I usually post a Following Jesus Today class midweek, but we did not have class this past Sunday so that class members could attend a Ministry Fair and learn about local and global ministries our Church supports. So, instead of a class, I thought I would post a H-E-A-R journal entry from earlier in the week.
H-E-A-R Journals are a regular part of the D-Groups – discipleship groups of 3 to 5 people – that happen at our church. D- Group members read the same Scriptures each week, try to understand and apply them to life, and respond to the truth they see. When they meet with their group, they share one of their journal entries from the week.
I read Mark 9-10 on Saturday. My HEAR journal follows. (This is not exegesis, but devotional thoughts based on a particular text.)
Highlight (Mark 10:51): “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
Explain: Jesus didn’t simply heal blind Bartimaeus. He first asked him what he wanted him to do. Jesus either did not know what the man wanted, or the man didn’t know what he wanted (think of the man in John 5 who had been paralyzed for 38 years), or he knew it would benefit the man to articulate his desire. Sometimes it is necessary to clarify our thoughts and set our hearts before faith can ignite.
Apply: It is good for me to think and speak to Jesus about what I want.
Respond: Jesus, I want to keep growing – more and more – in the knowledge of God. I want to be pure – sanctified wholly. I want to be humble, free of the demand that things go “my way,” ready to go a different way when I see wisdom in it. I want good work to do through my later years – work that I can share with Karen. I wanted never to be governed by fear or sin. I want hope to energize me until I die—and hope becomes sight. I want my sons and their families to experience you in these same ways. I want to bless people through my work. I want our church family to be united, fruitful, and joyful. I want to be free of deceit. I want to see you in the glory you had with the Father. I want more and more to want what you want for me.
(For more information on D-Groups, see Foundations, by Robby and Kandi Gallaty.)
“This kind comes out only by prayer.” Jesus said that about a stubborn unclean spirit, but there are many things in our lives that “come out” only by prayer: stubborn marriage problems, addictions, financial needs, and more. Learning to pray is necessary to a life in which we can do what we need to do when we need to do it.
The text of this sermon is included below for those who would rather read that listen.
When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. “What are you arguing with them about?” he asked. A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?” “From childhood,” he answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.” (Mark 9:14-29)
Our text ends with Jesus’s explanation that “This kind can come out only by prayer.” This kind: the difficult kind, the stubborn kind, the tough, intense, pernicious kind can come out only by prayer. He was speaking about an unclean spirit, but I believe there are other things that plague us that can only be effectively handled by prayer. There are marriage problems that will never be resolved except by prayer. There are financial predicaments, relationship impasses, job difficulties, health setbacks that can only be overcome by prayer.
There is something unexpected about this verse—but I am starting with the end of our text, and we really should begin at the beginning. We’ll return to that unexpected thing in a few minutes, but before we get to that, let’s see where we are; let’s get some context.
Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up a very high mountain where they had an experience which, as far as we know, no one else has ever had. On that mountain, they stood in the presence of two of history’s greatest heroes, Moses and Elijah, even though they had lived (in one case) many hundreds and (in the other) more than a thousand years earlier.
But that was only the beginning. They saw Jesus transfigured before their eyes. They could hardly bear to look at him – he was as bright as the sun. The sight was awesome. They were confounded. Frightened. And then they heard the voice of God address them directly and they nearly came undone.
They never forgot what happened on the mountain. At the end of his life, knowing that his death was near, Peter was still talking about it. It was a mountaintop spiritual high. And yet this incredible, wonderful, unforgettable experience on the mountain was followed by chaos and confusion in the valley. That often happens.
The mountaintop is not an escape but a preparation. It is not a place to live but a place to be restored for service. Peter wanted to build shelters and stay there, but Jesus did not oblige him. We occasionally, by God’s grace, ascend the mountain but we inevitably, also by God’s grace, return to the valley – that’s where we live and do good.
Jesus took three disciples with him up the mountain, but he left the other nine in the valley to carry on the work. When they returned to the Nine, they could see that a crowd was gathered around them. It was not a happy crowd. There were experts in the Jewish law there and an argument was in full swing.
Because people were focused on the argument, the crowd didn’t notice Jesus until he was quite close. When they saw him, they ran to him. Something about Jesus caused the people in the crowds to marvel. Mark does not tell us what it was, but some people think that Jesus looked different after the transfiguration, the way Moses looked different when he came down from the mountain.
