Prayer: Bringing God's will to pass

II Thessalonians 1

Introduction: In his small Bible Study guide on 2 Thessalonians, Chuck Swindoll quotes the following words from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. The king is King Arthur, and these are some of his last words as he lies on his deathbed. “Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”
If more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of… and if men know God… then we ought to lift hands of prayer for both ourselves and those who call us friend.
When we come to the last two verses of 2 Thessalonians 1, we find Paul very much believing these concepts attributed by Tennyson to King Arthur on his deathbed. Before we look at Paul’s very short prayer and see how his beliefs correspond to King Arthur’s, we have to ask ourselves a question. “Do we believe that more comes about by prayer than most of the world dreams of?” How much do we, who know God, lift hands in prayer for both ourselves and those who call us friend? If we could take the spiritual temperature of our prayer life today, what would the thermometer read? What could we testify of ‘dreams come true’ because God answered our prayer?
I’m convinced there are many among us today who pray faithfully, who could relate many experiences of working with God to bring His will to pass here on Earth. I’m sure there are a good number among us who often get counsel from the heavenly Father by means of prayer for issues we must act upon.
But who among us today would say, “Don’t bother me with another sermon about prayer! I know all I need to know; I’m highly motivated every day to pray; I’m as disciplined as can be in this spiritual exercise.”?
Though this prayer of Paul’s is very brief, it is loaded with good things for us to understand, to imitate, and to incorporate into the way we pray. In fact, I’m amazed at all that Paul said in only two verses! As we read 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12, notice how easy it would be for us, for the next 30 days, to pray this prayer of Paul’s for ourselves and for those who call us friend.
2 Thess 1:11-12 – “To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
As we examine what Paul is saying, we find him making three requests of God on behalf of his friends in Thessalonica. We could make the same requests of God for ourselves and our friends every day, and we could be assured that God would be pleased with what we are asking.
Paul’s three requests are these: one, that God would count these friends worthy of their calling; two, that God would fulfill their every desire for goodness; and three, that God would fulfill their work of faith with power.
As we think about what Paul is initially petitioning God for, and as we seek to understand what he means, it’s good for us to remember the circumstances that his friends have been experiencing. These believers were in the midst of afflictions and persecutions. Life was not much fun at this point, full of pain and suffering. These Christians probably felt a lot like the church member being investigated by the IRS. An agent of the IRS called the pastor of the church and inquired whether he knew a Herman Coffman.
“Yes, I do.”
“Is he a member of your church?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Did he give a gift of $10,000?”
“He will!”
Paul had affirmed these new converts and had bragged on them everywhere he went. He had just explained to them some of the reasons, some of the good reasons for pain and suffering in the life of a follower of Christ. Now he turns to prayer for them.
Notice in the first part of his prayer in verse 11, Paul prays that God would count them worthy of their calling. These Thessalonian believers have been called into the kingdom of God. They have been ushered into that realm where God rules, where they have a part of the life of God and He has a part of theirs. They have been given the status of children of God. They have been ushered out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Their sins have been washed away. They have been made partakers of eternal life.
They have been given a relationship with the Creator of the universe. They have been assigned a guardian angel to minister to them and to protect them. They have been baptized into the Body of Christ. They have been commissioned to carry the Gospel to the far corners of the world. They have been commanded to love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their strength and with all their soul, AND to love their neighbors as themselves. They have been called to the standards of Micah 6:8. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Paul prays that these Thessalonians will be counted by God as worthy of this high calling. I’m reminded of the life-story of the swimmer, Gertrude Ederle. She is 93 this year and now lives in a nursing home in Wyckoff, New Jersey. As a twenty year old in 1926, Gertrude swam the English Channel. In only her second attempt, she beat the men’s record by 2 hours, using a crawl stroke instead of the breaststroke, which was the common stroke of her day. And her record would stand for 24 years. Experts would later calculate that Gertrude Ederle had actually swum 35 miles in crossing the 21 mile wide channel because of the rough waters that 14 hour day on August 6, 1926. At one point in the crossing, both her father and her coach pleaded with her to come out of the water. She shouted, “No, No.” She had already decided she would finish the swim or drown trying.
Amazingly, this channel-crosser had fallen into a pond as an eight-year-old while visiting her grandmother in Germany and had to be rescued. Though terrified by the accident, she decided she’d better learn how to swim. And learn she did.
Gertrude Ederle felt like she had a calling, a high calling, the same kind of calling climbers feel when they contemplate Mount Everest. She set out to become worthy of that call. And she succeeded.
