When Love Prays

When Love Prays

I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. Philippians 1:9

PAUL HAD JUST TOLD BELIEVERS in the Philippian church how he longed for them with the tender compassion of Jesus. But as we know, love doesn’t just sit there. It is moved to action, and very often that action is prayer. So Paul immediately told the Philippians how he had been praying for them—how the compassion of Jesus filling his heart had come out in his words, faith, and spiritual power. He prayed that their love would grow more and more (as his had), and that their knowledge and understanding would increase. He wanted them to see the King and the Kingdom as clearly as they could because that’s the most loving thing we can hope for in someone else’s life.

The fact that Paul’s prayers were motivated by love—specifically by “tender compassion” (verse 8)—is significant. We should never pray just for the sake of praying or even for the sake of making things right, accomplishing godly goals and purposes, or getting our needs met. Our prayers are to flow from a fountain of love because that is the foundation and fundamental truth of who God is (1 John 4:9, 16). Our prayers have to connect with God at this point; otherwise, they are pointless. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, all of our activity is fruitless apart from love.

The good news is that prayer is especially fruitful when motivated by love—far more so than if we pray because we want to see miracles, experience God’s power, satisfy the needs and longings in our hearts, or have our spiritual status validated. None of those desires are necessarily wrong; they just aren’t the highest priority. Instead, when we are driven to pray for ourselves and the people around us because our hearts overflow with love for God and others—because our compassion moves us, as it so often moved Jesus—we are moving in sync with God’s Spirit. Our prayers carry his DNA within them. His love—and ours—becomes the reason, the purpose, and the outcome of the things we pray.

We are never nearer to Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at his unspeakable love.