Jesus walked right up to the Nine and asked them what they were arguing about. It is possible that the experts in the law had challenged their authority to perform exorcisms. Whatever the case, before the disciples had a chance to answer, a man in the crowd interrupted.
He had brought his son to Jesus, but Jesus was gone. So, he asked the disciples – who were, after all, his representatives – to expel an unclean spirit that was ruining their lives. But your disciples, the man said, don’t have what it takes. The Greek is something like, “They lacked the strength to do it.”
I don’t think this distraught dad was the only person talking, for Jesus did not answer him;he answered them. I think that means that other people were all talking at once: the disciples, the teachers of the law, people in the crowd. There were accusations and recriminations – it was chaos.
Amid all the clamor, Jesus says (literally), “O unbelieving generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I bear with you?” Notice the word, “unbelieving.” It is important to the story. Jesus then says of the boy: “Bring him to me.”
When the spirit saw Jesus (I don’t know how a spirit sees – was it through the eyes of the boy or in some other way?) it convulsed the child. He fell to the ground, rolled around, and foamed at the mouth. Jesus immediately turned to the dad and asked, “How long has this been happening to him?”
The dad said, “From childhood.” Think of that. Year after year of anxiety and fear, always on high alert, always worried about what other people are thinking. And the great sadness the dad felt for his son in his torments, the helplessness, and then the hopelessness. And then someone told him about Jesus, so he brought him his son, but what he found were nine disciples who couldn’t do anything … except argue. For a moment, his hope had risen. For a moment, he could almost believe that Jesus would help. But this fiasco poured cold water on his flickering faith.
That is something to think about. Do you, a follower of Jesus, make it easier for people to believe in Jesus or do you make it harder? If knowing Jesus isn’t changing you, if you argue, get angry, and talk and act just like people who don’t belong to Jesus, you are making it harder for people to believe.
Listen to this dad’s words: “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” There is not much faith there – but there is a little. Faith figures largely into this passage, into Jesus’s teaching, and into effective prayer. The principle is this: “According to your faith will it be done to you” (Matthew 9:29).
Because the disciples knew how important faith is, they once said to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” Do you know how Jesus answered them? (I paraphrase.) “You don’t need great faith. You need genuine faith. If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and cast into the sea, and it will be done for you!”
Can so little faith really lift so heavy a mountain as a critically ill child, a critically ill marriage, and impossible job situation, an extreme financial need? Is it true that only a little faith is necessary? How can that be?
A little genuine faith on our part is enough, but only because it is joined to Jesus’s great faith. The one who “ever lives to intercede for us” also intercedes with us when our prayers align with God’s will—and his intercession makes all the difference. When we wear his yoke, he does the heavy lifting. When to this dad Jesus says, “Everything is possible to the one who believes,” the one who believes and for whom everything is possible is preeminently Jesus. The desperate father’s smidgeon of faith is joined to the faith and faithfulness of Jesus the son of God. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).
The word of Jesus to this dad somehow revived the dying embers of his faith – a word from Jesus can do that – and he cried out, “I believe!” then immediately added, “Help my unbelief!” And Jesus did help his unbelief. If Jesus sees even a spark of faith, he will tend it, help it, blow on it until it becomes a fire.
I want you to notice something it took me a long time to understand. Within the same person at the same moment, belief and unbelief can coexist. That is because, as I often remind you, we are bigger on the inside than we are on the outside. People are a little like the old-style hard drive in your 1980s Tandy computer. They have bad sectors. They can be tooling along, trusting God and everything seems to be fine, when suddenly they access a bad sector – that is, they discover a part of their life where unbelief dominates – and their faith crashes.
Most of us struggle to face the fact that these bad sectors – these areas of unbelief – exist in our lives. And because we don’t face it, we don’t understand why our genuine efforts produce so little fruit for Christ.[1]
But Jesus is willing to help us. This prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief” is one that I have often prayed. And the Lord has helped me. And he will help you too.
Jesus aided this man’s belief and helped his unbelief by answering his prayer. Answered prayers greatly help our belief and systematically dislodge our unbelief. In this case, Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the boy and never come back. But notice that the answer to this dad’s prayer did not at first seem very encouraging. The spirit shrieked, sent the boy into prolonged convulsions (the Greek says something like, “much convulsing), and then came out, leaving him lying on the ground, looking to all the world as if he were dead.
