Praying for Maturity (Philippians 1:9-11)

It is just delightful to be back with you this morning for our third week in this series. I have really treasured and appreciated your prayers for me.

I know several of you have been praying specifically for me this morning, and I am thankful to God for that, and it has brought me great joy throughout the week to know that many of you are praying for each other.

And I was looking forward to being together with you this morning and thinking back to the reality that as a young man, as a child young man,

I really didn't delight in going to church. There was this opportunity that I had in front of me to do so, and I didn't seize that opportunity as much as I should have.

I was there, but I was really looking forward to after church more than I was looking forward to being at church. And now, by God's good grace, it's the opposite.

I'm really looking forward to being here with you all, and it is a pleasure and a treat to hear from God's Word together.

Let's pray briefly, and then we will start. Our Father, you are

God, and you are the great God who controls the entire universe and does so in a way that reflects and transmits your glory in ways that we can delight in and appreciate.

Father, you have joined us together in the church. You have saved us by grace through faith, placed us in the union with your

Son, Jesus Christ, so that we, through the power of your Spirit, might grow. And that's what we pray for today, that you would help us to grow as we apply ourselves to the words of Paul here in the book of Philippians.

May we take what he has prayed for this church and apply it to our lives directly, and may you strengthen us, encourage us where we are weak, help us to rejoice in the work that you are doing and that you will do as you complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.

In your name, amen. Well, for those of you who weren't here for either one or both of the last two weeks, let me get you caught up.

We are in the third week of our series on relational prayer, which is simply a helpful reminder that we should be praying for each other.

And we started in our first week by taking a look at how the Apostle Paul and his church planting team established the church at Philippi, how this vibrant relationship formed between this group of believers in Philippi and Paul that persisted all the way through his ministry.

And we also took some time to look specifically at Paul's prayer priorities, what drove him to pray, what encouraged him to continue praying even when it was difficult.

And then last week, we focused specifically into the book of Philippians in the first chapter and Paul's greeting to this church and looked at verses three through eight and studied how his prayer was so joyful, how he could think back about how he had worked alongside of this body in the work of the gospel and how much

God had done through that partnership, that fellowship. And it inspired us to encourage one another to pray more joyfully, to see the work that we are doing in prayer as we pray for each other in the sanctification process as powerful, as effective, as part of God's plan to bring about sanctification.

And this morning, we'll do more of that. This morning, we're going to focus in, our title this morning is

Praying for Maturity and we're going to continue on in Philippians 1, starting in verse 9 and go through verse 11.

And our goal today is to refresh our understanding of how praying for others is a critical part of the sanctification process for any body of believers, but specifically for our body right here.

Now this week, my wife and I had a chance to go to Spokane for a music festival and we took the opportunity to drive around some of the neighborhoods in Spokane that we had never seen before.

And I was completely blown away. If you drive through Southern Spokane up on the hills behind Sacred Heart Hospital, there are some amazing neighborhoods that have been there for years.

They have this beautiful landscaping, just incredible rocks, trees, flowers, bushes that are just sculpted into the hillsides and the landscaping there.

And you can tell that those buildings, that the houses there and the properties of land have been cared for consistently for decades, maybe even more than a century.

And the way you can really tell is by looking at the plants. You can see that the trees and the bushes and the flowers, they're not new, right?

Some of them are huge, well -established pieces of landscaping that have been cultivated, right?

Their foliage tells you that they've been fed well, they've been trimmed well, they've been cared for well.

Their roots are deep. Now you can contrast that with the work that my wife and I have tried to get our flowers and trees growing at the various rental homes that we've lived in throughout our 20 years of marriage.

Now that's not because of failure to effort, like we've tried, right?

We've put in short bursts of energy, putting plants into the ground, changing the soil, trying to get them going, but you know what it lacks?

Time, staying in the same place long enough to cultivate that soil and those plants and allow them to come to full maturity.

And pursuing maturity in the Christian life and particularly mature prayer can be similar.

We may start strong and invest in a period of significant growth only to see it fade or fail due to a failure to cultivate that growth.

So I want you to think with me this morning about a question. The first question for you to think about is, what are the characteristics of a mature

Christian? In other words, what do they do and how do they do it?

