Alright, you may be seated. I invite you this evening to turn in your Bibles to 2 Thessalonians. We're going to continue our pattern this evening of starting with the Bible lesson and then moving into the school of prayer. You'll recall that we have been Well, I guess I should say I have been selecting passages to reflect upon in our time together that have to do with prayer. And it's really amazing. Maybe it shouldn't be amazing, but there is a lot in the Bible about prayer. And as I saw this week, there are things in the Bible about prayer that I think we often miss. And so it would be good for us to mine it out. So I'm going to draw your attention this evening to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. And I'm going to read in your hearing verses 1 through 12. Verses 1 through 12. So the entirety of chapter 1. I'm not going to deal with it all in the ministry of the Word this evening, but we're going to read it. And over the next few Sunday Vespers we'll be spending some time on it. So 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring. This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering. since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might. When He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed because our testimony to you was believed, To this end we pray, excuse me, to this end we always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's for the reading of God's Word. What are the slogans of the Protestant Reformation? Let's see if you guys can finish it. Always reforming. Good. Reformed. Always reforming. And this really encapsulated the energy and the direction of the Reformation. The Reformers would banty that slogan around because as much progress as they made in the Reformation, they never wanted to forget how they got there. And the way they got there was by coming to the Word and letting the Word, this is interesting, interpret them. It is true that we interpret the Word of God. We have to interpret the Word of God. It's impossible to understand the Word of God unless you interpret it. But at the same time, if we're approaching the Word of God for what it is, it is also interpreting us. And it is also reforming us. It is also reforming the church. And the reformers never, even though some of their enemies would like to cast aspersion on them and their character, thinking that they were prideful and haughty and arrogant, the fact of the matter is they were quite humble men. John Calvin, you could say whatever you want of him, but if you've ever read his Institutes, It's quite warm and devotional. In fact, there are times when I've been reading the Institutes and I've just had to stop and pray. There's been times when tears have been jerked from my eyes reading the Institutes because Calvin, as much as he was a reformer, he was also a pastor. And he knew that if the Word of God was going to have its way not only in the church, not only in our individual lives, and not only in society, then it would have to be always reforming us. So, in their minds, there would always be reformation that needed to happen, and this is true for a number of reasons. First, while traditions are and can be good and helpful, there is always potential baggage which comes with tradition, even tradition in our church. Over time, people can start thinking, well, since we've always done it this way, this must be the way that the Bible tells us to do it. And the fact of the matter is, is that's not always the case. Sometimes traditions need to be reanalyzed with the light of Scripture. But a second reason why there's always going to be reformation is that the heart and mind always need fresh exhortation from the Word of God to connect the teaching with life. The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And so, when it comes to prayer, we all have need of reformation. I think we can agree with that. Not only in how we pray, but also in our heart attitude toward God in prayer, but also, and specifically, what I want to talk about tonight, We need reformation in that for which we pray. As I was reading over 2 Thessalonians this week, something as old as the first century and yet as fresh as the rising of the sun hit me, our framework for prayer is not always what it should be nor what it could be. So I want you to notice in your Bibles verse 11. Look at verse 11. Paul has written almost the entirety of chapter 1, and then he says in verse 11, "...to this end." Another way he could say that, or another way that could be translated is, with this in mind. With this in mind. Well, what is he talking about? When he says, with this in mind, what does Paul mean? Well, the answer is everything he has said in verses 3-10. The kinds of prayers... let me just finish verse 11 so you know. He says, "...to this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by His power." So to what end, with what in mind does He always pray this way for and over the saints? We see them in verses 3 through 10. And what you will notice is that virtually none of these things in verses 3-10 are prayers for physical or material petitions. I find that incredibly interesting. It's not that physical or material petitions are wrong. We could pray for these things. We ought to pray for these things. As I always say, there's no necessarily illegitimate prayer. He is our Father in heaven and He wants us to pray for all of our needs. But one of the things we're driving at in these Vesper lessons is to try to conform our prayers, not only individually, but as a people to the tenor and the shape and the contours of the prayers of Scripture. So there is a place for physical and material petitions, but the thrust of Paul's prayers were primarily spiritual. And they weren't all petitions for spiritual things, but also thanksgivings for spiritual