Zambia Hunt

Glorifying God with Your Life – Part 1

Based on Philippians 1:9-11

This is Part 1 of a 4-part series on glorifying God with your life.

The Apostle Paul carried a burden for the Christian brothers in the churches that he had planted. The apostle’s heart is revealed in his prayer for the saints in Philippi. Before we look closer into the prayer itself, it’s essential to understand the context in which Paul wrote this letter.

Paul established the church in Philippi during his second missionary journey around AD 50. About ten years later, he found himself in prison for proclaiming the Gospel, as those within Judaism opposed his message of gospel grace and reconciliation through Jesus Christ. Paul was taken by the government of Rome by ship to the city of Rome, where he was under house arrest.

As we read this passage, picture in your mind that Paul was writing these words while shackled to a Roman legionnaire. This had been his life 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for almost three years. Can you hear the sound of the clanking of the chain as Paul’s quill pens these words on the parchment?

Paul’s Heart for the Philippians

As we read this passage, we feel the weight of Paul’s situation and the depth of his love for the Philippians. He writes to them to encourage their faith and to express gratitude for their partnership in the Gospel. In his prayer, he asks that their love may overflow more and more with knowledge and depth of insight so that they may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

His heart is filled with joy and thanksgiving as he thinks of them. In verse number three, he writes, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.” In verse number seven, he tells them, “I have you in my heart, in as much as both in my bonds and the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you have been partakers of my grace.” In verse eight, he tells them how deeply he longs after them with the affection of Jesus Christ.

Then, in verse number nine, Paul explains to the church at Philippi that as he thinks these thoughts about them, as he is overcome with joy, as he contemplates their faith and their steadfastness for the gospel of Jesus Christ, as he thinks of them with this love and this overflowing heart, he is praying for them.

Paul’s Passionate Prayer

“And this I pray.” So Paul is saying, here is what I am asking God for on your behalf:

1. “That your love may abound more in knowledge and all discernment or judgment.”
2. I’m praying that you may approve the things that are excellent.
3. That you may be sincere and without offense until the day that Jesus Christ returns.
4. I am praying that you will be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God.

We have all been guilty of offering habitual prayers or even casual prayers. You know, “God bless the pastor, the church, and all the missionaries” kind of praying. We’ve all been guilty of that kind of praying, but sometimes circumstances come to us in life. There are situations that, perhaps unexpectedly, we may encounter when suddenly the seriousness and our perspective of God in prayer are radically affected.

Suddenly, we find ourselves in a situation or a circumstance or facing a challenge that we realize is so far beyond our ability and our wisdom that our hearts turn to God, and from the depth of our souls, we cry out to the only one who can hear and answer and come and meet that need. Have you ever been there?

A Personal Story of Desperate Prayer

I have an amazing wife. I’ve spent my adult life in Africa. I was 25 when I moved to Africa. My wife was 22. As new missionaries leaving the United States, we discussed what we would do when God blessed us with children. We were moving to a country with less-than-ideal medical services, pre-World War II medical equipment, and less current techniques. In that discussion, it was easy for me to say we will have our kids in Zambia. While I quickly came to that conclusion, it was not quite easy for Lori. We prayed about this decision, and in the end, God gave us peace of heart and mind. Should God bless us with children, we would have our children in Zambia.

It was April 8th, 2002, and Lori came to me at about nine-thirty in the evening and said it was time. She was nine months pregnant with our fifth child. Now, husbands, do you remember the first time, the first child? Your wife thinks she feels something, and you mobilize, jump up, grab the bag, rush her into the vehicle, and speed down to the hospital as fast as you can, only to get there and wait fifteen hours before the baby is born.

Well, by the time this little one was coming along, we’d been through the birth process four times. When Lori said, “Honey, I think it’s time,” I was very relaxed. I wasn’t in a big hurry. About 30 minutes later, she returned and said, “This one’s different. We really should go.” We got in the vehicle, drove to the clinic, and got inside, and she gave birth to a baby girl in less than an hour.

The baby came very quickly. The cord was wrapped around her neck when she was born, and the baby was purple. I watched the midwife as she worked swiftly to get that cord off the baby’s neck. It seemed like an eternity, but it was only a short period, and she was successful. And slowly, the baby’s color began to become normal. And everything seemed normal. We were the only people at the clinic, so I told Lori that I was going back to find a place to lie down. I mean, it’s like two in the morning. And men, you understand, the women don’t understand this, but I’m telling you, this whole childbirth thing for a father, it’s exhausting.

You’re involved in all that emotion and all that’s going on, and you can’t do anything. You have to be there, and it’s unbelievable, indescribable, ladies; you don’t understand what we go through. And so I’m finished. I went back to the back room, and I laid down on the floor and fell asleep like that.

And about an hour later, there was a tap on my shoulder, and it was Lori. And she said, “Honey, you must come quick—the baby’s in distress.” So I got up, and we ran back into the birthing room. Carmen was lying there, taking little bitty gasps of air. And now, instead of being purple, her color is gray. And every time she exhaled, bubbles were coming out of her nose. In the birth process, she had ingested so much of the amniotic fluid that she was literally drowning.

The midwife is on the phone at 2:30 or 3 a.m., trying to find a doctor. Either the doctors who were called didn’t answer their cell phones, or the one who did answer his cell phone said, “There’s no way I’m coming out at night; I’ll come in the morning.”

And I remember taking Lori’s hand and leaning over that little bed with that little child lying there fighting for every breath. I remember that prayer. And I remember crying out to God and saying, “Oh God. We’ve done everything that we can do. And we can’t find a doctor! We ask that you would be merciful and spare this little girl’s life. But Lord, you know what is best, And whatever you decide, we will trust you.”

You see, that was not a casual prayer. That prayer came from the bottom of my heart, a cry that rang out before God because I was in a circumstance and a situation where I could do nothing else. If God did not intervene, there was no other answer. God did intervene, and a doctor from another town suctioned the baby out of Carman, and we celebrated her marriage to David last year.

Understanding Passionate Prayer

I suggest that passionate prayer is praying from the overflow of a burdened heart with a deep sense of our inability. It is one man’s passionate pursuit of God on behalf of another. That’s the kind of prayer that Paul is praying in our text.

In these verses, Paul is laying out his passionate prayer to God on behalf of the Philippians. He has spoken of his deep affection for them, how he greatly longs for them, and now he shares with them his prayer. “And this I pray,” Paul says in verse 9. Here is the content of that prayer. He longs for them to glorify God with their life. To be the means by which praise and glory are rendered to God because, at the end of verse number 11, he says I am praying these things to God unto the glory and the praise of God.

In these three short verses, Paul lays out the essentials for a life that glorifies God. This prayer is essentially a plea by Paul for the Philippians to glorify God with their lives. I want you to notice these things that Paul is praying for. Notice, please, beginning in verse 9.

In the coming posts, we’ll dive deep into each aspect of Paul’s prayer and discover what it truly means to glorify God with our lives.

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Coming up in Part 2: “Love That Grows and Wisdom That Discerns” – We’ll explore how glorifying God begins with a love that constantly grows and the wisdom to choose what is best over what is merely acceptable.