So I'm just going to list a couple off for you. You're probably already thinking them in your head, but mature Christians read the scriptures faithfully.

They pray, they sing heartily, they speak the truth to one another in love.

They work diligently, they love others deeply and unconditionally, they exercise wisdom and discernment in their daily life, they submit to authority, and finally, they bring great glory to God.

That's what a mature Christian does. Now in contrast, let's paint the opposite picture.

What are the characteristics of an immature Christian? Now careful here,

I'm not talking about an unbeliever, I'm talking about a Christian, somebody who is saved by grace through faith, but is not mature or not as mature as they yet will be in the providence of God.

Well, here are some of these characteristics, not all of them, but some of them. They rarely read scripture, if at all.

They don't pray, or they only intermittently pray, only out of a sense of duty.

They refuse to sing heartily, they speak unkindly or harshly to other believers, and they struggle to work diligently.

Their love for others is shallow and conditional, not unconditional.

They lack wisdom and discernment, they tend to rebel against authority more often than they submit to it, and finally, they absorb the glory that is intended for God, rather than reflecting it all to Him.

So I want you to think now, in which of these areas that we just looked at, do you see the most need for growth in our body?

Where is the opportunity for us to be more mature as a body of believers here at KCC?

And secondly, if you see it, are you praying for growth in that arena?

Open your Bibles up with me, if you're not already there, to Philippians chapter 1, and we will read our text this morning.

I'm actually going to borrow a page from my father -in -law David Forsyth's book, as he likes to say.

Let's get a running start at this passage, and let's read last week's passage, starting in verse 3, and we'll read all the way through verse 11 of chapter 1.

Philippians 1 .3, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.

For God is my witness, how I long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

This morning, we are going to study Paul's five connected prayer requests for the

Philippians, so that we will become mature disciples who pray for the maturity of other believers.

As we look at Philippians 1, 9 through 11, this is one long connected prayer with five prayer requests that Paul has for the

Philippians, that he lays out for the Philippians to say, this is what I am praying for you.

We're going to study that this morning, so that we too will pray like that for the maturity of other believers.

So as I mentioned, it's one long sentence in the Greek. Paul didn't believe in periods, right?

He believed in connecting words and phrases, and you can see it as you look back at the verse.

It starts with the and, which was part of what made it really hard for me last week to stop at verse 8, because you really just want to connect on and move on into verse 9.

We have and, then we have that, then we have so that, then we have in order to, then we have until, right?

And then we have to the great praise and glory. Paul just connects these prayer requests together with all of these connecting phrases.

So his first request that we're going to zero in on in verse 9 is to multiply real love.

Paul's first prayer request for the Philippian church was that they multiply their love.

So let's look at this verse 9. This verse starts with the phrase, and this I pray.

And this connects Paul's petition here to God back to his expression of joy and affection and thanksgiving and confidence that we just saw in Philippians 1, 3 through 8.

Now we know from our study last week that Paul consistently and fervently prayed for this church body.

But why? Wasn't it one of the better churches that he interacted with?

Why did he need to continue praying for them? Didn't he have other churches that need more time and attention and might have been a better use of his prayer life?

Well, even though the Philippian church was a really, really good church, one of the best that Paul interacted with, it still had room to grow.

And Paul is telling the believers here his specific prayer request for them to set the stage for his continued admonition to them, which is going to occupy the rest of the book of Philippians.

He wants more. More what? Well, he wants more love, more unity, more humility, more service, more wise behavior.

In Psalm, what does he want for this church? He wants maturity. He wants them to continue growing.

So look back with me at verse 9, and this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.

You can see it there that the motion forward for this body comes in that verb, abound.

It's what produces the motion of this whole prayer, sets it in motion and keeps it going.

And this verb, abound, it's a present tense verb, which tells you there's a continual progress here.

It doesn't stop. It's not like you start it, stop it, it's done, taken care of, that's the last thing you need to do with it, it's all checked off on your list.

No, this is a process that is continuously going. And this verb, abound, it's an action.

It's an abundance. It's producing something such that there's never nothing left, right?

There's always something more left here. It's like a crop that you produce it and you finish going through it all and there's still more left.

