First of All; A Church That Prays

Introduction

First of all.

Those are the Apostle Paul’s words—not mine.

And whenever Scripture says first, we ought to pay attention.

As we move into chapter two of Paul’s personal letter to Timothy, the pastor of the church in Ephesus, Paul is no longer warming up. He’s no longer addressing introductory matters. He gets right to the heart of what must shape the life of the church.

“First of all,” Paul says, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.”

1 Timothy 2:1 “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,”

Before structure.

Before leadership.

Before correction.

Before programs or plans.

First or all…Prayer.

Paul is establishing something foundational here: if the church is going to be healthy, if it is going to grow, if it is going to bear witness to Christ in the world, it must be—first of all—a church that prays.

Urging

1 Timothy 2:1 ESV

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,

Almost immediately, most of us dive right into one of those words, (intercession, thanksgiving, supplications) but Paul invites us to look into what is arguably the single most important element of our relationship with God — prayer — by using this simple word… URGE

“I urge…”

The word urge here is the Greek word παρακαλέω (para-kaleo).

Para — It’s where we get the words paramedic, paraphrase, parentheses, etc. PARA means close beside, right next to, around you.

Kaleo — to call

When Paul urges Timothy toward this, he’s saying: “I am calling people to come close to this principle — to step toward it, to accept it, to walk up to it and surround yourselves with it, really know it.”

When Paul says, “First of all, I urge that…”, he is making it unmistakably clear that as pastor of the churches of Ephesus, Timothy’s first order of business had better be prayer.

Before programs. Before structure. Before leadership development. Before correction.

Prayer.

Because if the church does not pray —

if the people who comprise the church do not seek the face of God —

what hope is there for real growth and spiritual formation?

And the reason is simple:

Prayer changes us.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. — Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Get this, each time we pray, new neural pathways are formed in our brains — making it easier and more natural to pray, to recognize His presence, and to sit with Him.

Conversely, the opposite is true. The longer we go without prayer, the harder prayer feels, the less natural it seems to go to God, we have a harder time recognizing His presence, and we tend to fidget like little children in His presence.

You’ve probably heard the old idiom;

“Seven days without prayer makes one weak.”

And it’s painfully true.

The longer we postpone communion with God, the more resistant our flesh becomes — and the flesh hates prayer.

The very thing we need most is that thing our flesh resists the hardest. And we will find every excuse imaginable to avoid it.

We’ve all been there.

Pew Research tells us that less than half — 44% — of people who claim faith pray daily.

Figure it this way, between online viewership and in house attendance, we minister to about 300 people weekly. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

That means of those 300 people, only 132 of them will pray daily.

But get this; Only 33% pray or give thanks for their meals. That’s only 90 of that 300! And only 13% of Americans participate in a prayer group!

We all know prayer matters. We know it changes us. We know it changes things.

So why don’t we pray?

Why Don’t We Pray?

#1 Our flesh resists prayer with everything it has

Listen to these words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship:

“The flesh resists this daily humiliation, (isn’t that what the flesh thinks of prayer - humiliation)

first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of 'evangelical liberty'). We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from self-martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life. As soon as a Christian recognizes that he has failed in his service, that his readiness has become feeble, and that he has sinned against another's life and become guilty of another's guilt, that all his joy in God has vanished and that his capacity for prayer has quite gone, it is high time for him to launch an assault upon the flesh, and prepare for better service by fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37; 4:2: Mark 9:29; 1 Cor. 7:5).”

Bonhoeffer is ruthless here — and rightly so.

We must launch an assault upon our flesh, and we do that by doing the very thing our flesh hates most:

Prayer.

#2 Prayer Requires Energy

To truly seek the face of God requires something from us.

The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy. — E. M. Bounds

We have, in many ways, become spiritually lazy when it comes to prayer.

And the absurd irony is this: the very place where energy is spent in prayer is the place where energy is restored.

We unburden our souls. We release anxiety. We intercede for others. We allow the Holy Spirit to work within us.

Need more energy? Spend it in prayer — and God will return it tenfold.

It’s no different than physical exercise. When you’re out of shape, movement feels exhausting — but movement is the very thing that restores strength.

You were designed to expend energy in prayer.

How did Jesus sustain ministry? He withdrew. He prayed. He communed with the Father.

#3 We expect something from prayer instead of allowing prayer to be the thing

What if the time you spent with God was the miracle?

What if the end result wasn’t answered requests — but communion itself?

How might your prayer life change if you approached it that way?

Prayer does not equip us for greater works — prayer is the greater work. — Oswald Chambers

Picture a busy coffee shop — noise, rush, distraction — and one person sitting quietly, savoring their cup. That’s prayer.

Not an escape from reality — but sustenance within it.

Urge Me To Do What?

Paul doesn’t leave prayer vague. He gives us form and direction.

He teaches us how to pray — even for people who have hurt us, mistreated us, or stand in authority over us.

We are commanded to:

Offer Supplications

Supplication is an old term that means humble, earnest asking — often considered to be a private matter. In other words, this sort of prayer is what’s expected at home or in your private prayer time.

This kind of prayer cannot be sincere unless the heart is right.

You don’t have to like someone’s personality to pray for them — Christ didn’t enjoy your behavior before salvation either. We love as we were loved by Christ.

Jesus makes this unmistakably clear:

Matthew 5:46–47 ESV

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

In what ways are we better than anyone else if all we ever do is show grace and mercy to those who have been gracious and merciful. To follow in the footsteps of Christ, to be a literal follower of Jesus, we must pray for those who haven’t been kind, who have betrayed our trust, and offer supplications on their behalf in the same way we offer supplications for those whom we adore!

Who in your life needs your supplication? Have you neglected the practice of supplication from your prayer life?

