What could you pray for someone who’s new in the faith? What could you pray for someone who’s been a Christian for 50 years? What could you pray for your best friend, or for your husband or wife? What could you pray for those people you’ve never met but who your link missionaries have told you about?
Well clearly there are lots of things we could pray for those people, depending on the situation they’re in, aren’t there? But let me suggest that Paul in his prayer here in Philippians 1 gives us a model that will fit every situation.
1 He prays for Excellence
He says: "And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10to help you to determine what is best." Now on a quick reading you might think he’s just praying that they’d be more loving. But the love he wants them to show is in fact just a means to an end.
You see, the point of his prayer is this: that they might be able to determine what is best. He’s praying not just for more love, but for excellence.
It’s like the Olympic motto: "swifter, higher, stronger." He prays that their love might not just overflow, but that it might overflow more and more; and with knowledge and full insight.
If you ever thought that good enough was good enough as far as service of God is concerned, think again. Good enough only works for yesterday. Today it’s more and more, higher and higher, stronger and stronger.
One of the criticisms you’ll hear about the Anglican Church is that mediocrity is the norm, that self-satisfaction is our great failing. Is that true do you think? Are our great strengths of a Biblical tradition, a strong liturgical practice and a well thought out theological basis, also our great weakness?
Do we sometimes think that we don’t need to do any more, any better? That the Anglican Church will just go on and on "as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be?"
Well, if that’s the way we think, Paul challenges our thinking with the prayer he prays here, a prayer for what is "best". So what is this "best" thing that he prays they might be able to determine?
He gives us a clue in the way he prays that they might discern it. He prays that their love might overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. What does that mean?
Maybe it might help to put it in the negative. He doesn’t pray that they might love in ignorance and insensitivity, does he? Nor does he pray that they might love with cheap sentimentality and short-sighted ignorance.
That’s the easy sort of love that we can fall into if we’re not loving with knowledge and insight. That’s the Hollywood, chick-flick sort of love, the cheap sentimental, gushy sort of love you see in a soap opera.
No, Christian love comes with "full insight." It’s a love that doesn’t just ignore reality, but rather works in the midst of or through the reality of the relationship. What’s more it’s a love that comes out of the knowledge of the gospel, the knowledge of the nature and will of God, as we saw last week.
So it’s a love that’s informed by the love of God. It’s a love that grows in response to our experience of God’s love for us.
But there’s more to it than just that, because he prays that this overflowing love, informed by knowledge and insight, might help them work out what’s best. That is, to be able to discern between different paths, different options to find the superior choice.
It would be great, wouldn’t it, if all our decisions in life were simple black and white decisions. It’s cold today so I’ll wear a jumper. It’s hot today so I’ll wear a short sleeved shirt.
But anyone who’s lived more than a few years on this earth knows that there are very few black and white decisions to be made. Mostly we have to choose between different shades of grey; or in these days of colour television, between countless colours of the rainbow.
So the purpose of Paul’s prayer is to help them decide, among all the competing demands on them, what things they’ll put their time and energy into, what ethical and moral choices they’ll make, what career path they’ll go down, how much time they’ll spend with their children or their spouse, what programs their church will pursue, how they’ll divide up their time, or their money, or their energy.
And the way we decide that is by allowing the love of God, overflowing in our hearts, tempered by knowledge and insight, to be the key.
There’s a third clue in the passage that might help us understand what this "best " might mean. Look at v6: " I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ."
There’s never a thought in the New Testament that once you become a Christian that’s all you need to worry about. Coasting along as a Christian is never considered an acceptable option. No, the Christian walk is just that - a movement from one place to another.
It’s a movement from immaturity to maturity, from being a fallen creature to being sanctified. Our goal is to be perfected in Christ when the last day finally arrives.
My wife, Di, and I are planning to take part in a pilgrim walk in Spain later in the year. We’ll be doing the last 100 or so kilometres of a 900 km walk.
Now my understanding of pilgrimages, in the Christian tradition at least, is that they’re meant to focus the mind on God as you move towards a particularly holy place.
But it isn’t enough to just focus on God. If that’s all you were doing you could stay at the first place on the route and save yourself all that exertion and pain.
No, we actually have to walk the route, in a sense acting out our lives as Christians, so we experience the sense of getting closer to your goal, that is, closer to the last day, closer to that face-to-face encounter with God.
Now I have to say I have some problems with some of the theology behind traditional pilgrimages, but that idea of experiencing in a physical way what it means to draw closer to God spiritually as our life goes on has its merits doesn’t it?
So part of this idea of discerning what’s best has to do with discerning what will best help us grow in our maturity, in our likeness to Christ, in our discipleship, to move forward in the Christian life.
The next question of course is, are you committed to pursuing what is best? Are you committed to using your time in the best way you can? Are you committed to relating to your family, your children, your spouse, your parents, your brothers and sisters, the best way you can?
Are you committed to spending your money in the best way possible? Do you look for ways to use your wealth to grow God’s kingdom, or is your giving to God’s work a necessary duty that you do grudgingly?
Are you committed to developing your mind in a godly way? Is your reading of the Bible developing your knowledge of God in such a way that you’re better able to choose what’s best?
Even as you think about those questions you have a choice you know? You can treat them as another set of rules to make you feel guilty or you can approach them from the point of view of love; love that’s overflowing more and more with knowledge and full insight. You see if our love for God is growing then we’ll welcome the opportunity to test our growth in maturity.
One of the attractions of something like the Pilgrim walk we’re going to do in Spain is that it allows us to test ourselves, our strength and stamina.
Are we able to keep going day after day? Will we be able to make it to the end? So too, if we approach these questions with a growing love for God then we’ll willingly submit ourselves to them in the hope that we can correct those areas where we still need improvement.
2. Paul’s Prayer is tied to a Long Term View
As we so often find, Paul’s perspective is not confined to the present circumstances of his hearers. He’s always looking to the day when Christ will return.
So he prays that they might be able "to determine what is best," - Why? - "So that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God."
So this striving for excellence itself has a further aim: that we may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, that is on the last day, when Christ returns, and that we might produce a harvest of righteousness.
So again, a maintenance mode won’t do, will it? If on the day Christ returns he finds us in the same state we were in when we were first converted, it’ll be a sorry state of affairs for most of us won’t it?
Imagine if you had an employee who had been working for 20 years and still had the same level of knowledge as when she began. There’d be something wrong wouldn’t there?
There should be a huge difference between the carpenter entering an apprenticeship and one who’s been working for 10 or 15 years. If you’re choosing a tax accountant or a solicitor you’d much rather have someone with a number of years experience in the field wouldn’t you?
So how could we think it’s OK not to progress as a Christian? No our purpose as Christians is to grow in our faith, in our commitment, in our service, in our ministry, in our Christ-likeness.
Our purpose is to become more and more pure and blameless, to bear a harvest of righteousness. Notice that? Not just a bit of fruit: no, a harvest, a basketful of righteousness.
And we do that because we have a future focus. We’re to live always with a view to the day of Christ, with a view to the day when Christ will return and take us to join him in the Father’s glory.
Notice too, that the day of Christ is both our focus and our motivation. We strive to grow in Christ-likeness because we know that on that day we’ll see him face to face. We strive because we want to be fit to meet him when that great day finally comes. And we do it, as he says at the end of his prayer, so that on that day God will be praised and glorified.
The purpose of Paul’s prayer is to see Christians grow, to learn how to make the best choices, but first and foremost it’s to see God glorified. Let me suggest that if you make that your first priority it’ll simplify the task of making the best choices.
For more sermons from this source go to http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sttheos
