Let's read the scriptures, please. In 1 Thessalonians, just before we sing another hymn, we'll read from 1 Thessalonians, and I want to look tonight specifically at the verses two and three, but because it is a short chapter, we'll read the 10 verses together. So 1 Thessalonians chapter one, please, beginning at verse one. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus unto the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father, knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance, as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so that ye were examples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. Amen. May God bless his word to our hearts. Let's just take our hymnals again then, please. and turn to that favorite hymn, especially when we come to this meeting, 625, what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. 625, we'll stand again, please, to sing together. Let's stand. What a friend we have in Jesus All our sins and griefs to bear What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful? ♪ To all our sorrows shed ♪ Jesus knows our every weakness ♪ Take it to the Lord in prayer ♪ I, weak and heavy laden ♪ Comforted with a load of care Take it to the Lord in prayer. In His arms He'll take and shield you. So let's read just the first couple verses, please, of this chapter again. 1 Thessalonians 1, rather I meant to say verses 2 and 3. It's what we'll focus on tonight. Verses two and three read, we give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father. Amen. Let's just bow for a moment, please. Father in heaven, We come to Thee, Lord, to seek the help that is necessary by the power of the Holy Spirit for the right preaching and hearing of the Word of God. Lord, let us not just blindly or thoughtlessly go through this part of the meeting, whether that concerns preacher or any of the hearers. Lord, let us give our attention to the Word of God. Help us to hear well. Help me, O Lord, to preach well, to preach clearly. May the Word of God find a resting place in each of the hearts here. We pray for every child of God that there will be material here to equip us for prayer, to encourage us to pray tonight. Lord, we believe there is, and so we ask that the Holy Spirit would take this and apply it. We pray for all who are in attendance, Lord. There may be some here who are not saved. Speak to them also, O God. Bring them into a relationship with thyself, a position of union with Christ. Give them tonight the privilege of praying truly for the first time. And bless us as we gather, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. In the majority of this first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Paul spends his time recognizing that they truly are Christians. If that sounds very basic to you, remember that many of God's people at times will struggle with the matter of assurance. Remember also that these were people who had been saved out of a very pagan culture. The people around them were hostile. They were, in many ways, opposed. Paul writes, therefore, to encourage them, testifying that he saw in his ministry the gospel truly applied to their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Testifying, as he does at the end of the chapter, that he witnessed their true repentance from idols, verse 9, to God to serve the living and true God. He also testifies in the middle of this portion to the fact that the true work of grace in the hearts of these men and women was made evident by their own testimony that had traveled through two very significant areas named Macedonia and Achaia, verse 7 and verse 8. These were provinces of ancient Greece. They were larger than our country each. And so the people who had been saved and had begun to follow the Lord had walked with God and had a public reputation as those who had exhibited repentance and faith and therefore were genuine believers. And this first chapter has many commendations of their spiritual qualities and their actions of this very, very young New Testament church, only a few years on the road. And you and I would do well to emulate their example. And in one sense we are, because we gather tonight for prayer. And yet recognizing that, that the focus of these words are on the Thessalonians, it is not to them primarily that I want to direct your attention, but rather I want you to consider tonight verses two and three, which tell us about the prayer of Paul and Silvanus, which is Silas and Timothy. We're gonna be focusing on these verses and considering the example of Paul at prayer. The activity for which we gather tonight is a very holy and sacred one. It is the most sacred activity we could be engaged in. And we learn much from listening to the prayers of God's people. Each of us has our own personality, our own background, and knowledge. And we pray, all of us, in different ways in the terms of the little details. There are certain things. that are and should be the same in terms of our approach to God and our confidence in approaching Him in prayer, but we all have distinct manners of praying. Every single one of us, however, would love to hear the Apostle Paul at prayer, if that were possible. And while we'll never hear him audibly, in a sense, we have recorded here in these two verses some of the features of his prayer and the record of how he, Silas and Timothy, prayed for the Thessalonian believers. And there are things that we can learn tonight concerning the features of Paul's prayer. Before we get into that, let me point out two things by way of introduction. Look at verse two and notice this phrase. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers. The first thing, very brief, pointing out that these are the prayers of three men, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, our prayers. And what does that tell us about these men and about the importance of regular prayer? Together, not just as an individual. praying together. It tells us that these men who were missionaries and pioneers, as they traveled from place to place, leaving behind established works and then going somewhere new, where there often was no congregation of Christians, where they often began by going into the synagogues and then into public places, witnessing to Jews and Greeks, and then often usually coming up against opposition, we learn here that they were in the regular habit of prayer, no matter where they went. They write the letter to the Thessalonians from some other place. People think it was Corinth. The lesson for us is that these men, no matter where they went, whether there was a Christian congregation there or not, continued in the habit of prayer, always together. The second thing I want to point out to you is Paul's wisdom as he speaks to Christians and is about to speak well of them. He frames it in the right way because in verse 2 he begins by saying, He doesn't say, you have done so well. You're to be highly congratulated. No, he puts the glory where it should be, and he says, we give thanks to God for you. And that's the attitude that we should have not only to other Christians, but first and foremost to ourselves. We're all apt to be proud. We're all apt to forget that all that we have and all that we are is of grace, and the credit is not ours. So let's look then at the four features of Paul's prayer. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father. First feature, his prayer was comprehensive. We give thanks to God always for you all. We're often forgetful. In fact, I can hardly admit that without smiling, because I do struggle with being forgetful. And you would be perhaps appalled to learn that a man in his 30s can do what older people do and walk from one room in my house to another and upon arrival be distracted and then forget why I went there in the first place. But I do. We're often forgetful, and it's significant that Paul, under inspiration, says he was praying for you all. This is the word of God. Take that word literally. He writes to a whole church, and he says, we give thanks to God always for you all. And that means that he was praying for all the believers. He was praying comprehensively for the entire church. This is not a common translation in the Authorized Version. It's only found three times in Scripture that the Greek words behind our English are translated in this way. And so the Holy Spirit means that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were praying for all the believers in this church. They were thankful for everyone. The lesson here is that there was no exclusion of anyone from their prayer lives for any reason. No one was excluded from their prayers on the ground of their ethnic backgrounds. No one was excluded from their prayers based on their cultural practices, who they were, what their name was, where they came from, whether they talk, do, and sound different to Paul, Silas, and Timothy. No one was excluded, even on the basis of their frustrating personality traits. They prayed for everyone. And those variations that I've mentioned, and many more, are present in every congregation, every Christian congregation, because the Church of Jesus Christ is taken from every tribe, nation, kindred, and people. We will, even if we're all from Port Glenone, we will be surrounded by people who are different to us, and sometimes there's friction. But the simple lesson is that the feature of the apostle's prayer was that he prayed comprehensively, and no one was left out. We know that we are inclined to be partial. We're all inclined to have favorites, and to a degree, it is inevitable that we will click better with some people than with others, but that's not to control our prayer lives such that we would not pray for some of our brethren and sisters. We would need to ask the Lord then for those who have made it a little more difficult for us than others, we asked him for grace to pray for them. And in fact, the best way to think of that person in your minds would be to pray for them more than others. Are we to suppose that there was no one in Thessalonica who was difficult, who gave Paul, Silas, and Timothy a hard time? I don't think so. So their prayers were comprehensive. We give thanks to God always for you all. It means what it says, and it's significant. Secondly, their prayers were constant. In the word always, we find the same word that is used of Jesus Christ in Hebrews 7, verse 25, which says that he ever liveth to make intercession for us. The word ever, same as the word in our text, always. And though Paul is not Christ, and Paul and you and I are not capable of prayer that is unceasing, not even for a moment, We're not capable of that, neither was Paul. Yet he did follow the example of the risen Lord because he was engaged in prayer that was constant. We give thanks to God always. This is the scripture. So you take it literally, we take it at face value that Paul was the man who was in the habit of constant prayer. We give thanks to God always for you all. And then also you see the same fact, the constancy of his prayer shown in the beginning of verse three, remembering without ceasing. So Paul is no hypocrite. Paul is no hypocrite. As a apostle, as a leader in the New Testament church, as a man with authority, he testifies honestly under inspiration that his own prayer life was without ceasing. The word means uninterrupted. And he would admit this himself before, at the end of this epistle, in the very, very well-known verse, 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, he would then tell those people, pray without ceasing. He would do it first before he would tell others to pray. A note for leaders, a note for church oversight, for those who have positions of authority. We can never complain about other people praying. if we do not do that ourselves. If the example is not set, then the sheep will not follow. Paul knew the importance of continuing steadfast in prayer, and you and I should continue in prayer constantly as we are able in order to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. You only find what you look for. And we will only obtain the grace that we need every day if we are in prayer every day. So his prayer was comprehensive and it was constant. Thirdly, you'll see that his prayer was conscious. Conscious prayer. It says, we give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is true that we think about the things that we love. And I saw a quote today, and I didn't write it down. So this is not exact, but it was, what the heart loves most, the mind will consider most. In verse four, Paul calls these Thessalonians brethren beloved. He loved them. He loved them. And this affection was proved or demonstrated by the fact that he was