Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
What are the things that you pray about? What do you pray for? One of my professors once said, "Don't have the disease of the gimmes." As a class, we looked at him thinking, what is he talking about? Well, the disease of the gimmes basically means our prayer life is, Lord, give me this. Father, give me that. Lord, do this. Do this for me. Give me that. We need to be careful of the disease of the gimmes.
Paul's Model Prayer
The Apostle Paul has an incredible prayer that he models for us in this passage.
It's 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 11. "So we keep on praying for you, asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of His call. May He give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do."
He basically says, look, work while you wait. People are waiting for the second coming of Christ. They were lounging on their lawn chairs, well not back then, but they were certainly waiting for the Lord's return and they weren't working. So, Paul says you need to work while you wait.
The Noble Prayer
Paul models this incredible prayer in two noteworthy ways. As we look at this verse, let's just call number one the noble prayer. He says right there, "So we keep on praying for you." What are you praying for, Paul? "Asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of his call." I mean, that is a noble prayer. As you think about your prayer life, are you praying for your friends, your family members, your coworkers? I mean, you can just take this and say, Lord, help my spouse. May you enable her to live a life worthy of her call. Help my kids in their job. Help them to be living a life worthy of their call. That is an amazing, noble prayer. It's about others. Paul wasn't praying for himself. He's praying for others to live nobly.
Prompted Prayer
Secondly, let's call it prompted prayer. Not only a noble prayer, but prompted prayer. This is incredible what Paul prays for them. "May God," or "may he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do." You ever walk with God, been reading the Bible, or maybe you went to church and just have this host of good thoughts in your mind. I want my kids to grow up to be godly. I just really want my friend over there to love God. I really want my pastor to continue to preach great sermons, or whatever it is. You just have this plethora of positive, godly things that you know that would really be helpful for people to live out.
Those are the types of things Paul prays for. He's praying for them, for God to give them the power to accomplish all the good things. Here it is. This is why it's prompted prayer. "Your faith prompts you to do." This is an amazing prayer. We call it prompted prayer, where Paul is just praying that God would do this in their life.
Living It Out
As we look at this, what do we do with this passage? Number one, I find out that we can live out your calling. I mean, if Paul is praying for them to be worthy of the call, even Paul prays for this in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1. He prayed for them to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which God had called them. It's a great prayer. It's a great opportunity for us to live out the calling that we have. Husbands, fathers, wives, singles, a worker—whatever it is. We should live out our calling.
Secondly, let's call it pray like Paul. You can live out your calling. What should we be doing? We should be praying like Paul's praying. Think about all the people in your life that you can pray like this. You can just go right to this Bible and say, Lord, I just pray that you would accomplish this in my wife's life. I pray that you would accomplish that in my friend's life. Lord, I pray for my uncle. He really wants to go into ministry. I pray that you would fulfill that desire in his life. Literally, the prayer requests here are almost endless for you and for me.
Let's go ahead and be the people who don't have the disease of the gimmes Let’s not always be praying for ourselves, though this is okay to do sometimes. Pray for yourself, certainly, but let's not have the disease of the gimmes. Let's be praying noble prayers and prompted, powerful prayer just like Paul, so we can live a life pleasing for Him and watch others do what God has called them to do, so that they might live a worthy life for the glory of Jesus Christ.