And then he adds to this verb, abound, this phrase, still more and more, right?

Not just one more, he gives it two mores, right? It's a greater degree, exceedingly more and more and more, it multiplies.

That's why we're focusing in on saying that the goal here for Paul is to see this church multiply their love more and more and more.

You're never going to run out of love. So what does Paul want to abound here?

Agape love, unconditional love, love that is not measured and said, well,

I'm going to have this much love for you based upon your performance or how lovable you are right now.

That's a dangerous trap for us as believers to measure our love out and say, well,

I have this much love for you. And it's based upon how lovable you are behaving or how mature you are behaving.

If you're behaving maturely, I have a lot more love for you. But when you're being immature, I'm sorry, that's all the love

I have for you right now. No, that is not how you love this body because that is not how

God loves you. God does not measure his love out for you based upon your performance.

How does he love you? Because of his love for his son. And is there a limit to the love for his son?

Absolutely not. When God places you in faith union with Jesus Christ, there is an unconditional love for you that exists no matter how lovable you have been that day.

And therefore, Paul had the capacity to love people who were unlovable.

And therefore, so do we. And we should reflect that in our prayer life.

So the question should be asked, is Paul asking for love for God or love for others?

And I don't think there's a need to differentiate here. It's both, right? He wants them to love

God because a love for God will always extend to a genuine, unconditional love for others.

Now, did the Philippian church have a love for others? Already.

A hundred percent yes. They were faithful participants in the ministry of the gospel.

You can just think back to last week. We traced the path of how they gave to him in Thessalonica.

They gave to him in Corinth. They sent Epaphroditus to bring a gift to him when in Rome.

If you haven't had time to connect these dots together, spend some time reading 2

Corinthians chapters 8 and 9, where Paul recounts the generosity, the overflowing generosity of the churches in Macedonia who gave to him to be helping encourage the church at Corinth to be a little bit more generous.

I'll sum it up for you because I can't spend time going there this morning, but Paul basically said he had to tell the church at Macedonia, stop giving.

You don't have any more to give. You've given way more than I need, and you don't have any more to give.

Stop it. They loved him so much, and they loved the work that he was doing so much.

But yet, his prayer for them, look back at verse 9 is, and this

I pray, that your love may abound still more and more.

He doesn't want it to decline. He doesn't want it to plateau. He wants it to move from like a flower, from a bud to a bloom, to full maturity, and our love for God can grow in that same way.

Our love for God and others should not have limits. Our prayer requests for others can always return back to this fundamental thing.

If you pray for others and nothing else, you can simply pray for them, and this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more.

What does this love look like? Well, go back to verse 9. What does it look like? It abounds still more and more in, here it is, real knowledge and discernment.

Now these two nouns here are very helpful. This real knowledge, or some passages would translate it full knowledge, it's actually one word, and it's the spiritual knowledge that comes through study of God's Word.

But it's not just knowledge, head knowledge, it's what produces a right relationship with God and with others.

It's a knowledge of what God loves and what He hates, and it's more than just the facts.

It's a full knowledge that moves you in the direction that God is intending for you to go.

Now the other word, discernment here, this is a really interesting word because this is the only time it's ever used in the entire

New Testament. Discernment, it's judgment, being able to have the right perception of something, to test it, make sure that it's real, discern if it's real or if it's counterfeit.

It's the only time this word is used in the New Testament, but if you look at the Greek Septuagint, the translation of the

Old Testament into Greek, this is often the word that is used to translate wisdom in the book of Proverbs.

So it's praying for real knowledge and discernment or wisdom.

A real love, a love for the people of God is guarded by real knowledge and discernment.

Real love is careful and discriminating. It produces and pursues a relationship that is immersed in God's truth, not just relationship for relationship's sake, but relationship for the sake of the truth.

Paul wants an abundant, overflowing, excellent, rich, full, saturated, in full bloom love,

God's love. Now he's going to tell the Philippian church how to get to this love.

Look at your Bibles and I want you to just fast forward quickly with me through some of the exhortations that Paul gives to this church.

Look at chapter 1 verse 27. I'll read it for you here. Paul says,

Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent,

I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.

