Zachary Peters

Philippians 1:18–20

Good morning once again. As always, it’s a supreme blessing to be here. I love you guys, and I love doing this. And before I get into it, happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there — this isn’t a Mother’s Day sermon, but I do want to say thank you to every single mom, including mine and including my wife. Thank you so much.

We’ve been working our way through Philippians — this letter Paul writes from prison to the church in Philippi. I’m not going to rehash everything we’ve talked about; hopefully we’ve been paying attention. Last week in particular, we talked about rejoicing in the prosperity of the gospel despite circumstances, whether good or bad. In fact, the prosperity of the gospel is not only in a life lived for the gospel, but in a death for the gospel.

This is an attitude we have to adopt in our lives. In fact, it should become a natural outpouring of what we believe about Jesus and the gospel. For Paul, that attitude gives him the confidence to face any situation, and to still rejoice and to know that God is in control.

At the beginning of this set of scriptures in Philippians 1:18–26, two verses stand out that I think deserved more time than we could give last week.

Philippians 1:18–20

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance [Salvation], as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (ESV)

The joyful, undefeated attitude Paul shows is not natural. You don’t reach this attitude on your own. You don’t reach this maturity on your own. You’re not born with the strength to be who Jesus has called you to be on your own.

Paul was not born as this person ready to step into this role. It all started with salvation and grace, of course, but here Paul specifically is pointing to the Philippian church’s prayers and the help of the Holy Spirit.

It is through prayer and the Holy Spirit that Paul has the confidence that he will make it through with courage and joy. His deliverance/salvation is tied to the prayers of others and the moving or supply of the Holy Spirit.

And that’s what we’re talking about today and next week, because we need help. We’re not doing this thing on our own. As we continue this journey of being in a relationship with God, there will be times — as we see in Paul’s life — when we need some help. We need the prayers of the people around us. And we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

Today, we’re going to talk about being a praying people and believing in prayer.

Let’s start by thinking about prayer. Paul is consistent in asking the churches for prayer. He asks for prayers for safety (Rom 15; 2 Corinthians 1; and Philemon, to name a few of those times). He asks for prayers that his work would not be hindered (2 Thessalonians 3:1–2). He asks for prayers that he would proclaim the gospel clearly and boldly (Col. 4; Ephesians 6).

And here in Philippians, he is asking for a prayer tied to his desire to survive the trials before him and to finish the fight the right way. Not just physically, but mentally and spiritually it seems.

So what is prayer? We’ve talked about prayer several times before as a church — I tend to do a series on it every year, so I’m not going to rehash everything right now. But all prayer is a conversation with God. Just like you might have a conversation with a parent, or with a friend, or with a child, you can have a conversation with God. It does not have to be complex. You can recite the Lord’s Prayer, and that can mean something, so long as you mean what you’re saying. Or you can view prayer almost like a text chain that never ends — a never-ending conversation with God.

Why do we need to talk to God? God knows everything. That’s one of the things we believe. He sees everything. He’s not surprised by anything. So why do we have to pray?

I’ll be honest, sometimes I think about it this way. One of my daughters has a habit of describing her life as it happens, right in front of me. She’ll be setting up a baseball tee, and she’ll say, “Daddy, look what I’m doing. I’m setting this up. Daddy, look, I’m picking up the bat. Daddy, look, I’m swinging. Daddy, look, I hit it 30,000 feet” — she is an athletic prodigy, obviously. But if you’re a parent, you know — you love that stuff. You love the fact that your child wants to make sure you’re taking notice of their life. Sometimes I think we’re a little like that with God. He knows what we’re doing. He sees it. But it’s nice that we want to go out of the way and tell Him.

On a technical level, though — we pray because God tells us to pray. In Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us instructions on how to pray, and He starts His lesson on prayer by saying, “When you pray” — not “if you pray,” but “when you pray.” There is an expectation of prayer.

Next, even though God knows everything about you, sees everything about you, knows your innermost thoughts — He knows every struggle, every success about you. He knows you better than you know you. You are called to a personal relationship with Jesus.

You are gifted that opportunity. And just like with your best friend, just like with your spouse, just like with a child, that relationship — and the strength of that relationship and the growth of that relationship — is dependent upon communication. Prayer is personal communication with God.

If you don’t know how to pray, look at the Lord’s Prayer and start there. Say a five-second prayer if that’s all you’ve got. But do it, and do it consistently. Talk to God. Pray.

But Paul is not just talking about prayer to God in a relational sense. He’s talking about petitions. He needs help. He is asking for specific prayer and God’s intervention. He seeks prayers — people talking to God about him for specific things. That’s a whole different phase of your prayer life.

But if God is sovereign, if God knows everything and sees everything, why do we need people to pray for us? Why do we need intercession? If God is all-powerful, what is the role of our prayers in that all-powerfulness?

As one commentary puts it:

“It is important to recognize that God ordains the prayers of his people as a means through which to accomplish his purposes, including his purposes for the perseverance of Christians in the faith and for their ultimate salvation.”

1 Cor. 1:4–9; Eph. 1:15–23; 3:14–21; Phil. 1:3–11; Col. 1:9–14; 2 Thess. 1:11–12 all show Paul’s own prayers for the sanctification and final salvation of the believers. Those prayers show how seriously he took this duty, and Philippians 1:19 shows that he expected his churches to take it seriously on his behalf as well.

God wants us to pray, and He responds to our prayers. He does not have to, but that seems to be how He wants things done because He has invited us to be a part of how He works here on earth.

