Prayer for Fellow Disciples of Jesus Christ

xymonau, sxc.hu

This is my prayer for my fellow disciples of Jesus Christ as it was Paul’s prayer for the church in Philippi. Paul identifies in the first few verses of the book that the church shares in the same salvation, the same grace, that he does and that he is confident that the faith of the church will continue to grow until it is perfected when Christ returns. His prayer is as follows:

He prays that their love will abound. To abound is to be great in number or amount or to be fully supplied or filled (American Heritage Dictionary). Not only this, but that the love will abound more and more. So love is to become greater in number every day or we are to be filled more every day with love. Now this love is to be filled through real knowledge and discernment. Paul makes a clear distinction that there is real knowledge and there is fake knowledge. Real knowledge is knowledge of God and his plan. Fake knowledge is everything else, which comes from the world. Discernment is His wisdom, the ability to make decisions the way God would make them. And where do we find God’s wisdom and knowledge? In the Word of God. His prayer for the Philippians and my prayer for all believers is that they would study and learn the word of God, that they would have a hunger and thirst for it and that their love which is the love of God will grow daily in them through their faithfulness to it.

Why do we need this abounding love? It is so we will be able to approve things which are excellent. This isn’t to say that we are to be judges of our own efforts or that we will determine what is excellent or not, rather we will be able to determine what is right and good through the discernment we obtain through God’s word. Remember that this prayer is for the church at Philippi and for the whole church today. Decisions are made in churches daily. My prayer is that the church leaders are being filled more and more by the wisdom of God and that, that is the measure by which they make decisions, not by fake knowledge which is the knowledge that comes from the world around us. Through this effort to make judgments based on God’s standard our leaders can be sincere and blameless so that no one will be led astray by the result of their judgments.

Now this sincerity and blamelessness, is a direct result of their filling of the fruit of righteousness. According to American Heritage Dictionary, to be righteous is to be morally justifiable and in accordance with virtue or morality, but most importantly, it is to be without guilt or sin. This fruit, this freedom from guilt and sin, comes through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ. Now for what reason would we desire, or would it be required, that we be free from guilt and sin? For the glory and praise of God. My prayer for believers today is that they be sincere and blameless, that they hunger and thirst for righteousness through God’s word so that decisions can be made according to the measure of God’s wisdom and knowledge and most importantly, that through these efforts that God would be glorified in this time and in times to come; that others would come to know Christ through these efforts and that they too will receive the blessing of this prayer that God might be glorified also through them.

1. Importance of Prayer
2. Are You Sanctified Through Christ?
3. How to Lead Someone to Christ
4. The Meaning of Life
5. Rules for Practical Christian Living~Ephesians Ch. 5
6. God’s Vineyard from Isaiah