conscious of their lives. And the point that I'm getting to here is the effort that Paul made in order to know what needed prayer. The word remembering in verse three is the word that means exercise the memory, recollect, rehearse. Paul made effort to think about the people in Thessalonica in order that he could pray intelligently and specifically for them. We give thanks to God always for you all. Making mention, the word making mention is only used by Paul in the New Testament and it means to rehearse or recite. He didn't just think about the needs of this church once. And then in terms of his prayer, just throw caution to the wind and go into it very carelessly without any forethought, without any notes. There's enough material here to suggest that Paul was in the habit of writing down or in some way being able to jog his memory and recite the needs of the congregation of Thessalonica. And if he did it for them, then we could rightly assume he did it for all the other places where he had ministered. Organization, forethought, were very much part of this apostle's prayer life. And it should be part of ours too. Their prayers were not haphazard. They prayed in a way that was deliberate. They made the effort to know. And so prayer lists, prayer cards, missionary boxes, calendars, very, very biblical. to help us to pray well. Missionaries far from home and believers in other countries and those in need are so encouraged, as I'm sure you know by experience, when you have had difficulty, when you had a particular need, to know that you're being prayed for and the need is being named before the Lord is of immense encouragement to you. So let's do this for others. Now what was Paul conscious of? Here we look a little at the Thessalonians, and we find that Paul remembered before the Lord three graces that they displayed. The first one is the work of faith. It is the work that rises out of true faith, the saving grace by which a person rests on Christ alone for salvation. Let me point out to you, if you are not saved tonight, That though you may have done things that appeared to be good, that though you may have done things that only a Christian would ever be thought to do, if you are not saved, that was not a work of faith. You must have faith in order to perform works of faith. You may do good things. They gain you no credit with God. You must have faith. You can only be justified by faith. I want to challenge you tonight. Don't sit amongst believers all your days and think that you're on your way to heaven because you socially and by your behavior fit in with them. These are works of faith, true saving faith. This was a faith that was like Timothy's unfeigned faith. 2 Timothy 1 verse 5, when William Tyndale translated Galatians 5 and verse 6, which in our Bible reads, faith which worketh by love, he translated it as faith which is mighty in operation. Believer, is faith operating in you? Is it operating in me? Am I doing works that are rising from faith? And then we find that Paul was also conscious of the labor of love. The word labor, it's similar to the word work, but it's more intense. It depicts a labor that is like a toil, a heavy work, an intense work. It's translated in Galatians 6 as trouble. And for those things that we love and for those people whom we love, we will go to great lengths. We will put ourselves to trouble. Parents know about this, especially mothers. I heard a minister giving his testimony recently. He pointed out that mothering never ends. You never stop mothering your children, ladies. In Acts 17 and verse 15, we read of these Thessalonian believers making a long journey from their home to Athens in order to accompany Paul as he journeyed there. That was a labor of love, putting themselves out, sacrificing their time, perhaps their opportunities to gain income, not seeing their families, encountering dangers along the road, who knows? That was a labor of love. Paul reflects on their labors of love. Can you be described as someone who labors for the master that you profess to love? Is there a labor of love in your life? If not, Christian, why not? Christ is worthy. And then Paul is conscious also of the patience of hope, this quality that the Christian has, this stabilizing, settling quality, whereby they hope unto the end. 1 Peter 1, 13. It is the hope of the coming of Jesus Christ. It is also the hope of eternal life. Titus 1, verse 2, that's given to us by God who cannot lie. The patience of hope, this hope that is an anchor of our soul, and it keeps us. Steady. It marks us out as people who are characterized by patience. You know that your unsaved friends and colleagues, maybe you don't know, I'm telling you now, they can see that. They can see it. When we exhibit this quality, they will notice. Opportunities will come your way as you simply walk with God. And as you exhibit these graces, the work of faith, the labor of love, Unsafe people see you going to lengths that they would never dream of. And they don't understand why you spend the time and the energy and the expense for church, as they would put it. It's a witness to them. Be encouraged. These are graces that when anybody watches you, Christian, they will inevitably notice. Paul noticed them about the Thessalonians, these things that he was conscious of. Let's strive to be like them, to have a testimony as they did. Fourthly, we've come to the final aspect of Paul's prayer. We've seen that his prayer was comprehensive. He prayed for all. His prayer was constant, like his Savior. He strived to be like his Savior, and that his prayer was unceasing and uninterrupted. It was conscious. He made effort to think about the people who needed prayer and what needed to be prayed for, and indeed what God should be given thanks for. We sometimes, I don't think we thank God quite enough when he answers the prayers that we have been offering. Let's remember to thank God tonight. Finally, we see that Paul's prayers were candid. His prayers were candid. We refer here to the final part of verse three, which reads, in the sight of God and our Father. And I take this little clause, this little part of the sentence, in the sight of God and our Father, to refer to the prayers, as opposed to referring to the three graces of the Thessalonian church. And in doing so, without going into the details, I am simply taking, you know, I'm giving