Priorities are hard things aren’t they.
Like choosing a pudding. Do you like cheesecake? Yes. Do you like sticky toffee pudding? Yes. Do you like rhubarb crumble? Yes. Do you like chocolate mousse? Yes. You can’t eat 4 puddings. You wouldn’t manage to eat them all without being sick. You would get high cholesterol if you ate four puddings every day. You have to choose. Which one do you want? Cheesecake. Sticky Toffee. Rhubarb Crumble. Chocolate Mousse. You may have only one. Ah. Much harder.
We have to have priorities for life. If you have to choose between having a holiday or running a car, which is it to be? If you have to choose between reading, going out with some friends, watching telly, or reading a good book, which is it to be? You can’t do everything. Much harder.
We have to have priorities for our churches’ lives, too. What’s going to matter the most? How do we listen to the needs of children, teenagers, young adults, the middle aged and the elderly? How do we focus on reaching out to those who are not here and on meeting the needs of those who are? We have an hour and a quarter together on a Sunday morning. You can’t do everything. What will we do?
You may recall from a couple of months back that the church at Philippi was in good health and in good heart. Paul seems to have a bit of a soft-spot for them. He hasn’t got anything big to tell them off about. He has dangers to warn them of; he has areas where he wants them to grow, but he doesn’t want to have a go. He wants to encourage them. “You’re doing well,” he says. Keep at it.
Even so, he starts his letter by telling the Philippians what he prays for them. Paul could ask God to do anything he wanted for these Christians. But, of all the things he could have asked God to do, this is what he does ask for. If Paul wanted God to do one thing for the Philippians, this is it. And they’re a healthy church. This is not a prayer to sort out their problems. This is what Paul thinks is the best thing that God could do for a healthy church.
Like a child. Picture a child who is fit, who is healthy, who is developing just perfectly. They’re not grown up yet. The priority for a child who was overweight would be to lose weight. The priority for a child who was undernourished would be to take in more nutritious food. The priority for a child who had swine flu would be to get better. But even healthy children have to grow up.
I’m sure that we have our problems. As Christians, all of us fall short in our own ways. As churches, both our churches will have many failings. It may be that we need to address some of these as a priority. But even a healthy Christian, even a healthy church, has growing to do. And Paul’s prayer here tells us what he thinks is the most important thing for a healthy Christian and for a healthy church.
Two things come out of what Paul prays for:
Long for more and deeper love for God
First, Long for more and deeper love for God. Long for more and deeper love for God.
Verse 9: “And it is my prayer that your love may overflow more and more, with knowledge and all discernment.”
Paul prays that the love that these Christians have for God might overflow its boundaries. It’s like a river. We all know what that looks like when it overflows. We had the damaging floods in Cumbria in the Autumn, and they are still recovering up there, long after the news has lost interest. The river bursts its banks. The water normally flows down the river, between the two banks. But too much rainfall, and the water escapes its boundaries and runs much wider.
Paul wants our love for God to be like that. Where are we at the moment? How much do you love God? Paul says: Let’s burst that boundary. May you grow in love for God more and more, that leaves the old path of the river far behind.
I don’t know what boundary we think is reasonable. How much love for God is enough? How much would you like to love God? Paul says: Let’s burst that boundary too. There is no such thing as too much. That’s why he says “more and more”. More and more, and more and more, and more. It’s a continuous process of our love for God increasing and overflowing, and then increasing some more.
But in what direction does Paul think our love for God should grow. He mentions two things. The first is that our love should grow in knowledge. Now, we know that there are two kinds of knowledge. You can know facts, and you can know a person. Knowing someone is not the same thing as knowing about them. Paul is talking about knowing God. Not knowing facts. Knowing him as a person. And in that, he says, our love can grow. We can love him more, appreciate the privilege of knowing him more, get to know him better and better, walk more closely with him.
The other way he says our love for God can grow is in what he calls discernment. Nouse. As you live life, day by day, on the ground, what does it look like to love God. What kinds of things do you do? What kinds of things do you avoid doing? What does love for God look like in all the changing scenes of life? And then doing it.
