11-04-12 Phil. 1:8-11 THE PRAYER

Our study of Philippians has brought us

to verses 8-11 of chapter 1.

Most of this passage is a prayer,

prayed by Paul for his friends at Philippi.

We’ll take a look at this prayer in detail

in just a few minutes,

but it might help if I first prepare us

for what we are going to find

by giving a little background

on the way Paul uses prayers in his letters.

There are times, of course, when his prayer-life spontaneously spills out

into his writings,

praying for the safety of his readers,

or praying that he may come to them soon,

or praying that he might once again

see their face.

But there are other times

when Paul allows his readers to hear him praying

because it is the most effective way he has

of revealing to them

both his heart and his goals for them as believers.

In fact, there is a pattern that exists

in most of Paul’s letters

in which he will pray for them

in the opening section of the letter,

and in that prayer reveal to them

the purpose for which he wrote the letter.

His letter to the Colossian Christians

is an excellent example.

In Col. 1:9 Paul says,

we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

He was writing to a group of believers

who were highly motivated in their young Christian lives,

but who were ignorant

about what God’s will for their life was

or how to fulfill it.

Satan had capitalized on that ignorance

and sent into the young church

a leader who was filling their heads

with all sorts of religious duties,

convincing them that true Christian living

was the faithful fulfillment of those duties.

Paul sees them being sucked into this religious death trap,

and drops to his knees and prays that they may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,...

and then he follows that prayer

by writing them a letter that explains

exactly what the will of God is for them,

and warns them of the two traps Satan will use

to attempt to divert them away

from that will.

In other words,

he prays a prayer

and then writes a letter which is used by God to answer the prayer

he has just prayed.

And having said that,

I guess I’d better quickly complete the thought

by telling you that he reveals the will of God to them in Col. 1:27

where he tells them that God’s will for them is simply, ... Christ in you, the hope of glory.

God’s will for them is not their fulfillment of some elaborate or burdensome religious system,

but rather simply their submission to the living Jesus Christ

and then His living His life out through them one day at a time.

And then He goes on to warn them of the two great weapons used by Satan to attack this will of God.

One of them is religion

and the other is seeking to meet our needs outside of God’s protective moral framework.

If we keep ourselves free from those two great lies,

Christ both can and will live through us.

And this same pattern of revealing the purpose of his letter

through the prayer he prays

can be seen in his letter to the Ephesians

where Paul begins the letter in Eph. 1:18-19 by saying,

18] I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, [19] and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe....

Then he goes on to write a letter

to explain just exactly what is

the hope of His calling,

and what is HIS inheritance in the saints,

and what is the surpassing greatness of His power in our lives.

Whenever Paul chooses to write a prayer into his letters

he does so because he knows

it is of vital importance to us

and our growth to hear that prayer.

In fact, I believe the prayers in the Epistles

are the most powerful keys we have

to understanding what God is really seeking to accomplish in our lives.

They are like being handed a road map

of where our Lord is planning to take us

in the future.

Paul follows this same pattern

in this first chapter of Philippians

in this prayer we have recorded for us

in Phil. 1:8-11.

Let me read the passage for us

and then we’ll begin chewing on it.

Before I read it

I need to warn you that what Paul says here

may very likely sound confusing when you first hear it

because he has concentrated so much

into a single sentence.

But we’ll stay with it long enough

so that we can hopefully begin to get a grasp

of what he’s actually saying

and why.

Beginning with verse 8 Paul writes,

8] For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. [9] And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, [10] so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; [11] having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Now there is no mystery about what Paul says in verse 8.

He says, 8] For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

That word that we translate “affection” literally means “inward parts”,

and Paul is saying simply, “I miss you and love you so much

it makes me hurt inside every time I think about you.”

And it is clearly that strong bond he shares with them,

and that love he has for them

that motivates him both to pray this prayer

and to write this letter.

You know why he does that, don’t you...why he tells us what he’s feeling inside?

He does it because he wants to show us the real thing.

He wants to show us what it is that drives the healthy walk with God.

It’s love, folks,

the love our God gives us for the people He gives us.

It’s the only thing that works,

and it stands in sharp contrast to a life driven by religious duty.

Who do you love?

Do you allow that love to define the priorities in your life?

I hope so.

To fail to do so

is to set yourself up

for the greatest loss in your life,

a loss that cannot be regained,

and cannot be compensated for through any other achievement in life.

OK, now Paul actually links 5 ideas together in this short prayer,

ideas that build on one another.

This may sound a little academic to begin with,

but if we follow Paul through to the end

it will end up very practical.

