An Example of How to Pray

We started 2 Timothy last week.

Only looked at the first couple of verses, kind of an introduction, even though these

books are right next to each other.

When you turn the page from 1 Timothy to 2 Timothy, there's three or four years or so

that have passed by in this time.

A little recap, Paul was writing this letter to Timothy at the end of his life.

This was the last thing that Paul wrote, at least the last thing we know of that he wrote

so far as the Bible's concerned.

This is the last book that he would have written in his life, or letter I should say, that

he would have written before eventually he was killed.

Now, we don't know all the details of that, but ultimately Paul lost his life in service

to the Lord.

And so, he's writing this letter to Timothy, and so we talked about that a little bit last

week.

Tonight, we will start in verse 3, and we'll go from there.

So let's pray, and we'll get started.

Dear Lord, we come to you.

We thank you for a good day.

I pray, God, that your Holy Spirit would be among us, that you would help me to be ready

to preach and teach your word, God, that you would help me to be free of the worries and

the stresses and the thoughts of this world.

Perhaps there are others, dear Lord, that come in here with stuff on their mind, worldly

stuff, stresses of the world.

I pray, God, that you would just free us of that tonight.

I pray that your Spirit would speak to us, that we would hear your word, that we would

learn from your word, and that it would instruct us, that we would listen to it, God.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

There's a lot of good stuff here in verse 3.

We'll read through it, then we'll talk about it.

In Timothy chapter 1 verse 3, I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience, as my

ancestors did, when I constantly remember you in my prayers night and day.

Now this is a beautiful passage, I think, because we can look at each part of this passage,

and we can see some good instruction here for us.

We can test ourselves tonight, if you want to, as we look at this passage.

We can test ourselves and see how good we do.

What's the first thing we see here that Paul says?

He says, I thank God.

Okay, this is a good test for us.

Do we thank God?

Well hopefully we do, but sometimes our prayer life may kind of be overtaken with our concerns

and our worries and our stresses and our needs, and God help me with this, and God help me

with that, and God, I need you.

Please help me.

And there's nothing wrong with praying that.

We want to pray to God.

God wants us to come to him and bring our burdens to him, but we need to remind ourselves,

perhaps from time to time, maybe we just need to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving.

God, I thank you for a beautiful day.

God, I thank you for the breeze that you gave me today.

Boy, nothing feels better than a good breeze on a hot day.

Even the simple things, acknowledging those things, not overlooking those things, not forgetting

those things.

Just a prayer of thankfulness, and maybe we thank God every day, or maybe we don't.

Maybe there are times that we forget and times that the Holy Spirit kind of reminds us or

we see something around us or we realize how much we're blessed, and we say, you know,

God, thank you that I've got food on my table.

Thank you, God, that there's air blowing on us right now in the middle of summer.

Thank you, God, for being good to me and my family.

God, thank you for our health.

There are certainly many things we have in this world to be thankful for.

Sometimes the stresses and the worries and the hardships of this world may kind of overshadow

that.

And maybe that's why it's good for us to look at passages like this to remember that even

on our worst days, maybe we have some things to be thankful for that we're not realizing.

And maybe that's a good place for us to start on a day where we're depressed or we're upset

or we're angry or we're going through something really hard.

As instead of giving in to the difficulty of our situation, to take a moment and say,

God, I thank you for the good stuff that's going on.

And that's how Paul starts right here at the beginning of this letter.

He says, I thank God.

And that may need to be part of our prayer life too, if it's not already.

Whom I serve with a clear conscience.

Okay, here we go.

Here's the test.

Are we serving God in our life?

In the way that we live and the things that we do, are we serving God?

And are we serving God with a clear conscience?

Can we get to the end of our day or the end of our week and can we say, man, I really

did all I could do and I did it with the right heart and I did it for the right reasons?

Or maybe sometimes we don't.

Maybe sometimes we do the right thing with the wrong heart.

Maybe sometimes we do the right thing for the wrong reason.

