The Whole Body, Part 12: The Knees

Well, it's good to be back this morning. I know we had a guest preacher last week, and I felt that dovetailed very well with the previous week's sermon, as we considered our time in the

Word, our ability as a stomach to digest the Word, to feed on and grow thereby.

And Brian, of course, coming to preach the Psalms as God's gift to us based on Psalm 48.

And these things we want to carry with us as we now come to part 12 of our series.

We've been considering the whole body in this series, and we've been using, as a way to get at the whole body, this great image from Ephesians 4, of members, of brothers and sisters, growing up in all things into Him who is the head,

Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

So that's been our banner verse, our focus on this idea of the whole body, and that's brought us to consider the head, and the eyes, and the ears, the nose, the mouth, the heart, the spine, the shoulders, the hands, the stomach, and this morning, the knees.

The knees. We're running out of body parts as we're toward the bottom. In fact, next week will be the last new body part, and then the following week, part 14, will be a conclusion where we wrap everything together.

And so next week, we look forward to talking about the beautiful feet, the feet that herald the good news of a risen

Savior, and that'll be the message next week. But this morning, we're looking at the knees in part 12.

Now, the knees is a way of speaking about prayer. If you remember from our Needham study last year on Sunday nights, the ancient posture for prayer was not sitting, in fact, not even kneeling, but it was standing.

And so when we have early Christian catacomb art, or even what we gather from synagogue practice, prayers were something that were done in a posture of standing.

However, there were times when people kneeled in prayer. And so though it wasn't the normal posture, in times of great duress and trial, in times of great humiliation or submission, kneeling was the proper posture for prayer.

We can see this, for example, in 1 Kings 8. We read, Solomon, when he had finished praying all of this prayer and supplication to the

Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to the heavens.

So you get the idea there. In that great moment, he had poured himself out in prayer before the altar of God on his knees, kneeling with his hands outstretched.

Same thing in Ezra 9. One of the great prayers of Scripture. And you have there at the very beginning in verses five and six,

Ezra saying, I fell on my knees, I spread my hands out to the Lord my God, and I said, oh

Lord, I am too ashamed, too humiliated to lift my face to you. So there again, this prayer begins with this act of humiliation.

He bends down upon his knees, falls upon his face. Or in the New Testament. I don't have many examples of this, but here perhaps is the best,

Ephesians 3, beginning in verses 14 and following. Paul says, for this reason, I bow my knees to the

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he says a phrase later, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit.

So Paul there is saying, I bend my knees in prayer before the Father, asking that he would grant you strength by his spirit.

And so we have examples where knees are the body parts of prayer in Scripture. And of course, knees have ever since been in our mind, something associated with prayer.

So we often think of the bended knees. But we write in this way, or we use this as a metaphor for prayer.

I don't know that we actually practice this. C .S. Lewis, who wrote a little booklet toward the end of his life on prayer, one that he wrestled with, he struggled with for a time, wanting to write on prayer, and found it very difficult to write about prayer.

And so in the end, he decided the way I'll do it is not by writing a direct treatise on what prayer is, and how to grow in prayer, but rather to use this format of letters, similar to screw tape, but in this sense, it was letters to Malcolm, chiefly on prayer, letters to a friend.

And it was given as little tokens or insights into prayer. And one of the things he says in one of those letters is, you should actually allow your body to pray along with your spirit.

In other words, it may be appropriate to put our body into a position of prayer, even as we put our minds and our hearts and our spirit in a position of prayer.

So Lewis commended actually bending on the knee, rather than just sort of laying out on the lazy boy and putting the

Doritos to the side while you throw up some prayer. The idea is put your whole body into that prayer. That's not something that I personally practice, but I wonder if there's something to that.

So we have this language of the knees. Now in the past, we've spoken about prayer, and we've spoken a lot about prayer from even the

Sermon on the Mount in chapter six, especially about how prayer relates to anxiety and the way that the

Lord taught his disciples to pray. But I thought, since we're looking at the whole body, we really need to consider not individual prayer, but rather how individuals come together in corporate prayer.

And I thought Romans 15, in this passage we just read, verses 30 through 33, is a neat little window into how

Paul conceives of corporate prayer. It's not one of your go -to passages for corporate prayer, but for me, it's very interesting that Paul expects these believers in Rome to gather together and pray.

He has a certain understanding of what that should look like for them, a certain understanding of what's happening when they gather together in prayer, and a certain understanding of what that will lead to.

And these are the things that I think we need to grasp together this morning. If we would be a mature body, a whole body, we need to have strong knees, that is, a strong corporate prayer life.

And we're going to do that by paying attention not just to this passage, Romans 15, 30 through 33, but also the prepositions within this passage.

Some of you are homeschooling and you know this word, prepositions. Some of you use them all the time, you have no idea what they are.

Well, preposition are these little helping words that position nouns or phrases, or any word for that matter.

It's a word that positions other words. It's a preposition, words like by, with, in, under, for, through, right?

These are all prepositions. And there's different glosses. You can have one preposition in Greek that may be translated a handful of ways, and sometimes in Greek, how prepositions are formed, how prepositional phrases are formed, are of no significance, and sometimes our theology depends upon prepositional phrases.

And so these are often ignored, but often load -bearing words. And I would not say that our doctrine depends on the prepositions of Romans 15, but I do think it's very helpful to pay attention, and I hope to show you why even this morning.

