Micah McCormick: Philippians chapter 1.
Micah McCormick: Go ahead and turn there.
Micah McCormick: We're continuing on this study through Philippians.
Micah McCormick: Verses 9 to 11.
Micah McCormick: That's the text for tonight.
Micah McCormick: Philippians 1, 9 to 11.
Micah McCormick: This is what God's word says.
Micah McCormick: And I pray this that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior, and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Lord, what better prayer could we offer than to pray that our love would keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, that we would approve the things that are superior, that we would be pure, that we'd be blameless in the day of Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: Oh God, fill us up with the fruit of righteousness.
Micah McCormick: It's a fruit we know and acknowledge that comes through Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: And we pray that we would do this all to your glory in Jesus' name.
Micah McCormick: Amen.
Micah McCormick: Robert Murray McShane was a Scottish minister in the 1800s, and he famously said, If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies.
Micah McCormick: Yet the distance makes no difference.
Micah McCormick: He is praying for me.
Micah McCormick: If you could hear Christ praying, that would bring encouragement to you.
Micah McCormick: And the knowledge that he is praying for us should bring encouragement to us.
Micah McCormick: It would bring instruction to.
Micah McCormick: Even the disciples come to Jesus and they say, Lord, teach us to pray.
Micah McCormick: And he gives them a pattern for prayer, the Lord's prayer.
Micah McCormick: Well, we don't have an audio recording of the words of Jesus.
Micah McCormick: We don't have an audio recording of the apostles' prayers as interesting as those would be.
Micah McCormick: The apostles, too, can teach us much about prayer.
Micah McCormick: We do have written down prayers that they prayed.
Micah McCormick: And we have one such prayer right here in Philippians chapter one.
Micah McCormick: It's a prayer that Paul himself prays for the Philippian church.
Micah McCormick: And we can learn a lot from this particular prayer.
Micah McCormick: The title for the message tonight is Lessons from Paul's School of Prayer.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to limit myself to five lessons.
Micah McCormick: You can take more than that.
Micah McCormick: And there's actually a number of Paul's prayers that are recorded throughout scripture, especially in the letters.
Micah McCormick: My title is similar to a chapter in a book by someone who looks at a larger number of Paul's prayers.
Micah McCormick: We're going to focus just on this prayer tonight from Philippians chapter 1, five lessons from Paul's prayer.
Micah McCormick: Here's the first lesson.
SPEAKER_02: Three verses.
Micah McCormick: I'm sure at times Paul said more than just these specific words for the Philippians.
Micah McCormick: Perhaps he's summarizing some of the things he's prayed for them here.
Micah McCormick: But those are speculations.
Micah McCormick: The bottom line is Paul says, Hey, I've prayed for you.
Micah McCormick: Here's what I've prayed.
Micah McCormick: And it's pretty short.
Micah McCormick: That's similar to Jesus' pattern Our Father in heaven, hallowed by thy name, and it goes on.
Micah McCormick: It's a relatively short prayer.
Micah McCormick: But Micah, what about pray without ceasing?
Micah McCormick: I'm not saying that we should rarely ever pray.
Micah McCormick: I'm saying when we pray for any particular group or person, it doesn't necessarily have to be a long prayer.
Micah McCormick: We should have a spirit of prayerfulness about us throughout the day.
Micah McCormick: We should want and desire that.
Micah McCormick: But we shouldn't feel discouraged if we're not praying 15 minutes straight for New Hyde Park Baptist Church or the Cooney families as missionaries.
Micah McCormick: But Micah what about when Jesus went and spent all night in prayer?
Micah McCormick: It's a wonderful thing.
Micah McCormick: That wasn't every night.
Micah McCormick: So there's wonderful occasions when we can spend greater seasons in prayer.
Micah McCormick: I'm not saying overlook those or minimize those, but don't minimize short, simple, scriptural prayers.
Micah McCormick: Matthew 6, 7, and 8.
Micah McCormick: When you pray, don't babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they'll be heard for their many words.
SPEAKER_02: Don't be like them, because your father knows the things you need before you ask him.
Micah McCormick: We're not trying to get God's attention or inform him.
Micah McCormick: He knows.
Micah McCormick: Nothing happens.
Micah McCormick: And Elijah gets up and prays, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you're God in Israel, and I am your servant, and that your word I've done all these things.