#1. Paul begins his prayer

by asking God to enable their love to abound still more and more...

Now to help us keep a firm grasp

on where Paul has been

and where he’s going in this whole passage

I need to back up to a thought we looked at last week.

If you were here you may remember

that we were talking about victimization,

and especially about the things that have the power

to make us victims.

And in that discussion I suggested that

the New Testament does not deal with the concept

of our being victims

because God is committed

to offering us the truth,

and the truth is that circumstances

never make us a victim -

the only thing that has the power

to make us a victim

is our attitude towards those circumstances.

Or, if I were to turn that around a little bit,

I believe God deals with the victimization situations in our life

not so much by changing our circumstances,

but rather by changing US,

and especially our attitude towards

and approach to those circumstances.

Now of course there are countless times

when God does intervene in our lives

and alter our circumstances

in ways that best serve His work within us,

but as I read the Bible I cannot escape the realization that

the real work He’s seeking to do

is not around us,

it’s IN US.

He doesn’t tell us that He conforms the world to the image of Christ,

He tells us that He conforms us to the image of Christ.

And what we see happening here in Philippians

and certainly in Paul’s prayer

is an excellent example.

You see, if I were in Paul’s situation,

sitting in prison for my faith in Christ,

writing a letter to you here at PBF,

and if I were to include my prayer for you,

I think the first thing I would pray

would be,

“Lord, I ask that You will deliver my friends from being thrown into prison too.”

Only, to be honest,

I think the FIRST thing I would pray

is, “Lord, I ask that you will get me out of here, and I also ask that you will deliver my friends at PBF from being thrown in prison too.”

But look at PAUL’S prayer -

there’s not one comment about

either HIS or THEIR circumstances.

His focus is not on what might happen TO them,

His concern is about what is happening WITHIN them,

because the truth is that circumstances

never make us a victim -

and circumstances never have the power

to make us truly free.

The only thing that has the power

to make us a victim or to make us free

is our attitude towards those circumstances.

OK, Paul begins his prayer

by asking God to increase in them

the one thing that forms the foundation for everything else God seeks to accomplish in our lives.

He prays that their love may abound still more and more.

Now for this prayer to make any sense to us

we need a clear understanding

of what’s really involved in this whole love thing

that forms the central core of our calling as Christians.

More than 16 years ago

I taught this same passage to those who were here that morning.

Just out of curiosity

I went back and read the notes I’d used for that teaching.

It was a fascinating experience for me

because much of what I found there

lined up exactly with what I still want to share with you today.

But I also discovered

that there was something missing - something huge,

something that I didn’t even know about back then.

And before we end this morning

I’ll try to share with you

what was missing from my teaching back then.

But let’s start first with the part that hasn’t changed.

We in our culture today

view love as a feeling.

It is a powerful feeling of attraction to another person,

a feeling that, when it exists,

where it exists,

will motivate the lover

to choose to do all sorts of things

in an effort to communicate and express that love to the one he or she loves.

We view it as a sort of emotional hurricane

that consumes and envelopes us.

We even talk about “falling” in love

in much the same way we would talk about

falling into a swimming pool.

We view it as something beyond our control,

something that consumes and drives our lives when it exists.

Now, of course I understand that concept of love

because it is a universal human experience.

I don’t want to get side-tracked here,

but I will just make two observations about that kind of love

before we move on to what Paul is really talking about.

First, after thinking about this whole area for more years than most of you have been alive,

I have come to the conclusion that it is actually our separation from our Creator

that has created within each of us

the love vacuum that gives birth to that experience of falling in love.

Each of us have within us

a desperate longing to be known fully and loved completely in the face of that knowledge.

We long for it,

we hunger for it,

and we’ll do anything we can when we think there is a possibility

of receiving that kind of love from another person.

That love vacuum exists within us

because we all enter this world

cut off from the only One who can truly give us that kind of love,

the only One who can truly know us absolutely,

and then accept us totally on the basis of that love - our Creator God.

Our spirits hunger so much for it

that we’re totally set up for that emotional hurricane that we call falling in love.

When we are in that storm

what is it we feel?

We tell ourselves that we feel love for the other person,

but what we really feel

is that this other person can truly meet OUR love needs.

We feel as if this person knows us fully, deeply,

and accepts us totally in the face of that knowledge,

and that feeling creates within us the ultimate emotional high.

The problem, of course, (and this is my second observation about this falling in love thing),

is that it is an emotion-based deception

that is not rooted in the truth,

and like all emotions, it always comes to an end.