So let me inflect a little bit as I read our passage. Romans 15, beginning in verse 30.

I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God for me, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so that by the will of God I may come to you in joy and be refreshed together.

May the God of peace be with you all. Amen. Well, Paul begins with this strong appeal.

I appeal to you, brothers. I prefer some of the other translations that really get across the heart.

I beg you, brethren. Paul has just put on display this glorious gospel, and he's coming now to tie up loose ends and give farewell greetings.

That will occupy most of chapter 16. Really, chapter 15 is the proper end of the letter.

You could almost view chapter 16 as postscript. And here, Paul is closing out this last paragraph of the formal body of the letter with this appeal.

I'm begging you to pray. Pray, pray. I appeal to you, brothers, pray.

And he asks, and here's these little words. He asks that they pray by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the

Spirit. So this is the beginning of the foundation of corporate prayer, that corporate prayer, the kind of prayer that Paul longs to see, the kind of prayer that Paul longs to build into the churches that he's planted, and then even to the churches that he hopes to visit, like this church in Rome.

He says, I appeal to you on this ground, on the Lordship of Christ and the love of the

Spirit of God. This is the ground of Christian fellowship, and therefore, the ground of Christian prayer, corporate prayer.

We are able to pray corporately because we are something corporately. We've been brought by the love of the

Spirit into this relationship with our Savior, with our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the ground of corporate prayer.

If that hasn't happened, there is no corporate prayer. There is no effectual prayer. There's no reason to pray.

There's no purpose to pray. Paul is appealing to brethren, to fellow heirs, to saints who serve and worship the same

Lord. He says, our Lord Jesus Christ. And how has this come about? By the love poured out in our hearts by the

Spirit of God. That's Romans 5 .5. Elsewhere, Paul makes an appeal with Jesus in this way, 1

Corinthians 1 .10, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Or 2 Corinthians 10 .1,

by the humility and gentleness of Christ. But here, Paul appeals by Jesus and by the

Spirit. I want you to notice this language of Father. In Ephesians 3 .18,

I bow my knees before the Father. I appeal to you by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit.

You have this language that is always Trinitarian. Prayer is a Trinitarian thing. He's praying to God, by the

Son, by the Spirit. Prayer is a Trinitarian activity. You only pray by the

Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. The Father receives our prayers through the

Son, by the Spirit, who groans on our behalf. Whenever we're praying as the people of God, the

Trinity is involved. Whenever we gather to worship or to pray as a body, the

Trinity is involved. Every act of God is a Trinitarian act. And so we see this language.

And here, you'll notice again, this appeal, the Lordship of Christ, the Lord that they love.

And how do they love? By this love that the Spirit has poured out. And so the Lordship of Jesus, the experience of the love that the

Spirit produces, this is the ground of prayer. This is, in fact, the call for prayer. This is why Paul makes his plea for prayer.

He appeals to these things. For this reason, you want to pray. For this reason, I appeal to you, brethren.

Now this is, in some ways, the end of the letter. It's a bookend, and it's coming full circle from the beginning.

Romans 1, toward the very beginning, verse eight and following, Paul first expresses his desire to visit these

Christians, to make it to Rome. And in chapter 15, verse 23, he repeats,

I've been longing for many years to visit you. So that's his heart.

I think of you. I long for you. Even though I haven't met you and I haven't been with you, we have the same

Lord. We actually have this real fellowship. We have the same love worked out in our lives by the

Spirit to such an extent, I long for those I haven't even met. I feel a kinship, a closeness, an intimacy for those

I haven't even known. What is that but the love of the Spirit that we've been adopted together as brothers and sisters into the body of Christ?

And so you see how this begins to fuel his understanding of the ground of prayer. Pray for me, even if you haven't met me.

Because we have the same Lord in heaven, the same work of His Spirit in our lives. So I yearn for you, even as you ought to yearn for me.

I pray for you, even as you ought to pray for me. Why? Because of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of His Spirit.

That's an appeal to pray. Now of course, this ties in also to how he wants these

Roman Christians to think about other brothers and sisters they have not met. Those in Judea.

He says, of course, pray that I would be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, that my service for Jerusalem would be acceptable to the saints.

He says, I yearn for you, I long for you, I yearn for my brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. The way that I think of you and call for you to pray, so I also think of them and I pray for them.

And I want you to yearn and pray for them as well. In fact, I want you to give this gift, this offering, that I will be brought to the

Gentiles. This again is full circle. He had identified himself at the very beginning of this letter as a minister of Jesus Christ to the

Gentiles. Ministering the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the

Holy Spirit. So this is this offering that he's referenced. We mentioned this a few weeks back.

In verse 24 and following, he says, I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there after I have enjoyed your company for a while.

Now, however, I'm on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there. For Macedonia and Ikea were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the

Lord's people in Jerusalem. So this is the appeal proper. I want you to think about who else belongs to the

Lord Jesus Christ, who else you can love by the Spirit. All right, this is the ground for Christian prayer.

This is the ground for the appeal. We come to this first preposition. With, with.

With. Paul says, strive together with me in your prayers to God.

Now, I take this language of with, this praying together with, as a call for continual and combative prayer.

Continual and combative prayer. Strive together with me in your prayers to God.