Micah McCormick: Answer me, Lord, answer so that the people will know that you're God and you've turned their hearts back.
SPEAKER_02: And then fire falls down from heaven.
Micah McCormick: It's the power of the person we're praying to.
Micah McCormick: It's not the length of our own prayers.
Micah McCormick: Some of you might be a little hesitant about praying on Sunday night or Wednesday night or even to come on Wednesday night because, well, I just can't pray a long, eloquent prayer.
Micah McCormick: Don't.
Micah McCormick: Pray a short, heartfelt prayer.
Micah McCormick: Lesson number two, we should pray for churches and not merely for individuals.
Micah McCormick: Who is Paul praying for here in these verses?
Micah McCormick: Verse 9, he speaks of your love and that in verse 10, you may approve what is superior.
Micah McCormick: It's not a letter for the saints, uh, for Timothy as an individual.
Micah McCormick: It's for the saints at Philippi, verse 1, together with the overseers and deacons.
Micah McCormick: He's praying for the church.
Micah McCormick: When Allie was back visiting with us from Texas, she came into Audrey's house and she said, Hey, y'all.
Micah McCormick: And we said, Boy, Texas has got a hold of you.
Micah McCormick: She said, Oh, oh, sorry.
Micah McCormick: Hey, you guys.
Micah McCormick: Paul is praying for y'all.
Micah McCormick: Paul is praying for you guys here in this passage.
Micah McCormick: So, how often do you find yourself praying for groups of Christians, especially for churches?
Micah McCormick: We live in a very, very individualistic society that has some benefits.
Micah McCormick: Why are food courts and diners so popular?
Micah McCormick: In part because you can go and people can get whatever they want.
Micah McCormick: Doesn't work that way at the family dinner table.
Micah McCormick: At least it didn't used to work that way.
Micah McCormick: One of the challenges of the society we live in is that we're not as used to caring for groups of people and praying for groups of people.
Micah McCormick: I go to a pastor's fellowship, and one of the great things about that fellowship is usually at some point we kind of go around the room and ask the question, how can we pray for your church?
Micah McCormick: I love that question.
Micah McCormick: It's not uncommon for me to get an email or a text message from an administrator or another pastor here in the area.
Micah McCormick: Hey, how can we pray for your church this coming Sunday?
SPEAKER_00: Other churches are praying for our church.
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: What a blessing.
Micah McCormick: So when we think about missionaries, yes, let's pray for individual families like the Coonis or the Wissies.
Micah McCormick: But let's also pray that the Sola Fide Home Fellowship that the Coonis are working with would blossom into a multiplying church.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray for the Whisies that wherever God lands them, they'd be able to help build up or establish a healthy church for the glory of God by God's grace.
Micah McCormick: Our prayers don't have to be long.
Micah McCormick: We should pray for churches and not merely individuals.
Micah McCormick: Lesson number three.
Micah McCormick: We should pray that Christian love would keep growing.
Micah McCormick: That's how Paul starts the prayer in verse number nine.
Micah McCormick: You can look there again.
Micah McCormick: I pray this, that your love will keep on growing.
Micah McCormick: That sounds like kind of a, well, duh.
Micah McCormick: I mean, love is pretty important by this.
Micah McCormick: All people will know that you're my disciples by the way that you love one another.
Micah McCormick: Isn't that kind of obvious that we should pray that Christians would love each other and that that love would grow in in churches?
Micah McCormick: It's obvious, but it's always needed.
SPEAKER_02: Look around our world.
SPEAKER_02: Even look within churches.
Micah McCormick: The world could use more Christian love.
Micah McCormick: Churches could use more Christian love.
Micah McCormick: There's never enough of that.
Micah McCormick: So we want to keep praying that it would grow.
Micah McCormick: Now, as we pray for this growing love, there's two very important guideposts that Paul puts on this particular prayer.
Micah McCormick: You can see those at the end of verse number nine.
Micah McCormick: That your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment.
Micah McCormick: Love that's untethered to God's truth is not really love.
Micah McCormick: Carson puts it this way: without the constraints of knowledge and insight, love very easily degenerates into mockish sentimentality or into the kind of mushy pluralism the world often confuses with love.