That’s how our love for God can overflow and increase. We can know God better. And we can get better at living as those who love him. And there is no higher priority than that, says Paul.
This last week, I had a conversation I have every few weeks. It’s a delight. An engaged couple come to see me to talk through how they go about organising a wedding here. One of the things that I always say is that weddings take a lot of time to organise, but in planning their wedding they need to plan for their marriage too. They will get married. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to work at. In ten years’ time, their marriage may be really healthy. We hope and pray it will be. But the business of getting to know each other more, and the business of working out their love in the situations they find themselves in, never stops. We hope they will grow in love for each other for the rest of their lives.
So let’s ask: What are our priorities? For us? For other Christians we know? For our children? For our grandchildren? For our godchildren? For the lives of these churches? Of all the things that Paul could have prayed for, this is what he went for. And remember – this is a healthy church he writes to. This is not a remedial prayer. Take a church with no big problems – here’s what he prays.
So let’s make this what we pray for each other. Let’s pray this for our church. Let’s pray this at Kemsing for Woodlands, and let’s pray this at Woodlands for Kemsing. Let’s pray this for our mission partners. Praying, that we might grow in love for God with every passing day, week, month and year. Praying, that our love for God might work itself out in the way we know him, and in living for him in practice.
That’s Paul’s first priority. He says: Long for more and deeper love for God.
Long for fruitful and discerning living.
The second is this: Long for fruitful and discerning living. Long for fruitful and discerning living.
Look at the end of our reading. Paul wants his readers to be filled with the fruit of righteousness. Think of the fruit of the Spirit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness and Self-Control. Is that how you would want your life to be described? Would you like someone to say at your funeral, without exaggerating, that those are the best 9 words to sum up the way you lived your life? That’d be good, wouldn’t it?
Well that’s Paul’s goal, too. So what’s the key to it? Verse 10: Being able to choose what is most excellent. Being able to know what is most important. Being able to distinguish the good from the best.
And what’s the key to that kind of discernment, Paul? Well verse 10 starts with the words “so that”, so we’d better to look back to verse 9. Verse 9? We’ve got back to where we were a moment ago. Grow in love for God through Jesus Christ, so that you may be able to choose.
In other words, if you want your life to be filled with the fruit of righteousness, you need to learn to distinguish the good from the best. And if you want to learn to distinguish the good from the best, you need to grow in your love for God through Christ.
I wonder if you went shopping at all in the January sales. The trouble is, you keep finding things that look useful or fun, and that are reduced to a very tempting price. That’s a trouble, you say? Yes, it is: You can only carry so much, fit so much in your car, fit so much in your house, afford to pay for so much. So you have to choose. You have to learn how to say: That would be really fun to have. But it’s more important that I have this other thing instead. You have to learn to distinguish.
And the key to distinguishing the very best in life is to grow in love for God. The more you love God, the more you’ll prioritise your life by choosing what is close to his heart. And the more you make decisions that resonate with God’s heartbeat, the more you’ll be filled with the fruit of righteousness.
So let’s allow this to shape our prayers as well. Let’s pray for one another that our every decision would be in tune with the things that are dear to God; that our love for God would turn into making the very best choices.
And let’s take this on board as we think about our life as a church as well. I take it that we would like to be fruitful churches, that do great things for God and bring his blessings to many. What’s the key to that? The key is not the right technique. It’s not reading the right books. It’s not tweaking the way we do this that or the other. It’s not avoiding tweaking this that or the other either. It’s getting to know God better and better through Jesus Christ, and loving him more.
Conclusion
So we all have to prioritise in many ways. But what are our priorities going to be when it comes to God?
Paul tells us what his priorities are for healthy Christians and for healthy churches. The most important thing is that we grow in our love for God. That in turn will make us discerning people who choose the very best. And that, in turn, will make our lives fruitful in all kinds of ways, as God’s righteousness is worked out in what we do. May it be so.