Paul says, I'm striving and you need to strive with me in prayer to God.

How are you to strive? Together. So there's something corporate about this prayer life.

How are you to strive? Continually. This is not, in the Greek tense, this is a continuous aspect.

This is not a one and done prayer. This is prayer without ceasing. This is a continuous labor of prayer.

So these prayers, right? It's not one prayer, it's multiple prayers. Strive together with me in your prayers, in the many prayers that you will offer up.

Not one prayer, not one prayer meeting, not one week devoted to prayer, only to slip away in weeks to come, but no, in your labors of prayer, strive and strive together.

Strive even with me in this prayer. This is where this language of combative comes in.

Continual and combative. The word strive there, the word, it's often used to speak of a struggle.

Something that's not easy. It's used, in other contexts, to speak of entering into combat.

And sometimes that's what prayer is like. It's like entering into combat. It's not easy.

If it was easy, we would pray a lot more than we do. If it was easy, our prayer lives would be far more fervent than they are.

It's not easy. Our flesh reels against prayer because it wars against the spirit. The world does all it can to distract us and draw us away from thoughts of our

Heavenly Father in that kind of prayer life. And if it can't distract us from prayer, then it will at least cut off that approach to God through prayer.

Prayer becomes an act of meditation. Some app you can put on your phone and you can pray with the

Hollywood celebrities. It's not prayer. I don't know who they're praying to. They're not a father in heaven.

It's more of a meditation exercise. Oh, it's really helpful when I pray and I slow down and it's like, that's not prayer.

You're just thinking. You're thinking about yourself. That's a mantra. It's not prayer.

No, there's something combative about prayer. Paul understands that. Strive. It won't be easy.

It'll be hard won. So strive, fight. Fight that good fight of faith. Strive in your prayer life.

Strive in coming together to pray. The things that are hardest become the things that are most vital.

The things that are hard won are the things that are the most fruitful. And so we know prayer is a struggle.

We know it's hard to strive. That's why Paul appeals for this. Isn't it often the case that when we're struggling, when we're spiritually dry, that free, that fervent exercise of prayer is almost always the first casualty.

In times past, it was spoken of it being the canary in the coal mine. The coal miners taking that little songbird in because it had such sensitive lungs.

And if the coal mine was producing something that would kill the canary, that meant the coal miner had to leave.

And prayer is that canary. When that dies, you are in danger, spiritually speaking.

When your prayer life begins to falter, everything else will begin to falter as a result. The lungs of that canary, so fragile, so sensitive, that's a good way to think about our prayer life.

In fact, this aviary imagery is something that the Puritans love to draw on. Thomas Manton described the need to strive in prayer like a bird striving to keep in flight.

He said, a bird cannot stay in the air without continual flight, a continual motion of the wings.

Neither can we persist in prayer without constant work and labor. You've seen the birds.

They have to flap pretty hard until they can finally catch some current of air to sort of waft along.

And then eventually it drags them a little too far and they have to fight and persevere forward. What an excellent image for prayer.

But the takeoff is a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of effort and motion before you finally catch some of those currents and winds that will keep you afloat in that spirit and atmosphere of prayer.

Some people never make it to that atmosphere. They never flap hard enough. They never strive to make it to that place of prayer.

This is always held out for us. In Colossians chapter four, Paul commends Epaphras. And he says,

Epaphras greets you always laboring fervently for you in prayers. Then he tells us what

Epaphras is praying for. That you would stand perfect and complete in the will of God. I bear him witness.

He has great zeal for you. So here's Epaphras and he is laboring. He is striving to pray for these

Christians in Colossae. And Paul's commending that example. He says, he's striving. He has zeal for you.

He's laboring fervently in prayer for you. If he can't be with you, praying for you, he's still laboring for prayer even when he's not around you.

I was reading the other night of a hymn writer who wrote a number of hymns that are in our

Trinity hymnal, Francis Ridley Havergal. And in this little presentation of her life, this little biography, saying this faith that she had even as a young girl, even as a seven -year -old girl, and how she had this practice of secretly praying for anyone she was around.

And she would pray from this young age for them to be blessed of God. And that transformed the way that she, of course, would interact with them.

She sought to be the vehicle of that blessing. The testimony for that blessing. And there was, in this story, the experience that led to her writing the hymn

Take My Life and Let It Be was being in the house with all these people and they weren't believers.

They didn't have this joy and this peace of the gospel worked out in their life. And so she made a point to pray for each of them.

And at night, she was restless. She could not sleep. She was tossing and turning because she was saying, God, please, please, do something in these people's lives.

And she was only there for a handful of days and before she left, God seemed to have worked something into all of their lives.

And then she was not able to sleep for another reason. She was just too excited. She was so grateful. She understood how to stay in that atmosphere of prayer.

She was an epaphras, always laboring fervently for you in prayer.

That's three conditions of prayer. Always labor fervently.

That's amazing to think of the fruitfulness, the impact of a prayer life like that.

If that could be true of a Frances Ridley Havergill at age seven or an epaphras in the middle of his life, laboring for a church he's no longer with, fervently in prayer, what kind of impact could we have as Christians if we were to understand the power of prayer, this combative and continual effort in prayer?

