FBC Morning Light – August 1, 2022

Prayer for the Preacher and the Power of the Word

Well, good Monday morning to you. I hope your week's getting off to a good start today, and I trust you had a wonderful Lord's Day yesterday. I know you probably, when you go to church, you're preparing to go to church, at some point along the way in the preparation, you pray.

Hopefully, certainly, you pray that the Lord blesses you, speaks to you through the Word, that you are refreshed spiritually, that you're encouraged, and so on and so forth. You pray for the worship service, that it will be a blessing, and things of that nature.

But in our scripture reading today, in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, I also want to encourage you to pray in another direction. Certainly, you want to pray in a self-oriented, a self-directed way, in that sense of, speak to me, teach me, grow me, things of that nature.

Those are all good, and those are things we need to pray for. Here in 2 Thessalonians 3, first couple of verses, some things to pray in an outward direction, and particularly, specifically, pray for the preacher of the Word.

Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to pray in this way. He says, be glorified, just as it was with you. Paul is asking the Thessalonians to reflect back on how, when Paul came to Thessalonica, and he preached the Word there, that people heard the Word, that the Holy Spirit used the Word, he quickened dead hearts, and opened deaf ears, and they were converted.

He says, I want you to pray that the same thing, the same way the Word worked in you, that it will work in others as I preach the Word. When you think about going to church on a Sunday morning, and you're going to be hearing the Word taught in the Sunday school class, preached in the morning and evening services, pray for the preacher, pray for the pastor, pray for the teacher of the Word that day.

Pray that he communicates the Word effectively, that the Holy Spirit uses the Word powerfully, and that the preached and taught Word will effect change in the hearts and lives of God's people. That is, that it may run swiftly, and that it be glorified.

I think what Paul is getting at there is that those who hear it will recognize that this is indeed not the Word of men, but the Word of God. This is the very Word of God, and I need to pay attention to this.

This is sacred stuff. So pray that the attitude toward the listener will be one of recognition of what it is that's happening, that the Word of God is being taught, it's being proclaimed. In the second direction, he encourages us to pray.

He says, pray also that we, pastors and teachers of the Word, may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for not all have faith. Here again, I think there's a two-fold direction here of this prayer request.

Pray that we may be delivered from unreasonable people, unreasonable people. People can be unreasonable in various ways. I remember one time a guy said to me, after a Sunday service, I think he bent me on a Monday, he said, my wife and I are going to leave the church.

He said, you're just not preaching messages that deal with my sin. I said, what is that sin? He said, the way you preach the Bible, you just take a passage of Scripture and then you go to the next passage the next week, just incrementally working through books of the Bible.

That's not the way to preach. He says, you need to preach so that you're attacking sins, specific sins. You just need to preach in this way. I thought about that at the time when he was saying that, and I said to him, I said, what exactly are you expecting me to do?

Do you expect me to know the pet sins of everybody in the congregation and then to preach on those and try to hit all those every Sunday? What exactly are you expecting me to do? I didn't convince him and he ended up leaving.

He was an unreasonable guy. I don't think he was particularly wicked. He wasn't out to destroy me or hurt the church or anything like that, but his demands were just unreasonable demands. His expectations were unreasonable expectations.

That kind of unreasonable person can drag down the work of the ministry. Pray that your pastor, the teachers of the word will be delivered from unreasonable people and also from wicked people. Wicked people are those who will be more active in trying to hinder the work of the ministry or to somehow attack and undermine the person delivering the word.

Over the course of 40 years of pastoral ministry, there have been a few people like that along the way. I think it's helpful for God's people in a local church to recognize that that possibility exists and to pray that it doesn't happen.

Pray that God delivers your church and your pastor from unreasonable and wicked people. Just a couple of prayer requests to pray for your pastor. I trust as this week gets underway and this new month gets underway, to me, a Monday is always an anticipation of Sunday, but that's pastoral ministry.

As you reflect on yesterday and then look forward to next Lord's Day, pray for your pastor. Father in heaven, I pray that you would encourage us to be sensitive to the challenges that are a part of the work of the ministry, the preaching of the word.

May we pray effectively and accordingly. We ask this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. I hope your new week gets off to a good start and I hope the month of August gets going well for you. Have a good day.

God bless.