To What Kind of Prayer Does God Answer Yes?
1 Thessalonians 1: Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. 2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; 3 remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and [a]steadfastness of hope [b]in our Lord Jesus Christ before our God and Father,
I. The Humble/Repentant have answered prayer.
II. The Scriptural have answered prayer.
III. The Righteous have answered prayer.
IV. The Fervent have answered prayer.
V. The Selfless have answered prayer.
VI. The God exalting have answered prayer.
In the previous message, we found that God answers "Yes" to Scriptural prayers. That means that we are to pray based on what God reveals to be His will, as revealed in the Bible. That’s an important thing for us to remember. Many people pray based on their own desires, hopes and dreams.
“Do not hastily ascribe things to God. Do not easily suppose dreams, voices, impressions, visions or revelations to be from God. They may be from Him. They may be from nature. They may be from the Devil.”
J.K. Johnston, John Wesley Why Christians Sin, Discovery House, 1992, p. 102.
I would add, they may be our own whim.
We are often like the story…
Walter Knight told of an old Scottish woman who went from home to home across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed.
One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" someone asked. "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right." She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!
Today in the Word, May, 1989.
We often pray like that. Keep asking for what we want, never inquiring from the Word what God wants.
In today's sermon, I am giving an example of that kind of prayer. In 1st Thessalonians 3:10-13, Paul is praying for the people of the church in Thessalonica. And he is praying for three things for them; An increasing faith, an abounding love, and a growing hope.
1 Thessalonians 3:10-13 10 as we night and day keep praying most earnestly that we may see your face, and may complete what is lacking in your faith? 11 Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you, 13 so that He may strengthen your hearts blameless in holiness, before our God and Father, at the [a]coming of our Lord Jesus with all His [b]saints.
I. Pray that we have an ever-stronger faith. A faith that keeps strengthening day after day.
1 Thessalonians 3: 10 as we night and day keep praying most earnestly that we may see your face, and may complete what is lacking in your faith?
“Faith is the ability to trust the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
So to complete our faith, we need to hear, understand, believe, and obey the Word.
Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
Denise and I read through the Bible each year. It is on my “bucket list” to be able to preach and teach through at least the entire New Testament, and hopefully the Old Testament in my lifetime. Why do I want to get through all of it? Because it is the “whole counsel of God.” And I want to have a complete faith, to understand all that can be understood. And I would like to be able to teach it all. Because a complete faith is not some blind trust in a nameless goodness from God. Faith is knowing all that God says, believing it, and obeying it.
Faith is the ability to trust the truth of the Word, and nothing but the truth of the Word. And if there is a Scriptural prayer that you can pray, and be assured of a “Yes” answer, it is the prayer for an ever-growing faith. Pray it for yourself, pray it for your church.
What else can we pray scripturally that we know God will answer “yes?”
II. Pray for and increasing/abounding love.
12 and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you,
An increasing faith and an abounding love. These are sequential by the way. Love follows faith. True faith results in true love. The more my knowledge, trust, and obedience in God grows, the more His Spirit works in me and through me, and the more His nature is reflected in me. Love manifest. Love is the result of the Spirit’s work in you. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
But do you want to know a sure-fire way to know if God is really working in you?
1 John 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
The one who has God working in him, with the greatest of power, will have love oozing from them. Why? Because God is love. And the one who does not love does not know God.
What will that love look like?
Now, as confused as the world is about true faith, they are as confused about true love.
A. Colloquial definition: here are some examples
· “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” – A. A. Milne
I want you to suffer so I don’t have to.
· “To love is to burn, to be on fire.” – Jane Austen
Sounds painful
· “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” – Pablo Neruda
That’s dark
· “Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.” – Ben Hecht
I don’t know what that means. Lily Tomlin summarized it best.
· “If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?” – Lily Tomlin
I’m not even going to try and make sense of the world’s definition of love. Let’s go to the Scriptural definition.
B. Scriptural Definition.
Let’s read again the verses I mentioned before
1 John 4: 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves has been [a]born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
What’s the definition?
God is love. So, if you are praying that we all abound in love, we have to define that love in which we abound as being defined by God. Who God is defines for us what love is. God’s love is the love we aspire to flow through us. So, what does God’s love look like? Again, that is a very large subject. But let’s try and break it down to the basics.
Who does God love? Himself, Humanity, His Own.
Three manifestations of God’s love: His love for Himself, His love for humanity, His love for His own.
Love is defined by three phrases; to Himself, no reserves, to humanity, unconditionality, and to His own, completeness.
A. His love for Himself: inter-Trinitarian love: no reserves
Holds nothing back: The love that exists between Father Son and Spirit
You mean God loves Himself? Here’s a quote.
https://www.experiencinghisvictory.com/god-is-love-the-interrelationship-of-the-trinity/
Millard Erickson does a fine job explaining the concept behind the need for more than one person to be in the Trinity if God is to be love. He puts it this way:
In a sense, God being love virtually requires that he be more than one person. Love, to be love, must have both a subject and an object. Thus, if there were not multiplicity in the person of the Godhead, God could not really be love prior to the creation of other subjects. For love to be genuine, there must be someone whom God could love, and this would necessarily be more than mere narcissism. The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father; the Father loves the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit loves the Father; the Son loves the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit loves the Son. The fact that God is three persons rather than merely two also is a demonstration of the character of love. There is an old statement, ―”Two‘s company; three‘s a crowd.” It is possible for two human persons to have a relationship of love for one another that is much more difficult for three persons to have among themselves. Two persons may simply reciprocate love, not having to share the other person‘s love with anyone else. With three persons, there must be a greater quality of selflessness, of genuine agapē. This Trinity founded upon love is a demonstration of the full nature of agapē.