So this is what Paul's calling for. Strive together with me. The idea is if you are in that spiritual drought, if you find that your prayer life has faltered, you might say,

I'd love to strive in prayer, but I'm too weak. I'd love to strive together in prayer, but my life and my walk is just not there yet.

Listen, once I get strong enough, then I'll really strive in prayer. Then I'll even join together with you to pray.

And I think Paul would receive that kind of attitude as nonsense. What? You're so dry and weak that you can't labor in prayer, so you have to get strong on your own before you can join together with the saints to pray?

What kind of logic is that? No, he would say that's why you need to strive together in prayer.

That's why you need to join with the saints. Don't wait for your prayer life to blossom individually so that then you're strong enough to come in like some head honcho into corporate prayer.

No. Come into corporate prayer, I could put it like this. Put yourself in the place of prayer, and you'll grow in prayer.

Put yourself around those who are praying, and you will learn how to pray. You wanna strive together in prayer?

That's not something that begins out in isolation. That begins corporately, meeting together to pray.

I have read many accounts of revival throughout church history. I have yet to read of one that has not begun with corporate, fervent prayer.

Not a one. Sometimes it begins with just three people gathering fervently in prayer.

Sometimes it begins with a blind shut -in up in the

Northern Highlands who prayed with her sister and one other. And then the times of revival broke out and lasted for three years.

Sometimes it began with businessmen in Manhattan that were so busy that they had to take their lunch break just to be able to pray to their

God. And God would see fit not only to preserve their faith in that workplace, in the dog -eat -dog environment of busy midtown

Manhattan, but he actually blessed them with revival that broke out from those lunch breaks. This is the fruit.

God is pleased to answer prayer. Epaphras may not have even known what

God was doing in Colossae as a result of that. It wasn't lost on Paul, and I can guarantee you, if it wasn't lost on Paul, it wasn't lost on the

Lord. The Lord answered those fervent, active prayers. The Lord will always answer that continual combative prayer from his people.

Do you need to strive in prayer, Christian? Yes, but even more important than that, you need to strive together with one another in prayer.

John Gill, taking up James 5, asks this rhetorical question. If the prayer of a righteous man avails much, what will the prayer of a righteous church avail?

That's the logic. Strive together with me,

Paul says. Strive together in prayer. In the

New Testament, the fellowship of believers is often connected to prayer, frankly, because the fellowship of believers is often rooted in prayer.

It'd be a good way to introduce each other to new people. This is the person

I pray for all the time. Our fellowship is rooted in prayer. It should be something that we, from any given week to the next, remind each other of.

I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. I have prayed for you. Romans 12, beginning in verse 12,

Paul says, be affectionate to one another with brotherly love, giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the

Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer.

This is a corporate command. I hope you can see what's the cart and what's the horse.

Where is this brotherly affection going to come from? Where does giving preference to one another begin?

It begins by continuing steadfastly in prayer with and for one another. It's gonna be hard for me to be selfish against the person

I'm always praying for. It's gonna be hard for me to not love with brotherly or sisterly love the person

I'm always praying for. That's the idea. It's the rootedness of our fellowship.

Ephesians 6, 18, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit.

This is, again, corporate imagery. How many of you grew up with those

Sunday school posters and it has like some medieval knight and it has all the armor of God from Ephesians 6 listed?

That's a wrong image. I didn't realize that was the wrong image until Pastor Matthew Burt came many years back and preached from that passage and reminded us of what first century armor actually looked like.

I should have known this as I'm a Roman history nerd. It just never occurred to me. The Roman armor was designed not for the individual like medieval armor where it's just your whole body head to toe is covered in steel plates and you're just gonna go out there and try to wildly swing and hopefully not get trampled on by a horse.

The idea of the Roman army was you always fought as a unit. There's no such thing as a lone ranger in the Roman military.

You were a unit so everything was meant to be meld together. You might have protective gear but your shield was meant to interlock with every other shield.

The weapons were designed to work together effectively. There was no one that was gonna go out and sort of make the solitary challenge.

That's the idea. Praying always with all prayer. That's shield. That belt of truth, that sword of the spirit.

These things are actually meant to function corporately. It would have been obvious to a first century mind.

So that preposition with calls us to understand continual combative corporate prayer.

Are we striving, struggling, laboring always fervently together with one another in prayer? Our fellowship will be affected either positively or negatively as a result of that.

For lack of it we'll splinter apart. But to grow in that is to grow in the love of the father.

Into the kingdom mindedness that befits our calling as brothers and sisters. Into the joy and the peace and even the zeal that belong to the kingdom of God.

So that's the first preposition, with. Second prepositions that are a pair.

I just wanna draw your attention to them. It's these little words from and for. I think this is a really helpful way for a body to think about prayer.

From and for. One of the things that we ought to be doing as a body if we're to be a whole body is interceding.

Intercessory prayer, interceding. And the language of intercession is praying from something and praying for something.

That's the language of intercession. We see that even just in our passage. Paul writes this.

Strive together with me in your prayers to God that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea.

Pray that I'll be delivered from something. That's intercession. And that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints.

That also is intercession. Pray I'll be delivered from this. Pray that my labors for this will be answered or blessed.

That's intercessory prayer. A whole body strives together in intercessory prayer.

That's a lot of from prayers and for prayers. Pray I'll be spared from this.

Pray I'll be delivered from this. Pray that God would open a door for that. Pray that God would bless me for this.

