Pray Like This
Three Key Takeaways
Pray with thanksgiving, remembering what God has done. Paul says, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you." Thanksgiving is the foundation of prayer. When we remember all that God has done in our lives, in others' lives, in the church, it produces joy and confidence. Gratitude isn't just polite; it's essential to sustaining prayer.
Pray with confidence in God's faithfulness to complete His work. Paul was confident "that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." God finishes what He starts. When praying for people, we can trust that God will complete the transformation He's begun, even when progress seems slow or circumstances look discouraging.
Pray for love and wisdom to produce lasting fruit. Paul's prayer wasn't for comfort or success, but "that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment." He prayed they'd grow in love for God and others, grow in wisdom to discern what's excellent, and make righteous decisions that bear good fruit—so they'd stand before Jesus filled with the fruit of lives that honoured Him.
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Pray Like This
Over the next 9 or 10 weeks, we'll be working our way through Philippians. It was originally a letter written in the 60s AD—a generation after Jesus died and was resurrected—by Paul (Saint Paul, the Apostle Paul), who travelled around Turkey and Europe preaching the gospel and forming new communities of Jesus followers.
Philippi was the first place in Europe he visited. It's the first city in Europe to have a church planted in it. About ten years after he started the church, he wrote them this letter to help them. He was in prison, probably in Rome at this point.
This letter taught them what it meant to follow Jesus. For readers today, 2,000 years later, in a city a lot bigger but quite like Philippi in many ways, the aim is to understand what it looks like. This letter will help us over the next few months.
Today, it will help us think about how we pray.
Everyone Prays
Prayer is something almost everyone has done at some point. When you look at polls, maybe 20 or 30% of people describe themselves as atheists. But if you ask how many people pray, it's like 99%. Even people who don't believe in God still pray. They still have an instinct to ask for help from something or someone beyond themselves whom they trust can help them.
Prayer is often experienced as difficult, even among long-time Christians. Sometimes there's so much to pray for, we can't fit it all in. Then, when we come to pray, we can't think of anything worth praying about. Or we start praying for about ten seconds and drift off, and ten minutes later realise we're thinking about becoming a professional footballer and need to get back to prayer.
Many people's earliest memory of prayer involves anxiety—sitting in a circle in a kids' group, terrified of praying out loud, desperately trying to rehearse the whole prayer in their head so they'd know what to say, panicked about praying the wrong thing or stumbling over words.
The truth is, sometimes in some contexts, we still find ourselves doing it a bit like that.
Learning from Paul's Prayer
Paul tells the Philippians that he's praying for them, what he's praying, and even a few things about how he's praying. That's a brilliant opportunity for us to learn how to pray together—in particular, how to pray for the church.
Paul is praying for this church in Philippi. As we're forming this new church, this passage provides a framework for learning how to pray for the church we're part of. What should we pray for? What's the most important thing to pray for? How should we do it? Paul is going to teach us.
The Letter Opens
Philippians 1:1-2:
"Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
He's writing to "all the saints"—that means holy ones, all the holy people, all the ones that God has made holy in Christ Jesus. That's us, too, if we're Christians. God has made us holy.
Thanksgiving: The Foundation of Prayer
Verses 3-6:
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 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."
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you."
Paul starts with thanksgiving. When he thinks about the Philippian church, he thanks God. When he prays for them, he thanks God.
This is the foundation of prayer. If we want to learn to pray well, we must learn to be thankful. We need to learn to remember all that God has done and thank Him for it.
Paul doesn't just thank God occasionally. He thanks God "in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all."
He thanks God whenever he remembers them and whenever he prays.
Why? Because thanksgiving produces joy. It changes the way we pray. It changes our perspective.
When we remember what God has done in our lives, in other people's lives, in the church, it brings us joy. It makes us confident. It helps us keep praying.
Many people struggle with prayer because they forget to be thankful. Prayer often becomes focused on immediate needs and concerns. We forget to stop, remember, and thank God for all He's already done.
Paul says he prays "with joy." Why? Because he is remembering their shared history in the gospel—how God brought them to faith and sustained them.
Thanksgiving isn't just about being polite. It's essential. It sustains our prayer life.
Confidence: God Finishes What He Starts
"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."
Paul is confident. He's sure. He has no doubt.
What is he confident about? That God will finish what He started.