Offer Prayers

This refers to prayer spoken aloud — corporate, public, communal.

Jesus warns against hypocrisy, not against public prayer:

Matthew 6:5 ESV

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.

Public prayer teaches others how transformed hearts respond.

We pray — not slander. We intercede — not gossip.

Who do you need to pray for openly?

Make Intercession

This kind of prayer could be both a private or public prayer, however the point is the same - the Greek here is powerful!

Intercession means an

INTERVENTION led by God, marking intersection between heaven and earth as it reflects the Lord's specific will.

This isn’t us praying our will for other people, no matter how kind that may be, it is us praying God’s will for that person - meeting with God on HIS terms for that person’s life.

In fact, sometimes we don’t even know what to pray because we aren’t certain how to approach it for the sake of God’s will.

Paul addresses this when he discusses what happens when we don’t know how to pray for someone;

Romans 8:26 ESV

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Spurgeon puts it beautifully:

2    I must pour out my heart in the language which his Spirit gives me; and more than that, I must trust in the Spirit to speak the unutterable groanings of my spirit, when my lips cannot actually express all the emotions of my heart. Charles Spurgeon “The Fatherhood of God” sermon (1858)

Charles Spurgeon

If you’re stuck and you don’t know how to intercede for someone, if you’re in prayer and you don’t know what to say because your lost in yourself - release the power of Holy Spirit within you to take those things which you can’t utter, those things which you don’t know what to say - straight to the Father.

And while those seem to be flowery words, this is a very practical thing. It’s hands-on, real. .

How do we pray like this?

First, soften your heart. Allow yourself to feel that which you cannot express.

Then turn your heart towards God and ask Holy Spirit to pray for you, on behalf of you. It’s truly not complicated.

For whom do you need to intercede today?

You don’t need to know how to pray for them - who is Holy Spirit breaking your heart for right now?

Offer Thanksgiving

“Gratitude is the Gateway to Worship” — Kevin Jones

I have said this for decades - if you want to encounter the presence of God, it should start with gratitude and thanksgiving.

Yet there’s a much deeper practice found within offering thanksgiving, it’s an element of decreasing yourself as you align your focus on God.

Thanksgiving is an act of self-denial.

William Gurnall

Deeply embedded within the act of offering thanks to God, we find that we must deny ourselves. Offering thanks is all about recognizing blessings as gifts, not entitlements, and choosing to acknowledge the Giver or the source of good, even when life is difficult, requiring a deliberate choice against our natural self-focus.

People are astounded and often offended when I remind them that GOD gave them the job that provides for them - they didn’t earn it. Because if He had wanted to, He could have blocked their path at every turn.

You might work hard at something for years and never see the fruit of your work - because your work isn’t about you!

It’s about bringing glory to the One who gave it to you! Offering gratitude can be extremely difficult at times, especially when life is hard, when circumstances seem to be out of control.

What do we do when this happens?

If you find it hard to offer thankfulness in prayer due to life's pressures, consider starting a gratitude journal.

Each evening, jot down three things you are thankful for that day. Then, use these notes as a foundation for your prayers.

When you kneel to pray, recount these blessings to God, allowing your gratitude to transform your mindset, refresh your spirit, and deepen your relationship with Him.

Let’s start now;

What are two things you can whisper thanks for right now?

For Who?

1 Timothy 2:1 ESV

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,

All means all.

Friends. Enemies. Leaders. Strangers.

This includes the ones you love, then people who drive you crazy, the ones who lie about you, the ones who defend you, the people who have hurt you, the ones who have walked hand in hand with you through the darkness… and get this… the people whom you haven’t even met.

Why?

Because God desires peace for the sake of godliness — and godliness for the sake of witness.

1 Timothy 2:2 ESV

for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This means we pray for those in leadership or positions of authority over us, it also means pray for those who are in lower stations than us.

It means pray for those who are different from us and worship differently from us, and pray for those who we’d rather not associate with.

Pray for ALL people.

Feel like you don’t know who to pray for? Pray for your neighbors. Pray for the police and fire departments. Pray for Pastors or professors, the social workers and the court system.

Pray for ALL people.

How do you pray for them?

With supplications, prayers (in public), intercessions, and thanksgiving.

God’s plan for your life is a peaceful and quiet life. A godly and (get this) DIGNIFIED life in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY!

But get this — it may shock us to hear this — God’s plan isn’t just about you!

Always, God’s plan reverts back to an eternal purpose, that which will draw all men to God - that God may be glorified.

The point of desiring a peaceful, content environment in our lives is not for our own comfort — it is for the expression of godliness and holiness — it is for Christian witness, the spread of the gospel of Christ Jesus!

That’s the whole plan - if we can live our lives in this way, God moves our surroundings and we can more easily share the gospel!

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 2:3–4 (ESV)

…who desires all people to be saved…

The absolute end goal - the touchdown moment for our joined prayer lives is that people be saved!

Who in your life is in need of the gospel? What if we utilized Paul’s instructions here? What if we determined within ourselves that we are going to come together as a family and prayer earnestly for ALL PEOPLE and see this world changed to the glory of God?

Conclusion

God’s plan for your life is a peaceful and quiet life—godly and dignified in every way.

But hear this clearly: that peace is not for comfort—it is for witness.

God desires all people to be saved.

And He has chosen to work through a praying people to accomplish that purpose.

This is why Paul says, “First of all…”

Not because prayer is optional.

Not because prayer is helpful.

But because prayer is foundational.

The church does not move forward without it.

The gospel does not advance without it.

And we do not become who God is forming us to be without it.

So the question before us is not do we believe in prayer?

The question is this:

Will we be a church that prays?

For all people.

In every way.

For the glory of God and the salvation of the world.

Are you willing?

First of all… will you pray?