Paul has a reasonable expectation, as he says this, that as the Philippian church prays for him, it is going to do something for him. It would be a waste of time for him to write this if he didn’t believe it mattered.

Your prayers matter — not just on a relational level, which is good; not just on some sort of theological level where we know we’re supposed to pray because God tells us we’re supposed to — but He hears our prayers and responds to them because He cares for us. There’s an expectation that God will answer prayer.

Now, here’s a caveat. When you look at how Jesus teaches us to pray, at the very beginning of this prayer, after you give God His relational and positional honor in your life, there is an instruction to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” — meaning that above any petition you might make for your life or for someone else’s life, for your child’s life, you are submitting yourself to the perfect will of God so that He can do what He wants to do.

So when you pray for certain things, you’re first praying for God’s will to be done. Sometimes that might mean He’s not going to answer your prayer about something the way you wanted. His will, which you have prayed for, is not what you want.

Does that make sense? If your prayer life includes this attitude of desiring God’s perfect will to be done in your life and in the world, that means sometimes what you want, what you’re hoping for, what you’re praying for underneath that, might take a back seat to what we’re praying first — which is for God to do what needs to be done for His glory, for His honor, for the advancement of His kingdom.

It’s not an easy thing to wrap your head around. Despite knowing all that, Paul still wants the prayers of the Philippian church. There’s no way around it. Pray for people.

Peter and John, shortly after the birth of the church and the giving of the Holy Spirit, are walking to the temple to pray. They are presented with an opportunity, and through the name of Jesus (very much like a prayer), something spectacular happens. And later in Acts 4, after Peter and John are released from arrest, the believers gather and pray, and Scripture says the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. Elsewhere, we see that people desire Paul’s prayers, that God responds to them, and that miracles happen.

Paul gives a plethora of commands about churches and Christians being a praying group — to bring your supplications, to bring your concerns and your anxieties to God in prayer — not just because it’s going to make you feel good, but because there is an underlying belief that God hears you and will do something about it.

James says, too: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him” (James 5:14). And, James 5:16–18:

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. (ESV)

We have to be a praying people. We pray because we’re commanded to. We pray because it’s relational. We pray because we need prayers — because we need God to intercede on our behalf, to step into situations that we have no control over and do something about it. I pray for you, and I want you to pray for me.

Paul needs prayers of encouragement and intercession as he faces the trial before him. I just know we have all had those moments where the only answer was God’s intervention.

My father, when he was 17 or 18 years old, had a very severe car accident. He was DOA — dead on arrival. They were picking him up to put him in a body bag and felt a pulse in his ankle. They hooked him back up to everything. He had broken nearly all his ribs, crushed his sternum, crushed a kidney, and had a nasty scar across the lower part of his back. For years, if he was doing yard work and started sweating, he would bleed out beads of glass and blood from glass still embedded in his face and head. But he survived.

Here’s the thing about that survival. I don’t know if he would have survived without prayers or not, but I do know this: the night he had the wreck, his praying grandmother woke up in the middle of the night and started praying for her grandson — not knowing anything. This wasn’t modern times. News didn’t travel that fast in the 70s. She just woke up and started praying while it was happening. And my dad survived.

Later, when my dad met my mom — I don’t know exactly when they figured this out — but I’ll say this. One night around the same time my dad had his accident, my mom was woken up, and the Holy Spirit told her, You better start praying for your future spouse. And she did. And here I am. Prayer matters. Pray for people. Pray for things you have no control over.

There are some practicalities to take home with us from this:

When we pray, pray for others, not just for ourselves or things that directly affect us. That seems like common sense, but we live in a self-centered society, and I know firsthand in my own prayer life how quickly my prayers turn to me, me, me, I, I, I. There is nothing wrong with praying for yourself and your own needs, but it is good practice and spiritual maturity to fixate your prayers on others first.

Specifically, as in the Lord’s Prayer, pray for the avoidance of temptation and for deliverance from evil for others. That is a piece of what Paul is asking for here; there is always a temptation to give up. There is always a temptation to do the easy thing. He wants the strength to go through the trial the right way and bring glory to God.

Paul is so far from presuming upon his own standing before God on the final day that he could say, “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).

He was secure in his salvation, but also said things like the above. Why? Because he knew firsthand how hard it was, just as Jesus did when He taught us how to pray.

This, of course, is why he coveted the Philippians’ prayers during his present time of testing. This is also why we should be as vigorous in our prayers for the perseverance of other believers as we are in other aspects of our intercessory work for them.

I wish I had more time, but this will lead us into next week. Often, those prayers for help are answered with a supply of the Holy Spirit that lifts us up in our times of need. We need help, and other people need help. Pray for it. Pray that God gives us what we need — the grace and mercy and the supply of the Holy Spirit — in order to make it through, to be saved, to be delivered in a way that brings glory and honor to God. Pray. Be a praying people.

Let me close us in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we come to You and we say that we love You. And above all else, we pray that Your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Give us help, Lord. Help us. We’re all going through life, and we’re all going to face things — good times and bad times. I simply pray that You would help Your people. Help the people who are hearing this. Help them with Your Holy Spirit. Give them the supply of who You are exactly when they need it, for Your glory and for Your honor. Let us believe in the power of prayer. Let us know that You desire to hear our voices, to hear about our days, to hear our concerns — even though You already know them. Lord, I pray that You would give us a modicum of faith to believe that we are not wasting our time, and that when we bring our petitions to You, You are faithful, You are good, and You will do work. In Jesus’ name we pray these things. Through Jesus’ grace and through our connection to You, Lord, we believe that You care. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.