That's intercession. We're getting some of the content of even Paul's own prayers.

He's spelling out how he wants these believers to pray. How he even wants them to think about prayer. You should be praying for God to deliver you and to bless you.

To help you escape from something and to help you attack or invade something.

That's intercessory prayer. So the from for Paul is deliverance from unbelievers in Judea.

From, in other words, opposition. From enemies. Have you read the

Psalms lately? Half the Psalter are prayers of deliverance.

Prayers from. Deliver me from sword -like tongues.

Deliver me from the treachery of enemies. Deliver me from those who hate my life and pursue me unto death.

Deliver me from an evil eye. Deliver me from greed and violence and bloodthirsty men.

Half the Psalter are prayers from. The other half are prayers for, essentially.

Paul is always having to pray for deliverance. From Acts chapters 20 through 23, we see this cavalcade of warnings and dangers and plots.

You have a group of people that last we read in Acts had made a oath that they were going to assassinate

Paul and they wouldn't eat again until they did. It's like, whatever happened to those guys?

Paul understood the power of prayer. Paul is in chains and then delivered out of chains.

He's in chains and delivered out of chains. He, in some ways, asked for deliverance from chains, but then he also will say, pray that God will use these chains.

Pray that these chains will actually amount for a door of the gospel. So he's always mission -minded.

An intercessory prayer life, a church that's interceding, must be missionally -minded. You're always thinking in terms of from and for.

Providentially, why is this happening? What's the from that we need to pray about? What's the for that God may answer?

It's just a way of looking at your life. It's a way of looking at our corporate life. Where are we? We must be like the sons of Issachar.

What days are we living in? What do we need to pray for deliverance from? What do we need to pray for strength and courage for?

That's a whole body. That's a mature body. Something from, something for.

Let me just give you more examples. 2 Corinthians 1. Paul begins sharing his struggle in Asia.

He says, we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us.

He says, my prayers have been answered. He delivered us. In whom we trust, he will still deliver us.

You also helping together in prayer for us. That thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many.

Froms and fors. He recognizes God was the one who delivered me.

He did it with your help as you gathered together in praying for our deliverance. And he will deliver us still.

And you should understand how powerful your corporate prayer life has been in that regard. And don't just pray for deliverance for our sake.

Pray for a door for the gospel. Colossians 4, beginning in verse two. Continue, this is a corporate command.

You all continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, praying also for us that God would open to us a door for the word. You see, without even spelling it,

Paul is writing this in chains. Praying for us. He says, pray for us, pray for deliverance.

Pray we'll be delivered from these chains. But do you know why I'm in these chains? Because of the word. And what do

I want you to pray for? A door for the word. Prayers from, prayers for.

Was it maybe two years ago now that I was sharing some of the letters from that pastor in China, early reign covenant church, who was in prison.

And what are his letters? But pray that we would be delivered from this. From this, from this.

But pray for this. Pray the Lord Jesus Christ would be magnified.

Pray even our guards would have their eyes opened and their hard hearts softened to the reality of the gospel.

Do we pray for deliverance? Do we pray for protection? Do we pray for a life of peace? Do we pray that we wouldn't have to endure hostility and persecution?

Yes, we pray for deliverance from all of these things. But a mission -minded church, a maturing whole body church, an interceding church is always praying for a door to open for the word of God.

In other words, if you're not praying for, you should not be praying from. And notice what

Paul doesn't do in these passages. When he's asking the church to intercede in prayer, to strive together in prayer, he doesn't allow his understanding of God's sovereignty to short -circuit the call and example of prayer in Scripture, which is something

I think we always do. If it was going to happen, it would have happened.

If it will happen, it will happen. Irrespective of my prayers, irrespective of me striving together in prayer, if God's gonna open a door, he's gonna open a door.

This was the, some of you are aware, heading into the 18th century, the beginning of the modern missions movement, where you had the high churchmen, the ones that Spurgeon would always tongue -in -cheekly comment that they were always sitting in the balcony looking down on him.

And he meant that figuratively, not literally. They were always looking down. Look at this man, this revival evangelical preacher.

He doesn't understand what we hyper -Calvinists understand. Or as the missionary was told, young man, sit down.

If God wants to save the heathen, he'll do it by himself. He must receive all the glory, not you. This is the way that we short -circuit the means that God has called us to.

He has called us to strive together corporately in prayer. Jesus himself not only gave the example of prayer, but he taught his disciples to pray.

When they found themselves powerless because they thought they had everything they needed in themselves, and when he came down from that mount of transfiguration, they said, we weren't able to deliver.

What are we doing wrong? He said, you don't understand. This time goes out by prayer. We always rely on ourselves and the things that we've learned and the place that we've walked.

We stop relying on prayer. What is the example of Christ in his whole life, but he was the man of prayer, every aspect of his life, in this never -ceasing act of prayer in communion with his father, praying by the spirit who was poured out upon him to his heavenly father.

And even as we read in Hebrews 9, 14, it was through that same spirit he offered himself. His whole life was a prayer.

Do you see what I'm getting at? We allow understanding of God's sovereignty to lead us toward almost fatalism.

We end up praying just because we're supposed to pray. It's a thing that Christians do.

We pray because I'm an extra good Christian this week. I'm actually praying a lot more.