That's how he wanted their love to begin to be executed, is that they would stand firm against what is not true with one mind, one spirit, together for the faith of the gospel.

Look at chapter 2 verse 2. He says, Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. And then flip over the page if you need to to chapter 4 verse 2,

Paul corrects here and counsels this church. He says, I urge, and I urge

Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Indeed, true companion,

I ask you to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Paul is urging this church to refine their conduct, to be of the same mind, love, and purpose with the goal of putting others first, to do away with disunity or disharmony, to live in right relationship with God and with each other.

So ask yourself the question, how do I know if I have this kind of love?

Well, I think the easy answer is it will be revealed by how you pray, both for yourself and for others, right?

You can pray for spiritual maturity, real love in your own life, but I'm focusing this morning in this series specifically on are you praying for others?

Quote here from John MacArthur, he says, The measure of a person's spiritual maturity is not how well he or she conforms externally to the command to pray.

The issue is how internally constrained that person is to pray. By a strong love for God and others.

The measure of maturity is how internally constrained you are to pray for others.

So ask yourself the question, is your love for others in this body here at KCC, is it growing?

Is there more and more and more real love as the days and weeks and months and years of our time together going by?

If you look back a year or two, or if you've only been here for a month or two, you can look back a month or two, but is there more love for this body in your life now than there was?

Are you strengthening your love muscles by pursuing real knowledge and discernment that guards and motivates your love?

Who around you needs your prayer to develop and increase this kind of real love in their lives?

Paul's first prayer request for the Philippian church was that they multiply the real love that they already had.

Now, look back at verse 10, we're going to see that he prays that they would make excellent choices.

Prayer request number two is that they make excellent choices. Look at verse 10, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.

Now, this Greek word, approve, it's to test, to prove something, to scrutinize it and make sure it's genuine.

I want to get it beyond the check the box mentality. Some of you who have worked in companies where there are expense reports to do, you know what can happen.

You have a manager, the manager's got a bunch of direct reports, they've got a lot of things on their plate and the last thing they want to do is to go through your expense report and make sure that every single expense that you submitted was legitimate and within company policy.

So they kind of wait until the end of the week, they open their computers and check, check, check, check, check, check, check, done, okay, knock that off my list.

That is not what God wants us to be doing here. This approving is, it requires effort, a concentrated application of God's word to life.

I work for a Bitcoin financial services company and we are constantly being trained and tested to ensure that we can recognize phishing emails, right?

We get trained on how to scrutinize the sender name, the email address itself, the language in the email, the presence of the hyperlinks and attachments, anything and everything to make sure that we do not accidentally click on a link or an attachment that would compromise the security of our company data and endanger our customers and their data and their relationship with us.

Do I, do we give that same kind of attention to God's word?

Do we go back to it and carefully examine what we hear preached here on a

Sunday morning? Do we read our scriptures with an eye to, is it true? If it's true, how is it true and what is it doing?

Well, if we do, then the text tells us, right, so that we may approve the things that are excellent.

We'll be able to identify what is superior, what's better, what's of higher value, transcendent, value.

This word in the Greek helps us see that it's testing between two things. Maybe the two things are both good, but we're trying to determine which one is the best.

What is the most excellent? And Paul posits here that if your love is increasing more and more and more in real knowledge and discernment, then you will be able to discern and approve what is best, even when you're faced with difficult choices.

We often are faced with difficult choices, and that's where the test comes into play.

Does our love for God and others give us the ability to discern what is the best, to approve and endorse that which is the best?

This is much more than just a basic knowledge of right and wrong that even Satan and his demons have, right?

They know the truth. They know the facts, but this is more. So Paul's prayer goal here, his prayer request for the

Philippians, he wants them to be single -minded, mature, highly focused, effective believers who are discerning and persistent, like the

Hebrean believers, right, going back to the Word and testing it to see if it's true and it's accurate, and then to see how does it help me love others more?

How does it help me engage in the work of the gospel in my own life and in the life of believers around me, and then ultimately in the sphere of unbelievers that are around me?

Another quote here from J. Dwight Pentecost in his commentary, he says, Paul wants them to have the discernment, to focus their attention, give their strength and effort, not to secondary, but to primary things.

