v 9. I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.
Prayers for the outworking of faith in life.
Yesterday we considered prayer for a person’s inner development; today we want to think about the outworking of faith in a person’s daily life. After all, that is the part of life that is seen by others, and this public reality of a Christian’s faith is what is commented on by them. You may have heard it said of some who profess to be Christians that they are hypocrites – the faith they claim to adhere to and the way they live in practice simply don’t match. So Paul prays two things for these believers.
First, that love will overflow more and more.
This should be the very first significant aspect of a Christian’s life in the public domain. He prays that love will overflow – that is it will not be confined to a small group of people but will be seen to overflow to all they come into contact with. Think of a river overflowing its banks and spreading out in the surrounding area – that is how Paul envisages their love developing and touching their community. Pray that our love as Church will be the same.
Then he prays that they will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. You can tell a healthy plant by the growth it puts out. So we pray for people that that will keep on growing, maturing as Christian believers in a way that is obvious to all.