Paul's Prayer for US
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Paul’s Prayer for Us
Paul’s Prayer for Us
phil 1.
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
The apostle assured the saints that he prayed regularly for them (v. 3). Now here (v. 9) he reported what it was he prayed for.[1]
This is it...
This is what he wanted them to become
This is the goal
List the top three goals for your children’
These are them
This is his prayer ....
Paul’s genuine thanks for the fellowship of the Philippian saints caused him to pray for their continued spiritual progress.
He went to prayer for them
Concern for others should express itself first in prayer, as one recognizes the importance of the divine factor in any lasting spiritual growth.
Many of us have goal for our children
Love God and be faithful to Him
Have a vibrant marriage
Bring grandkids
This is what Paul prayer for for these believers
Should this not also be for us ?
[1] Kent, H. A., Jr. (1981). Philippians. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon (Vol. 11, pp. 107–108). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
Paul’s Prayer for us is:
I WE Should Love Without Bounds
I WE Should Love Without Bounds
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
phil 1.
The basic petition of Paul’s prayer is that his readers’ love might abound more and more.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Love is a fruit of the Spirit () that enables all other spiritual virtues to be exercised properly ().
Love is a fruit of the Spirit () that enables all other spiritual virtues to be exercised properly (). Without it no Christian is spiritually complete (). No reason appears in the passage to limit this to love for God, for each other, or for Paul. Most likely, it is unrestricted and refers to the continuing demonstration of this spiritual fruit in any and all ways. The Philippians had already displayed their love in generously giving to Paul, but love never reaches the saturation point.[1]
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Without it no Christian is spiritually complete ().
14 And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
col
No reason appears in the passage to limit this to love for God, for each other, or for Paul. Most likely, it is unrestricted and refers to the continuing demonstration of this spiritual fruit in any and all ways.
Love is the most remarkable thing in the universe and the greatest fact is that “God is love” ().
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Book than Anna B. Warner’s simple couplet:
Jesus loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
The greatest passage ever written on love is . This portion of Scripture is like a lofty cathedral transept—wondrous, awesome, bathed in tinted lights and shades—with every line and word designed to lift our thoughts higher and higher and fill our hearts with noble desires, dreams, and determinations.
Love will drive people to extraordinary lengths. It will make them do things nothing else can.
Consider, for instance, what Jan de Hartog’s heroine Betsy did.
De Hartog’s story, set in the Dutch East Indies amid terrifying jungles and untamed wilds, is a calculated study in contrasts between Betsy and the hero, Dr. Brits-Jansen. Big, bossy, brave, the doctor strides through the story like a giant. His passion is leprosy: what it is, what it does, where it lurks, whom it attacks. Nobody knows more about the disease than he. He can diagnose it in a flash. With tireless zeal he wages war against leprosy in the aseptic hospital and in the pagan villages. The powers that be have armed him with warrants. His job is to stamp out the disease and he is authorized to isolate and quarantine the victims and burn their villages. And so he does the best he can. Following Brits-Jansen’s adventures with breathless interest, we are attracted and outraged by the force of his formidable personality.
Betsy is a Salvation Army missionary who with her saintly husband runs a leper colony. She was saved from a life of wickedness, a life to which she had abandoned herself with the same reckless determination that Brits-Jansen gives to his leprosy crusade. Now she is out in the bush surrounded by suffering lepers in various stages of the dreadful, disfiguring, and contagious disease.
The difference between Betsy and Brits-Jansen is soon seen. His goal is to eliminate leprosy and no measures are too harsh. Her aim. is to love the poor unhappy lepers more and more. Betsy lives with them, works with them, cares for them, comforts them, weeps with them. At last she becomes just like them—a leper. She dies a long, lingering death, beatified in the hearts of all who know her.
Betsy is just a character in a story, but the world has known many real-life missionaries who have done in fact what she did in fiction. They have learned to love more and more, giving up the comforts of home, the warmth of family and friends, the security of well-paying jobs, and the prospects of advancement, achievement, and renown in order to bury themselves with some jungle tribe or to work in some city slum.
Paul prayed that the Philippians would love without limit, that their love would abound more and more.
He had received ample proof of their love for him, but there was a whole world of lost people to be loved.
The men who had owned that poor demonic slave girl needed to be loved. The city magistrates who had unjustly beaten Paul and Silas needed to be loved.
The Philippians had neighbors, friends, workmates, acquaintances, relatives, and other brothers in Christ who needed to be loved with the love of Christ.
b. Love Within Limits (1:9b)
Love Within Limits (1:9b)
“In knowledge and in all judgment.”
judgement - discernment
Love is not to be mistaken for lust, nor does love operate without law.
Love knows its limits, knows where to draw the line. While we can love all men, we do not love all that they do.
Love is to be universal but it is not to be gullible.
Paul makes that clear by using the words epignōsis and aisthēsis in . Epignōsis, translated “knowledge,” means “precise knowledge, knowledge acquired by further experience, the result of learning or perceiving.” Aisthēsis, translated “judgment,” also means “perception.” Aisthēsis occurs only in this verse in Scripture.
