My Prayer for You
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
August 9, 2009
Philippians 1:3-11 (NIV)
3 I thank my God every time I remember you.
4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.
8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God.
This is my prayer for you and it's what I want to talk to you about today. The first thing I want you to see is the tenderness in Paul's word to the church at Philippi. The Philippian church was special to Paul. It was located in Greece, in the province of Macedonia, in southern Europe. You can read through Paul's letters in the New Testament and see how often Paul refers positively to the churches of Macedonia, which were the Philippian churches. They were generous to him. They loved him and cared for his needs while he was on missionary journeys and while he was in prison. Philippians is probably the last letter Paul wrote, as it is believed that he was executed not long after he finished it. In fact he wrote it from a prison in Rome.
So there's Paul sitting in a Roman prison, knowing that time is probably running out for him. He has had a long and productive ministry, planted many churches, raised up many pastors and missionaries, and left a legacy far bigger than he could have known at the time. Paul was an amazing man, but was still a man. As such, it is safe to say this letter was written with some measure of fear. Certainly in loneliness and longing, as Paul himself says. Remember that Paul was unmarried, so he had no wife, no children -- he had only the relationships he had formed with those in his churches, and the leaders he had built from the ground up. As such, Philippians is a goodbye letter. Paul expresses an awareness that there's a good chance he'll end up dead. But he also expresses the hope that he'll get to go back to those he loves, those who had been so generous in sharing their love and their lives with him.
It is brief if you compare it to Romans or the books of Corinthians. Nowadays some guys do body-building when they're in prison. They have nothing else to do. Well, Paul wrote letters. Ever wonder if those letters would have been written if Paul hadn't spent so much time in prison? Hmmm...
See, we cannot understand this letter if we do not understand Paul's situation, and his relationship to those to whom he was writing. Can you place yourself in a similar situation? Imagine that you are in prison, with its terrible conditions. You have no spouse, no children, thus no one coming regularly to see you. You have only your friends, who are now hundreds of miles away; perhaps people in your small group -- who have cared for you and loved you as family. You have a bad feeling about how this is gonna end, so hour after hour you sit there thinking of your loved ones, missing them, longing for them, writing to them. Those memories bring joy to you, but also moments of pain as they contrast with the cold stone and steel that surrounds you.
That was the reality as Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians. Let's read it again, with that in mind.
Philippians 1:3-11 (NIV)
3 I thank my God every time I remember you.
4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.
8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God.
That's a love letter. That's the kind of letter a parent would write to a child. Love is that thing that, when we are under the gun, threatened on every side, unsure of our future, desperately longing for home, still says to those we love, "Chin up kiddo. I'll be okay, no matter how this turns out." Love is that thing that when we're suffering and hurting, thinks of the impact that must have on those we love who have to see us in that condition, and reaches out in care and concern for them. Love is that thing that thinks not of our own suffering, but of the suffering that our suffering must be causing others. And I believe Paul wrote this letter in that spirit, with that love. Read the rest of this brief letter and you'll see his affection and love oozing out all over the place, as well as the courage and bravery Paul is mustering as he realizes how this is probably all gonna end.
So I began by saying this is my prayer for you. Obviously the circumstances are vastly different. I did not write this sermon from prison, and my life isn't ebbing away as quickly as Paul's was -- at least not that I know of. Most obviously, I am not the man that Paul was. Few men ever will be. But perhaps the affection is similar. And Paul, like myself, was a pastor who planted a church and had the joy of seeing it grow and working with those people through their victories and disappointments. If he were here today, we would have a great talk about pastoring! We would talk about the heartbreak it constantly involves, and the front-row seat we get to one miracle after another. We would talk about the constant apathy of many of our people and then we'd get honest about our own apathy as well. Most of all we'd have stories to tell -- Paul of when his people supported him in prison. Mine of when I stood before you years ago and told you I'd been coasting -- completely spiritually dry -- for months -- and you let me keep getting up there. Paul of when he was opposed in the city of Colassae. Mine of when I shared with you months back about struggles with paralyzing fear and anxiety - and you let me keep getting up there. We'd both talk about the words we'd received from people. Words of selfless encouragement and love; words of withering criticism and rejection. We'd talk about the expectations of others and how we could never meet them, but what an honor it was for someone to expect out of you what people sometimes expect of us.
I cannot tell you how many ways in which I identify with Paul. I identify with him as a pastor, but for our purposes today I identify with him as someone who has come to love a group of people dearly and who, even in desperate hours of his own, and bearing heavy personal burdens, longs for their well-being. So I identify with this prayer that Paul prays for the Philippians and want to spend a few moments talking about that prayer with you today.
Philippians 1:9-11 (NIV)
9 ... this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God.
That your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best. See, love is good, but it is not enough. Love must be based on knowledge and insight, because you can love someone dearly and still make mistakes in how you act toward them simply because you do not properly understand them or know them, or because you may lack insights into what drives them and motivates them and makes them as they are.
