Pray

We are making our way through Paul’s first letter to the Jesus followers in Thessalonica. Today, Paul offers a prayer guide.


2 Thessalonians 3
1 Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we ask you to pray for us. Pray that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly and be honored wherever it goes, just as when it came to you. 2 Pray, too, that we will be rescued from wicked and evil people, for not everyone is a believer. 3 But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. 4 And we are confident in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we commanded you. 5 May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.


Pray. In this passage, Paul offers a perfect guide for how we should pray for each other. In the first half, Paul provides a great example of how your friends can pray for you (or even how we can pray for ourselves) ... ask them to pray that God would use you to share his message and that God would open the hearts of the people in your circle of influence so that they would receive his message and that God would protect you from any evil that might get in the way of his message being spread. In the second half, Paul provides a great example of how you can pray for your friends ... pray that God enables them to reach such a deep understanding of his love and Jesus’ patient endurance that both will naturally flow out of their hearts and spill out into their lives. Here’s the most important point ... these great examples will never do us any good unless we actually use them. So, take a minute right now ... and pray.