Micah McCormick: These constraints do not stifle love.
Micah McCormick: Far from it, they ensure its purity and value.
Micah McCormick: So we're not just praying for a vague, more positive feeling, although we want our whole mind, heart, soul, and strength to be engaged in loving others, but we're praying particularly that love would grow, that it'd be a growing love in knowledge.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes those two things are pitted against each other.
Micah McCormick: Well, we don't really need more knowledge.
Micah McCormick: We just need more love.
Micah McCormick: No, that's not what Paul says here.
Micah McCormick: He says we need a love that's a growing love in knowledge.
Micah McCormick: We need a love that understands and embraces from a personal way and from our hearts who the Lord is, that we know him, and all the truth of his word that he's given us.
Micah McCormick: It's all good, it's all glorious, and all that knowledge is fuel that will help our love grow more for him and for others.
Micah McCormick: When's the last time you heard someone pray for New Hyde Park Baptist Church that our love would keep growing in knowledge?
SPEAKER_02: Is it because we could be tempted to think, well, we we pretty much have all the knowledge we need.
Micah McCormick: We could use a little more, but we we've got that covered.
Micah McCormick: If that's the case, let's confess our pride and pray for humility and then pray that our love would grow more and more in knowledge.
Micah McCormick: The other guidepost that Paul puts out here for increasing love is that it would be a love not only that's growing in knowledge, but also a love in discernment.
Micah McCormick: You might be looking at a Bible tonight that says depth of insight there at the end of verse 9, that second guidepost.
Micah McCormick: A discerning love.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes online you'll see different ministries that label themselves discernment ministries.
Micah McCormick: You ever run into that online?
Micah McCormick: Generally speaking, you should avoid them because they're not very discerning.
Micah McCormick: Just as an FYI.
Micah McCormick: Usually what they're doing is they're they're gonna want to convince you that every public Christian you know is secretly a wolf in sheep's clothing, or every notable church is just actually a den of iniquity.
Micah McCormick: And it's at best, it's kind of it can be nitpicking.
Micah McCormick: At worst, it can be actually slanderous.
Micah McCormick: You're jumping to conclusions about motives or behaviors or associations without that much information, without that much knowledge.
Micah McCormick: And is the goal love, or is the goal just to kind of be the Christian alternative of a world's cancel culture?
Micah McCormick: The goal is love.
Micah McCormick: And another note: if you run into a Christian individual that says, God's really given me the gift of discernment, they probably don't have it.
Micah McCormick: Um but you can help them, be kind to them, uh, be patient with them, and hopefully you can help them see and know scripture even better.
Micah McCormick: A growing love is a discerning love, so it doesn't rush to believe everything that calls itself discerning, but we do need discernment.
Micah McCormick: It says so right here.
Micah McCormick: We need a love that clearly and carefully distinguishes right from wrong.
Micah McCormick: A similar word to the word that's used here in verse 9 is used in Hebrews 5.14.
Micah McCormick: That passage reads, solid food is for the mature, for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.
Micah McCormick: That's a lot broader than just this novel has some bad words in it.
Micah McCormick: I need discernment whether I should read it or not.
Micah McCormick: It's much broader than that.
Micah McCormick: It's all-encompassing all of life.
Micah McCormick: Lord, I want to know what's right and wrong in your eyes, and I want to love and celebrate those things and avoid whatever's not good and righteous and lovely and all those words in your eyes.
Micah McCormick: Pray for a growing love.
Micah McCormick: Fourth lesson.
Micah McCormick: Four out of five.
Micah McCormick: So that we do five lessons.
Micah McCormick: Here's the fourth one.
Micah McCormick: We should pray with the end in view.
Micah McCormick: Let me say that again.
Micah McCormick: We should pray with the end in view.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 10.
Micah McCormick: So that praying for this growing love, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.
Micah McCormick: The day of Christ there refers to the second coming of the Lord Jesus.
Micah McCormick: That's a common theme in the Bible.
Micah McCormick: Live with the end in view.
Micah McCormick: 1 Corinthians 1 8.
Micah McCormick: He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: 1 Thessalonians 5.2, you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night.
Micah McCormick: Let us stay awake and be self-controlled.
Micah McCormick: So if we're praying with the end in view, the end of history, the final wrapping up of all of God's purposes, to bring in the sermon from this morning, this day of the Lord that has come, and that yet in another sense will come climactically and finally.
