The prayers of Paul

This is a series of the prayers of St Paul found in the letters attributed to him in the order he is believed to have written them. Letters to the same place or person will be treated with the first letter to that destination.

This prayer can be seen as a continuation of the previous prayer in Philippians 1:3-6, but where that prayer was thanksgiving for what the Philippian Christians did, here he moves on to pray for them.

⁹ And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰ so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, ¹¹ filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:9-11 ESVUK

The world is full of self-help books, many of them about positive thinking. The question I have is why are they so many of them? If they worked why the need to write another book?

Positive thinking is not all bad. It is used by the Samaritans when people have phoned in who are stressed out thinking of the worst that can happen. Negative thinking has great negative power. Remember this, just because it’s bad doesn’t mean that it’s true.

But as for positive thinking, people were caught out by Covid. No amount of positive thinking would make it go away. Three months in people who had thought it would pass slowly complained that the UK government had said it would pass in 12 weeks, but what the government had done was to request that vulnerable people isolate for 12 weeks. If they had taken time to look at the length of a pandemic they would see that they last about three years.

An old interview with US Vietnam POW camp survivor, Medal of Honour winner Commander James Stockdale has stuck with me. When asked, “Who didn’t make it out.” He said, “That’s easy, it was the optimists.”* The Bible does not say, “Look on the bright side,” because the Bible is not interested in interpretations of the truth, positive or negative, it is concerned with truth. It is not about positive or negative thinking but realistic thinking.

Christians are not immune from this. Takes this passage:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

Unfortunately, that verse, as nice as it sounds, is completely out of context. The context is that Judah is about to be taken into exile. The worst thing that can happen is about to happen. God’s message is that the exiles will be blessed when they turn to God and come to pray to him. As for the optimists, those who said that Judah would remain in its homeland, things turned out badly for them.

Paul’s prayer, above, talks about knowledge and discernment in our love. It is about realism, knowledge, plus the discernment of what is true. The power of truthful thinking, realistic thinking, will bring us blameless in the day of Christ because it is based on the reality of God and his love for the world. God loves you. This is the reality that your faith should be built on, God’s love shown in Jesus Christ who gave everything, even his life so that we might have abundant life.

You are loved. That is the start of truthful thinking.

---

< Previous | Prayers of St Paul | Next >

*https://www.mindandsoulfoundation.org/Articles/596277/Mind_and_Soul/Articles/Not_so_positive.aspx