THE BEAUTY FOUND IN PETITION

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May He strengthen your hearts 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.

1 Thessalonians 3:11-13

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

No one is more accessible in your life than God.

It’s a truth that has existed before Adam and Eve were created.

Think about this a minute.

At any time, no matter early or late, day or night, God is ready, willing, and able to hear you when you need Him. He’s never absent and this means we never are in a place or at a time when we can’t appeal to our Lord, whether it’s for our own needs or for the needs of others.

This is the beauty found in the kind of petition that always renders results because God will respond to our petitions in one of three ways. He will either grant our petition, deny it, or wait to grant or deny, if necessary. Ultimately, He knows what is best for us and herein is just one more beautiful thing found in petitioning God. We can always trust the outcome of those petitions.

The Apostle Paul knew very well about the Lord and His handling of requests when brought. As he went on his missionary journeys, he moved at the will of God, going where He wanted him to go and avoiding places He prohibited. This didn’t mean that the Lord led Paul away from trouble but He put Him in places He wanted Him in to carry out His purposes and showed He was with Him in every circumstance.

In other words, Paul knew he could trust God’s response to his petitions when he presented them.

Did I mention there is beauty found in petitions when we bring them to our Lord?

Pivoting to our scripture passage today drawn from the closing verses of 1 Thessalonians, chapter 3, we find Paul raising up three specific petitions to God. Let’s look at each of them:

1. Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to come to you. v.11

A common theme in this letter has been Paul’s longing to go back to Thessalonica. Despite Satan’s attempts to hinder that from happening (2:18), Paul still was optimistic it could happen in the future and continued to petition God with the hope He might “clear the way”.

2. May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. v.12

The first petition was the only one of these three where Paul is petitioning for himself and the other missionaries. For here, we find the Apostle shifting his attention to his brothers and sisters in Christ in Thessalonica.

At the core of this second request is the matter of love. Paul would write to the Corinthians in his first letter to them that “love never fails” (13:8) and that love was the greatest when found in the company of faith and hope (13:13). He knew that when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, He actually gave two and both were centered on love (Matthew 29:37-39).

This was the love that Paul wished for the Thessalonian believers. He wanted their love to be fully focused on God and then for His love to flow back into the way they related to one another and others. It would be a love like Paul and the others had for their brothers and sisters, a love that would increase to overflow.  

3. May He strengthen your hearts 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. v.13

Finally, Paul asks for the Lord to help the Thessalonian Christians become more holy and blameless in the way they lived. We know the church in Thessalonica was new and fledgling which meant they were vulnerable to the attacks of Satan who would like to do nothing more that destroy anything the Lord intended for good.

And so Paul implores God to strengthen the hearts of the believers in Thessalonica to stand firm in their faith, ever growing to be more and more like Jesus until that day when He returns.

Three wonderful petitions lifted up to a God that Paul knew would act on them.

As I close, we can repeat these petitions today as we go forth and minister to others for the cause of Christ and the Gospel.

First, we can ask God to make the way for us to those who need to hear the good news of salvation through Jesus.

Second, we can ask God to make His love increase to overflow in our hearts and in the hearts of others, either in general or targeted toward someone we may have in mind.

Finally, we can ask God to strengthen our heart and the hearts of all Christian believers so that they might become holy as He is holy and found blameless when our Savior Jesus comes again.

Thanks be to our Lord that He is ever present, ever willing, and ever able to hear us when we call, always responding in ways that are perfectly good and right. This friends is the beauty found in petition.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to Gods4all@aol.com