A parent who loves his child “in knowledge and in all judgment” will not indulge his every wish and will not withhold rebuke and discipline.
Nobody ever loved us as God loves us; Calvary is the witness of that.
But God’s love—vast, eternal, boundless—never violates His holiness, never operates in conflict with His omniscient wisdom, and never ignores His own righteous laws. The fact that God is love and longs for all men to be saved and share His home in Heaven does not mean that there is no Hell. And the fact that Hell exists does not mean that God stops loving those who are there. Sin breaks God’s laws and it also breaks His heart.
Love is not cold and calculating because it stays within the limits of sense.
Love is always warm and giving. Love finds a way to work for the good of those brought within its wide embrace.
Seriously - do people in your life believe that you exhibit love?
Invite people into your lives....
Paul’s Prayer for us is:
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
10 That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ;
He Wanted the Philippians to Be Sound in Their Doctrine of Christ (1:10a)
“That ye may approve things that are excellent [things that differ].”
The word translated “approve,” dokimazō, literally means “to assay, examine, test” and it is used in reference to testing metals for purity.
Paul’s idea is that we should carefully examine things and approve them only if they pass the test.
We are to examine things that differ to see if they pass the test.
Illustration of secondary education - failure to examine has proved very expensive for many. No jobs only debt.
Do we judge our life against the standard the Word of God!
Matters of doctrine are among the things that differ. Paul was aware, for example, of doctrinal differences in the church at Colossae.
He recognized serious cultic errors in that church and exposed them in his letter to the believers there.
Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians was written about the same time as his Epistle to the Philippians.
Today cultists have their “Christs,” but they are to be distinguished from our Lord Jesus Christ. We can—we must—love people whose doctrines differ from ours; but the fact that we love the people does not mean that we approve of what they believe, say, or do.
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
3 As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine,
8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
The discerning atmosphere in which their love should operate will require them continually “to discern what is best.”
Some things are clearly good or bad. In others the demarcation is not so readily visible.
In Christian conduct and the exercise of love, such factors as one’s influence on others, as well as the effect on oneself, must be considered (). The question should not only be “Is it harmful?” but “Is it helpful?” ().
The goal in view is the day of Christ, in which every believer must stand before his Lord and give an account of his deeds ().
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
This sobering and joyous prospect for the believer should have a purifying effect on his life ().[1]
3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.
I want what is best ...
Jim Cornell moving to VA from NJ
He wanted what was best - search the scriptures....
Paul’s Prayer for us is:
I would say to any young man contemplating the ministry and beginning to build his library, “Go for the best.” I always look at the libraries in the homes I visit. All too often I see shelves lined with books that look impressive but are of little or no value. I see sets that have been eulogized in advertising copy, marketed at discount prices—and bought at the expense of something better. It is a pity that not only money but also time is spent on such books.
Many of these books are doctrinally unsound, espousing positions that are more harmful than helpful even to those who are mature enough to sense that something is wrong. Unless an idea is instantly recognized as a weed, it is planted in the mind and remains there as a potential danger. If a book is not doctrinally sound and the reader is not theologically astute, he can be sidetracked for years by a wrong idea.
When I was first beginning to take an interest in eschatology, someone gave me a book that suggested that Paul’s last trump in and (the rapture chapter) was the same as John’s last trump (the last of the seven in the series) in the spent months considering that wrong idea and it was not until much later that I saw through its theological fallacy. The theory sounded right but proved inadequate to account for all the facts. I wasted many valuable hours of study time pursuing a phantom.
III We Should Legitimize Righteousness
III We Should Legitimize Righteousness
11 Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.
We should be filled with righteousness.
By legitimizing righteousness we are making it visible and real
We are authentic
Righteousness characterizes our lives
We legitimize righteousness by not living consistent.
illustration - we are consumed with being faithful to church but our neighbor dying with cancer never get a card or a visit
To make something real and legitimizing something that had a negative view and making it positive
example
gay marriage - present as normal and loving society has legitimized gay marriage
WE CAN MAKE RIGHTEOUSNESS SEEM AUTHENTIC ...
REAL - NOT LEGALISM
“the fruit of righteousness.”
The conduct that will receive Christ’s commendation must be characterized by “the fruit of righteousness.”
Transformed lives are the demonstration that God works in believers.
Paul desires that when his readers stand before Christ, their lives will have been filled with the right kind of fruit.
He is not talking about mere human uprightness measured by outward conformity to law (3:9).
He is rather speaking of the spiritual fruit that comes from Jesus Christ, produced in them by the Holy Spirit sent by Christ ().
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Paul is praying this will be your life.
6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
Consequently, all the glory and praise belongs not to believers but to God, for he has redeemed them by the work of his Son and has implanted within them his Spirit to produce the fruit of righteousness. The thought is similar to that in , , , where Paul says that the entire plan of redemption should result in praise of God’s glory.
Paul’s Prayer for us is:
I WE Should Love Without Bounds
I WE Should Love Without Bounds
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
II We Should Long for Sound Teaching
III We Should Legitimize Righteousness
III We Should Legitimize Righteousness