Micah McCormick: If we've got the end in view, we're gonna want to pray for churches to approve things that are superior, as verse 10 says.
Micah McCormick: That's that's the Christian Standard Bible, the Pew Bible.
Micah McCormick: Yours might say to approve what is best or to approve what is excellent.
Micah McCormick: If you know eternity is rushing in on you, don't you want to live for what's the best thing you could live for?
Micah McCormick: Again, it's a very sensible prayer, but it needs to be lived out and prayed out in light of what's coming.
Micah McCormick: So, how can we pray to approve what is superior?
Micah McCormick: What does that look like?
Micah McCormick: Lord, help Crossbridge to understand that Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches are better than McDonald's chicken sandwiches.
Micah McCormick: They're far superior.
Micah McCormick: No, that's obvious.
Micah McCormick: You don't have to pray for that.
Micah McCormick: Pray for more important things.
Micah McCormick: There's an example of the kind of thing that Paul is talking about right here in this very letter.
Micah McCormick: So flip over to Philippians 3.
Micah McCormick: Not gonna do a sermon on this passage, it's coming later.
Micah McCormick: But I do want you to see this because Paul's gonna elaborate on the excellent things, superior things, the what is best kind of things.
Micah McCormick: Verse 7 of chapter 3.
Micah McCormick: Everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.
Micah McCormick: More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Micah McCormick: There's one thing of surpassing value, you can always pray that they would know Christ more.
Micah McCormick: Paul goes on, because of him I've suffered the loss of all things, and consider them as dung, that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
Micah McCormick: My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
Micah McCormick: There's the end in view, the resurrection from among the dead, and all the while he's got the surpassing value knowing Christ more.
Micah McCormick: So we can pray for other churches and for our own church and for Christian organizations.
Micah McCormick: Help us to have this grasp of the surpassing value of Christ and who he is.
Micah McCormick: Paul suffered and he found Christ to be of inestimable value amidst his suffering.
Micah McCormick: We're not praying for people to suffer more, but we're praying for them to have a kind of experience and mindset in their suffering.
Micah McCormick: So think about how we pray for suffering churches, and even we could say this applies to individual prayers.
Micah McCormick: How do you pray for suffering individuals?
Micah McCormick: It's fine, it's kind, it's right to pray that they would be healed.
Micah McCormick: But if 95 plus percent of our prayers are merely, Lord, heal this person who's gotten a bad diagnosis, heal this person in the hospital, Lord, this church is going through some hard times, you know, bind them up, heal them.
Micah McCormick: If that's all that we're praying, we're not capturing Paul's full heart of prayer.
Micah McCormick: We pray that they'd be able to say, amidst their suffering, I know something about fellowship with Christ.
Micah McCormick: And I have a resurrection power that's at work in me, that's sustaining me, and I have a vision of Christ and a relationship with him that's carrying me through this.
Micah McCormick: That's what we want to grow and flourish, along with whatever physical healing the Lord may bring into their lives.
Micah McCormick: Let me switch to a different arena of application.
Micah McCormick: Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Micah McCormick: The verse here additionally speaks of being pure and being blameless in the day of Christ.
Micah McCormick: Again, that there's the goal in mind, but what's beautiful here in part is that Paul's not demanding perfection right now.
Micah McCormick: That's not to say he's excusing sin at all, but he's praying with the end in view and wanting Christians to progress towards that end.
Micah McCormick: Pray with the end in view.
Micah McCormick: 2 Peter 3 The day of the Lord will come like a thief.
Micah McCormick: On that day, the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed.
Micah McCormick: Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people should you be in holy conduct and godliness as you wait for the day of God?
Micah McCormick: Based on his promise, we wait for a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells.
Micah McCormick: That brings us right into the final lesson.
Micah McCormick: Lesson number five from Paul's School of Prayer.
Micah McCormick: We should pray that righteous lives will bring glory to God through Christ.
Micah McCormick: Right from verse number 11, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.
Micah McCormick: Pray for our church.
Micah McCormick: Pray for North Shore Baptist Church.
Micah McCormick: Pray for Beacon Church.
Micah McCormick: Pray for West Hills Baptist Church.