Sometimes things look worse after the Lord answers our prayers. We think, “This is your answer?” But if we stop trusting at that moment, we’ve stopped trusting too soon. With the fearful father looking on, Jesus raised the boy; he was finally free, and the father’s faith was helped.
Jesus then went into a house and his disciples went with him. As soon as they were alone, the Nine asked him (verse 28), “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” They had driven out demons before, but this time they failed. Why?
Pay attention to Jesus’s answer in verse 29; there is where we find something unexpected. “This kind can come out only by prayer.” Only by prayer. Not by rituals. Not by smarts. Not by determination. Not by study. Only by prayer.
Are we clear on that? Then, let me share an observation: Jesus didn’t pray. He said that this kind only comes out by prayer, but he didn’t pray … then. But he did pray, day after day and sometimes night after night, year after year. Jesus’s life was characterized by prayer. It was punctuated by times of prayer. Jesus is not, I think, talking about praying on the spot but about praying before you’re in a spot. This kind does not come out by praying loudly in the moment but by praying (as Paul would later put it) “on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Ephesians 6:18) from a life that is increasing in faith.
I’ve known people who seemed to think if they tried really hard to believe and spoke very loudly when they prayed, their request would be answered. I haven’t seen them succeed any more than the prophets of Baal succeeded when they tried the same thing. Prayer that has power is not the prayer of a moment but the prayer of a life – a life connected by a thousand cords to Jesus.
At four places in the New Testament record, we hear Jesus tell his disciples (and the people listening in), “When you pray …” Those words brought something definite to the disciples’ minds, something that might not come to ours. For them, “When you pray” referred to the three times every day when they said their prayers. That was their practice and Jesus didn’t put an end to it, though he did instruct them to do it differently.
You will never know the power of prayer if you only pray when you feel like it. Powerful prayers don’t appear magically in an emergency. They come out of a praying life. Larry Knapp and I were once stuck in a small village in Senegal when the taxi we were riding in broke down. It was our third car repair of the trip. I was anxious to get back on the road and get our 13-hour cross-country trip behind us – thirteen hours spent in the back of a small, crowded Renault station wagon in 100-degree heat. Finally, the car was ready. Together with five Africans, we stuffed ourselves into the car. The driver started it up but, before we could leave, the call to prayer rang out over the loudspeakers. Everyone, including the driver, bailed back out of the car, unrolled their prayer mats, and said their prayers, as they do five times every day.
It was three times a day for the people to whom Jesus was talking. When they heard him say, “When you pray,” they assumed he was talking about their regular prayer times. When you read Jesus saying, “When you pray…” does anything definite come to mind? Do you have regular prayer times? A twelve-second prayer before a meal is good, but it’s like a twelve-second fill up at the gas station. It won’t get you far.
Jesus said, “When you pray,” because he expected his people to pray. His disciples knew from watching him that the power to live well is gained, at least in part, through prayer. It’s no wonder they asked Jesus to teach them – men who had been praying all their lives – how to pray.
When Matthew tells this same story, he includes a part of Jesus’s answer that Mark leaves out. Mark records Jesus saying, “This kind comes out only by prayer,” but Matthew adds, “Because you have so little faith.” Faith is spiritual muscle that is strengthened (in part) by prayer. People who don’t pray don’t have the strength they need when they need it.
Jesus, whose faith in his Father was unbreakable, prayed regularly. He once went on a 40-day prayer retreat. He sometimes prayed through entire nights. He got up early in the morning to pray. And, no doubt, he joined his family, friends, and neighbors in the three daily times of prayer.
I am not suggesting that you go on a 40-day prayer retreat or spend entire nights in prayer (though I am not suggesting that you don’t, either). I do suggest that you have a regular prayer time each day. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between time spent praying and power, but there is a relationship. I can’t promise that if you pray three times a day you will have power to move the mountain of illness or financial need or marriage troubles. I can promise that if you don’t pray, you won’t.
Some people try to pray as they go – to pray when something comes to mind. That is good and we should do that. But in my own experience, I have found that I am much better at praying as I go if I have prayed before I left. The two kinds of prayer are symbiotic. The regular prayer time fuels the pop-up prayers and the pop-up prayers make the regular prayer time richer. If I cut out one, the other inevitably suffers.
There are difficult things in your life, in your relationships, in our church that will only come out by prayer. If you don’t pray, they won’t change. Learn to pray. Ask for help. Read books on prayer. Set a prayer schedule. But, most importantly, do it. Pray!
