Last week I was reading through Philippians 1:3-11 when it struck me that Paul provides us with a few fundamentals of praying for others. In a sentence, we might summarise those principles like this: praying for others is grounded in the assured confidence that comes with knowing God and affectionately remembering his people, desiring God’s glory.

Previously I’ve developed a passage from D. A. Carson’s Praying With Paul, where he outlines the two broad ways that the Bible ought to shape our prayer lives. Firstly, meditating on the Bible informs our theology and therefore our prayers. Secondly, we can pray the prayers found in the Bible. This reflection on Philippians 1:3-11 tends towards the former, the theological principles and foundations out of which prayers grow.

I’ll list them in the order that they appear in the passage.

Remember Them

Key to teaching my son how to pray has been the New City Catechism’s definition of prayer as “pouring out our hearts to God in praise, petition, confession of sin, and thanksgiving.” Given that it’s an uncommon word, we’ve had a handful of conversations about “petition”. And every time my son asks, I tell him that we should always bring the needs of others before God (Philippians 1:3-4). Jesus, after all, taught his disciples to pray in the plural (Matthew 6:9-13).

Coming back to Philippians, the provenance of Paul’s letter makes this concern for others even more striking. Imprisoned and staring down the proverbial barrel, Paul could’ve been forgiven for tending to his own more urgent matters. Yet he intercedes for the Philippians. He brings the needs of others before God. Paul remembers God’s people.

Trusting God

Even though you might not know the citation (Philippians 1:6), we all know the next verse. “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” If you’ll allow the anachronism: Paul wasn’t a hyper-Calvinist, just a faithful Calvinist (Institutes 3.20.3; Psalm 145:18). For far from concluding that God’s sovereignty renders prayer superfluous, Paul sees no contradiction between gladly affirming the providence of God and ceaselessly petitioning that same God. God’s sovereignty instilled confidence in him. It inspired prayer.

Is it the same for you? Does the truth of God’s sheer power bring with it the reassurance that his promises won’t fail? Does it motivate prayerfulness? Paul didn’t pray for others because he was uncertain whether God would turn up. Rather his prayers were undergirded by what he knew to be true about God. God won’t fail. His purposes cannot be thwarted. So pray.

As I wrote in my Philippians 1:3-6 devotional, “God’s grip has not loosened. His power has not waned. His goodness and grace is unending. He will bring his work to completion. Therefore with wholehearted dependance on him, we can carry on.”

Full of Confidence

Still on the topic of confidence in God—and in some ways inseparable from the previous point—Paul’s assurance concerning the Philippians is bound up in his prayers themselves (Philippians 1:7). As I argued last year, “in addition to Paul’s confidence stemming from God’s work he further grounds his confidence in his own prayers.”

We run the risk here of reducing prayer to an incantation or one of the many misleading iterations of decreeing and declaring in the Lord. This only happens when we divorce Philippians 1:7-8 from Philippians 1:6 (see my previous point). Paul wasn’t a mighty man of God, presumptuously banging on the gates of heaven and demanding God to bless him or the Philippians. Yet he was convinced that there is power in prayer, because we serve a sovereign God.

With Affection

I think it was Augustine who said that the clearest demonstration of loving one’s enemies is seen in praying for them. Forget your enemies for a moment and think about your local church. Do you love them? We know we ought to love them, only we aren’t always sure what that means. But those whom Paul has in his heart (Philippians 1:7)—the objects of his blistering affection (Philippians 1:8)—are the subjects of his prayers.

This ties back to our first point. When we pray we must affectionately remember others—perhaps the undesirable obverse of this is praying marked by the love of self, something all of us are inclined towards. As Calvin puts it, “all prayers ought to be such as to look to that community which our Lord has established,” showing “special affection” to the household of faith (3.20.38). This is love.

For God’s Glory

Finally, Paul concludes what he actually prays for the Philippians by stating his express purpose in prayer: God’s greater glory (Philippians 1:11). Indeed, God’s glory serves as a kind of guiding light for all of life—thus it should steer our prayers. It should be the hope behind all of our petitions. It’s why praise and thanksgiving are intrinsic to prayer. As Paul sets his sight on God’s glory and the fame of his name, so should we when we pray.

But praying that God might be glorified can’t be used as a kind of spiritual full-stop. It doesn’t somehow baptise thoughtless prayers. It isn’t a bow we tie around lazy and indifferent prayers. The verses preceding Philippians 1:11 don’t allow for that. Though we might not always know how God will glorify himself we ought to always pray according to his revealed will.

A Theological Guide

As I alluded to in my introduction, we can conceive of two broad ways the Bible can shape our prayers. One simply adopts or slightly adapts biblical prayers, whether those are Jesus’ or Jeremiah’s, Paul’s or a psalmist’s. The other way is to have our prayers informed and infused with truth—with theology. Though the passage I’ve considered above is a Pauline prayer, this article has attempted to outline some of the theological principles of praying for others. Paul affectionally remembers the Philippians when he prays for them, drawing great assurance from God’s character and desiring that God would be glorified in them. Let’s do the same.