Prayers of Paul--1 Thessalonians
3:13 & 5:23-24
What kind of prayer will God always be willing to answer?
Have you ever thought of that?
Many people pray and ask for/about people or other things. Sometimes our prayers are competitive in nature.
Sometimes we ask with wrong motives, maybe
God knows better than we do about what we need, not what we want. Sometimes God answering "yes" to your prayer may be bad for someone else.
But can we pray about something that God would not refuse?
I think these two verses are examples of things He will
never be unwilling to fulfill.
1 Thess. 3:13--“May
He strengthen your heart 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.”
Personalize these and ask them for yourself and for others:
“God, strengthen my heart so I will
be blameless and holy in Your presence.”
1 Thess. 5:23-24—“May
God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept
blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Personalized: “My God of peace, sanctify me through and
through. Keep my whole spirit, soul and
body blameless both now and at Your coming.”
Praying for
sanctification and blamelessness are not easy things to pray about considering
all the
temptations
that we are dealing with.
I asked the
college students in our class what kinds of issues they or their classmates are
facing
- · Alcohol
- · Drugs
- · Profanity
- · Sex
- · Pornography
- · Anger/Revenge
- · Smoking
- · Laziness/Hard Work
- · Partying
This is by no means an exhaustive list and those temptations
do not stop with college students.
However, these temptations can affect our prayer and our usefulness to
God. They can interfere with and put a
barrier up between us and God to where we don’t want to talk to Him anymore.
Think of it in these terms, growing up, when I did something
I knew I shouldn’t do, the last people I wanted to talk to or run in to was my
parents. Why? Because there was the chance I could slip up
and give myself away or worse, they already knew about whatever it was I had
done. If they didn’t know, I would be in
a state of fear and/or guilt—so it was best to just avoid them if possible and
keep going as if nothing was wrong. It
created a barrier between us that my behavior put up.
We treat God the same way.
When we are living things like those listed above, the last person we
really want to get close to is God. Why?
Because we suspect He already knows—and we know on some level that it will have
to be dealt with before true closeness or fellowship is restored—before our
prayer is truly “heard”.
To be “heard” means to be given an audience. God is fully aware of everything, but He does
not “hear” or give an audience to everything or everyone—not while sin needs to
be dealt with.
In order to be in the presence of God, we must be blameless.
Blameless is the same concept that was said of Abraham back in
Genesis—“walk before me and be blameless”.
It does not mean perfection that can be attained through effort but a status
that exists when one’s sins have been atoned for or covered. A life characterized by the influence of
atonement creates a quality of character and integrity that will not give cause
or evidence to accusation. It is a life
of faith—“Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
In the strength of our own heart, we cannot be blameless. We need God to act upon our heart, to give us
strength in order to be blameless.
When was the last time you asked God to strengthen your
heart so you can be blameless? If you’re
like me, it’s either been a while or never.
Paul expresses a similar thing in 5:23—“may God Himself… sanctify you through and
through.”
When was the last time you
asked God to sanctify you?
To sanctify means to make holy or set apart for a holy
purpose. Paul is asking for you and I to
be made holy so we can be used for holy purposes.
Have you asked God to use you for a holy purpose
lately? You might be missing out on some
great opportunities.
You may think you are nothing special, that God could never
use someone as ordinary as you, but In the ritual sacrifice of the Old
Testament—normal items can be made from the same lump of clay (for example) as
items to be used to worship God—something to use at home, and something to be
used in the temple can have the same source.
See Romans 9:21 & 2 Timothy 2:20-21
What separates them is whether something has been sanctified,
set apart to the service of God—this usually required a sprinkling of the blood
of a sacrifice.
By having the Blood of Christ placed over you, covering your
sin, our sin is atoned for, God’s just wrath appeased, the righteousness of
Christ (not our own righteousness) is credited to us just as righteousness was
credited to Abraham.
In doing all this for us, we are also set apart or
sanctified or made holy for a greater, noble and holy purpose.
And not just part of us, but all of us. We are to be sanctified completely, through
and through.
Too often, we try to hold back part of our life for
ourselves. We say, “God, you can have
this part of my life, but this is mine and I’ll do with it what I want.”
Paul points out that we really can hold nothing back. He sets apart, He sanctifies all of you—“spirit,
soul and body.”
You are a whole person and each part either feeds and
nourishes the other, or tears down and diminishes the effectiveness of the
other.
For example, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. When you or I sin sexually in our physical
body our spiritual life is greatly impacted and diminished. That’s why there is such a struggle for
sexual purity in the life of believers and our culture.
Sexual sin, outside of God’s design of marriage between a
man and a woman is both a symptom of and a cause of spiritual decline. And in most cases, the sin does not start
with a physical sin. It starts in the
soul or mind. That’s why Jesus can say
that men who look at a woman with lust in his heart has already committed
adultery—and this has affected the man’s spiritual walk.
That’s why we need God’s strength to work on our heart. He is the active agent of our purity and
blamelessness. He acts upon us, He
strengthens us, He makes us holy: spirit, soul and body.
When we ask Him to sanctify us—there’s nothing we can hold
back—God wants to purify and set apart all of us—our whole being for His great
purpose.
When was the last time you wanted God to have all of
you? When was the last time you asked
Him to keep you blameless, to sanctify you, to strengthen your heart?
Do you really think God would ever say “No” to this kind of
prayer?
I don’t.
Maybe we should be praying like this more often. Our homes, our churches, our nation wouldn’t
be the same because… “He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”—1 Thessalonians 5:24
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