FRIDAY 8th
2 Thessalonians 1:11-12
NIV (vv11-12) – ‘With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. We pray this 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.’
ESV (vv11-12) – ‘To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfil 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.’
We have already discovered what kind of example Paul and those co working with him were in their care for the believers, they prayed for them constantly, may any of us who have oversight of the family of God be faithful in our covering of them in prayer, but then also those who are under the oversight to pray for those in leadership – I know how much I value the fact that there are those who are praying for me.
In the prayer that Paul has referred to here, he has asked that God would make the believers ‘worthy of his calling’, and that ‘by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith’.
What a prayer of concern and love for the Church, a good and godly prayer that we could use for each other in Emmanuel Pentecostal Church, that God will make each one of us worthy of his calling and that his power will be made available to us to bring to fulfilment every desire we have for good things in his service and every deed we do that is prompted by the faith that we have in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a prayer that is asking for God to bring success, and I am sure that we want that in God, that we as a church will be successful in all that we do for him in and through his name.
Already in this chapter Paul has used the word ‘worthy’ twice. In verse 5 ‘that you may be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God’ and here in verse 11 ‘that our God may make you worthy of his calling’. We of ourselves would never be worthy, but because of what Christ has done on our behalf, in coming to believe by faith we are made worthy, but we need to ensure that by the way we live and obey his commandments that we remain worthy. May God by his grace who made us worthy, keep us worthy!
Unworthy am I of the grace that he gave,
Unworthy to hold to his hand;
Amazed that a King would reach down to a slave,
This love I cannot understand.
Unworthy, unworthy, a beggar;
In bondage and alone;
But he made me worthy and now by his grace,
His mercy has made me his own.