Praying that Love May Abound
David W Palmer
(1 Thessalonians 3:10, 12–13 NKJV) Night and day praying exceedingly that we may see your face and perfect what is lacking in your faith? ... {12} And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you, {13} so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints.
(1 Thessalonians 3:10–13 NLT) “… make your hearts strong, blameless, and holy as you stand before God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes again with all his holy people. Amen.”
We note something in this passage that is worth keeping in the center of our focus. Paul doesn’t flinch when he says that “you— ‘the church … in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thes. 1:1 NKJV)—will stand before God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes again.” Without doubt, we will “all” stand before “the judgment seat of Christ” (Rom 14:10). In other words, God makes us accountable to him for our actions—whether “good or bad”:
(2 Corinthians 5:10 NKJV) For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Jesus’s return is not an escape from the need to have a strong heart, be blameless, and to be holy. This is a strong motivator for the apostle Paul’s prayer for our love to grow and overflow; he knows that the attributes he listed are [some of] the very criteria that will be assessed as we “stand before God … when our Lord” returns. “Thank you Holy Spirit for adding this prayer to your word and making it so plain.”
Let’s imitate what we see here in Paul’s Holy Spirit-led prayer for the believers; and let’s pray this same prayer over our loved ones and ourselves—fully anticipating and expecting the results of which Paul wrote.
In another of his recorded prayers, Paul asked the Lord to do the same thing for his friends at Philippi:
(Philippians 1:9 NLT) “I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.”
This Holy Spirit-inspired prayer is another that we can imitate. We too should pray that love will abound in us and overflow from our lives. Paul goes on to give us an impressive list of the outcomes and benefits he expects from this prayer:
(Philippians 1:10–11 NLT) “For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. {11} May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God.”
The benefits and results of this prayer are quite amazing; the apostle Paul prays that their love may overflow and that they keep on growing in knowledge and understanding so that they can first “understand what really matters.” What, you may ask, really matters? God is love; love and our loving actions and words obviously matter to him. The Holy Spirit wants us to grasp this as a deep and profound revelation. No matter what else we do or say in life, it must always be filled with, coated in, and motivated by love:
(1 Corinthians 13:1–3 NLT) If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. {2} If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. {3} If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love really matters to God; therefore love should be our priority.
Another outcome of the apostle Paul’s prayer for our love to overflow is that we may “always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character