[1] Dallas Willard says something very like this – only says it better – in Renovation of the Heart.
To read some Bible scholars, one would think that Jesus viewed women through a twenty-first century feminist lens. Other equally-well regarded scholars, seem to think that Jesus looked at women through a pre-Nineteenth Amendment lens. It seems to me that people attribute to Jesus the view they want him to have.
It has been suggested, for example, that Jesus chose male apostles because God designed men for leadership in a way that he did not design women. On the other hand, it has been argued that the sex of the first apostles is immaterial. The important thing was not their sex but their number – twelve, like the number of Israel’s tribes – signifying the emergence of a new people of God.
But Jesus’s view was neither a post-modern nor a pre-suffrage American view; it was not an American view at all. The temptation to baptize our views in Jesus’s name must be resisted. We must go back to what he actually did and said and judge not just our views but our actions and words by his.
We cannot make sense of what Jesus did and said by looking through a twenty-first century American lens, whether liberal or conservative, egalitarian or complementarian. His contemporaries could not make sense of what he said and did by looking through their first century lens either. Jesus did not think of women – nor relate to them – the way his society did then or ours does now.
In first-century Israel, women – and for that matter, children – were treated as essentially inferior to men. Women, for example, were not permitted to testify in court, for it was believed that they were not emotionally stable enough to provide reliable testimony.
In first-century Israel, men had the right to divorce their wives “for any reason,” but wives were only permitted to divorce their husbands for two reasons: employment in a “disgusting trade” – one that made them ceremonially unclean – or heresy. A woman could not divorce her husband even if he was a violent, abusive, philandering brute.
Girls did not attend school and remained mostly illiterate. A famous late first century rabbi insisted that “The words of the Torah should be burned rather than entrusted to women.” The earliest extant mention of Torah study by women instructs: “And you shall teach your sons and not your daughters.”
Jesus lived in a world in which many rabbis would not even speak to a woman in public, much less teach one. The Jerusalem Talmud quotes: “Women’s wisdom is solely in the spindle.” In other words, a woman’s place is in the home.
Jesus lived in this world, but he did not adopt its views. The fact that Jesus accepted women disciples must have been a constant source of controversy—and gossip. In his public teaching, he addressed both women and men. Some of his dearest friends were women. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention women who followed him and “cared for his needs.”
Christianity is sometimes faulted for a low view of women. It is not because of its leader. Jesus not only taught women, the first person to whom he disclosed his messianic identity was a woman. The first person to whom he appeared after the resurrection was a woman. The people to whom he first gave the honor of announcing the conquest of death were all women. Jesus did these things because he was Jesus, not because he embraced the views of his time. Or the views of our time.
We cannot make Jesus a spokesman for feminism, egalitarianism, or complementarianism. These are constructs that are, at best, built from original source materials; they are not the materials themselves. Our goal must not be to fit Jesus into our framework, but to fit ourselves into his. Jesus will not ask us whether we hold progressive or conservative views, but whether we have loved and honored others. It is not our views that will be judged; it is us. It is our actual interactions and not our nuanced views of others that reveal who we really are.
When asked what was the greatest of the Old Testament’s 613 commands, Jesus answered: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). In this class, we look at what it means to love God – our cultural ideas of love may lead us astray here – and how we can do that with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.
If you have been part of the class online, you may wonder where our co-teacher Kevin was. He woke up ill, and I missed having him with me – he is a great teacher! He’s fine now and will be back with us next week.
We want to know God’s will. God wants us to know his will. So, why is it so difficult to know his will? This sermon on prayer and the knowledge of God’s will is rooted in the Apostle Paul’s great prayer in Colossians 1:9-12. This is a prayer to pray for your church, your family, your friends, and yourself.
The researchers cite the “seemingly constant flow of disconcerting events” that have plagued Americans in recent years: a pandemic, a contentious election, the events of January 6, mass shootings, wildfires, and more. This non-stop drama fills the airwaves and repeats dozens of times a day on news media outlets.
According to McLaughlin, Gotlieb, and Mills, one out of six Americans engages in “severely problematic news consumption.” Within this group, almost three out of four experience mental ill-being “quite a bit” or “very much” and six out of ten report experiencing physical ill-being “quite a bit” or “very much.” This latter statistic represents a ten-time increase over other study participants.