There is a certain high calling for pastors, policemen, and presidents, and that calling carries with it the expectation of certain standards of conduct and behavior and ethics and morality. The good pastor, the respected policeman, the worthy president measures up, in his behavior, to his calling.
Paul is praying for his Thessalonian friends, that their lives would reflect the standards of God’s call upon their lives.
We, like the Thessalonians, need faithful friends who will pray that we will be counted by God as worthy of what He has called us to. God has called each one of us to be light in this world of increasing darkness, to be salt in the context of growing corruption, to be kind in the face of rejection, to be merciful to failures, to be gracious to the stubborn, to be loving to the ugly, to champion justice for the downtrodden, to exude humility in the face of praise, to constrain anger in a setting of misunderstanding, to show hospitality when there is need, etc., etc., etc.
And friends, let’s not forget that this kind of conduct, conduct worthy of the call of God upon our lives, is often required of us in difficult circumstances. It is one thing to be a patient person when all on the home front is cool, all at work is satisfying, and life is good. It’s quite another thing when nothing in any part of life is clicking. Nothing rips our masks of piety off quite so quickly as pain. Nothing spotlights the condition of our souls quite so quickly as suffering. Nothing punctures the balloon of our image quite so quickly as affliction. Who we are and what we are is never so loudly broadcast as when we hurt.
Isn’t it interesting that when Paul begins to pray for these friends, he doesn’t pray for release from suffering; he doesn’t ask God to remove those responsible for the affliction; he doesn’t petition God to provide green pastures and quiet waters. What he does ask is that God would enable them to endure their pain with the kind of class and character that reflects positively on His power and grace.
Friends, let’s pray for one another. Let’s ask God to enable us to live in such a way that our claims to know God have merit in the eyes of those who see our behavior, especially in troubled waters.
Paul’s second request of God on behalf of these new believers is that God would fulfill their every desire for goodness. The term for “goodness” here in the Scriptures is always human goodness, and the term is a relative of the word “generosity”. And the word “desire” could also be the term “resolve”. Another translation, then, of Paul’s prayer is that God would fulfill ‘their every resolve proceeding from generosity.’
Paul recognizes that suffering can make Christians hard-hearted. He knows the tendency that pain fosters towards anger, bitterness, and stinginess. He knows we feel less open-handed, less open-hearted when pain and affliction overwhelm us. And we know it too. Who wants to think of someone else when our need for comfort is so great? Who has the energy to focus on being generous to someone else when our suffering is screaming full blast in our souls?
That’s why Paul is praying! He knew it was important to pray in this specific way that these believers would emerge from their trials having a reputation for goodness and generosity. He knew it was critical that these Thessalonians have a clear resolve to do good and that that resolve would bear fruit. Only God could provide that kind of energy! Only God could fulfill that resolve!
I read this week partial stories of three men of resolve. We are all familiar with Winston Churchill’s statement in 1940: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we will never surrender.” That is resolve.
I was also introduced to William Harvey this week. He was a physician, born in England in 1578, and through his resolve, he introduced to the medical community the bulletproof theory that the heart was a pump that pushed the blood through a circulatory system in the body. Up until then, it was generally thought that the body had two kinds of blood pushed through the body by the constant twitching of arteries. The heart was believed to be a device that heated the body and filtered the blood.
One of Harvey’s teachers who impressed him a great deal was the great astronomer, Galileo Galilei. Galileo always urged his students “to continue studying science by experimenting, measuring, and examining things for themselves, rather than believing blindly what others had told them.” William Harvey’s resolve to explore further than his collogues became the foundation for blood transfusions, open-heart surgery, and artificial hearts. That is another kind of resolve for goodness.
Perhaps the most fascinating example of resolve for goodness comes out of the experience of Frank Laubach Mr. Laubach rose from a lonely missionary assignment in the Philippines to become a Christian world statesman. He founded the World Literacy Crusade and exerted quite a great influence upon United States foreign policy after World War Two, though he never had any political appointment to any State Department post.
The fulfillment of Frank Laubach’s ‘resolve for goodness’ began with a process that started in January of 1930. In that month, he began to cultivate the habit of turning his mind to Christ for one second out of every minute. After four weeks of this practice, this is what he reported: “I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. This sense of cooperation with God in little things is what so astonishes me, for I never felt it this way before. I need something, and turn round to find it waiting for me. I must work, to be sure, but there is God working along with me.”
Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, says that Laubach “always knew that his brilliant ideas and incredible energy and effectiveness derived from his practice of constant, conscious interface with God.”