You see, the truth is we don’t know each other deeply, totally,

and we don’t accept one another totally.

In fact, nearly always that emotional love-bubble bursts

when one person begins to see the other person honestly, objectively,

and discovers they aren’t even remotely the person they thought they were.

They’re selfish, or grumpy, or demanding, or manipulative,

or filled with a long list of expectations

that they want the other person to fulfill.

And once that far more accurate evaluation of one another takes place

all those intense love feelings can dissipate in a single day.

And we fall out of love as quickly as we fell into love.

The truth is

the closest thing to true love we’ll ever know between human beings

is when two people have lived together for 20 or 30 or 40 years,

have gone through the hardest things in life together,

and in the process truly gained deep knowledge of one another,

and come through it hand-in-hand, with unshakable commitment and love.

That’s what our spirits long for,

but such love never happens

without a prolonged history of hard choices and unshakeable commitment.

But let me get us back on track here.

One of the greatest discoveries of my life

came when I began to realize

that the kind of love our God offers us,

and the kind of love He calls us to between one another

is a not a love that is dependant upon our feelings,

it is a love that is deeply rooted in the choices we make.

When our Lord talks with us about love

and about our loving the people He places into our lives,

He is not talking with us about how we may feel towards them at any given moment,

He is talking with us

about the way we choose to act towards them

no matter where our feelings may be at the time.

True love is not our God calling us to feel a certain way towards a person,

it is His call us to choose to act in a certain way towards them.

It doesn’t begin with our feelings,

it begins with the choices we make.

Once I discovered this truth

I began to see so many things in Scripture

as I had never seen them before.

Passages like I Thess. 4:9 began to make sense to me:

1TH 4:9 Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; [10] for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more,...

Loving was something that God could teach us how to do,

and Paul complimented the Thessalonian Christians for practicing love,

and he encouraged them to excel still more.

And Peter’s comments in I Pet 1:22 made sense:

1PE 1:22 Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart,...

He was telling us that our submission to Christ had freed us from that

self-centered existence

that robed us of the ability to choose to act in love towards others

prior to our union with our Lord.

But now, in Christ, our souls have been purified,

making it possible for the first time in our lives

to begin learning how to choose to love those around us.

Peter then encourages us to pour ourselves

into this incredible calling,

to fervently give ourselves

to the task of learning to love from the heart.

And what God offers us through Christ

is the only thing that truly gives us

the basis for solid security

and hope for a lifetime.

He tells us that true love,

the real thing is not dependant upon

our fluctuating feelings,

true love is something we can choose,

something we can learn to do,

and something we can continue building for a lifetime.

And true love, His kind of love,

has the power to deliver

the kind and quality of life we really want -

the kind of relationships

that give us a purpose for living

as nothing else can do.

OK, that much I understood 15 years ago

and it truly did give me a hope and a security in my life as God’s child

that freed me from the slavery that comes with a life lived on the basis of our feelings.

But there were some things I didn’t understand back then about this love thing.

I knew it began with our choices,

but I didn’t fully realize

the power those choices have

to reshape and redefine every aspect of our lives.

I’ve tried to come up with some way of explaining

what I want to share with you right here

and this is the best I’ve come up with so far.

When we accept God’s calling to choose to act in love towards another person

His Spirit responds to those choices

by giving us the ability to see beyond their sometimes very offensive flesh exterior

and to glimpse them at the soul and spirit level -

to see them a little bit as God sees them.

And when that happens

it will create powerful emotional responses within us -

a deep compassion for them,

and a longing to do whatever we can

to make their life better

and to share in what God is seeking to do in their life.

And in the most amazing way,

when we see it correctly,

love is not just what we choose to do as God’s people,

it is also why we choose to do it -

it becomes our reason for doing what we do.

It’s exactly the opposite from what our society offers us.

Our society says if we feel love we should act in love.

Our God tells us that when we act in love

it will affect us deeply at the feeling level,

even if we may be reacting to their flesh on the surface.

When Paul wrote to the Philippians,

For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus...,

he was expressing deep love feelings

that were the byproduct of the love choices

that caused him to get involved in their lives in the first place.

I could have made this love thing a whole lot more simple, I guess

by just saying that when our God calls us to grow in our love choices towards one another

He wasn’t cramming a duty down our throats,

He was offering us the doorway

to the most fulfilling and meaningful approach to life we’ll ever know.

And then He gives us both the knowledge

and the ability to make those choices.

And that’s where Paul goes next in this prayer.

He says, I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge, and all discernment...

but we’ll have to wait until next week

before we move on to a closer look at that.