Micah McCormick: Pray for other churches that they would be filled with the fruit of righteousness.
Micah McCormick: Does that sound kind of pious or overly self-righteous?
Micah McCormick: It's Paul's prayer.
Micah McCormick: Can't be wrong, provided it comes from a good heart.
Micah McCormick: How often do you get a letter from a Christian organization?
Micah McCormick: And it says, pray for us coming up in 2026.
Micah McCormick: We'd love to have a larger influence.
Micah McCormick: We want our ministry to expand.
Micah McCormick: Pray for us as we're making staffing decisions.
Micah McCormick: Pray for us as we try to hit our goal of$2.3 million by the year 2030.
Micah McCormick: Those aren't wrong prayers.
Micah McCormick: But you ever get a letter from an organization, missions organization, camp, Christian camp, and they say, pray for us that this year we'd be filled with the fruit of righteousness.
Micah McCormick: Would that be a letdown?
Micah McCormick: I hope not.
Micah McCormick: It's the kind of thing that desperately is needed in prayer and in churches and organizations everywhere, the fruit of righteousness, lives that are more and more and hearts aligning with God and his purposes, his heart, our heart, his mind, our mind.
Micah McCormick: We want those things lined up in these morally beautiful and compelling ways.
Micah McCormick: There's one other place in the Bible that mentions the fruit of righteousness.
Micah McCormick: You don't have to turn there, but I'll read it for you.
Micah McCormick: James 3, verses 17 and 18.
Micah McCormick: The wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense.
Micah McCormick: And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace.
SPEAKER_02: Pray that.
SPEAKER_02: Pray that for one another.
SPEAKER_02: The ultimate reason that God's doing this is that he would receive glory.
Micah McCormick: The works of the flesh contrast with the fruit of the spirit.
Micah McCormick: It's supernaturally produced by God.
Micah McCormick: And so if it's supernaturally produced by God, where else can we go but to God to ask Him to do it?
SPEAKER_02: The ultimate test, one writer says, is the test of our motives.
SPEAKER_02: Our prayers reveal more and more whether the grand central hub of our lives is ourselves, or whether it's God.
Micah McCormick: So we pray that God's glory would increase, that his fame would increase in this church, in that church, and the churches that everywhere name the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: And that's where this prayer of Paul actually comes full circle with the Lord's Prayer.
Micah McCormick: When the disciples say, Teach us to pray, Jesus begins, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
SPEAKER_02: May your name be set apart as holy.
Micah McCormick: The devotion of your glory, would that be the first thing that headlines our prayers?
Micah McCormick: This is how Paul ends this particular prayer.
Micah McCormick: It's coming through Jesus Christ, but it's multiplying to the glory of God.
Micah McCormick: That love that we have for others, part of the prayer, growing love, it's going to be growing horizontally to the extent that it grows vertically to God.
Micah McCormick: That's the source and supply of the love.
Micah McCormick: And it goes back to him that he might receive glory, that others might be compelled to say, I want that love for the Lord.
Micah McCormick: I want that kind of a growing love for his people.
Micah McCormick: And we love him because he first loved us.
Micah McCormick: When we gather on Sunday, we don't want to be a Tower of Babel church.
Micah McCormick: You know what I mean by that?
Micah McCormick: They wanted to make a name for themselves.
Micah McCormick: It can happen in kind of subtle ways.
Micah McCormick: Hey, welcome to our church.
Micah McCormick: Hopefully you met our great ushers.
Micah McCormick: You're about to hear from our great band, then you're going to hear from our great pastor.
Micah McCormick: Yes, I mean, we're we're thankful for all those things, but we're gathering because we want people to hear about our great God.
Micah McCormick: We want him to have the spotlight because he's the one that satisfies far more than any one other thing, individual idea, plan, or purpose or program in a church.
Micah McCormick: So that's what we pray about.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to close us once again with this prayer from Philippians chapter one for our church.
Micah McCormick: I'd invite you in your own hearts, pray along.
Micah McCormick: Hopefully, you can say amen to this short and beautiful prayer.
Micah McCormick: Lord, how we thank you.
Micah McCormick: And we're praying this that our love as a church would keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, that we would approve things that are superior, that we would be blameless and pure in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to your glory and praise.
Micah McCormick: Amen.