God began a good work in the Philippian Christians. He brought them to faith. He started transforming them. And Paul is confident that God will bring it to completion.
God doesn't start things and abandon them halfway through. God doesn't give up on people. God finishes what He starts.
This is crucial for our prayer life. When we pray for people—for ourselves, for others, for the church—we can pray with confidence. Not confidence in ourselves, but confidence in God's faithfulness.
God will complete the work He's begun.
This doesn't mean it will be easy. It doesn't mean there won't be setbacks. It doesn't mean progress will be quick or obvious. But it does mean God is faithful. He will bring it to completion.
When we're praying for someone, and it feels like nothing's happening, when we're praying for ourselves, and we feel like we're going backwards, when we're praying for the church, and it feels discouraging—we can remember this: God finishes what He starts.
Affection and Longing
Verses 7-8:
"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 defence and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus."
Paul holds them in his heart. He yearns for them. He has affection for them.
This isn't cold, duty-bound prayer. This is a warm, heartfelt, longing prayer.
Paul prays for people he loves. And his love for them isn't just human affection. It's "the affection of Christ Jesus." Christ's love flows through him.
When we pray for the church, when we pray for each other, we're not just ticking boxes. We're expressing love. We're expressing care. We're expressing the affection of Christ Jesus for His people.
The Content of Paul's Prayer
Verses 9-11:
"And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."
Here's what Paul actually prays for them:
That their love would grow ever stronger.
Not just that, they'd love a bit more. That their love would abound—overflow, increase, multiply. More and more.
Love for God. Love for each other. Love for those outside the church.
That they'd grow in wisdom.
"With knowledge and all discernment." That they'd know what's right. That they'd discern what's excellent. That they'd turn away from evil and turn towards what God says is good and true.
That they'd bear good fruit.
As they grow in love and wisdom, they'll make good decisions. Those good decisions will bear fruit. They'll build up more and more good fruit in their lives.
So that when they stand before Jesus—which one day will happen to all of us—they'll be carrying baskets full of the fruit of righteousness. They'll have lived lives that honoured Him
Living with the End in Mind
Paul is praying with the end in mind. He's thinking about "the day of Christ"—the day when we'll all stand before Jesus.
At the beginning of their journey, the Philippian Christians were completely self-centred, mainly concerned about themselves, their own lives, and the things that concerned them.
But Paul's prayer is that, by the time they reach the day of Christ Jesus, they'll have been transformed into people who love and make wise decisions. Their lives will have built up more and more baskets of good fruit of righteousness.
They'll stand before Jesus, and He'll say, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've lived well. You've walked well."
Think about someone like Mother Teresa—a famous example of someone who lived a radical life of learning to love other people with incredible wisdom. Her whole life was poured out for the poorest people in Calcutta—for the lepers, the people society didn't care about.
She was transformed by God into someone who loved other people more and more. She lived with incredible wisdom.
When she died, she had nothing. No possessions, no house. All the things we might value—she died with nothing.
But the day she stood before Jesus, she was filled with the fruit of righteousness. Standing before Jesus with a life well-lived.
This becomes the goal of the Christian life. Not to accumulate things in this world that we can't take with us anyway. But to store up good fruit—to stand before Jesus filled with the fruit of lives that honoured Him.
How We Should Pray
This forms the substance of Christian prayer for each other, for our community.
We should be praying primarily for things like this: that God would teach us to love Him and each other more and more, that we'd grow in wisdom so we'd learn what righteousness looks like, learn how to follow Jesus well, and that we'd build up loads of good fruit from living before Him.
So that when we arrive on the day of Christ Jesus and stand before Him, we're filled with the good fruit of lives that have honoured Him and followed Him.
That's a great thing to pray for each other and to live for together.
At Redemption
At Redemption, we're learning to pray like this—with thanksgiving for what God has done, with confidence that God finishes what He starts, and with a focus on love, wisdom, and bearing lasting fruit.
We don't want church to be just hearing about it on Sunday and then going off on our own to try and do it. We want this to be a community where people read the Bible together, learn to love one another, learn what wisdom looks like, go on a journey together, and help each other get to the finish line, filled with the good fruit of lives well lived.
We're praying that God would lead us day by day in growing in our love, wisdom, and righteousness, so that we can stand before Him and hear His "Well done" ringing in our ears.