What does this mean? It means that constant consumption of news media is making us sick – quite literally. In homes where CNN, MSNBC, or FOX News plays from morning to night, people are more likely to experience anxiety, lack of focus, difficulty sleeping, and relationship problems.
Participants in the “severely problematic” group were likely to agree with statements like: “I become so absorbed in the news that I forget the world around me”; “My mind is frequently occupied with thoughts about the news”; “I find it difficult to stop reading or watching the news”; and “I often do not pay attention at school or work because I am reading or watching the news.”
People in this group also experienced feelings of fatigue, physical pain, poor concentration, and gastrointestinal issues. Of the 1,100 people surveyed, more than four out of ten were deemed to have moderate or severe levels of problematic news consumption. The good news is that many people are able to stop or significantly reduce their news consumption when they understand that it is having an adverse effect on their physical and mental health.
The researchers describe one result of severely problematic news consumption as “transportation.” The term describes a mental state in which a person is “transported” into a story. Previous literature on the subject treated the relationship between a reader and a fictional narrative. Here, however, it is into a news narrative that people are transported. Their faculties are absorbed in the story and the immediate world around them recedes.
During the last few years, I have seen people break off relationships with family and church because they had been transported into pandemic-related stories, election stories, and war stories. This has happened among both liberal and conservative media consumers.
A critic might contend that something similar occurs among consumers of the Christian gospel. They hear the story repeated over and over. They dwell on the story, are transported into it, and it becomes their story. And Christians view this “transportation” as a good thing. They encourage each other to meditate on the story and repeat it often.
There is a difference, though. Transportation into the media’s news stories, so often used as propaganda, breaks relationships, instills anxiety, and creates a sense of insecurity. Transportation into the gospel has the opposite effect: it heals relationships, instills peace, and provides security.
Whereas preoccupation with news stories tends to isolate people from one another through fear and anger, preoccupation with the story of Christ encourages people to embrace others with love and acceptance. While both tell of gross injustice, the gospel shows how injustice is overcome by sacrificial love.
Of course, one must decide which story best reflects the real world. Is it the story of chaos, corruption, and danger that is told by media outlets in various ways all day long? Or is it the story of the God who has redeemed and will make new our admittedly broken and troubled world?
The Christian gospel does not ignore the evil in our world. If anything, it sheds light on its causes, which run much deeper than politics and economics. But, unlike the so-called news stories, the Christian story offers a reason for hope.
Jesus understood how humans were designed and how they thrive and his teaching reflects this. Understanding what he teaches about the human heart is imperative for anyone who longs for spiritual transformation in Christlikeness. The foundational text for today’s class is Luke 6:43-45.
This sermon looks at how to pray for others and is based on Philippians 1:3-11. This remarkable passage offers great insights into how we can pray effectively for the people in our lives.
How to Pray for Others (Philippians 1:3-11)
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
Verse 3 again: “I thank my God every time I remember you.” Praying for Paul involved remembering. When he prayed, he thought about people; he brought them before his mind. I have often interceded without doing that; I have remembered requests but not people, and my prayers have been poorer because of it. But when I have brought the person to mind, remembered them in the presence of God – their personality, their strengths, their weaknesses and, above all, their future – it has informed and enriched my prayers for them.
This was Paul’s practice. He frequently speaks of remembering people in his prayers. He remembered the Ephesians when he prayed for them, as well as the Romans, the Philippians, the Thessalonians, and the missionaries Timothy, and Titus. This was Paul’s practice. We should make it ours too. It might change how we pray for people.
He says that he “thanks God” and that he “always prays with joy.” What about you? When you pray for people, is it with thanksgiving and joy or with complaint and worry? Too often my prayers have been motivated by my worries for people rather than by my joy over them. But how can we pray with thanksgiving and joy, when things are up in the air and the outcome is so uncertain?
The answer is: we can’t. No one can, not even the great Apostle Paul. That is not how it works. If you believe that everything is up in the air and uncertain, your prayers will be filled with worry and tinged with complaint. But Paul’s prayers were filled with thanksgiving and joy. Why? Because he did not believe that everything is up in the air. He believed in the one who is up in heaven. He looked at things differently than most of us do, which explains why he could do things most of us cannot do.
He prayed with joy because he believed certain things were true about the people for whom he was praying. And he believed those things because he believed certain things were true about their God. A person’s beliefs really do govern their life. Look again at verse 4: “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy…” All my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy.
