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2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am I want to tell you about three great men from this church’s recent past. They were all serving as leaders when I arrived here only a little less than nine years ago, but they are all dead now. Most of us here will not remember them. Oldest among them was Gerald Henagulph. Gerald became the lay leader of the church in the 1940s when there was only a handful of people remaining and it was about to close. Under God Gerald rescued the church and lead it for more than 30 years. Then there was Harold Poyser. Harold was an ordinary man. He worked a large part of his life at the Cowley works, and then latterly as a college servant in the kitchens. Everyone who came to the church would remember Harold’s beefy handshake and warm open smile. Finally I want to mention Roy Enoch. Roy was a relative newcomer, having come to Magdalen Road only a few years before me. But Roy made a great mark as a leader. He combined great gentleness and love with shrewd wisdom, and became a father figure to many people of my generation. Why do I mention them? I mention them because they were all great men of prayer. Brian has some of Gerald’s early diaries from the 1940s – they resonate with prayerful confidence in God’s ability to rebuild that little church – and he did! Harold Poyser was in the habit of praying through the whole Magdalen Road prayer list every day. In his latter days when he needed less sleep, he took delight in rising in the small hours and praying until morning. And Roy was one of those utterly regular disciplined people. Every morning he read his Bible, and he prayed without fail. Today they are all in glory. They have passed the baton to us. And I wonder. Are we as strong as we once were in prayer? There is no doubt that we are stronger in some aspects of our church life. I think it is fair to say that we are more biblically literate as a church. In many ways we are more engaged with our community – we mirror its multiculturalism, its youth, its educational range. There are certainly more people. But is there a real commitment to prayer? A survey carried out a few years ago in Britain made sobering reading. The average church attender in Britain prays for only 4 minutes a day. Their minister prays for only 7 minutes a day! When we hear a statistic like that there is a tendency to sigh a sigh of relief. “At least 1 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am I’m not that bad” we say to ourselves. But could it be that this is a key reason for the woeful weakness of the church in Britain. Do we want to be like the average church? If our prayer life is weak, why do you think it is? Don Carson in his book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” - which we are encouraging you all to buy and read – says that one reason is simply that we don’t plan to pray. Is there a fixed point in your routine which is set aside for Bible reading and prayer? If our plan is just to fit it in when we have a moment you can be sure we won’t find that moment. Distraction is by far the biggest reported hindrance to prayer. I combat that with a prayer list – of people I pray for daily, weekly and monthly. I have developed the habit of jotting down some key thoughts from the Bible passage I am reading and turning that into prayer. Some people read hymns and pray through them. I was recently given Martin Luther’s sixteenth century book “A Simple Way to Pray”. It gives great advice on how to use the Lord’s prayer and the Ten Commandments in prayer. We can learn to focus in our work – there is no reason why we should not learn to focus in prayer. I think another reason why we don’t pray is that we are activists. We have learned that “God helps those who help themselves”. Occasionally I will set aside a few hours in a day to pray and meditate. I have to wrestle with a sense of guilt that I am “not doing anything”. When did the Bible ever describe prayer as “not doing anything”? For a pastor in particular it is one of my two great tasks – “the ministry of the word and prayer”. All our activity will go astray if it is not covered by prayer – beware of prayerless activism. This morning, though, I want to pick out a couple of things from 2 Thessalonians 1 which may offer a little more diagnosis, and potential cure for prayerlessness. I want to suggest that prayer is driven by confidence and hunger. First of all then I want to suggest that prayer is driven by confidence in God Confidence in God: a foundation for prayer That is the burden of verses 3-10. Paul is confident, first of all that God is acting now 2 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am That God is acting now – vv3-4 Vv3-4 He feels an obligation to thank God because he sees their faith growing “more and more”. He sees their love for one another increasing. He sees them persevering and enduring under considerable difficulty. Let’s be frank. Those are the last things that stir many of us to prayer. We may pray when those we love are sick. We may pray when our job is threatened. We may pray for an easier life. But rejoicing with God when faith grows, and love increases, and Christians endure in difficult circumstances – do those things make us rush to pray? Often we just don’t care about the things that God really cares about. But more deep seated is a lack of confidence that God is working in that way today. We focus on the failures in our faith and others. On the signs of lovelessness. On the precariousness of people perseverance rather than the fact that they have kept going. I often talk to people, even amongst us, who just don’t believe God is working. They see only struggle and failure. Let me say I would love to see him working more powerfully. I would love to see our faith be stronger than it is. I weep when I see or hear of lovelessness amongst us or in my own heart. And I do see people give up. But don’t close your eyes to the real work of God that there is amongst us, and amongst evangelical churches in this country. It is frankly a miracle that the best part of a hundred people gather here regularly, to sing and pray and learn from the Bible and enjoy being together. It is a miracle that two wages get paid by us. It is a miracle that people with nothing in common except Christ are learning to love one another. Make no mistake about it, the outside world sees that miracle. Over the last few years I have met a few hostile observers of this church. They are convinced that I possess some dangerous charismatic power that enthrals you. They have a higher view of my gifts than any of us in this room I think – because they have no other explanation for what is going on here. We know it is the work of God. And notice too the increasingly shrill way in which evangelicals nationally are labelled as 3 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am “dangerous