things. So I'd like to speak very briefly tonight on what should frame our corporate prayers together. And if I could sum up everything that I'm going to say tonight in one phrase, it would be this. What we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value. Let me say that again. What we most frequently give thanks for betrays what we most highly value. And I want to show that to you in just a few steps here tonight. First thing I want you to notice in verse 3 is this. Paul gives thanks for signs of grace. He says in verse 3, We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, And the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Isn't this interesting? Paul is giving thanks for the growth of people's faith. Now just think about that for a second. When is the last time, first off, you ask somebody, hey, are you growing in your faith? and then took the next step and thanked God either in their presence or in your personal prayer closet or in a Vesper service like this publicly for the growth in their faith. Now if you don't want to answer that question because as you think yourself I'm like it's not something that I often do. Why is that? Why is it that we are reluctant to ask about people's spiritual condition? Let's get interactive. Somebody give me an answer. Why? It can be awkward, right? Why would it be awkward? It might not be good. It might not be good, okay. It might not be good. Oh, good. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right, Phil? Okay, that's fair. Alright, anything else? Yeah? Say that again. Okay, okay. So being transparent with people means being vulnerable with people. And if, as some of you have already said, we may not want to share the answer with people that is true and honest, what do we need to remember in context like that? In the context of the church, yes. Yeah. Okay, that's a great question. There are a million different ways you can answer that question. I'll give you one example from personal experience, maybe you could resonate with it. So when I was in college, I was in a relationship with a girlfriend who I thought I was going to marry. And I, at that time, thought that I loved her. And I was planning the rest of my life with her. And I was ecstatic. I was on cloud nine. And I would tell God in my prayers, like, this is it. This is my wife. We're going to have 14 kids and a big house and all this kind of thing. And long story short, her parents weren't too hot on me. And they ended up pretty much forcing her hand to break up with me. And I was devastated. And through that experience, I was forced to, number one, come back to my faith in the sovereignty of God, that God was in control even of this, and in fact, God determined this before the foundation of the world. And I put that together with Romans 8.28, God who causes all things to work together for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. And then I was forced to press into God and find my delight in Him rather than in the prospect of a marriage, okay? Now, that's not an easy thing to do. And we could probably tell countless stories of people who have had a similar situation who got bitter at God, right? They didn't trust God. They think God messed up. So when an experience like that could cause you to press into God further, trust in His sovereignty more, listen, delight in His sovereignty, that is one example of growth in faith. Another example would be dealing with anxiety. People in our congregation, we deal with anxiety. A lot of Christians deal with anxiety. But I have seen cases of people, including myself, who deal with anxiety on a daily basis, but have started to learn or are growing in their ability to actually grab onto promises in Scripture, preach them to themselves, and ease their anxiety in such a way that they're magnifying God's glory and putting their faith into practice. Does that make sense? Okay, alright. Those are examples where faith grows. So, we're not talking about the simplistic, I believe in Jesus, I have fire insurance, I'm going to heaven. Faith is all-inclusive. Faith is holistic. Faith has to do with your business, your work, your marriage, your kids, your school. Faith is integrated into every part of your life. And we can have weak faith and we can have strong faith. We can have something in between. So that's a good question. That's a good example of how faith grows. So thanksgiving is a fundamental component of the mental framework that largely controls Paul's intercession. He thanks God that his reader's faith is growing. So what do we commonly give thanks to God for? We thank God for our food at meals. We thank God when we receive material blessings, when the mortgage we've applied for comes through. When we first turn on the ignition in a car we've just purchased and it turns over. We may sigh a prayer of sweaty thanks after a near miss on the highway. We may give thanks when we hear that someone we know has been recently converted. But by and large our thanksgivings seem to be tied rather tightly to our material well-being and comfort. D. A. Carson says this, he says, It is because we value material prosperity proportionally, or I might add, it can be the case. So that is why when we read that Paul gave thanks for people's faith growing, it startles us, or it may even surprise us a bit. Or we may read over that and just kind of gloss over it and not even think twice about it. But he thanks God that the faith of a people at Thessalonica is growing. Since he mentions their faith growing, he's not talking about, as I've already mentioned, their initial conversion. Notice that their faith is growing. Paul praises and thanks God that they are not satisfied by yesterday's attainments, but stretching forward in spiritual maturity. That's a big deal. It's a big deal for