Wildwind is a knowledge ministry. I don't know how to run any other kind of ministry. Knowledge is what I love. Not everyone has the love of knowledge that I have, but what I have seen is that everyone has the same NEED for it. When someone is in personal trouble and calls a pastor, or friend, or counselor, why do they do that? Because they need knowledge. This includes the Ph.D astrophysicist who spends her life searching for knowledge, and the strip club DJ who maybe never gives knowledge a second thought, and all points in between. We all, no matter who we are, need knowledge, for it is on the basis of knowledge of the world and of God that we act and make decisions. What is one of the most distressed things we say as human beings? “I do not know what to do.” We don't want to feel like we're out there guessing about how to act. So I pray that your love may abound more and more in knowledge, and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best.
Notice it is not just knowledge Paul prays for, but love that abounds in knowledge. No one knew as well as Paul did what effect knowledge has on its own.
1 Corinthians 8:1 (NIV)
1. ...Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
Knowledge, unfettered by sacrificial love, leads to increasing arrogance and insensitivity to others. But when love abounds in knowledge, you have power! You have someone who is growing in knowledge and also in the humility and sacrifice that comes from love. FANTASTIC! Love without knowledge is shallow love. Knowledge without love is cold knowledge.
But it's not just knowledge Paul speaks of, it is also "depth of insight." Depth of insight is not simply knowledge - it is knowledge that leads to understanding. The last thing we want is to be people who are learning, but not understanding! Paul prays that love will abound both in knowledge and depth of insight.
That is my prayer for you. First of all, that you (we) would grow in love. Second, that as a community our love would not simply be mushy emotional fuzzies, but something real based in knowledge of God and knowledge of others. Isn't it obvious that the more we know someone, the better we can love them? When you first meet a person and say you love them, you in fact might. But you love in ignorance. You don't yet know their flaws, their weaknesses, their insecurities, their needs, their sins, and their ugliness. But over time you come to know these things about a person - you get to see behind the curtain, so to speak. As you see these things, you are able to learn to love from a place of knowledge, which means your love becomes more and more real, because it is directed less and less at who you think someone is and more and more at who you're beginning to actually know them to be.
But something's still missing. Knowledge must lead to insight. I may love Christy even with all of her flaws, but if I do not have insight into her, my love may cause me to simply try to change her -- after all, it really would be better to not have this certain flaw than to have it, right? So I may think, from a place of mere knowledge. But if I have insight, I can see the world through her eyes, from her point of view. This is where knowledge becomes empathy and compassion.
The church is riddled with people who do not have knowledge, because they are afraid that knowing will create problems for them in their efforts to believe. This is nonsense. The church is also riddled with people who have knowledge that lacks empathy and compassion. These are the people who say, "If you really loved God this or that wouldn't be a problem because the Bible says such and such in this chapter and that verse." Knowledge has not led to insight.
Paul's prayer is essential in the proper formation of spiritual human beings. Love, stemming from both knowledge and insight. Indeed I submit to you that love, in order to really be love in the true Biblical sense, must be based on both knowledge and insight. What's so amazing about God's love? It's that God knows me so well and still loves me anyway!
Then, when we love from a place of knowledge and insight, we are able to discern what is best. As I meet with person after person, couple after couple in my office, I find that it is not good intentions people are lacking -- it is basically good discernment. People are struggling to discern what is best. Because of that, they are often involved in the daily project of doing things that are NOT best (for them and those around them) and consequently there is pain in their lives and in their closest relationships. My ministry has focused and will continue to focus on providing you with a knowledge base and pathways to insight, with the prayer that this leads to more and more ability to discern what is best.
Paul says there are two things that will come from being able to discern what is best. First is that you will be pure and blameless. This is an inner quality. If you are pure and blameless, that means you are free from the burdens that always come from stupid mistakes. You do not carry around a sense of condemnation because you have aligned your life with reality and that has kept you on the path of wisdom.
The other thing that comes from being able to discern what is best is that we are filled with what Paul calls the "fruit of righteousness" that comes through Christ. Now you can think of this as inner peace, but think also of fruit as something that can be seen on the outside. When you are discerning properly how to live and what to do and what to avoid, your life takes on a certain kind of tone. People see that you seem to live free from major crisis and drama and that provides a huge contrast between your life and many of theirs. The fruit of righteousness may also involve the "fruits of the Spirit." Certainly when you are able to discern what is best and follow that path you end up with more love, more joy, more peace, and those kinds of fruits in your life.
This ends us up in a pretty awesome place. Isn't that the life we want? Isn't this what we're all hoping for? But we see here that it isn’t easy. We can have feelings of love for someone, but those feelings do not have to lead to knowledge. We can stay at the shallow, emotional stage where our feelings basically are warm fuzzies based on romanticized notions. We can run every time a relationship get challenging. Or we can go on to maturity, which requires letting go of some of our ideals, to embrace what is real, as we increasingly gain knowledge of the real person. We can come to love God and one another in knowledge. And then we can surpass knowledge and move to deep insight, which requires reflection and empathy and putting ourselves in the place of another person. Despite all we say about walking a mile in another person’s shoes, most of us have a very long way to go when it comes to learning how to set ourselves aside and really see the perspective of another person.
But Paul prays this for his people, why? Because this is how loving communities are formed – only as we are moving past our ideals and romanticized notions, into acquiring real knowledge of each other, and allowing that knowledge not to lead us to cynicism or frustration, but to deep insight which comes from empathy and understanding. This is my prayer for you today. Will you pray with me?
Philippians 1:3-11 (NIV)
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me.
8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God.
Amen.
