Ask For Great Things

Some time ago, USA Today (is there even such a thing anymore?) published the results of a survey on prayer that had been completed on behalf of the Lutheran Brotherhood.

According to the results of the survey, nine out of 10 Americans reported that they pray.

What do they pray for most often?

98 percent said they pray for their own families

81 percent said they pray for the children of the world

77 percent said they pray for world peace

And 69 percent said they pray for their co-workers.

Now, these are all good things to pray for, but one thing that’s missing from this list is the church, and I want us to recognize how important it is that we pray for our church — that we pray for THE church, perhaps especially during times of turmoil such as we are facing under the coronavirus.

I told you last week that I have already heard of a distressing number of churches that will not be gathering again after the shelter-in-place orders and social-distancing regulations have been lifted.

So, perhaps you might think that I would ask you to pray that the doors of churches might remain open, that they might be able to meet their financial obligations and continue to gather long into the future.

And, again, those are not bad things to pray for, but the point of this sermon series is for us to recognize that there are greater things that should be the focus of our prayers.

John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace,” had wonderful advice for those who come before God in prayer through the mediation of His Son, Jesus Christ:

Nelson’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations & Quotes Coming to a King

Thou art coming to a King

Large petitions with thee bring;

For His grace and power are such

None can ever ask too much.

It’s funny how God works out these messages I bring each week. Even when I think I’m doing all the hard work, He sometimes reminds me that it is the power of the Holy Spirit working in me that enables me to do any of the work He has given me.

This week, I knew that our message would come from the book of 2 Thessalonians, a book that is full of the Apostle Paul’s prayers for the church that he had planted in Thessalonica.

But as I studied through the prayers in this letter from Paul, the prayer that I had intended for us to study was soon overshadowed by the one that we will focus on today.

As I looked over the possibilities for music, I was frustrated that we could not use the hymn that I wanted to use, because it is under copyright.

And so I chose “To God Be the Glory,” since it is in the public domain, and I figured that most everybody would know at least the first verse. “To God be the glory, great things He hath done!”

And then I noticed the words from that John Newton quotation that I had already chosen to share with you: “Thou art coming to a King; Large petitions with thee bring.”

There’s a bit of a theme going here, wouldn’t you say? And I can assure you that I didn’t engineer all of this; it was God’s doing, not mine.

Great things He hath done!

His grace and power are such that none can ever ask too much!

So why do we pray so often for such little things?

Today, I want to encourage you to think bigger when it comes to your prayers for this church, and when it comes to your prayers for THE church.

Keep this in mind as we take a look at six prayers for the church in the book of 2 Thessalonians today.

Remember where it is? Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and then 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

This is a short letter, but it was full of encouragement and instruction for the Thessalonian church, and there is much that we can learn from it.

You can think of these two epistles as letters to a young church living on the growing edge, surrounded by a hostile world, and anticipating the coming of Jesus Christ.

Paul had visited this pagan city during his second missionary journey, and you might recall that I said he had spent just over three weeks there, but that he had left behind a church strong in its faith and its love.

So let’s take a look at the prayers Paul prayed for this church in the midst of his letter to the believers in Thessalonica.

We’ll zip through the first four and then concentrate on the fifth.

The first prayer is one of thanksgiving, and it appears in chapter 1, verse 3.

2 Thessalonians 1:3 NASB95

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater;

Now, let me reword this in a more modern fashion, and then I want to point out something wonderful.

“We owe thanks to God for you always, brothers and sisters, and that’s appropriate, because your faith has been increased, and your love for one another continues to abound.”

For those of you who were with us last week, the last part of this verse should sound familiar.

When we looked at Paul’s prayers for this church in 1 Thessalonians, we saw that he prayed that God would cause their love to increase and abound so that their hearts would be separated unto God and unto His Son, and that the church would be sanctified and preserved completely for the work that God had set aside for it.

So when Paul says in verse 3 here that he thanks God because the faith of the Thessalonians is greatly enlarged and because their love for one another grows ever greater, what we see is that Paul is thanking God for answering his prayers!

Does God answer prayer?

Of course, He does!

Does God ALWAYS answer prayer?