people to grow in their faith. And I would just come back to the example I use. I want you to think of examples in your life of paradigm-shifting moments when maybe a theological truth dropped like the other shoe, or something like sovereignty, or something like God's goodness, or something like actually being able to delight in the Lord and trust in the Lord. These are all features of your faith growing. But then he also says in the latter half of verse 3, he thanks God that their love is increasing. Their love for one another is growing. And why is that so important? Because Jesus said that a distinguishing mark of His disciples is that they would love one another. He says in John 13, 34 and 35, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are to my disciples if you have love for one another." So it's worth probing this thought just a little further for a moment. You know, a close-knit society with shared ideals and goals frequently finds it relatively easy to foster love and tolerance and inner cohesion. We can even see this kind of common grace love a rock climbing group, or homeschool co-ops, or sport teams, or whatever. A certain amount of fraternal depth is common enough, even in political parties. They have enough common grace, you might call it love for one another, or at least for the ideals of the party, that they can manage to keep it together when division threatens their ranks. But the church is to be different. The church is made up of people who are varied as can be. I mean, think about it. Even in our small congregation. Rich, poor, learned, unlearned, practical, impractical, sophisticated, unsophisticated, disciplined, flighty, intense, carefree, introvert, extrovert. and everything in between. The only thing that holds such people together is their shared allegiance to Jesus Christ, their devotion to Him stemming from His indescribable love for Him. So I would submit to you that if love for one another in Christ is the overarching theme of unity within a body of Christ, then no political, no racial, no economic or ideological strife will be able to rip them apart. If there is love, there will be ears to listen. If there is love, there will be patience to wait. If there is love, there will be words of love to build up and edify. Where there is love, I firmly believe that virtually every issue can be worked through. That doesn't mean that it's easy, but it does mean that it's possible. But now I want you to notice in verse 4, Paul thanks God that they are persevering under trial. Now this is no small thing. To persevere under trial is nothing more than putting into practice our faith. Coming back to Phil's question, can we go through a trial badly? Adverb. Can we? Yeah, we can waste our trials, right? I would submit to you, Phil, that's a bad example of, well, I would say that's an example of perhaps a weak faith, a faith that is not mature, a faith that is not maturing. And I'm not talking about the circumstances, I'm talking about how we react to it. On the other hand, we cannot waste our trial and we can use it for the glory of God. So whatever that means, whether that's cancer, whether that's loss of a loved one, we say like Job, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, may the name of the Lord be praised. We read those words and we sing that in songs, but you know what? That's actually incredibly difficult to do in the midst of an actual trial. And that's why Paul here thanks God that they are persevering under trial. What else is at stake when somebody's going through a trial? Not only their faith, but what? Witness of what? Of God, of the church. I mean, there's a lot riding on people getting through a trial. So it's not just our individual faith, but it's also the testimony of Christ in the church. We may take these things for granted, but history tells us that we cannot. Out of charity, we assume that every professing believer in our midst is a real, regenerate believer, but we do that out of charity. But some are not. There are imposters. And furthermore, even among those who are truly regenerate, there is a spectrum of maturity. Some may be true believers, but still have not learned to bear up under trials through faith. They haven't learned that this is the age of suffering. They think that this is the age of glory. They haven't learned to use the gospel for the center of satisfaction and pleasure in this life. So when trial comes, you know what they do? They buckle. So what is the benefit of publicly giving thanks for believers by name who have and are persevering under trial? Number one, it fortifies them to continue to bear up under affliction. God gets the glory for their perseverance. They can see and hear the grace of God in their life as it is echoed in corporate prayers and thanksgivings which are lifted up to God on their behalf. Secondly, It inspires other believers to emulate the same perseverance in their own lives. In other words, it's contagious. My brother or sister is persevering in her trial. I have the same Spirit of God dwelling within me. I could do the same for the glory of God in my trial. I was at McKinsey's graduation on, when was that, was that Friday? Okay, sorry. And they do a really cool thing. It's, what's the name of the school? Keys, thank you. Kingdom Education for Young Scholars. And I've been to two of their graduations, and what they do is they have the parents come on stage, and they get 90 seconds, and they get to give their graduate a charge. It's very special. It's very, very heartwarming. And there was a parent that came up to charge his daughter, and I think he had his other son and his other daughter up there, but no mom. And he started out by basically saying, if mom were here, she would take the mic and she would charge you right away, she'd push me out