Prayed for Constantly

Guest (Male): We may not realize it, but role models are important to us at any age. The choices we make concerning whom we look to for direction are critical, especially when it concerns our prayer life. Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. James Boice, teaching you to think and act biblically. Today, we begin a new volume in our series on the book of Romans called The Power of Salvation. Throughout this study, we'll be learning the importance of living a disciplined faith. And since prayer plays such an important role in a disciplined faith, ask yourself this question: Do you sometimes find it difficult to pray? Does enjoying God sometimes seem like an insurmountable task? Well, you're not alone. We all go through times in our Christian life when prayer seems hard, but as we turn to God's word, we can find helpful instruction for us concerning what to do during such moments. Let's turn now to Romans chapter one, verse nine, and begin.
Dr. James Boice: We come today to a section of Romans in which the apostle Paul models prayer for us. What we're going to read is not a doctrinal treatise on prayer, and therefore I'm not going to handle it that way. Paul doesn't tell us what prayer is, he doesn't tell us who to pray to, he doesn't stress, as it would be quite proper to stress, that it's through the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit and such things. This just isn't the nature of the passage. Or again, this is not a passage that gives us how-tos for an effective prayer ministry. Seven ways to pray so that you get the thing you asked. This isn't what Paul is doing. Paul is just reflecting on his own life. He's not even thinking particularly about prayer; he's just mentioning to these Roman Christians that he prays for them. But as he mentions it, he says something about how he does it, and as he talks about it, what he really is doing is modeling a prayer life for us. Now here's what he says, verse nine: "God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times. And I pray that now at last by God's will, the way may be opened for me to come to you. I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong, that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith." Now, I want you to see a number of things about this, and the first thing that we notice is that a strong prayer life is not inconsistent with vigorous service for the Lord. Let me repeat that: a strong prayer life is not inconsistent with vigorous service for the Lord. Now, we know that theoretically, but in practice that shouldn't be the case. If anybody would ask us theoretically, is it possible to serve God and be strong in prayer too? We say, of course, yes. But actually, in our thinking, it's probably the case that we divorce the two. Because isn't it true that when we think about people who really are strong prayer warriors, it's a little trite phrase we use, prayer warriors. Isn't it true that when we think of strong prayer warriors, the image that naturally arises to our mind is that of a little old lady somewhere who is not able to do anything and so she prays? Or we think of somebody who has been hospitalized, somebody who's bedridden. They're not useful in any other way, so they might as well pray. And we hope they do, and we say, oh yes, that's good, do pray for me. We certainly need prayer. But you see, we separate the two. We would say, I think we sometimes think this way, some people have the gift of prayer, and then there're the rest of us; we have the gift of activity, and so we work without praying. Now, that is not right. Let me say, because I don't want to be misunderstood at this point, that I think some people are given a special gift of prayer and do have a special prayer ministry. But what I want to stress, and what it strikes me as perfectly evident on the basis of this passage, is that a strong prayer life is not inconsistent with strong service. You can be very active for God and be very active praying. Indeed, those who are most active and certainly those who are most effective pray greatly. Now the apostle Paul is an example. He started off one missionary journey after the other. He'd come to a city and he'd preach and establish a church there, and then he'd move on. In the course of that kind of an itinerant ministry, having no real home of his own, he was imprisoned many times and stoned and beaten and shipwrecked. He traveled over sea and by land in hardships and dangers, some from without, some from within his countrymen and so on. But he kept at it. Everywhere he went, he established churches, and once he established them, he kept them in his mind and his prayers, and he wrote to them, and he tried to help them through the various problems that developed. I just can't imagine anybody who was more active than Paul. He tells us in one place that he carried daily the burden of all the churches. No busy executive ever had more responsibility than Paul, no active worker ever had more things to do. And yet Paul was a great prayer warrior. Here's what he says. He says, "Constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times." Do you think Paul was exaggerating? I don't think he was exaggerating at all. I think he really did pray all the time for the churches. Just as Martin Luther prayed all the time, and John Calvin prayed all the time, and Jonathan Edwards prayed all the time, and George Whitefield prayed all the time, and John Wesley prayed all the time. Robert Hall Dane has a wonderful quotation at this point. He's writing about this text and Paul's faithfulness in prayer, and he says this: "Prayer and labor ought to go together. To pray without laboring is to mock God. To labor without prayer is to rob God of his glory. Until these are joined, the gospel will never be entirely successful." Now the second thing I want you to see about this passage is that prayer also directs Christian service properly. It's important to say that because many engage in so-called Christian service but are misdirected in what they do. Misdirected in terms of their goals; they set out to build an earthly kingdom rather than the kingdom of Jesus Christ. And misdirected in their methods; they set out to do it in the world's way and not in God's way. The Lord Jesus Christ was well aware that the kingdom did not come by power, by force of arms, by manipulation; it came by the spirit through the preaching of the word. And that's what he did. And when he sent the church into the world to preach the gospel, it was to carry out the same kind of ministry that he had established and carried out during the days of his flesh. And yet as we know, many, many works get off base at this particular point. Now the