To every man alike, God grants a gift of 24 hours in any one day, not a moment more or less.

What a man accomplishes in the 24 -hour period is determined by the discipline that the man exercises in the use of time.

One will exercise discipline and accomplish much, another will be undisciplined and accomplish little.

Paul wants this church to make excellent choices. He wants them to approve what is excellent.

And this means that he wants them to evaluate your choices, and sometimes the best way to do this is evaluating the direction that a choice is going to lead you.

As an example, when I get stressed at work, I find my choices, where's my favorite food?

And comfort myself in that. Well, I have to stop and say, where does that choice lead to?

Is it consistent with the other choices that I make, like getting up in the morning and going to the gym?

Am I making two choices and one is consistent and the other is inconsistent with the goal?

I'm going to suggest to you a metric that Paul provides to help you measure your choices.

Look over at Philippians 4. I wish I had time to teach through this passage because I love it.

In Philippians 4, verse 8, he says, finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

I have a friend who I used to teach high school, Sunday school class with, and he provided me an amazing way to remember this passage.

So I'm going to share it all with you. I'm not going to take the credit for it, but this depends on you having a

New American Standard Version, which many of you do, but he uses the acronym THERPLO.

You think, well, what is THERPLO? Well, T, whatever is true, H, honorable, right,

R, pure, P, lovely, L, O, of good repute, THERPLO is the way to remember this passage.

This is the key. A mature believer loves the things of God and is moving forward in their ability to choose wisely, to exercise discernment in how they will think and act in light of the increasingly difficult choices that they face.

So how can we pray for others in this body to make excellent choices?

Well, we can start by praying that they will use their time wisely. I'm going through this list here because I love the reality that Paul provides us his specific prayer request.

Sometimes when I'm praying, I just run out of things to pray for a person, and the easy solution for that is go back to Paul's prayers and just pray what he prayed, right?

And that's a great starting point, just praying through verse 9 through 11 specifically for another person.

But then I'm trying to help you extend that one level further. So praying that they would use their time wisely is the first one.

The second is pray that they would moderate their devotion to entertainment. Pray that they would grow in their reading habits.

Pray that they would pursue and strengthen relationships with their family and their church family.

Pray that they will learn wisdom with money. Pray that they would regularly read and study

God's Word to improve their knowledge of God. And pray that they would experience the wholehearted worship of the

Almighty that grows in spontaneity and devotion and joy. Pray that they would be able to experience the same joy that you're experiencing as you're praying for them.

So Paul's first two prayer requests that we've looked at this morning are for the Philippians that they would multiply their real love, and secondly, that they would make excellent choices.

Now, request number three, he prays that they would manifest sincere purity.

Look at the second half of verse 10. He says, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, here it is, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.

That linking phrase, in order to, connects this to the previous phrase.

When you approve the things that are excellent, you do so in order to be sincere and blameless.

That's the goal. Approving the things that are excellent produces a sincerity, a sincere purity as you await

Christ's return. This is the goal, the ultimate goal. But our ultimate goals define our day -to -day goals, our day -to -day actions and attitudes, and our sincerity and purity are being measured every minute of every day, not just when we are together here on Sunday mornings.

If you say, I'm sincere and pure while I'm here worshiping on Sunday mornings, but when

I'm not, I struggle with that, then that's not sincere purity. Now, sincere, the

Greek word here is exactly what it sounds, it's pure, unalloyed. It's the idea of ethical purity.

It comes from the idea of sifting something through a sieve, right? It produces the idea of what gets through that sieve is consistent size, it's cohesive, it's unified.

Now, the Greek word here for blameless, I love this word as well, it's void of offense.

There's no offense present, nothing that you can strike against. It also can be used to kind of give the idea of a smooth road.

I know how many of you have enjoyed the treat of driving on a road that's brand -newly paved, it's super smooth.

It's not like many of the roads that you and I drive here in North Idaho. It doesn't cause you to stumble, it doesn't cause others to stumble.

Paul wants this Philippian body to be a whole, pure, blameless body, inside and outside, one person, highest degree of integrity, because your whole life is a preparation for what?

Look back at verse 10, right? So that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ.

