Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 86 · March 27
What Paul Asked For
“Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:”
Think of the last prayer you prayed for somebody else. Was there anything in it that left their circumstances exactly as they are?
Paul is writing to a church under persecution. He knows it and says so: your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure. Then he tells them what he prays. Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power. Not a word about the persecution stopping. He asks that they be made equal to what they have been called into, and that the good they intend actually gets finished. It is his habit. Colossae gets strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. Ephesus gets the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.
Pray it now for one person, by name.
Father, count them worthy of what you have called them into. Finish the good they mean to do and keep running out of road on. Put power under the small acts of faith that nobody sees or thanks them for. We are not asking you yet to move the thing pressing on them. Make them equal to it while it stands, and let your name be honoured in them. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 86 is Eyes on You (Psalm 33:18).