At the first of his letters, Paul took a generous amount of time and space to write out a prayer for the congregation at Ephesus or Corinth or Thessanolica or Rome. We generally just skim through this section, treating it like more or less the small talk at the front end of a conversation.

“Hi there.”

“Hope you’re doing well.”

“Maybe we can connect soon.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Except it’s not “blah, blah, blah” material. Like the rest of the Bible, these sections, too, are the inspired and infallible Word of God. That means there is something here for us. In fact, there are at least three things:

1. Paul’s prayers are the key to understanding his whole letter.

A good rule of thumb in biblical interpretation is this: The smaller the passage the greater potential error. Think about it – you can find a verse in the Bible to justify almost anything. You want to bash in the heads of your enemies? There’s a verse for that. You want to marry a thousand women? There’s a verse for that. But we must read those verses in context.

What does the paragraph around it say? And what does the whole chapter say? And what does the whole book say? And what does the whole Bible say? It all fits together if we zoom out. Accordingly, Paul used his prayer as a simple outline of his main points in his letters. So if you want to have a good idea of his overall purpose in writing Philippians, read the prayer, and you’ll find a clue to the issues he was addressing in the congregation.

2. It’s okay to pray articulately.

These prayers of Paul are not haphazard; they are instead well thought-out and articulate. You might even say they are beautiful in their use of language. And that’s a good thing, though sometimes we might not think it is.

We believe, as Christians, that we can approach the throne of grace boldly and with confidence, as a child comes to his or her father. One of the things that means is that we don’t have to perfectly plan our prayers. Sometimes the language is messy or desperate or hardly even intelligible. That, too, can be a good thing if it truly expresses the depths of your heart and soul. There is a beautiful kind of authenticity that comes with spontaneous prayers, but there is also beauty with carefully crafted ones.

In these lines, you find wonderful, grace and Christ-centered language that rolls off the tongue and pen like poetry. I can’t help but think the Lord takes delight in beantiful language like this.

Too often we have used spontaneity as an excuse for laziness in praying.

3. Don’t pray generally.

It’s amazing that Paul, a man constantly on the go to new frontiers, actually knew the specific situations going on in these congregations. Maybe the reason our prayers sound like, “God just bless them today,” or “God I pray that you would be with them today,” is because we don’t actually know the people we claim to be praying for. If we knew them, we would pray more specifically – like the apostle did. We would know that they struggle with disunity. Or with self-worth. Or with a particular misunderstanding of the gospel. And the words would roll off our tongue, not in generalities, but with specific promises of God associated with them.

Friends, as you open your Bible day after day, don’t skip these sections. They’re not meant to be thrown away. Let them fuel your understanding of the Bible. And then let them shape your prayers with beauty and specificity.