Praying With Paul Sýnishorn

The Framework for Prayer

For better or worse, all Christians have some sort of default framework for how to pray and what to ask for. Children growing up in believing homes learn to pray from their parents. When college students come to Christ, they adopt the framework for prayer modeled by campus ministry leaders and the Christians that disciple them. Regardless of where we start, we should try to cultivate a more robust and mature framework for prayer. Even though most of Jesus’ disciples had grown up praying in their homes and at the synagogue, they still said to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). 

2 Thessalonians 1:3-10 provides us with Paul’s framework for prayer, the foundational motivations and theological convictions that shape what the apostle prays for and why. In verse 3 we read, “We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.” Paul here expresses gratitude to God for three particular signs of grace among the Thessalonian believers. 

First, Paul thanks God that their faith is “growing abundantly” (ESV) or “flourishing” (HCSB). This refers not to their initial conversion experience but to their increasing faithful trust in God. In Paul’s former letter, he wrote that he sent his coworker Timothy “to establish and exhort” them in their faith and hoped to come to them himself to “supply what is lacking in your faith” (1 Thess. 3:2,10). Paul thanks God because the Thessalonian believers aren’t satisfied by past successes but are striving to grow in spiritual maturity.

Second, Paul expresses gratitude to God that their love is increasing. Earlier he observes that these Christians had “been taught by God to love one another” (1 Thess. 4:9), and now he celebrates that such love is increasingly apparent among the Thessalonians. It is natural for people to love, tolerate, and get along with those who are like them, who share similar interests, temperament, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. Ideally the church is different, as it is made up of people from various backgrounds and life stations, who share a more fundamental allegiance to the Lord Jesus that stems from His matchless love for them. Love is the distinguishing mark of Jesus’ followers (see John 13:34-35), and so Paul is grateful when he sees it.

Third, Paul thanks God that they are persevering through persecutions and afflictions (see 2 Thess. 1:4). The Thessalonians’ display of steadfastness and faith in trials is so outstanding that the apostle boasts about it “in all the churches.” For believers who stand in grace and maintain a sure hope in God, “suffering produces endurance” (Rom. 5:3). Thus, Paul testifies publicly that the Thessalonians are remaining faithful in suffering, so that others might be encouraged by signs of God’s grace and might join Paul in thanking God for His amazing work in these believers’ lives. 

Paul sets an example by thanking God for signs of His grace in other Christians’ lives, specifically their growing faith and love and their faithful endurance of suffering.