Does anyone doubt that someone was praying for this missionary, that God would fulfill his every resolve, his every desire for goodness and generosity? It is patently clear that that is exactly what God was doing in his life!
Friends, this would be a good prayer to lay at the throne of God on behalf of our friends. We ought to ask God to give us and our friends resolve for goodness. We are well aware that ‘desire’ is abundant everywhere in our day; ‘resolve’ is much harder to find in our day of fast food and instant gratification. So, what resolve do we have that is growing our of our generosity? What would we say we are committed to in the arena of goodness with the resolve of Winston Churchill, William Harvey, or Frank Laubach? Then we need to ask God to fulfill that resolve out of His reserves of power and goodness. Let me offer a practical suggestion: in your next Bible study meeting, your next church board or committee meeting, your next small group meeting, when the leader asks for prayer requests, don’t offer a prayer request for someone who is sick. Ask those gathered with you to pray that God would fulfill your desires, your resolve for goodness and generosity. Then listen as you pray to see what things God might speak to you about resolve and goodness and generosity.
Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians was that they might be counted worthy of God’s high call of them, that He would fulfill their resolve to be generous, and thirdly, that He would fulfill their work of faith with power.
Notice that Paul speaks here of the ‘work of faith.’ Faith is supposed to be demonstrable; it is supposed to be seen with power. When Gallup surveys show that 94% of Americans believe in God and 74% of Americans claim to have made a commitment to Jesus Christ, and 34% proclaim a ‘new birth’ experience, and when these same groups reveal shocking statistics for unethical behavior, crime, mental distress and disorder, family failures, addictions, financial imbalances, etc., etc., we wonder where the “work” of faith is!
The great apostle prays for these friends because he did not want the suffering of these Thessalonians to be like a drought on a crop of good deeds. He didn’t want their efforts in faith to be blocked, stifled, choked, or short circuited by pain and affliction. His prayer is that their faith will know God’s power so that they can continue to bear fruit in the face of all their difficulties. His prayer is that all their acts of faith would be filled with the energy of God Himself. Paul’s prayer is that the charcoal of faith’s work would glow more brightly under the fanning of suffering.
This too would be a good prayer to pray in our next elder meeting, our next council meeting, our next small group study. O Lord, fulfill our work of faith with power that is obviously from You.
Let’s step back a moment and catch again a glimpse of Paul’s intent in this prayer for his friends. He doesn’t want these believers to give in to their desire for relief from their suffering before God has done His work of character development. Paul wants these new converts to be counted worthy of their high calling in Christ Jesus.
Paul also doesn’t want these new Christians to give up in their afflictions before they have a chance to see God carry them through the dark valley and out into the light of victory. God wants to see their resolve develop into a reputation for goodness and generosity that He has fulfilled.
And finally, the great leader of Gentile Christians, the one who always carried about in his own body a thorn in the flesh, prayed that his friends wouldn’t give out in bearing good fruit because they had run out of power. God would fulfill, with His power, their works of faith.
We ought always to pray that we ourselves and our friends would not give in, nor give up, nor give out in this wonderful calling we have received from our great God.
Finally, Paul tells us the great purpose in his prayer – that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in Him. Paul’s desire is that these Thessalonians will be such a bright light, shining so clearly in regards to the reality of their salvation, that all who see them will see what a great Savior the Lord Jesus really is. Their character, their reputation, their strengths, their virtues bring glory to the One who is responsible for them.
It would seem that the Lord Jesus would have enough majesty and enough glory and enough splendor to stand alone above all His competitors. But God long ago decided that His Son would be glorified through us, the church. That’s a mind-boggling idea, isn’t it? God is seen to be magnificent because of our part in His plans! We indeed have a high calling; we indeed have a huge responsibility.
I want to conclude this morning with a few suggestions on how we might pray in the pattern of Paul’s prayer we see here.
Pray specifically. It is not hard to see how Paul has focused his praying on three specific issues related to his Thessalonian friends. We can do the same.
Pray situationally. How can we get in tune with what God is doing for the sake of His kingdom? What does this situation look like from the perspective of the Creator? Perhaps we ought to pray less for healing of sickness and relief from suffering and more for God’s will to be done and more for His glory to shine.
Pray sensibly. Suffering, affliction, and pain are not always to be avoided or escaped. Our prayers to be worthy of our calling are far more certain and likely to be answered than selfish desires for comfort and ease. Our prayers for resolve in being generous have a great chance of being answered. Our prayers for a faith that works with power will certainly please the Father.
When we pray in this way, we participate in bringing God’s will to pass in our world.

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