Worship for Sunday, December 5, 2021

Philippians 1:3-11 (ESV): 3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. Back in June of this year, you enabled me to attend The National Conference on Preaching in Nashville. I had the privilege of sitting under tremendous preaching and teaching about preaching. I want to thank you again for providing that educational opportunity. Not only do I want to thank you, but you should thank yourselves for sending me. It is one of the best investments that you have made in me, and through me, in the ministry of Grace Community Fellowship. To sit under such powerful expositional preaching reaffirmed and even deepened my love for God's Word and for preaching and teaching it to God's people. You may not be aware of the connection, but over the past few months several of you, both those who are here in the worship service, and those who listen when the messages and bible study sessions are uploaded, have commented on the depth, the quality and the impact of my preaching and teaching. I believe that a large part of that is due to the edification, renewal and challenge I received from the men and women who preached and taught at that conference. I shared all of that with you for a few reasons. The first was to thank you again for investing in me, and through me, in your church. The second is to unashamedly say that I would be glad to be sent to Charlotte, North Carolina in May for the 2022 National Conference on Preaching. The third reason is that a portion of the New Testament reading for today was the text for the most impactful of ten sermons I absorbed during that time. What Pastor Tommy Swindoll shared from this passage changed the way I think about prayer and changed the way I pray for you, the people who make up Grace Community Fellowship. It changed the way I pray at our weekly Prayer Group. Those who gather on Thursday evenings are true prayer warriors. Most of them have been faithfully gathering to pray for his church since before it ever gathered for its first worship service. Others have joined as they became a part of this family. Still others were actively involved until illness or death took them from us. I have typically been the last person in the group to pray. By the time the others have effectively and fervently interceded on behalf of those names and situations we list there is little for me to pray, except Amen, Let it be so, Lord Jesus. After coming back from Nashville, I decided to begin praying the Scriptures for those listed and for the church. Specifically, I have been praying Paul's prayers for the churches he wrote to. I started with the letter to the church at Rome and moved forward in the epistles from there. You can consider it a happy accident if you want to, but I think it is no coincidence that when Prayer Group came back together for the first time after the Fall Bible Study the scripture prayer that was next in line was Philippians 1:9-11, a portion of today's New Testament reading and the text of Pastor Tommy Swindoll's impactful message. The Holy Spirit used all of these things to prompt me to preach a series of messages under the heading of How To Pray For Your Church. These messages will not be taking place sequentially, but for reasons I won't take the time to get into today, will be scattered through the months and, perhaps, even years to come. Today I want to begin with a message titled, Preparing Your Heart To Pray. So open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 1 as we look at what God has to teach us about the heart, the attitude, of the one who prays for their fellow believers, for their church family. I don't have the time this morning to fully unpack these attitude characteristics or to talk about how to develop them. That will need to wait. However, I want you to begin praying this way, so I will at least introduce the heart of a praying person. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul begins his letter to the body of believers gathered in Philippi with the beautiful prayer we have before us this morning. It is through this same divine inspiration that this same prayer is what God desires for all believers in every church down through the ages, so that we who gather under the name of Grace Community Fellowship on this first Sunday of December in 2021 are covered by the very same prayer. I will focus on the prayer itself, which is contained in verses 9-11, in a future message, but first I want you to notice Paul's attitude as he prays. Paul prays with joy. Joy is a key theme in the book of Philippians. In verse 4 he says: Philippians 1:4 (ESV): always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, Philippians 3:1 (ESV): Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord Philippians 4:4 (ESV): Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice His joy is a result of remembering the relationship that He has with them. He remembers that they are partners in the Gospel. He remembers that those for whom he is praying are his brothers and sisters in Christ. They know the same grace that he knows. Because of his knowledge of their salvation, he can rejoice with and for them, even in his imprisonment. Paul prays with confidence. He knows that as they absorb and embody this prayer, God will continue the work begun in their conversion. That work is a lifelong process that will come to completion in heaven. He refers to it as the day of Jesus Christ. The prayer is not simply lifted to the throne of God. It contains instructions regarding their role in the process. That is the way prayer usually works. We do not simply how our heads, close our eyes, whisper a prayer and then settle into our La-Z-Boys waiting for God to do something. God generally gives us the privilege of participating in the answer. C.S. Lewis wrote, "He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures." In other words, it is rare for God to not have us partner with him in working out the answer to the prayer. The last thing I want you to notice is that Paul prays with love for the Philippians. It says he yearns for them with the affection of Christ Jesus. The love for the world that empowered Jesus to carry his own cross to Calvary and kept him nailed there when he could have called ten thousand angels, was present in Paul's heart as he prayed for the church at Philippi. In fact, later in this epistle he writes: Philippians 3:8-11 (ESV): Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith- 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. When you prepare your heart to pray, the resultant time of prayer will be more powerful and meaningful for you. When you prepare your heart to pray, the resultant time of prayer will be more powerful in the lives of those for whom you are praying. James 5:16 (ESV): The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working I hope that you regularly and systematically pray for your sisters and brothers here at Grace Community Fellowship. Praying for one another is an important part of our life together. I hope that you pray for one another, not just when you are aware of a need, but at all times. Through the prayers that Paul prayed for the churches, we will learn more about how to pray for one another and about what to pray for one another. Today I want to invite you to begin to ask God to prepare your heart as you pray for the church. Ask God to put a smile on the face of your heart as you remember the relationship you have with each of your sisters and brothers. Ask God to give you confidence in the work He is doing in their life. Ask Him to show you how He would have you partner with Him in answering your prayer for your sister and brother. Ask God to fill you with a love that moves you, that impacts you, as you pray for your church family. Ask God to give you such a love for that person that you get a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye when you are praying for them. We are called to be a people of prayer. We pray for the world around us. We intercede for individuals and situations that we are made aware of. We pray for missionaries and mission fields around the world. We pray for the needs of our church family. These are all wonderful and important aspects of prayer. I am challenging you to elevate your prayer life and pray for the church, for your sisters and brothers gathered here in this place the way Paul prayed for the church in Philippi and the way Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus and the way Paul prayed for the church in Rome. I am asking you to pray that God would prepare your heart for these prayers, by making it a heart full of joy, brimming with confidence and overflowing with love. PREPARING YOUR HEART TO PRAY PHILIPPIANS 1:3-11 1