Really? We know that the Philippian church had problems. We know that two of its leading members, both friends of Paul, Euodia and Syntyche, were not getting along and their disagreement had impacted the church. Yet, when Paul prays for them, he does so with joy and with confidence. There were then, as there are now (and always will be), people suffering, dying, arguing, and hurting. We will never pray with joy and confidence if we are waiting until there is no suffering, dying, arguing, and hurting.
So how did Paul do it? He could pray with joy and confidence because, verse 5, he had been convinced by the Philippians’ partnership in the gospel that God was working among them, and he knew what God is like. Things are not up in the air when God is on the scene. Look at verse 6: “…being confident of this” – better “being persuaded” (by years of experience with God) – “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul prayed from a position of strength.
If we are going to do the same, we must know: people so that we can remember them meaningfully as we pray; and God so that we will have no doubt that the work begun in them will be completed. But there is more.
To be a great pray-er, it is not enough to know people; you must also love them. Love is key. Look at what Paul writes in verse 7: “It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart.” Love is the secret sauce, the hidden power, the enduring dynamic in effective prayer. Paul didn’t just have these people and their needs in his prayer journal or even on his mind; he had them in his heart.
It is common to hear Christians talk about inviting Jesus into their heart. That’s good; but they should also invite each other into their hearts. There will always be people on our minds, but our church family should be in our hearts with Jesus.
How did Paul – who knew a lot of people – have room in his heart for all of them? There is something magical about the human heart: like the Grinch’s heart, it is capable of remarkable expansion. We say of someone we admire: “He has such a big heart.” What that means is that he has taken a lot of people into it. And just think how big God’s heart is! He opens his heart to everyone – “For God so loved the world!” – and he still has room to spare.
Because the Philippians were in his heart, they were with Paul wherever he went. When he was in chains in an imperial prison, the Philippians were with him there. When he was out on the streets, they were in his heart. When he stood before some judge, defending the gospel and confirming its truth by his life, the Philippians were with him. But we need to take this a little further.
Jesus told us to pray for our enemies – the people who stand opposed to us, who want us to fail, to not get what we want. How on earth do we do that? We do it by taking the enemy into our heart. Once we have, we can pray for them. We can take our spouse into our heart. Our nosey neighbor. Our missionary. Our kids.
The first step is to bring them before your mind. Let yourself remember them. Feel their needs, their fears, their hurts, their potential. That will unlock your heart. And then choose to love them. That will bring them in.
But they are Democrats. They are Republicans. They’re arrogant. They’re Muslim. They’re gay. They’re Ohio State fans! Take them into your heart and your prayers for them will grow powerful.
In verses 9-11 we have an example of a powerful prayer. Now, it’s not the only example. Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Christians differed from this one, and his prayers for the Ephesians differed from both. Prayers that grow from love will be personal, relevant, and Spirit-inspired.
The thrust of this prayer for Paul’s friends is that their love will abound more and more – will overflow and continue overflowing – in knowledge and depth of insight. Isn’t it interesting that Paul does not pray for their health, safety, freedom, or financial security? He prays rather for abounding, overflowing love. Love is at the center of the Christian life.
The word the NIV translates as “abound” (verse 9) is one of Paul’s favorites. Two thirds of its New Testament uses are by him. He regarded the new life as one of abundance, of more and more—of constant increase. How different that is from the view that Christians are straightjacketed by rules and laws.
Paul writes about grace abounding (Romans 5:15-17), hope abounding (Romans 15:13), generosity (2 Cor. 3:9), thanksgiving (2 Cor. 4:15), good work (2 Cor. 9:8), comfort (2 Cor. 1:4-5), service (1 Cor. 14:12), and wisdom (Eph. 1:8). In a word – the word he uses in 2 Corinthians 8:7 – everything good abounds in the new age, which Christ has already launched and will usher in. It is the age of lavish, profuse, rich abundance.[1]
For his friends in Philippi, he prays that love may abound more and more. What a great prayer! People wrongly think they can be happy if their money abounds more and more. It does, but they don’t stay happy. Love is what people need, and “love comes from God” (1 John 4:7). He pours it into the hearts of Jesus’s people by the Holy Spirit.
