Grow In Love

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 1so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. – Philippians 1:9-11

Over the next couple of days, we are going to be learning about one of the things Paul prayed that most of us never even think about. Paul prayed that God wants us to be growing up in our going up.

In today’s key verses, the prayer that Paul prayed will radically change any life, any church, and any denomination. The way Paul prayed for the Christians in Philippians is the way that we should all be praying for our church, our spouse, our children, our families, and ourselves.

So today, we’re going to look at the first aspect of this prayer we can pray. And then tomorrow we’ll discuss two more aspects.

First, you should pray that your love will grow. We all know that God is love and that God tells us we are to love each other. We are to love our friends, our enemies, our spouses, our children, our family and we are to love Him most of all. But Paul prays that our love will “abound more and more.” In other words, it should grow. It is one thing to possess love; it is another thing to progress in love.

Our love should grow wider. We should love more people. It should grow deeper. We should love people more. Real love – the love that we need to pray for is not just love that flows, but rather love that overflows. Have you ever poured Coke into a glass of ice too quickly? Before you know it, the fizz has exploded to the top of the glass and overflowed. That is the picture that Paul uses here. Love never stays stagnant. It should never decrease, rather it should always increase.

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow as we continue to learn more about how to pray like Paul prayed.

Dear Lord, I want my love to grow. I want to have overflowing love for everyone that crosses my path. Help me to love the way you love, and help me to love the way you call me to love. In Jesus’ name, amen.