Mount Isa Baptist Church

A Model Prayer

Philippians 1:7-11

How do we pray for our fellow believers, those who call themselves Christians? How do we go about praying for them?

In our text Paul supplies us with a model prayer that we would do well to follow. I want to look at some points that will hopefully help us as we pray for each other as fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first point that should shape the way that we pray for fellow believers, is that they be abounding in love.

This is interesting because love is like this seed that is planted in the ground, and from that little seed, Paul expects growth. How can we tell whether I’m growing in Christ? The answer is to ask this question: “ls this seed of love germinating?” Is it producing new shoots of love? That is what Paul is praying for, for the Philippian church. Why in verse 9 does Paul leaves out the object of our love, he leaves it blank? He says, “that your love may abound more and more” but he does not put the object of our love there. Why is this? Does he mean that we should be abound more and more in our love for God? Is that what he means? Or does he mean that we should abound more and more in our love for fellow believers? Or does he mean that we should abound more and more in our love for the lost, unbelievers? Which one is it? Is it the 1st, 2nd, or the 3rd? And my answer to that question would be YES, he means all of the above. We cannot leave one of them out. He wants our love to abound more and more for God, for fellow believers, for those who are lost. Paul leaves the object of our love open, that we don't reduce the scope of our loving. So, we don’t just love the one portion and forget about the rest, that’s why he leaves it open. Paul means that we are to grow in our love for God. God wants us to grow in our love for other fellow believers. Paul would want us to grow in our love for unbelievers, for the lost. So, when you pray for your church family, think firstly about the seed of love, and pray to God that those people's love for Him, their love for each other and their love for the lost would be increased. That's the first way we should pray for each other.

Secondly, as these shoots of love thrust out of the ground they need to be held, they need to be received, they need to be guided by these two stakes.

These two stakes we read are knowledge and depth of insight. Why do these shoots of love, as they come up out the ground, why must they be held and guided by knowledge and depth of insight? The answer is, “It's all too easy for us as Christians to love the wrong things.” So, to prevent us, and to prevent these shoots of love being misdirected Paul says that we need two stakes, and those two stakes are knowledge and depth of insight. I can tell you why one Christian will grow, and another Christians growth remains stunted. It has to do with this intake of the Word of God. Our daily intake of Scripture, not just on a Sunday when we come to church but each and every day. Do we open God’s Word and study it and meditate on it and pray over it or do we pick it up once a week and dust it off on a Sunday and say to ourselves, today I’m going to study God’s Word? And then you wonder why your Christian growth is stunted, why you aren’t growing in Christ. That's why Paul whenever he prayers for his fellow believers, he always prayed that they would grow in their knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is God's goal for our lives and for our church? Well, it is for us to grow in our knowledge and our love for the Lord Jesus. The love for which Paul prays is defined by the Word of God, bound by the Word of God, and conforms to the love of God revealed in His Word.

The third thing we pray for our fellow believers is that they burst with fruit!

That's the goal of Christian growth. That the seed would become a shoot, that the shoot would be guided by knowledge and depth of insight, that suddenly there would be this huge harvest. We as Christians are to be pure, sincere, genuine and transparent in our lives, characterized by love so we can genuinely love others with Christ-like love. When are we to do this? Until the day of Christ. As he came to the end of his ministry and his life, Paul realized the all-consuming passion of the Christian should be to love one another.

How are we praying for each other? Are we even praying for each other?

My prayer is that our love for God, for each other, and for the lost would grow more and more each and every day.