Paul prays that this “love will abound in knowledge and depth of insight.” The word translated “knowledge” suggests a full understanding and the one translated insight has to do with perception. The idea is that love enables a person to understand what lies beneath the surface and perceive what others miss. People say, “Love is blind.” But Paul says, “Love is sharp-eyed and penetrating.” Real love doesn’t overlook things; it sees beyond them. It is selfishness that is blind – or at least acutely near-sighted. Love sees.
If there was ever a time when Jesus’s people needed to understand what lies beneath the surface and perceive what is not obvious, it is now. Ours is a spin-doctored world of half-truths. How will we ever know what is best? How will we remain unpolluted in this environment of deceit?
The surprising answer is: by love. The love God puts in our hearts is prophylactic. When it abounds, we are protected from the pollution of half-truths, hate, and sin. It is abounding love that enables us (verse 10) to discern what is best and … be pure and blameless…”
Because love enables us to see the way things really are – to perceive things what we would otherwise miss and understand what lies below the surface of the so-called facts paraded before us – we are able to discern what is best. Non-Christians know as well as we do that we live in a spin-doctored world, but their options are more limited: to fall in with the deception or to fall into cynicism. Cynicism is more noble, but it is not love. It sits alone and curses the darkness. Love enters the light and joins with people Cynicism leaves the world as it is; love changes it into what it should be.
Both those words, “pure” and “blameless” are picturesque in the original language. “Pure” comes from a compound Greek word with two roots, one meaning sun and other meaning judged – sun-judged. Paul prays for the Philippians’ love to abound to such an extent that their lives can be examined in the full light of day. The idea here is that they will be genuinely good.
Karen and I were in a market in Istanbul, where she was shopping for a decorative bowl. The light in these little shops is quite poor; it is hard to see flaws in the workmanship. It was the same way, only worse, when Paul was writing. In his day, people would take the item they wanted to purchase out into the bright sunlight. If the item passed inspection, they would say that it was “sun-judged.”
Of course, the proprietor didn’t want people to take his goods into the light if they had flaws and cracks in them. Who would? But what about God? We are his goods (in more than one sense). But he bought us used, and many of us were the worse for wear. But God is patiently repairing our faults and fixing our cracks with his love. He is getting us ready for the day when the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in its wings. And he will carry on the good work that he is doing “to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
The word translated “blameless” by the NIV and “harmless” by the scholar Gerald Hawthorne means “cause to stumble” in its verb form. Paul’s prayer is that there will be nothing in his friends’ lives that will cause people to stumble and fall away from Christ. Sadly, I have, seen this happen. People leave the church, and sometimes leave the faith, because they stumbled over the hatred in a Christian, or the pride, or the blind selfishness. If love had abounded more and more, that would not have happened.
But understand: none of this – knowledge, insight, purity, blamelessness – happens overnight. Picture a fountain, dry as a bone, resting on the crest of a round, barren hill. Then one day the spring opens and water flows into the fountain basin. It continues until it overflows the basin and begins running down the hill on all sides in little rivulets of life-giving water.
In time, the hill turns green. Flowers begin to grow. Root systems develop. Fruit trees spring up. Wherever the water flows, good things sprout. That is the way it is in a life that overflows with love. The knowledge, insight, purity, and blamelessness don’t appear full-grown. They develop as love continues to abound more and more.
And the result, verse 11, is the fruit of righteousness. God is a Johnny Appleseed. He goes all around planting people who will one day be filled with fruit. It’s a brilliant idea. The fruit that grows from these believer’s lives will draw people to God. Like Moses, who came to see the burning bush but stayed to hear God’s life-changing words, people will come for the fruit but stay to hear the gospel.
This fruit-filled life “comes through Jesus Christ.” It is not self-generated. Neither our efforts nor our sincere intentions can produce it. It is his loving life in us, delivered to us by his Spirit, that fruits in the beautiful things we see in verses 9-11.
Now, notice that this fruit-filled life leads (v. 11) “to the glory and praise of God.” We usually equate glorifying and praising God with the spoken word, but there is more to it than that. More even than the deeds we do. It the life we live or, more precisely, the people we become. That is what results in the praise and glory of God.
Talk alone does not bring God glory. In fact, talk alone, when not accompanied by a fruit-filled life, brings shame, and causes unbelievers to think and say bad things about our God. It is Jesus and his love that makes all the difference.
Then is there nothing we can – or need – do to cooperate with Jesus and is love? There is much we can do, just as there is much the apple farmer can do to help his orchard succeed. He sprays the trees, trims, and composts them. He can raise bees to help pollinate them. He can plant cover crops to add nitrogen to the soil.