The Father Son and Spirit love each other. And how do they love each other; with no reserves. They hold nothing back from each other. Here’s a Scripture verse that illustrates that.
The evening prior to His crucifixion, Jesus spoke of His love for the Father
“but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me… (John 14:31)
Do you know what that He is saying? I want the world to see my love for the Father. How, by my following in obedience all the way to the cross. He expressed His love for the Father by going to the cross, the most painful and humiliating experience of His life.
He loved with no reserves. The Father loves the Son in the same way.
It is highly significant that two of the three recorded times in the New Testament where the Father spoke audibly, He spoke of Jesus as “my beloved Son,”
He also spoke of the Father’s love for Him: “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)
How did the Father love the Son? By giving Him His glory. The Father gave the Son glory. Look at John 5.
John 5: 19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing from Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever [d]the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same manner. 20 For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. 22 For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son,
The Father demonstrates His love for the Son by giving to Him, and not just some things, but all things. He “shows Him all things, gives Him all judgement.”
The greatest expression of love is to hold nothing back, to keep no reserves, to give up all of yourself. That’s God’s love inside the Trinity.
The same magnanimous nature is in the Spirit toward the Father and Son.
And our love, the love we are praying for to abound in us, is to be without reserves, giving all we have, being inconvenienced, suffering pain for others, losing sleep, losing money, weeping. True love gives all, with nothing held back.
Well, if the love we pray to manifest among us is exemplified in God, it is unreserved inside the Trinity, it is unconditional for the world.
B. His unconditional love for the world
Matthew 5:44 “I say to you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
God loves His enemies.
45 so that you may [a]be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Paul speaking to the Gentiles…
Acts 14:17, “He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
God loves the unredeemed.
Ezekiel 18:32, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
And here is a description of the heart of God.
Jeremiah 13: “Listen and give heed, do not be haughty or proud, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God, before He brings darkness and before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains, and while you’re hoping for light He makes it into deep darkness, and turns it into gloom. But if you will not listen to it,” “my soul will sob in secret for such pride; and my eyes will bitterly weep and flow down with tears.”
Jesus wept over the unrepentant in Jerusalem.
Matthew 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often I would have gathered you as a hen gathereth her brood and you would not. You just kill the prophets that are sent to you.”
In Luke 19:41 He says He looked over the city and He wept.
It is the will of God that everyone repent.
John 6:40, “This is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, will have eternal life; and I Myself” will raise him on the last day.”
Romans 5:8 - "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
God loved the world unconditionally. What does that mean? He wants to save them despite the fact that they don’t deserve to be saved.
How do we love the world? Conditionally. Let me ask you this. What if Charles Manson had a genuine conversion? He truly became a Christian. Now, I’m not going to ask you if you’d be okay if he were paroled. I personally believe he shouldn’t be, regardless of any prison conversions. But, let’s say he was converted and died in jail. Would it bother you to think that he was going to heaven, if his conversion was genuine? We might say, “He has no right. He deserves Hell.”
But God’s love is so unconditional that He wants all people to come to faith; Charles Manson, Dennis Rader, thieves, murderers, rapists, pedophiles.
That is the kind of love for the world that He wants to abound in us. An unconditional love for the world. Again, that’s not to say that we think people shouldn’t be punished, just because they claim they found Jesus. I still believe in just punishment. But the love in our heart is that all people, even the ones who hurt us, would come to a knowledge of the truth.
Without reserves, unconditional…
C. God’s love for His own; completely.
John 13: Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them [a]to the end.
His own are His disciples. His own are believers. God loves His own. His disciples, believers, Christians.
How does He love them? To the end.
Eis telos- to the end.
Jesus loved His disciples, “to the maximum limit of possible love.”
“to the completeness of time.” There is no cut off date.
Now, what is interesting about this Scripture is when it was stated. When is this statement made? At the Passover that Jesus celebrated with His disciples, just before His crucifixion. Were the disciples reciprocating that love?
The disciples in the Upper room were arguing about who would be greatest. Nobody wanted to wash anyone else’s feet. Later they would all forsake Him and flee. They did not understand His upcoming crucifixion. In terms of their performance as His followers this was them at their worst. But it is at this moment that the Spirit of God chooses to let us know that Jesus loved them to the end, the utmost. And He washes their feet.
Jesus loves you, His church, that much. At your worst, to His utmost. To the max, to the ultimate, perfect and complete love. There are many Scriptures that tell us that God loves His own. Here are some.
He gave us His greatest treasure.
1 John 4:9 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world
It can cover the sin of any who come.
John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
It moves us from being depraved sinners to becoming heirs of God.
1 John 3:1 - "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"
It plumbs the depth of His emotion for us.
Zephaniah 3:17 - "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."
It has no expiration date.
Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”
So, God’s love for Himself is without reserves, His love for the world is unconditional, His love for His own is unreserved, unconditional and complete.
And Paul prays that the Thessalonians have that kind of love abounding and increasing in them.
Romans 5:5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
What can we pray these things for each other, and be assured that they are God’s will for us, and so He will answer “yes” to our prayers. For complete faith, for abounding love. For each of us to have God’s kind of love abounding, making to increase, our no holds barred love for God-giving all, our unconditional love for the world, despite what they do, we love them, and desire their salvation, and a perfect and complete love for the people of the church.
Next time we will look at praying for a strengthening hope.
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