apostle Paul didn't. The apostle Paul did things God's way, and the way he did it was by prayer. What I'm saying is that prayer kept Paul on the track. It kept him from getting misdirected. Notice what he says about his service for God in this passage. He says first of all, verse nine, that he served God wholeheartedly. Now many of our older versions at that point say, "I serve God with all my spirit." Now some have understood that to mean he served God by putting his spirit at God's disposal. One of our modern translations, the New English Bible, views it that way. That of course is a possibility, but I think the New International Version is surely correct when it takes that phrase "with my spirit" and interprets it as a paraphrase to put it into the kind of language that we understand: "with all my heart." That is, sincerely, wholeheartedly. That's the way Paul ministered. I emphasize this because there are many who don't minister in that way. Some are engaged in Christian work, but they're lazy. Ministry is something in which you can be quite lazy if you choose to be that way. Nobody generally checks up on how you use your time, and you can be lazy. Some are misdirected, some get off the track in other ways. Paul knew people like that. He writes to Timothy about it; he says they're disobedient and they never accomplish anything good. And yet as I say, he wasn't like that. And the thing that kept him on track was prayer. As he prayed, the concerns of God became Paul's concerns. And as long as there were people out there who hadn't heard the gospel, he made it his determination to preach the gospel where the name of Christ had not been known. So, that's one thing he says about his service. Secondly, he indicates that his service was gospel-centered. Now that's the phrase he uses: "God whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his son." Very few people engaged in Christian work would say up front that their service is not gospel-centered. We know that the gospel is the important thing and that as Christian people, we're called to make that gospel known. That's the great commission; it's the task of the church. But it is interesting how easily other things push the gospel aside. We can get engaged in programs, and the programs push it aside, and all sorts of things happen. They come in to take the gospel's place. And what keeps us from that kind of an error? What keeps us from falling into that worldly trap? Well, the answer is prayer. As you pray, God keeps the gospel of his son before your eyes. And certainly that had happened with Paul. Here he is writing to this church, he wants to minister to the church, and what he really wants to do is share the gospel with them. That leads me to the third thing that Paul says about his service, very clear from the passage, and that is that it was for others. Some people carry out service for themselves. They might get a reputation or establish themselves. Sometimes, God forbid, they look upon it merely as a job. But Paul didn't do that. Paul was concerned for others. There's a sequence of ideas here that is really worth looking at. He says that he prayed, that is he started with prayer, and he prayed that he might be able by the will of God to see these Roman Christians to spend time with them. And then secondly, he prayed that he might be able to see these Roman Christians in order that he might impart to them some spiritual gift. And then thirdly, he prayed that he might see these Roman Christians and impart to them some spiritual gift in order that they might be made strong or be established. You see how that relates to other people and how from the beginning it is grounded in prayer. It begins with prayer; that's where his desire comes from. And I'm sure also, though Paul doesn't say it explicitly, that it ends with prayer. Because although he didn't get to see them, at least by this point in his life, he certainly was praying for them. That the same things that he hoped to do for them personally on the day when he finally did get to visit Rome might happen in them through the ministry of other people. You see, a lot of things will keep us from serving others. Criticism will do it because we find it a lot easier to minister to people who like us and think well of us than those who are criticizing us. Fatigue will keep us from doing it. We sometimes get too tired to think about other people. It takes concentration to think about others; it's more natural, easier to think about ourselves. Sin will keep us from it because sin breaks our communion with God, and this other-directed mindset has to come from God. Sin really is self-centeredness as opposed to being God-centered or other-centered. And so all those things come in to hinder the advance of the gospel. What is it that will get us through that and make our service move in the direction that God intends? Prayer is the secret. Prayer will keep us from being unduly burdened down by criticism. Prayer will redirect our efforts so fatigue doesn't destroy our witness and will strengthen us. Prayer will keep us from temptation. We have it in one of our great hymns about prayer. It begins with a question: Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged; take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer. Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our refuge; take it to the Lord in prayer. Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer. In his arms he'll take and shield thee, thou wilt find a solace there. Well, in the third place, not only does prayer direct our service in the proper manner, it also makes the service of the praying one effective. Now somebody who knows the situation here might well ask the question how we can say that in view of the fact that Paul was praying to get to Rome and at least at this point in his life had been kept from getting there. A person might say, Paul certainly had a strong desire and that is true, and Paul certainly knew how to pray and that is evident. But in spite of his desire and his prayer for the thing he desired, it didn't happen. Well and good, we say, we often pray for things and they don't happen, that we can understand. But how then can we say that prayer is effective or that prayer makes our service effective? It would seem from the circumstances that Paul, at least so far as the Roman Christians was concerned, had no service at all. Well, let's think about that for a moment. Notice a number of things. First of all, when Paul prayed for the Christians in Rome, he certainly did not restrict his prayer merely to the fact that he would get there. As a matter of fact, he makes that clear. He says in verse nine and ten, "I remember you in my prayer at all times," that's