It's not actually a way of life. It's not actually something we feel makes that difference that somehow our walk and even the desire of God through our lives is going to be accomplished through prayer.

We just don't have a category for that. We tend to think this way. Isn't this what God wants anyway? Isn't this inevitable?

Can't we simply say if it will be, it will be? That's not Paul's logic. What does

Paul say to the church? Be vigilant. Gather together and pray. Be vigilant in it.

Don't get turned back. Pray for us. Epaphras is always praying for you, fervently laboring in prayer for you.

How are we to understand intercession in this way? We know that God is sovereign. And this sovereign God bids his people to gather together in labor and prayer.

Well, what else can we say about, if not directly prayer, then just intercession? Well, I think we can look at Genesis 18 and see how

Abram intercedes with God before Sodom and Gomorrah. And we can recognize even there that we do not change

God's will through intercession, but rather we participate in God's will through intercession.

In other words, what seems to Abraham like he's standing against the way that God is going, if we're careful to read the text, we understand actually

Abraham is interceding in the way that God wants him to, in the very way that God wants to go, in the way that he wants to reveal something to Abram about who he is, not only who he is as a holy, merciful, and righteous

God, but also the depravity of man and the justice of God. So Genesis 18, we have

Abram before Sodom, and it all, it begins, very important we don't miss this, it begins with God saying, shall

I hide from Abraham what I'm doing? This is, there is no place for Abraham to intercede unless God reveals enough for which

Abraham can intercede. Shall I hide what I'm about to do? If God did not want

Abraham to intercede, he would not have revealed it to him. He would have been saying, thanks for lunch, let's do it again, and then he would have left.

And then the next thing Abraham would have noticed is the smoke rising on the plain, but that's not what happened. As this episode unfolds, it begins with, shall

I hide from Abraham what I'm doing? And the result of that, in passing, is Abraham stands before the

Lord. It's this incredible moment where Abraham's no longer walking side by side, but he actually tries to cut off, no,

I have family down there, I have relatives down there, lots down there, Lord, Lord, you can't destroy that city.

Surely there's 50 righteous in a city that size, in the well -planned, well -watered plain of Shinar, surely there's 50.

And as you know, he whittles all the way down to 10. If Abraham was nervous, if he was just trying to hedge the bet, he probably felt quite content.

Just in my own family, there must be 10 righteous. And he thought, good, they won't even know it, but I've spared them this day by interceding.

Now, of course, the Lord was revealing something to Abraham about that, but you understand, God first revealed what allowed

Abraham to intercede. And whenever we gather as Christians to pray these intercessory prayers, it's because God has made known to us.

He's pressed upon our minds or our hearts those things that we ought to intercede for. Lord, this person is suffering, this tragedy has happened, or these things are going this way.

That is God revealing things to us or impressing our hearts and minds in a way that we can begin to intercede.

If at that moment of revelation, you say, well, what does it matter? The Lord's gonna do what the Lord's gonna do. You haven't understood anything.

Abraham's response as the man of faith is not, oh, the Lord made it known. Who can resist his will?

This man of faith, this man of prayer intercedes. The Lord will ultimately do all that he decrees.

But interceding is a way of participating in his will. And it comes from his prompt, it comes from his sovereignty.

Think of it in the terms of Luke 18. If the persistent widow receives her plea from an unjust judge, how much more so will the persistent bride receive her plea from the faithful and just judge of all?

Why do these passages exist in Scripture if they're not meant to elicit our encouragement to pray, to intercede, to be persistent, vigilant, striving together in prayer?

Prayers from and prayers for, that is intercessory prayer. Third preposition

I'd call your attention to is this little preposition by. Paul says, so that by the will of God, I may come to you.

Now we've moved from intercession and we come to petition. By the will of God, it's a petition.

We're praying after the Lord's will. Jesus taught us to pray in this way. We do not name it and claim it as if all of the energy and hope is pinned to the answer, but rather our faith is employed in making the petition heard.

You dare not think of faithful prayer as prayers that get answered according to how they were asked.

That's not faithful prayer. Faithful prayer is striving to make the petition heard. The king will decide how to answer that prayer.

How to respond to that petition. Your business is not to make that answer. Your business is to make the petition heard.

Philippians four does not say, let your request be answered by God. No, let your request be made known to God.

He will answer according to his wisdom. So we're not merely seeking

God's will by what we ask. We're actually responding to God's will by how he answers.

That's a very important part of prayer. We intercede, we make known our petition, but in understanding that prayer of faith, then the faith has to respond.

The Lord has not opened that door. I'm still in chains. This is still going in this direction. How can

I respond based on everything else God has made known to me? How can I respond now in light of his answer?

Rather than saying he hasn't answered or he won't answer. Many a time as immature believers, we walk away thinking

God hasn't answered our prayers when the answer is staring us right between the eyes. So we have not responded rightly to that answer.

So we go away sulking, we go away wallowing. We haven't responded by faith to God's answer.

Paul recognizes something when he prays that third time and the thorn is still in his flesh.

He recognizes that is the answer. It's not that God has an answer. Or that I haven't prayed faithfully enough.

I've received God's answer. Now I respond to it by faith. He allows his mind to welcome.

Why would it be that an all good God would allow a thorn to be in his child's flesh?