myself too much credit there. I'm simply telling you the position of the majority of commentators. Most men read this phrase, in the sight of God and our Father, and when they say, well, what is in the sight of God and our Father, most men come down that it is the prayers of Paul, Silas, and Timothy. So that's the way we're going to take it tonight. This underlines to us that these men came before the Lord and they prayed with sincerity. They prayed with great honesty. John Calvin said, all mere pretense must vanish when persons come into the presence of God. When we come to the Lord in prayer, we are coming into his presence by faith. Let's be candid. Let me remind you of something that we've probably all seen happen, perhaps in work, and someone has been asked about a project or about a task that they've been given, and they're asked, how are you getting on with that? Where are you with that? How's it going? And as their colleague, you hear them start to bluff. And they start, yeah, well, not too bad. And you know they haven't even started it. But they give the impression that it's ongoing. You know, that old one. And they bluff, and they bluff. And then the higher up, maybe the director, the owner of the business comes into the room. And the person who's bluffing realizes, I'm not going to pull the wool over that person's eyes. I may as well just come clean. How do they then speak? They speak in a way that is candid. There's no pretense. They speak. Honestly, they speak in a candid way, and I say this because the phrase in the sight of means literally in front of, or in the Old Testament, the thought would have been before the face of. The omnipresent God, nothing is hidden from him, but when we come before him in prayer, we are coming by faith into his very presence, and as Calvin says, all mere pretense must vanish. That has implications for how we pray. And I have always personally been blessed by those believers who enter God's presence in a way that could be described as candid, not showy, certainly not irreverent. I'm not advocating that. Just candidly, frankly, with simple words, biblical prayers, heartfelt prayers. They pray in a straightforward way. They pray in a way that is true. When we then come to the book of Hebrews and read in chapter 10 those passages that encourage us all to prayer, if you want to turn to that, you'll find it Hebrews 10, verse 19. There's a relevant word in that passage as well. Hebrews 10, 19 says, having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Verse 19, having therefore, brethren, boldness. The word boldness there means without ambiguity. It means literally, frankly, with frankness, with plain words and candid speech, we may come before God. Another alternate translation for the word boldness that I found in a dictionary was without circumlocution. That's a big word. Without circumlocution, it means going round and round. And to me, that is helpful advice, at least to me, for prayer. That I have boldness and I have no need to go around and around and try to almost convince myself that I may enter into prayer and approach God. The way is open. We enter by the blood of Jesus and by nothing else. So our prayers, we would do well, and I, as still a novice preacher, I don't want to give the impression I'm criticizing the people of God in their prayer. I just want to present what this means. We may come before God with frankness, with boldness, speaking simply and candidly before him. We don't need to go around and around and around, use many words where few would do. Let's not do that. We can come before the Lord, we can pray, especially in the public place, it's good to pray in a way that is concise. Give time for others, give time for as many as possible. These four features of Paul's prayer, drawn from 1 Thessalonians 1, verses two and three, let's strive to have them mark our prayer lives, and may we then In the will of God, find that he answers our prayers and blesses the work of God here in Portlanone, your family, your friends, as you uphold them before the throne of grace, even this evening. May God bless his word to our hearts. Let me thank you for listening. If our brother is going to bring announcements, I'll just go down now. Thank you. Well, on behalf of the Minister, the Reverend Stewart in session, we warmly welcome all who join with us this evening for a time of prayer and Bible study. And we certainly have been blessed this evening. Our brother, Mr. Stephen Greer, has come at short notice and we certainly have learned some valuable things from our brother's ministry here tonight and I want to thank him for his faithful exposition of the scriptures here tonight. Our Our announcements are as follows. Children's meeting, 7 p.m. The Youth Fellowship, 8 p.m. David Laverty, our broader Mr. David Laverty, our youth leader, will take the meeting there. On Sunday we'll start at 8 a.m. our early morning prayer meeting. Our Sunday school and Bible class at 10.45. and our Sunday services at 12 noon and 7.30, and again preceded by half hours of prayer. And DV, we will have our minister back with us for those services. Just pray for him. As you would know, he would love to be here this evening, but we pray for him that he will be restored to a goodly measure of health and strength. And I would encourage you to pray for some others in the congregation, perhaps remembering Mrs. Edna Kennedy, again, as Edna would love to be out among us and pray for her and for a full return of her eyesight. And you'll know of others who have laid aside at this time and who are ill in the congregation. We want to remember these people. Our brother has said to be clear and to be candid in our praying. And I would urge everyone to give time for others maybe to pray and to have a good time of prayer this evening and to have many to take part. And we encourage that very much this evening. And now we come to just a wee to begin our time of prayer here and to leave things with the Lord before us. Okay, folks. Lord, we come before thee and we acknowledge, Lord, that in our praying so often, Lord, we leave out things, and we say things, and we go around things, and we don't be as candid and clear as we ought to be, and we don't be, Lord, maybe as faithful in our praying as we ought to be, but we thank you, Lord, that thou art the one who can, Lord, give us access to.