the first thing. And then secondly, "I pray that now at last the way may be opened for me to come to you." In other words, he prayed in general for the Christians at Rome, and then as part of that he prayed that he might by the grace of God have a part in their strengthening. That's very important. What did Paul pray for when he prayed in general for the Christians at Rome? Oh, I'm sure he prayed for a number of things. He prayed that they might be established and strengthened in their faith. He prayed that they might be kept from the onslaught and temptations of Satan. He prayed that their witness might be effective. He prayed that they might be enabled to bear a strong witness in this corrupt capital of the Roman world. That and many, many other things. And so I ask the question: was Paul's prayer for these Roman Christians ineffective? The answer obviously is no, it was effective. And we know because of the way he talks about their witness. He said, we saw the verse when we studied it the last time, that their faith is being reported all over the world. He prayed for them that they might be strong, and they were strong. God had kept them strong, and their faith was known. So his prayer for them was certainly effective regardless of his involvement with them personally. And then secondly, we have to see that when he prayed for them and prayed that he might be enabled to visit them, he prayed that it might be by God's will that he should come. In other words, he recognized that there are many things we desire that may be very good and proper in themselves, but that does not necessarily mean they are God's will for us. He wanted to come to Rome, but perhaps that wasn't God's will. And at least up to this point, apparently it wasn't, because the concerns of the churches, the hindrances he talks about, had kept him from his visit. Did Paul chafe under that? Was Paul unhappy by that? No, not at all. We know that he was submitted to the will of God because of the way he deals with the hindrances. You see, we mustn't think that this was an incidental thing for Paul. That Paul said to himself, well, you know, I've been in all the other cities ministering and I'd kind of like to go to Rome to minister there, and so God, if it's your will I'd like to go. And if God said no, he shrugged his shoulders and say, well that's all right, there are other things I have to do. That isn't the way it was. Paul really did want to get to Rome, and he talks about it a lot. He talks about it here, and in case we miss the seriousness of it here, he brings it up again in the 15th chapter, saying several times over that he wanted to get to Rome and be strengthened and helped on his way by the Christians there and then go even on beyond Rome to Spain, the far end of the Roman Empire. You see, it was part of his vision of his great commission. He wanted to preach the gospel from Syria to Spain, from Jerusalem to Tarshish. And yet in spite of that, he was hindered. His life was getting on; Paul was getting older. And yet as we read this, we don't detect any sense of frustration or bitterness or anxiety because he was praying according to the will of God. Now I want you to see, in addition to everything I've said so far, that by the will of God, he did eventually get there. Now it wasn't the way he wanted to get there; he was in chains. And it wasn't when he wanted to get there; he was delayed. And he didn't get there easily because there was a shipwreck along the way and several years of imprisonment before they even shipped him to the capital. But he got there. And in God's own providential operating, what happened actually served to the furtherance of the gospel. Because he tells us about it in Philippians. He said, "You know, when I was imprisoned in the care of the imperial guard, I bore a witness." And so by that means the gospel spread throughout the entire Praetorium, that is, the pick troops of the emperor. And we know because of other sources, early, early Christian documents, that the gospel spread even in those early years into high levels of the government, so that members even of the imperial family came to believe in Jesus Christ. Were Paul's prayers effective? The answer is, of course, they were. James was not lying when he said in the fifth chapter of his book, verse 16: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." Well, there's one last thing I want to mention. Not only is prayer not inconsistent with active Christian service, not only does it direct our service, not only does it make it effective, prayer also changes the one praying so that he or she increasingly becomes the kind of person through whom God can accomplish his purposes. I know this was true of Paul. Paul, as I understand his character, was at least in the early days not an entirely gracious person. We know he was very strong-minded, that he was rigorous in his determination. And in the early days before his conversion, he was cruel. Paul was ready and willing to kill people who didn't have his outlook on religion. Even after he was converted, he must have had his moments. We know that at one point he got into a quarrel with Barnabas about John Mark and they had to part company. The two apostles couldn't even work together because they disagreed so strongly. That's what Paul was like. And yet, what a gracious man Paul turned out to be! How God worked in him! And here you find it as he writes to the Romans. I see it just reflected in an incidental way. He's writing here about his desire to be with them, and he says verse 11 that it's so he might impart to them some spiritual gift to make them strong, and all that's entirely proper, it's exactly what he should have done. He was an apostle, he wanted to minister there as well. But when he says it, he stops and he says to himself, "You know, maybe even though I'm an apostle, that sounds just a little bit arrogant. It sounds like it's all one way. It sounds like I have something to give them, but they have nothing to give me." And so he pauses, and because of what God has done with him, adds the line, verse 12.
Guest (Male): You've been listening to The Bible Study Hour, with Dr. James Boice, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. If you would like to listen to this message again or more messages on Romans or other books of the Bible, you can find them on our websites: thebiblestudyhour.org and alliance-net.org. We're a listener-supported ministry, so we welcome your contributions to keep this ministry going. You can give a gift today at alliance-net.org or write to us at: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Thanks for listening and join us again next time as we continue our study in the book of Romans.