Now, how many of you have ever done what I did, which is read one of Jim's emails to us, and got to the bottom and gone, what the heck does he mean by without wax?

I did it, I confess, I had to ask. Well, it comes from this word, this blameless word, right?

When they used to make pottery, unfortunately, some of the pottery that you would sell would crack.

So what did a skillful pottery seller do? Well, they would take some wax and seal it up in such a way that you couldn't visually tell that the pottery had been cracked, unless you did what?

You held it up to the light and inspected it carefully, and when you looked at it in the light, it wasn't blameless.

It was without wax. If it was blameless, it was without wax. If it had wax, it was blameless, okay?

What is the opposite of sincerity? It's hypocrisy.

So we need to ask ourselves, are we pursuing, are we manifesting a sincere purity, and are we praying for others to manifest sincere purity, or are we hypocrites?

Are we pretending to be pure and sincere and blameless? So I want to ask myself the question, are you praying, are we praying for others to cultivate sincerity and guard their lives from hypocrisy?

Are you regularly praying that God would open eyes of people in this body to examine their heart motivations, their actions, and their words?

And this is more important, not just are you praying for them, but are you willing to engage a fellow believer in addressing the patterns of their life and offering your faithful prayer with them as they battle sin?

Sin is messy, but spiritual integrity involves relationships, the relationship with God and with others, and we are either about the business of eliminating sin or accommodating sin.

Another quote here from John MacArthur, he says, Falling into sin usually happens in stages. First, a believer merely tolerates something he knows is sinful, perhaps criticizing it, but taking no strong stand against it.

Next, he accommodates it a little at a time, each time becoming less concerned about its wickedness, until it ceases to become an issue.

Next, he attempts to legitimize it by making excuses for it and defending it. Finally, and inevitably, he begins to participate in it, embracing it as part of his normal lifestyle.

Worldly values and standards become so mixed with biblical ones that the difference is no longer noticed.

We need a sincere purity because when Christ returns, 2

Corinthians 5 .10 tells us that we will all appear before his judgment seat.

A judgment for believers that will produce one of two things, commendation or your works that you had in this world being burnt up because they were not sufficient.

What do you want to hear? You want to hear, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.

So that's what we need to pray for in the lives of others, is that they would manifest sincere purity.

So we've seen the first three requests, multiply real love, make excellent choices, manifest sincere purity.

Next, Paul prays that they would minister fruitfully. Look back at verse 11. He says, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ.

Now this verb, having been filled, I love the reality that when you look at the Greek here, it tells us that it's a passive perfect participle, meaning it has a past action, something that was done in the past, but that past action is not done.

It has a continuing result. But the continuing result is not necessarily you performing that action.

It's passive. It's you having that action done to you. So having been filled means that God, through His Spirit, did the work in the past, but that that work is not done.

He has filled you with His Spirit, filled you with the fruit of His Spirit, the fruit of righteousness.

So this is an action that has been done, but that we participated in the present.

By allowing the work to continue, by refusing to grieve or prevent the

Holy Spirit from doing His work, allowing Him access, full access to every area of our life.

And what does that produce? It produces fruit. Think back to our analogy from the beginning, a mature tree produces fruit.

You know when it's mature when it produces fruit. And then what do you expect the next year?

More fruit. And the year after that, more and more fruit.

Now this idea of the fruit of righteousness, this is Paul pulling forward here an Old Testament idea.

Fruit of righteousness is what God has produced in the lives of His people as a result of their change, the transformation that occurs when we are saved by grace.

Now it is a process, yes, you're not instantaneously righteous, but you grow.

And that's what Paul is praying for here, that the Philippian believers would continue the results of this process, that their lives would bear fruit more and more.

They'd begun well, but Paul knew that a life of fruitfulness must be maintained.

And how do you maintain it? A constant willingness to allow the Spirit to do His work.

I'm not going to take you there, but you know how Jesus described the relationship that we have with Him, right?

He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Every branch that's in me does what?

It bears fruit, and therefore it's evidencing the fruits of righteousness. Where does the righteousness come from?

From the Spirit through the Word. Finally, we'll look at our last prayer request.