And so maybe we need to test ourselves and say, okay, God, there's some areas where maybe

I've done some work.

Maybe I served you in some way.

But maybe we don't have a clear conscience about the way we've been living, the things

we've been doing.

But Paul says, look, I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience.

So we want to be those that serve God and that serve with a clear conscience.

That when we get to the end of our days, that when we get to the end of our weeks, when

we get to the end of our months, when we get to the end of our lives, that we don't have

any regrets.

Now, certainly we probably do tonight.

There's probably some of us here tonight and maybe something you can think of the day that

you regret.

Man, I regret saying that.

I regret doing that.

I regret making that decision.

Perhaps even today we have some regrets and there are certainly some in our past, but

we want to be those who seek to serve God as best we can.

We'll never be perfect.

We seek to be perfect, as the scripture said, be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

So we strive to be like God in every way, but we don't succeed in that.

But that's our goal.

And so we keep reaching for our goal so that hopefully we can be those who serve God with

a clear conscience.

Continuing on, he says, as my ancestors did.

Now, that's a beautiful thing.

Paul is acknowledging that there are many brothers and sisters in Christ who came before

him who were faithful to God.

Even in the Old Testament, before Jesus came, there are many who came before Paul who were

faithful to God.

Now, I suspect if we were to take a few minutes tonight and go around this room, if I were

to ask you about a brother or sister in Christ that had a big impact in your life or a big

impact in the community, you could probably tell me a couple.

You could probably say, oh, yeah, I remember brother so-and-so.

Man, he was a man of God.

I remember when he said this and it stuck with me.

I remember seeing him do that and it stuck with me.

I remember sister so-and-so.

Oh, I remember she was so sweet.

I remember her spirit.

I remember her love.

I remember how she loved people and cared for people.

And what a beautiful example these people are, that we can look back in our life at

those who've come before us and we can see beautiful examples of who Jesus is.

That is the hands and feet of Jesus.

We see that so many times in the men and women who've come before us in our lives.

We can probably all think of a few people that we would put on those lists.

But here's the test for us.

What will be said of us?

What will be said of us a generation or two or three from now?

What choices will we make?

What things will we do for our families, for our community, for our nation that may have

a bigger impact that we can imagine?

What will those who come after us say about us?

Will they be able to look at us and say, man, he was a man of God or man, she was a woman

of God.

Man, he left an example to be followed.

She left an example to be followed.

Well, only we can determine that.

We determine that.

We determine every day how we're going to live our lives.

Now, we don't determine what's going to happen to us every day.

We don't determine if it's going to be good or bad, if it's going to be hard or it's going

to be easy.

We can't determine what our circumstances are going to be, but we do have a part in

what our response is going to be.

So we want to strive to be those who are a good example so that there are people who

are coming after us, that they'll be able to look at our life and that we'll have some

positive impact on their life.

Not so that they give us the glory, but so that they give God the glory so that they

grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ, so that they see good examples and they carry

on those examples to their children and their grandchildren and their communities.

And Paul says, here, look, I serve God with a clear conscious as my ancestors did, just

as those who came before me did.

They were a good example and I've been a good example and I've lived a good Christian life.

It's a good question for us to answer on our test tonight.

Are we living a good example?

Are we living a good Christian life?

Continuing on, I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscious as my ancestors did.

When I constantly remember you in my prayers, day, excuse me, night and day.

So here's another key thing that we see.

How often was Paul praying?

He was praying night and day.

He was praying daily and he was praying for Timothy.

He was praying for the one whom he loved.

He was praying for his brother in Christ.

He was praying for the one who was doing the work that Paul by this point probably couldn't

do because of his imprisonment.

And so here he says, look, I pray for you every day and every night.

Now I'm going to tell you what, there's something beautiful about when somebody tells you, I've

been praying for you.

I've been praying for you this week.

I've been praying for you and your family.

I've been praying for your surgery you got coming up.