fundamentalists” or even “the Christian Taliban”, when in fact we are only following what have been mainstream Christian beliefs for the last two thousand years. The strength of evangelicalism gives the lie to the secularists confident assertions that Christianity is a dying faith. And they are worried. Make no mistake about it, God is working, and Christians who see it, as Paul puts it “aught always to thank God”. And that confidence that God is acting now give us confidence that he will act in the future. That God will act in the future – 5-10 Vv5-7a We can’t look at verses 5-10 in any detail. Suffice it to say that the promises God give us about our eternal destiny, about our future glory, and satisfaction and delight in eternity are not vain. But nor are the warnings that those who reject God will in turn be eternally rejected. The choices we make now all too rapidly become eternally hardened. The reality of God’s future action must be a powerful stimulus to prayer. V11a Or perhaps we just don’t realise the great drama that is being played out in the lives of every single person that we know. If life was only about food and drink and clothes and homes and sex, then we might pray a little when we were worried about one or other of them. But if life is about judgment or vindication by God then we must pray earnestly. Confidence that God is at work now and forever is a vital foundation of prayer. But there is something else that drives Paul’s prayer life too. It is hunger. Hunger: a stimulus to prayer Hunger for Christ-likeness. Hunger for Christ-likeness V11a 4 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am Back in verse 5 Paul has already expressed confidence that they will be “counted worthy of the kingdom of God”. But now he prays constantly for it too. There is no contradiction. God wants us to be caught up in his great work. He wants us to yearn for what he yearns for. He wants us to be hungry for what he is hungry for. His great project in the lives of Christians is to conform us to the likeness of Christ. He chose us for heaven, but now he is preparing us for heaven. We will never be “worthy of his calling” in an absolute way – we will always need God’s abundant forgiveness if we are to be saved. But we can, indeed we must be changed so that, in a more limited way, we are worthy to be called followers of Christ. Are you hungry for that in yourself and in others. Do the failures of other people in this church leave you resentful, or condemning, or proud? Or do they drive you to your knees to plead with God on their behalf – that he would overcome their lovelessness, that he would give them a deeper faith, that he fill their hearts with a passionate love for Jesus which drives out sin. What if we resolved never to make any negative comment about another member of the church unless we prayed for them, for their maturity, for their happiness in Christ – for a week! Paul was hungry for success too. Hunger for success V11 There is a qualification in what Paul prays. He prays only that their good purposes, or probably better “desires” would be fulfilled. He prays only that their acts prompted by faith would be fulfilled. Not every desire or every act or Christians is empowered by God. We are sinners. Sometimes our desires are warped. Sometimes are acts are prompted by more base driving forces than faith. Paul is clear that he prays that God would apply a filter to our desires and actions. But he is also clear that he prays ambitiously for the fulfilment of their desires, and empowerment of their actions. He prays for God to fulfil “every good purpose and every act 5 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am prompted by faith.” God encourages us to be ambitious for his glory. There is a glorious freedom about the way that God treats us. He showed it first to Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 2 records how Adam and Eve were placed in a region in which there was gold in the hills, and aromatic resin, and onyx, and all kinds of trees whose fruit they could enjoy. A thousand and one good things to find and enjoy. So here Paul prays that every good thing that comes into our heads – would become reality. That every act of faith would be richly fruitful. Paul was hungry for good fruit from the lives of Christians – he was hungry for their success. He prayed that our desire to do a job at work would be fulfilled. He prayed that our desire to love our family better would be fulfilled. He prayed that our desire to speak to a friend about Christ would be fulfilled. He prayed that our decision not to upgrade the car but to use the money for something better would enrich us. He prayed that our decision to go and spend a bit of time with that lonely person would be richly rewarded. He prayed that our decision not shout for our rights at work but simply to work diligently as for Christ, would pay dividends. He prayed that our commitment to pray regularly for that person would be honoured by God. And what would be he be praying for us as a church? Is it a good desire to want to own the Bingo Hall? Is it an act prompted by faith to explore buying it? There are certainly unambiguously good desires associated with it. It is a good desire to long to see people reached for Christ. It is a good desire to long to be better equipped to serve our community. And there are so many other good desires – as numerous as the fruit trees in the garden of Eden. Lets pray for them all – God will filter out those he is not happy about but he loves to fulfil every good purpose, every act prompted by faith. Are we hungry to success as we serve Christ? And he is hungry for glory. Hunger for glory V12 believers. God’s ultimate purpose is to be First that Christ would be glorified in these 6 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12 – MREFC – 17th April 2005, am glorified. Not because he is a despot, but because his glory is the great, completing, all satisfying purpose of his whole creation. “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another He says. But as Christ is glorified in us, so we are glorified in being associated with him – we “glorified in him”. Paul is quite unabashed that he is hungry for glory – but not as the old divines used to call it “vainglory”. The exaltation of ourselves is the tawdry glory of the emperor who actually has no clothes. Paul was hungry for the glory that comes from magnifying the glory of Christ. Perhaps we don’t pray much because we are just not very hungry for the greatest things in life. There is a story in St Ebbes’ Church from years ago about some old ladies who used to sit at the back of the rather sparsely populated morning service. When urged to move forward they replied that they were praying that the pews in front of them would be filled. How their prayers have been answered! They were hungry not for vainglory, but for the reflected glory of glorifying Christ. 7