Praying for Others 1 Th. 1:1-3
In this passage Paul introduces us to the church at Thessalonica and their faithfulness to God. As you read through this book you begin to realize that this church was about as awesome as any other church Paul was a part of! Paul is constantly praising them for their faithfulness, their great attitude, and their desire to draw closer to God. They seem to be very obedient to God's Word and received it with great joy (1:6).
What I take away from this passage though is Paul's faithfulness in prayer towards this church. He reminds them that he is constantly praying for them and lifting them up before God. I get the feeling that Paul is so proud to be a part of this ministry and have connections with the people of this church. He spent a lot of time with these people (2:8) and I imagine that he had some close relationships with many of the people involved at this church. He loved them, taught them, instructed them, and motivated them to live Godly lives. So his prayer for them was very sincere and I'm sure he must have felt similar to a father proud of his own children as he watches them grow and become mature adults. In his book, "The Weapon of Prayer", E.M. Bounds wrote "effective preaching cannot take place without effective praying" and it seems that in this instance it couldn't be any truer. Paul preached to these people about the kingdom of God, but it seems to me that the effectiveness of his preaching was only warranted because of his effective and consistent prayer for the people at Thessalonica.
These few verses bring quite the conviction in my life. Prayer is one of the areas in my life where I tend to give God "sloppy seconds". I fail to spend adequate and meaningful time in prayer with God. While I do pray and even quite often, the time I spend in prayer is devalued because I don't allow myself to focus solely on God and His will. Many believers struggle with this very same thing. We desire intimacy with God, but we spend very little quality time with Him. If we're married we know this wouldn't work with our spouses [the lack of quality time], but for some reason we con ourselves into believing it's okay to do that to God.
But that's only the beginning of how these verses have challenged me. Recently God has provoked me to be more consistent in praying for the teens within my youth group by name. As their youth pastor it's easy for me to offer up prayers for the entire group (and there's nothing wrong with that), but it's more difficult for me to pray for them individually; to pray for their specific needs and how I want God to work in their lives. That's the hard part, especially when the group is growing and there are more kids. But like Paul I have to remind myself that I must be praying for them constantly and praising God for each one of them. As they grow I want to see God do some great things in their lives and I want to be able to say that I've prayed for them since they were young. That I've always prayed for them and have praised God for who they are.
As believers it's important that each of us remembers to pray for others. Intercessory prayer is one of the most important parts of the Christian walk. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit is in constant prayer on our behalf before God the Father. So if the Holy Spirit finds it important enough to pray for each of us before God, then my guess would be that we should be consistently praying on the behalf of others. It's easy to wrap our prayer lives around ourselves, but my hope is that we each find the time to be praying for others.
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