Of course, He does!

Of course, His answer is sometimes “No,” and sometimes it is “Not right now.”

But as we draw nearer to God in prayer and in our study of Scripture, what we will find is that our hearts are ever turned more toward His heart and that our prayers are more often for Kingdom things.

And as we genuinely pray that He will use us to make His Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, then we will find that His answers are more often “Yes!”

One of the things I miss most about being able to gather together in the same room is the work that our prayer group was doing each Sunday before services.

As that group assembled to pray, they certainly prayed for health and healing and the like, but the greater part of their prayer time was spent divining God’s will for His church and praying that He would accomplish His Kingdom purposes through us.

And we have seen wonderful “Yes” answers to those prayers.

And as we saw those prayers answered, that group did not neglect to thank God.

So we see Paul doing just that in verse 3 of chapter 1.

Now, turn to Chapter 2, verse 13, and let’s look at Paul’s second prayer of thanksgiving for this church.

2 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB95

But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Look at how this prayer starts, and then flip back to chapter 1, verse 3.

They both start the same way. They have the same structure.

In a more modern way of speaking, we might say this verse like this:

“We owe thanks to God for you always, brothers and sisters whom God loves, because He planned from the very start that you would be saved by your faith in Jesus Christ and that you would grow to be more like Him by the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Now, the beginning of this prayer sounds familiar, because Paul used the same form here that he did in Chapter 1 and verse 3.

But the end of it should sound familiar to those who were with us last week.

In his first letter to them, Paul had prayed for the Thessalonian church would increase and abound in its love so that it could be set apart for God and for Jesus Christ and that it would be SANCTIFIED and preserved for the Kingdom work that God had prepared for it.

Now we said last week that the word “sanctified” means to be set apart, but we also said that the setting apart should result in our becoming more and more like Jesus.

So what is Paul thanking God for here?

He is thanking God for saving the people in this church by their faith in the sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. And he is thanking God for sanctifying them by the Holy Spirit — for making them more like Jesus.

Does God answer prayer?

Of course, He does.

But the thing is that we have to pray for the right things. We can pray for great things, but they must be the right great things.

Pray for your health, but pray even more that God will use you — whether in sickness or in health — to do the Kingdom work of drawing others to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

So we have seen Paul’s prayers of thanksgiving in this letter. Now I want us to look at his prayers of supplication.

Supplication is just a big word for asking for something earnestly and humbly, and that’s what we’ll see as we move through these three prayers.

The first one appears back in chapter 1, verses 11 and 12.

2 Thessalonians 1:11–12 NASB95

To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Note the petitions in this prayer. Paul prays:

That God will consider them worthy of their calling

And that God will give them “all that goodness can desire, and all that faith can bring to being.” I’m paraphrasing that one.

What is the purpose for the petitions? So that Jesus will be glorified in them.

Now, note the power by which the prayer will be answered: All of this will happen by the grace of God and the grace of Jesus Christ.

There is so much that can be said of this prayer, but today I just want you to see its Kingdom focus and its “large petitions.”

Paul is asking that God would give them “all that goodness can desire, and all that faith can bring to being.”

In the context of this letter, what Paul is asking is that God would enable them to do great work for His Kingdom, even in their pagan culture, by their faith in Jesus.

Now, turn to chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, and let’s look at the fourth prayer Paul prays for this church in Thessalonica.

2 Thessalonians 2:16–17 NASB95

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.

The petition here is that the hearts of the Thessalonians would be comforted and strengthened, that they would be completely comforted and strengthened in Christ.

What is the purpose of this petition? That they might accomplish every good work that God had prepared for them to do for His Kingdom and that they would be able to share the word they had been given, the good news that a Savior had come to rescue mankind from its bondage to sin.

And what is the power by which the petitions would accomplish their purpose?

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father, who has ALREADY given us, as believers, eternal comfort and good hope by His grace.

If you have been saved by the grace of God, then the comfort and the hope you have in Jesus Christ are far more substantial than any comfort or hope you might find in the world.

And if you have been saved by the grace of God, then you can count on God to answer your biggest prayers as they align with His will and His Kingdom plan.