What can we do to help the fruit of righteousness grow in our lives? We can make sure we are connected to the source of love by connecting to God through faith in Jesus Christ. Our efforts cannot sustain this kind of life. We must be connected to God’s love. If you haven’t connected, today can be the day. At the close of this meeting, come up to the front of the room and find a prayer helper. He or she will be glad to assist you.
Next, we can (and must) choose to act lovingly. A wise man said, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” (You will take him into your heart.) “If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”[2] Let people into your heart and choose to love them.
Next, if you have a decision to make and find yourself unsure about what the right thing to do is, don’t just go over the pros and cons or consult with friends. Check to see if your love is in the right place. Remember that it is love that overflows in the knowledge and depth of insight that discernment requires. If your love for God or others has waned, ask God to show you any obstructions to love and with his help remove them.
One last thing: try bringing remembrance into your prayers this week. Hold the people for whom you pray before your mind. Wait on God’s Spirit to shape your prayers for them. And see what a difference that can make.
[1] Hawthorne, Gerald, Word Biblical Commentary: Philippians (Revised)
Occasionally, I read or hear someone say something like, “Christians believe some really strange things.” They usually mean that Christians believe in miracles like a six-day creation, a man who was swallowed by a great fish (and spit out days later), and the resurrection from the dead. I understand their incredulity.
Though I have been a Christian for a long time, there are things that still seem strange to me; they’re just not the same things. I don’t balk at the miraculous simply because it is miraculous. The rejection of miracles is not a logical conclusion but an a priori assumption based on a worldview which millions of people, including some of history’s greatest philosophers and scientists, do not share.
The things that seem strange to me and difficult to take seriously are not the miracles but the commands that Christians are expected to follow. I can believe in the resurrection of the dead but believing Jesus in a way that leads me to easily obey him when he says things like, “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth,” “Turn the other cheek,” and “Do not worry” is tough.
Such things are not truth claims to which one gives intellectual assent; they are instructions to which one gives obedience. It is easier to believe the Bible about Jesus walking on water than it is to believe the Bible about “giving to him who asks.” No one has ever asked me to walk on water but, every once in a while, someone asks me to give them money.
Another thing I find difficult is the command to rejoice, which is issued by prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself. It just doesn’t make sense to rejoice when bad things happen, and normal people cannot consistently do things that don’t make sense.
The Apostle Paul tells his friends in the Church at Philippi to rejoice no less than four times. After mentioning the very real possibility that he will be executed, he tells the Philippians, “You should be glad and rejoice with me.” Who says things like that?
He says a second time, “Rejoice in the Lord,” and this time adds that it is a safeguard for them. A page or so later, he instructs his friends to rejoice always and then repeats himself one final time. He urges this even though – or perhaps because – he is aware that their church is going through a troubling internal conflict.
Because I long ago committed myself to submit to Jesus and his apostles, I have tried to be obedient to the command to rejoice. I cannot say that I have been very successful. This failure, I think, lies with me rather than with the command itself, for I notice that Jesus and his apostle were able to rejoice despite extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
While imprisoned and facing a possible death sentence, the Apostle Paul rejoiced. He continued rejoicing after his absence from the scene made it possible for preachers with false motives to gain a foothold. He even told his friends that he rejoices in what he suffered for them.
Who says things like that? Only someone who knows something the rest of us don’t. When I have tried to rejoice amidst challenges and hardships, I have done so in obedience to dominical and apostolic teaching, not because rejoicing made sense to me. But the Apostle Paul knew that it makes sense to rejoice—and he knew why.
Like Jesus, Peter, and James, Paul could rejoice in times of pain and hardship because he was certain about how things were going to turn out. He knew “the end of all things,” as St. Peter put it, and knew that it was good. He could therefore not only endure hardship, he could rejoice in the midst of it.
The biblical word for this confident future expectation is hope. Hope is not a Pollyanna positivity; it is a certainty about the future based on a life-transforming connection with the God St. Paul calls – not incidentally – “the God of hope.” This connection, established by faith in Christ and sustained by God’s own Spirit, makes rejoicing not only possible but sensible.
What does it mean to follow Jesus? What is required? This class begins where following Jesus began: on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Seeing what discipleship meant for those first followers of Jesus will help us understand what it means for us today.
The Way Home 