Paul has prayed that they multiply their real love by making excellent choices so that they manifest sincere purity in order to minister fruitfully until the day of Christ, and lastly, to magnify

God. Look at the last half of verse 11. Having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

If the goal of your spiritual life, and specifically your prayer life, is not the praise and glory of God, you're missing the main point.

D .A. Carson says, the pursuit of the excellent can be wretchedly idolatrous. Wretchedly idolatrous in the sense that we need to be on guard in our pursuit for excellence, not being a perfectionist who absorbs the glory rather than reflecting that glory to its ultimate source, to God.

To the glory and praise of God is what Paul says. God has created us to find our ultimate fulfillment, our ultimate joy, our ultimate maturity in what?

In His glory. And our prayer lives should mirror that ultimate priority.

Paul wants the Philippian church to embrace the process of becoming mature, servant -minded leaders that mirror

Jesus in His submission to God's authority and display of God's glory.

Just allow your eyes to look forward quickly here. Chapter 1, verse 20 here, it says, according to my earnest expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness,

Christ will even now as always be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

And then all the way at the end, chapter 4, verse 20, excuse me, 420,

Paul finishes with his final admonition to them, now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever.

So an easy prayer request for you, something that I know

God will answer if you pray it for other believers, is to pray that God will be glorified in their lives.

Think back to Philippians 1 through 8, Paul was confident because he knew that God was the one doing the work.

I think a similar confidence flows through here. You can confidently pray for any believer in this body, no matter how mature or how immature they are, by simply praying, pray that God would be glorified in their life.

God will accomplish that. You know it. A harder step is to pray when you have a knowledge of how they are struggling to keep the glory of God primary in their lives.

If you can see that, then praying for that situation gets a little bit more challenging. How do you even know that about a person?

How do I look around and go, that guy or that gal, they're struggling? No, I have to pray with knowledge that comes through relationship.

That means I have to cultivate transparency with them. I have to come to that with a recognition that we are both being saved by the same

God, out of the same sinful wretchedness, and are being saved by the same grace, through the same means of sanctification.

As we summarize here, I want you to remember that Paul's prayer here is focused on progress, growth in the

Philippian believers. They started well, but with room to grow. He detailed here his specific prayer requests for them, so that they would know his love for them, which he's already professed, the affection of Christ Jesus, and so that they would respond to his prayer by reevaluating their love, their discernment, their purity, and their fruitfulness.

And I'm going to suggest to you that he doesn't want them to just focus on themselves and say, am I loving, am

I mature, am I discerning, but so that they would similarly pray for others, the same way he was praying for them.

He's providing them and us with the pattern for praying for others, that will elevate our prayer life, take it to the next level by giving us the most valuable the most helpful requests that we can pray, requests that lead to sanctification and deep, abiding relationship and fellowship in Christ's body.

So I know that you all can become mature disciples who are actively, consistently praying for others like this, specifically for the members here at KCC and then beyond that.

I'll give you three very brief applications that you can work on this week. Here are some things that you can do this week to apply this text.

Continue praying for others, whatever's going on in their lives. They're having difficulty at work, home, school.

Absolutely, continue praying for what you have been praying for, but begin mixing in prayers for spiritual maturity with the personal needs and requests that you know of in their life.

Help others by answering the question, how can I pray for you?

By giving them real requests that go one step beyond the surface.

So if someone in the body comes up to you this week and says, hey, brother, sister, how can I pray for you?

Resist the urge to give them something easy. Give them that second layer of what you really need, the spiritual maturity, the growth that you need.

And third, my third admonition for you is, when you say you're going to pray for somebody, do it.

If you have to stop right then and say, hey, can I pray for you right now so I don't forget, do it.

If you say you're going to pray for somebody, make a note, commit to it, remind yourself. May God enable us to develop a mature pattern of praying for maturity in the lives of those he has placed around us in this body.

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are so thankful to the

Apostle Paul for his labor in detailing this prayer request list for us.

And Father, we're confident that you who began a good work in us are capable, not just capable, you are motivated,

Lord, to complete it. For it does indeed reflect and display your glory throughout this world.

We pray for the people of Kootenai Church, for all of us, that we would consistently and faithfully pray for more real love so that we may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness through Jesus Christ until the day that he returns to the glory and praise of you,