Salvation Summaries

I decided to change the format of my posts on prayer to make them a quicker read, and  give you a few Biblical requests to include in your prayers during the next week. I’ll show the requests at the top of the post so you can easily see them, and will keep them brief so they are easier to remember. I plan to write one short post on prayer each week until I get through a dozen or so more prayers by Paul, David and Jesus.  Then, I’ll turn my attention to what really matters most to me, which is salvation.

What to pray about this week

1. Faith – to help others grow in their faith
2. Love – to love everyone more
3. Blameless – to live a blameless and holy life

Paul’s Prayer

1 Thessalonians 3:10-13  ¹⁰ Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.  ¹¹ Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you.  ¹² May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.  ¹³ May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.

Observations

• How often – I continue to be amazed at how often Paul prays for other believers. It’s not once in the morning and once at night. It’s not even several times a day. It’s throughout the day.  1:10 says “constantly in our prayers” and 3:10 is “night and day.”  Paul not only prayed frequently, he also prayed earnestly, or intensely and with conviction.  Paul was serious when he prayed for others, and he drew upon his relationship with God to “move” Him in order to act on Paul’s behalf (talk about moving a mountain!).  Jesus prayed often too, and at times with loud cries. Maybe we should ratchet up our prayer life…

• Greater faith.  How often do you pray for other believers to grow in their faith?  I don’t do this near enough. And if/when you pray this, how much do you think about what role you could or should play in achieving this?  How?  By bringing up this topic in a conversation.  You could ask how they are getting along in their faith, or you could try to find a way to mention what things you’ve done recently that helped you grow in yours. What are some examples?  Reading the Bible is a good start, but studying it, devotion to prayer, and mediating are likely where you’ll see the most gain.

• Love overflow  – Imagine what our country would be like now – especially now – if we all loved each other the way the Bible tells us to.  Non-Christians can’t do this, for the love of God is not within them (not that they can’t love at all).  After reading this verse, I felt the need to love others more, and decided to try it out on my way to the grocery store. In the check out line, the cashier’s name was Elena. Rather than say nothing, which is my normal modus operandi, I asked “How are you?” after she asked me something (I think how I was, where I usually say “OK” or “Not bad” or something to that effect).  Anyway, after she replied, I felt good (in a small way).  And then on the drive home, I noticed an African American man who was bending down near his lawn mower.  I looked longer than typical his way to see if he’d look up, and he did.  I then waved, and it also felt good. Now, some of you might say, “Well, that’s just being friendly.” And while that’s true, I’d counter it by saying that loving more made me friendlier.  I didn’t make any extra effort to do this today (or yesterday even), but hope to remember to do this more often.  Feel free to share with me some examples of what you’ve done to love others more.

• Live blameless and holy –  As a Christian, what guides you in how you should act and live?  It it the golden rule?  Trying to be kind and compassionate?  To always be truthful?  These are all good of course, but we might not be aiming high enough. Paul prayed that Jesus would strengthen the hearts of believers so that they would live blameless and holy lives.  Blameless refers to our obedience to what God the Father, or Jesus, command (and one of Jesus’ commands is to love one another in the way that Jesus loved).  There are many commands in the Bible (including praying for your enemies).  If we are to live blamelessly, we all likely need to do a better job of 1) knowing what these commands are, and 2) trying harder to obey them.  Living a holy life means to be set apart from the world and its non-holy lifestyles.  This may be even harder for Christians to do.  Part of living a holy and blameless life is to not be sexually immoral in any way (in fact, we are to flee from it).  If true, we simply can’t watch many movies or a number of TV shows today.