The beginning of every prayer – except emergency prayer, of course – is objective, and it's about God, not about us. So very often now it's the other way around. Even from earnest and godly people who love the Lord, you find they'll even start a service or a gathering or prayer with themselves. Thank you, God, for giving me this, for giving me that, for something else – but that's not the right way around. That is precious; that is our privilege – to pray for our needs – but we begin with Almighty God. We recognize him; we call on his name; we worship him; we adore and thank him. All these aspects of prayer come first. This is all down to him. It is the work of Almighty God. How did God do it? Through Jesus Christ, first the Father, second the Son, before we come to me or them or Paul's desire.
If we were more thankful we would be much less complaining. For Christians, it could be very easy to become embittered by our environment, because you see what the world does and the sinfulness of the world, and then there is us too and our own disappointment in ourselves. Things go wrong even in the churches, and you can become hyper-critical and embittered. Yes, we must notice when things go wrong and disapprove of them, but you balance that with the habit of thankfulness and glory to God for the things that he does. Then you will not become a sour and embittered person. You become a gloomy hyper-critical person if you do not practise thankfulness also for all that God does and for all his blessings.
Thankfulness is always through Christ. It is not just that God has given us great things and heard us and answered us from on high, it is because of Christ – he has purchased it all. And we must never forget that. We thank him daily for the plan of redemption, for the fact that in mercy he came from heaven and suffered and died for sinners. We praise him for our individual redemption: that he touched my heart, that he dealt with me, an undeserving sinner.
In AD49 Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome. Why did he expel the Jews? Because of Christ. It was a very broad sweep of Caesar’s authority, but it was because of Chrestos [Christus]. He thought all the Jews were getting into this and the influence of Christ was dangerous to Roman religion, so he expelled all the Jews. But he did not realise quite what he was doing because he left all the Gentiles converts. Paul is speaking to them particularly: ‘I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all.’ There were a few Jews left, but most of them would have been Gentiles. Under the nose of despotic rule there was a thriving Gentile church. ‘Your faith is spoke of throughout the whole world.’ What a magnificent work of God in that most difficult place to bring about the conversion of so many. Even in Caesar’s household there were many that believed, and there were soldiers that believed. The legions of Rome were very coarse in their whole lifestyle, and yet among them there were many (both in the ranks and the centurions, the officers) who believed in Christ, and held themselves aloof from all the bad language and the paganism, the heathenism that prevailed in those Roman legions. And they were a tremendous influence, and they went round the world.