And the closer you draw to God, the more you will be able to discern His will and recognize opportunities to pray for His Kingdom work to be done through you.

Now we’ll close with a closer look at Paul’s fifth prayer in this letter. Paul actually asks the Thessalonians to pray, but we’ll see that this is also a prayer Paul is praying for THEM.

It starts in the next verse, the first one of chapter 3.

2 Thessalonians 3:1–5 NASB95

Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it did also with you; and that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will continue to do what we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.

The first thing I want you to notice about this prayer is its focus.

The focus of Paul’s prayer here is the message and the messengers.

Now, the message is the word of the Lord, the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s unique and eternal Son, who came to earth as a man to give Himself as a sacrifice to pay the debt that each of us owes God for our sins.

The message is that through His death, our debt has been paid if we follow Him in faith, and through His resurrection, those who have done so will have eternal life with Him in heaven.

But who are the messengers?

In the greeting of verse 1 of this letter, we see that Paul is with Silas and Timothy, and they are surely messengers, and surely Paul is asking this church to pray for them.

But I think the “us” in chapter 3, verse 1 also refers to the church in Thessalonica.

Paul had been forced to leave Thessalonica after only three weeks when a mob of people who were angry that he was preaching the gospel in their city hauled some of the new Christians before the city authorities and forced one of them to post a bond as a promise that Paul would leave.

Next, he went to Berea, and the mob followed him there, and he had to escape by sea.

But the angry mob returned to Thessalonica, and they made things very hard for the new Christians in their city.

And when Paul switches to the second-person pronoun, “you,” in verse 3, we see that, even as he asks the Thessalonians to pray for him, this prayer is also for them in their persecution.

Folks, one of the lessons for us here is that our experience of worshiping God in peace is not a typical one, not even today.

And we should, quite frankly, be ashamed that we do not use the freedom we have to talk about Jesus to do more than sit in the pews — or our cars or on our couches — and listen to a sermon once a week.

I fear that we have become like the sleepy church of Sardis in the Book of Revelation. I fear that we have become too comfortable in our pews to go and complete our work in the sight of God.

In fact, I think that God is using this strange time that we are in now to force us outside of the church building — to force us not to GO to church, but to BE the church, to do the Kingdom work that He has prepared for us.

Paul had faith that God would use the Thessalonian church to build His Kingdom, even in their intensely pagan culture. And he had confidence that they would do just that.

And that leads us to the foundation of his prayer, which we see in verses 3 and 4.

The foundation of this prayer is God’s faithfulness to them and also their faithfulness to God.

Friends, let me tell you this: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

This doesn’t mean that you will never face hardships, that you will never face temptations, that you will never be mocked or persecuted for your faith.

What it means is that as you draw ever closer to God, you will feel His very comforting presence and the power of His Holy Spirit within those trials, those temptations and those persecutions.

And as you submit yourself to the Holy Spirit, you will find your own faithfulness to God growing day by day so that on the foundation of HIs faithfulness, you begin to bear fruit.

That’s the last thing I want you to note from this prayer. The purpose of the petitions is for the church to bear fruit.

What’s the fruit? The love of God and the steadfastness of Christ.

These are large petitions, not small ones.

The love of God is the love of the God who so loved the WORLD that He sent His only Son that whoever believes in Him would have eternal life.

And the steadfastness of Christ was such that He went to the cross to bear the sins of mankind.

These are not small petitions.

Now, I want you to go to God with small petitions. Take everything to the Lord in prayer. Jesus TOLD us to pray for our daily bread, so small petitions are clearly to be part of our prayers.

But He also told us to pray for our Father’s Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

When you go before the King in prayer for the church, feel free to pray for the little things. But please spend more time praying the great things He can do through the church.

Don’t just pray for the doors to remain open. Pray for us to fling wide the doors as we hurry out into this community to do the Kingdom work of Jesus Christ.

Don’t just pray for us to get back together. Pray for us to go OUT together to share the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

Don’t just pray that we will continue to be a part of this community. Pray that God will use us to change our city.

Pray that He will raise up pastors and missionaries from our ranks who will go and make disciples from among the nations.

Pray that His Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

And then go and do as He has commanded us to do.