¹¹To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power, ¹²so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Why pray? Is prayer a ritualistic form of good works that gains for us a better standing with God? More brownie points with the Almighty? That would be foreign to the thought of the apostle Paul as well as the other apostles on whose testimony we base our faith. Prayer is not a ritual in which we repeat over and over the same words, like Hindu adherents who spin their prayer wheels hoping their repetitions rise in their multiplicity to the gods. I can remember from my childhood the practice of repetitive “Our Fathers” long after the discipline of memorizing was accomplished and rote recitation set in.

Paul intently asked God for things immediately relevant to his ministry, not for gaining spiritual merit for himself. When he asked for prayer for himself, it was not to win a higher standing in the heavenly realms, but to enable him to carry out his ministry effectively (e.g., Eph. 6:19, Col. 4:3). In our passage today, the apostle prays that his readers would not only “be considered worthy of the kingdom of God” (1 Thess. 1:5) but also that God would “count [them] worthy of [their] calling.” To be sure, we should do everything in our power to live in a manner worthy of the Lord, but ultimately our worthiness can only be attained by God’s working in our lives. It is not entirely up to us; otherwise, why would Paul be praying like this? Both the human and the divine components are involved.

The Thessalonian believers have done well in their spiritual walk, and Paul encourages them to do even better, but this cannot be done in the flesh. In his earlier letter he wrote, “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thess. 5:24, also Eph. 4:6, 1 Cor. 1:8). God is the one who will fulfill every desire we have for goodness and every desire we have for doing the work of faith with power. We know that we are “created . . . for good works” (Eph. 2:10), but for those works to be spiritually powerful, we must do them in faith through God’s work in our lives. Only then will our efforts bring glory to “the name of our Lord Jesus.” This is all by God’s grace, make no mistake about it. We have a high calling in Christ, but He is the one who will make us worthy of that high calling. Our role is to trust Him, live our lives for His glory, and keep building on the faith, hope, and love we already have in Him. That is the intention of Paul’s prayer, that God would enable us to live worthy.

Lord, please count me worthy by Your grace.