I've been praying for this job that you've got coming up.

Now sometimes perhaps people tell us things, oh, I've got this coming up and that coming

up and well, we've got enough stuff coming up on our own.

We might not even think anything about it, but maybe we need to make a little note.

I would say a mental note, but we'll forget that.

We might need to make a little note on our phone or on a post-it card.

I remember Mary Blaylock at the store sometimes.

You'd say, be praying for so-and-so.

And you know what he'd do?

He'd pull his wallet out, he'd unfold this piece of paper and he'd write your name on

there.

And on that piece of paper was a whole list of other names.

What a beautiful thing to know that there's somebody that's praying for you.

And so we want to be those who pray night and day.

We want to be those who pray to God and thank God for who he is, for what he's done.

Most importantly, for Jesus Christ that our sins may be forgiven so that we may receive

the grace of God.

We want to go to God with all of our concerns and all of our fears and all of our burdens

and all of our struggles, all of our requests.

We want to let them be made known to God so that the peace of God, which transcends understanding,

may fall upon us.

We want to continually lift up our petitions to the Lord.

We want to praise God.

We want to thank God.

We want to seek God for wisdom and for help and for deliverance.

This is all part of our prayer life.

We want to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We want to pray for those who are struggling.

We want to pray for the marriages that are falling apart, those who are struggling with

addiction, those who are raising children, those who are trying to start a new job, those

who have health issues.

I mean, the list goes on and on.

We want to pray for those people.

We want to pray for each other.

It ain't nothing wrong with telling somebody, if you see them, you know what?

Brother, sister, I've been praying for you.

You've been on my mind.

You've been on my heart.

It makes you feel good when you know that somebody cares about you, that somebody's

praying for you.

That's exactly what Paul says here to Timothy.

He says, I pray every day and every night.

Do we pray every day, every night, once a day, twice a day, 10 times a day?

Well, a good place to start is once a day.

If you don't pray once a day, today's a good day to start praying and pray whatever's on

your heart.

That's the thing about prayer.

Some people say, I don't know what to, what do I say when I pray?

You just say what's on your heart.

You just say, God, I had a rotten day.

God, I said some stuff I shouldn't have said.

God, I wish I had a better heart.

I wish I could love this person that I'm having a hard time loving.

God, I want to do better.

I want to give more.

I want to help people more.

God, I don't want to have such a bad attitude.

I don't want to be so angry.

There's your prayer.

You just tell God what's going on.

God, thank you for being good to me.

God, this is a good hamburger from McDonald's and I thank you for it, even if it does cost

$18.

Whatever it may be, we need to pray to God and we need to thank God and we can just be

honest with God.

We can be ourselves.

We don't have to use some fancy language or some big words.

We don't have to pray for a long time or a short time.

It doesn't matter.

We just need to open our mouth and open our heart and say, God, I thank you and I need

you and I pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ.

There's a lot of good stuff in here that we can look at in this one verse that we can

see if we're doing a pretty good job.

We can test ourself.

Sometimes we fail the test.

Well, it's good to know when you fail the test because then you know you got some stuff

to work on.

Maybe in this short verse tonight, we realize that maybe we got some stuff to work on.

Let's pray.

Father God, we come to you.

We thank you for your good word.

We thank you for being good to us, God.

We thank you for this country.

We thank you for the freedom we have to come here.

I thank you for these men and women who have come here.

I thank you for giving us good examples in our life.

Dear Lord, I suspect every one of us has got a good example.

God, maybe there's some that don't.

Maybe there's some listening online and they don't... Never had anybody that was a good

example to them.

But dear Lord, I pray that they would seek out some brothers and sisters in Christ.

I pray that they would seek out some who are living by your word.

God, I pray that we would be faithful to lift up those around us, those who are in need,

those who are struggling, both those who are our brothers and sisters and those who do

not yet know Jesus Christ.

Dear Lord, I pray that we'd be faithful to pray and lift them up to you.

I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.