of the way. And he began to basically talk about how they had lost their mother, I think it was about a year prior. I hear this young girl is 18, 19 years old, lost her mother at 17, which is crazy. But if you could have heard what he was saying, this man was singing the glory of God through Romans 8.28, he was talking about how all things happen for a reason, and it wasn't superficial. This man, you could tell, there were tears in his eyes and tears in the daughter's eyes, you could tell that this man had made Romans 8.28 personal. You could tell that this man had honed out on his knees before God with tears coming down his eyes the promises that God had given him. He was clinging to them with white knuckles because he had nothing else. He was clinging to them with white knuckles in the midst of his grief and pain in his heart from losing his wife and the mother of his children. I don't think that there was a dry eye in that whole place. It was impressive. That man was going through a trial well. And you know what? It inspired me. And that's what it does. When we see people going through trials, we think about our own trials, and we're like, I want to glorify God just like that. I want God to use me as a vessel, to use me as a tool, to use me as an instrument, that if He ever is to bring in my life something as catastrophic as that, I could say like Job, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised. I don't want to waste my trial. So there's a place for us giving thanks to God for one another as we persevere under trials. And do you notice how these petitions and thanksgivings are focused on heavenly and spiritual things? And is that not what Paul tells us elsewhere in Colossians 3.1? If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. So what does all this have to do with the framework of our praying? Let me just give you a few thoughts. Number one, if in our prayers we are to develop a mental framework analogous to Paul's, we must look for signs of grace in the lives of Christians and give thanks to God for them. It's not simply that Paul gives thanks for whatever measure of maturity some group of Christians have achieved before he goes on to ask for more maturity. Rather, the specific elements in his thanksgiving show the framework of values he brings to his intercession, and we urgently need to develop the same framework. If we're to thank God for signs of grace in others and for spiritual maturity and for believers' perseverance under trial, what are we going to have to do? We're going to have to ask them. You know what that means? I've got a sermon brewing in my head, and I think the title is going to be Membership, a bump on a log or actually doing something. I think that's the title of my sermon. Because I think what we forget sometimes and what the elders here try to remind you of is your role as members is actually an office. And one of the things that we do in our office as members is when we come to church in the morning and in the evening and we attend home groups, we're not just there to eat the food and hear the benediction. We're there to inquire into the lives of one another so that we can do exactly what Paul is telling us to do here and modeling for us here. Thank God that our faith is growing. Thank God that our love is growing. And thank God that we're persevering under trial in the lives of believers by name. You're welcome. That's what he's modeling for us here. And I was reading this, I'm saying not that we as a church don't ever do that, but I think that we could grow in that. I think that we could so inquire into the lives of others that when we go into prayer here in just a moment, you're like, I've got a prayer request. I was flabbergasted and blown away by such and such faith this week as they persevered under a trial. And number one, I want to give glory to God for it and thank him for it and encourage our brother for it. But I just want to give thanks to God for that. We don't hear prayers like that a lot. So we need to inquire into one another's lives in order to know what's going on so that we can pray for them. So we ask questions like this. You go up to somebody and let me get practical. You're saying, how has the fresh grace of God today manifested itself in your life this week? That's a practical question. Here's another one. In what trial do you find yourself? How are you doing bearing up under that trial? What has Satan and his hordes thrown at you this week? What temptation? What despair? What trial? How have you responded? How can I thank God for the signs of grace in your life and pray that God would give you fresh grace to put into practice that which you already know? Do you see to the degree that these questions are odd or strange or invasive to us? we will not be able to pray as Paul prays here. Instead, it will be legitimate prayers for material prosperity without really getting into the nub of the issue. So, we are reformed, but my question for us this evening is, are we constantly reforming? The Lord has put a challenge before us tonight in this text. How shall we respond? May the Lord give us grace to be zealous and eager to see the life of Christ being amplified in each and every one of our lives. May we even tonight be zealous to see the effects of the gospel promise shine through this church like a prism manifesting all the manifold colors of grace. May we be reminded that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ came not simply to give us fire insurance to get out of hell, but to radically transform us into the likeness and image of Jesus Christ. So what signs of grace is the Lord manifesting in our lives tonight? What signs of grace is He manifesting in the life of your brother? Let's share these stories of victory tonight and give thanks to the Lord for them.