Oh, I know why, Paul says. What has it done all this time? It's kept me pretty weak and humble. It must be that God in his fatherly wisdom doesn't want me to be so puffed up that I float away from the church and from faithfulness like some hot air balloon.

And so in his fatherly wisdom, he allows this affliction to keep me humble and dependent upon him.

Oh, my father is good and trustworthy. Do you see? He doesn't say, I don't know why my prayer life isn't working.

Maybe there's some levers I can pull. Maybe I can clean up my act and then my prayer will actually get the thing I want. That's not prayer.

This preposition by teaches us something about petitions. This is how C .S. Lewis captured it in writing a letter to his friend,

Arthur Greaves. He says, we make a great mistake by quoting thy will be done without the rest of the sentence, on earth as it is in heaven.

That's the real point, isn't it? Not merely submission, but a prayer that we would be enabled to do

God's will just as the angels and blessed human spirits do it with delight, with simplicity, like players in an orchestra responding spontaneously to the conductor.

That's the idea. Praying Father, help me to submit to your will as you make it known, as you answer.

As you may know, the orchestra goes astray without a conductor. I can speak from experience and tell you having played alto sax in the

All -City Band in grades six through eight, that ended in flames, which is a story for another time.

I can also tell you that not only will the orchestra go astray without a conductor, but if the musicians never practice the conductor will be grieved.

And I'm speaking from experience. As I started, now

I'm going into the story anyway, started skipping practice, which was the last 30 minutes of the lunch break in middle school, and I just didn't like going anymore.

I was like, meh, I'm done. My parents had bought this very expensive brass instrument and so they weren't gonna know about it.

So I just stopped going. A few months later, we had this All -City concert with all the four schools and Lemon Store coming together to put on all the pieces that they had practiced, but I hadn't practiced in three months.

Next thing I know, I'm suiting up for this performance, just thinking I'll waltz in and I'll explain to the conductor,

Mr. Hudson, this mysterious absence that had gone on. And so I'm there in my dress outfit and I have my instrument case and my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins are filled out in the auditorium and I waltz in and the conductor says, what are you doing?

Said, oh, I'm really sorry about practice. He goes, yeah, yeah, you can't, you can't go on the stage. I haven't seen you in three months.

You don't even know how to play this piece. And so I tucked my tail between my legs and went and sat down and my parents were so confused.

Are you feeling okay? What's wrong? And the truth had to come out and I had to sit through that performance with laser eyes and whispers, just dreading what was coming on the other side of it.

The point of that story is, I had not done my part to practice. The conductor had all sorts of things he wanted to do, but I hadn't done my part to practice.

I didn't actually consistently show up. And so you could put it this way. I was grieving and maybe even quenching the desire of the conductor.

What does Paul mean when he says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit? Don't quench the desire of the

Spirit in your life. How much of that is attached to prayer? How do we keep in step with the

Spirit of God? If not by prayer and then prayerfully attending his word and then in prayer as a result of attending in his word, seeking to edify one another in fellowship.

The means of grace really flow out of our relationship with God. And the chief principle of our relationship with God is prayer.

If you ask the question, how did Jesus commune with his father? The first and most principled part of that answer is by prayer, by prayer.

So we do not grieve our conductor. We do not quench his desire in our lives. We make a practice of prayer.

This is why Paul is begging the brethren, strive together in prayer. And this means whether we're strong or whether we're weak, whether we're in the middle of temptation, whether we've caved to temptation, whether we're straining with every fiber of our being to resist temptation, we turn everything over in prayer.

We confess in prayer that our flesh is weak. We prompt the Spirit to come and strengthen us. At times that conductor is almost hardly noticeable.

Other times his energy is so bombastic, I can't count many times on my hands, but I can count at least two or three times when

I felt more than strangely warmed, I felt forced to pray, compelled to pray.

I hope some of you have had experiences like that. I know I'm disobeying God if I don't pray about this right now.

I don't even know why. I've never felt such a draw, such a need, such an urgency to pray. That's the conductor calling for it.

Other times it's so soft, you wouldn't notice, but this is keeping in step, fulfilling that desire until that practice becomes perfected.

This is how the Lord taught his disciples to pray. And so our prayer lives grow stale if we're not making a practice.

And the things that help us to practice is that sense of need. It's through trials that we learn how to pray. I've never learned how to pray better than when

I'm walking through a valley of tears. My prayer life tends to falter when things are going well.

Maybe it's a good thing that things don't always go well in our lives. It teaches us how to pray. It teaches us how to bend our will to the will of our

Father. It teaches us to submit as Jesus did, take this cup from me, but nevertheless, not what

I will, what you will. If it's what I will, it may go wrong. So I want it to be what you will,

Father, what you desire. Well, there's much more we could say, and we'll have opportunity to gather even tonight to pray and to talk about prayer.

I have a lot of notes that I'd like to share even about how to grow as individuals in prayer, but let me close with this thought.

We are to pray, and here's the last preposition, in something.

So with, by, from, for, but also in.

Paul writes that by the will of God, I may come to you in joy and be refreshed together.

That joy is front -loaded. We should be gathering together for prayer in joy.

Paul speaks this language of refreshment, that there's something about the believers gathering together that is refreshing.

What must the power of my flesh be that gathering together for corporate prayer seems to be the thing that won't refresh?

