“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy.”
– Philippians 1:3–4
What a wonderful picture of Paul’s love for these Philippian Christians in Philippians 1:3–4. I thank my God every time I remember you, and I pray for you with joy.
Let Philippians 1:3–4 prompt you to pray continually for those who are around you.
Oh, here’s what I want to encourage you to do based on this picture in Philippians 1:3–4. This is something God has been, yeah, doing in my own heart recently and this just brings it to the surface.
Philippians 1:3–4 Wants Us To Pray For Those We Think Of
So you know those times during the day or the night, just whenever, when different people pop into your mind, people from the past, people from your present, people you know and interact with, and maybe it’s for good reason.
Maybe you think about people because you’re frustrated with them or maybe you think about people because this or that that they did kind of rubbed you wrong. Or maybe so the opposite is that you think about this person because it’s something they did kind to you.
So regardless, when people come to your mind, let that be a prompt from God to pray for those people. To thank God for those people. To pray with joy for those people.
And that can look obviously different when it comes to different people, but when God brings people to your mind, maybe to think it’s not an accident that he’s brought into my mind. So let me pray. Let me just stop and just quickly pray for them.
So when you think of people who either in your family, friends that you work with, from church, that you would be continually thanking God for his grace in people. Even in people that you have a hard time getting along with. I mean, it will change your perspective to be continual in prayer for them.
It will certainly help you when they come to your mind to pray for them. It will begin to give you God’s perspective of them and at the same time when you think about people you are fond of and have close relationship with, then the beauty of Philippians 1:3–4 will take hold in your heart.
This Verse Thanks God For Letting People Into Our Lives
You will find yourself thanking God every time you remember these people, and praying for them with joy. So just pause right now. A part of me wants to just give some space. Hopefully, you’ll have even just a couple of minutes after this short podcast/prayer is finished to just pray in thanksgiving for different people.
Just let your mind wander to all kinds of people in your life right now in your life, in the past and just spend time thanking God. Just going to go through. I do this periodically in my time with the Lord.
Just God, I thank you for and I just start thinking of all kinds of different people in my mind goes in all kinds of different directions. I find myself praying for all kinds of different people.
So let Philippians 1:3–4 just play out in your life in that way and periodic concentrated time just thanking God for people. But then as you go throughout the day, praying, continually thanking God for people, praying with joy for people.
So God, we praise you for the privilege of prayer. We praise you for the joy that we find and lifting others up to you. I was reading the other day in 2 Corinthians, just how you unleash blessing on people’s lives through prayer.
Philippians 1:3–4 Prays For The People Around Us
So God, we pray in thanksgiving for the people around us, the people that you will bring to our minds all day today. God help us. Help us to pause in those moments and to thank you for those people, to pray with joy for them. If they are followers of yours, God, we pray that you would help us to pray for their growth in Christ. For your blessings, their intimacy with you, and all that flows from that in their lives.
God, for unbelievers who you bring to our mind, God help us to pray continually for their salvation. Help us to pray, continue that you would draw them to yourself. God, we pray that you would make us continual in prayer for those who are separated from you by their sin right now, who are in our spheres of influence.
God, as you bring up people from our past, help us not to think it’s a coincidence. So God, help us to look at this as your prompting to pray for them. God, we pray that the fruit of our continual thanksgiving and continual intercession for people around us would be your blessing, just unleashed on those people, and your perspective of those people in our lives.
Oh God, teach us to pray like this. And even now, as we closed this prayer, this podcast episode, we pray that you would just take our minds in all kinds of different directions to all kinds of people that we thank you for and we pray for with joy.
So do that now. Even right now, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