Won't it be refreshing if I don't have to go to Thursday night prayer? Ah, it'd be so refreshing if I don't have to go.

How does Paul view it? Oh, that I could be there praying with them, how refreshing that would be.

How powerful must my flesh be that it's the obverse at times? How distracted, how worldly must my life be that I don't find corporate prayer to be refreshing and joyful in this way?

You see, the joy of fellowship is both the cause and effect of this faithful, striving prayer.

It's grounded in the love of the Spirit, grounded in the Lordship of Christ, but if there's not this joy that consists in the kingdom of God, if there's not the joy of refreshing each other in prayers and in presence, then we're never going to grow in prayer.

We'll never be a whole body. The joy sometimes is a fragile thing, isn't it?

As we've learned even this past year, the joy is a fragile thing. Close -knit churches often experience friction and growing pains, but a church that's giving themselves over to strive together in intercession for one another from whatever

God has brought as trial and pressure and hostility for the openings of His Word in and through our lives, if we're gathering together and the reminders of who we are to one another, who we are as co -heirs, as brothers and sisters, if we're gathering together in that joy, we'll have every condition we need to grow in prayer, to have strong knees as a body.

And I would say it's that joy, it's that sense of refreshment, that sense of when I see a brother or sister and I just go, ah, this long, dusty week, and finally, my brethren, ah, the sweetness of the company of God.

Ah, fellow pilgrims, it's been weary, it's been long, it's been sorrowful, the nights have been lonely, but oh, my heart is full right now.

That's the difference between a sweet hour of prayer and a bitter hour of prayer, isn't it? Sweet hour of prayer calls me from a world of care, bids me at my

Father's throne, makes all my wants, all my wishes known. In seasons of distress and grief, my soul has often found relief.

Off, escape the tempter's snare, by this return, sweet hour of prayer. Well, just take that and now take out the sweet hour of prayer and what do you have?

You don't have the escape from the tempter's snare, do you? You don't have the soul finding relief, do you?

You don't have relief from distress and grief. Now your wants and your wishes are not made known, they're harbored and they're growing and festering and confusing and disorienting your walk.

And you're isolated, alienated from the Father's throne because your life is occupied by a world of care.

Do you see the opposite direction? That's the difference of an hour of prayer. That's the difference of corporate prayer.

That's the difference of being refreshed in joy by one another. We're sort of straining to hold these two things together.

The word that Paul uses to speak of refreshment could be translated relax. So on the one hand, we come together to fight, continual combative corporate prayer, but also in coming together, we relax.

The peace and the refreshment among the saints, a little respite along the weary way.

And this is why Paul concludes chapter 15 by saying, may the God of peace be with you all.

It's the God of peace who gives us this sense of peace, the sense of home, the sense of rest.

Strive together with me, Paul says, the God of peace will be with you. Pray in this way together, and not only will you have peace, you will find that the

God of presence is with you, and soon this God of peace will crush Satan under his feet. That's all the reason why you should strive together and fervently labor in prayer.

And so it is, brothers and sisters, to be a whole body requires strong knees, fervent knees, faithful knees.

Maybe here and here alone, we can uniquely assess the maturity of our body. Whatever else we may have going for us, whatever else we may think of our lives as individuals or in our marriages and are in our homes, whatever we may think about our levels of growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, if we have weak knees, unable to labor in prayer, we are not nearly as mature as we ought to be.

We may not even be a whole body without it. And so be encouraged and be exhorted by the

Lordship of Christ and the love of His Spirit, strive together with one another, continually and combatively interceding with God in all that you need deliverance from and in all that you need favor for, praying by His will, seeking it, and responding to whatever

He ordains, knowing it is good and right, so that in joy you may rest together until that day of rest finally begins when

Satan will be crushed under his feet. Amen? Let's pray.

Father, thank You for Your Word. Lord, bless it to us. Help us to grow in these ways. Give us that heart of Epaphras, Lord.

Give us that persistence of the widow. Give us that knowledge of Abraham and the faith to intercede.

Give us the submission of Paul with thorns in his flesh. Give us the resolve of our

Savior to keep the cup at His lips because it was Your will and not His. Oh, Father, help us in these ways.

Help us to grow as a body. Lord, convict each one of us in our prayer lives, individually and corporately.

Help this body to understand the power of prayer in ways that we have not, in ways that we must, to understand intercession and petition.

Lord, to commune with You and seek and grow together in this great means of grace. May the prayers of a righteous church avail much, even just some small mustering together here in some backwater region of New England, Lord.

If we are to gather in a spirit of prayer, the glories that would follow, the fire that would fall as a result in us and through us.

Oh, Father, give us this spirit of prayer. Help us to grow and grow with one another in this endeavor.

And Lord, answer our prayer. Answer our prayers for prayer. Lord, help us to not waste this opportunity to strengthen our knees, to be encouraged to run the race as to win.

Help us, Father, in these ways. We also pray, Lord, if there's anyone here who's a stranger to grace, who doesn't know what it is to pray to You, they don't have communion with You, they don't have the spirit indwelling them by which they can cry,

Abba, Father, even begin to pray our Father in heaven. Lord, grant them by Your mercy even that repentance and faith now.

Help them to see the need they have for a Savior and in seeing Christ as the only

Savior, may they run to Him knowing He will never cast them away. Lord, save them. Even this day, we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.