This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. This ought to matter to us. If this doesn't matter to us than we are dead in trespasses and sins. We ought to be driven to please God. If we say we want to please God, than we need to pay special attention to this, because here is our chance.

When a boy is courting a girl, he tries real hard to please her. If she wants him to take her shopping, he will trip over himself to take her shopping, because he wants to please her. Usually he might not like to go shopping, but now he is thrilled to go just to spend time with the one he loves. This is how we should view prayer. How much more we should want to spend time with God.

God please have mercy on me, and help me to keep seeking You in prayer. Help me want to please you. It's scary how a lot of times this doesn't motivate me very much. It gives God pleasure when we pray for others so that we can experience good reverence. This is an emotional, caring God who experiences pleasure when we care about other human beings. As earthly fathers, we rejoice to see our children expressing love to each other, and towards us the parents. How much more our heavenly Father cares about this.

This letter is all about reaching out to others. This is not a new commandment. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. The second greatest commandment of all is to love others as much as we love ourselves. This pleases the One who came to save sinners: God, our Savior.

The reason it is good and acceptable is because God wants everyone to be saved. How we live, and how our life affects others, is of utmost importance to Him. He is literally the Savior our God, or our Savior God. Isn't that beautiful? It's so great that everything revolves around the Savior our God! It all revolves around salvation! He's all about saving us!

Sometimes God picks out names to show the person's character. For example, He refers to the Devil as the Accuser, because that's what he does. Satan accuses us to God, and accuses God to us. In Genesis 3 he asks "hath God said?… Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods". The devil is calling God a liar, but we know who the liar really is. When Satan lies he speaks his own language. On the other hand, it is impossible for God to lie, and He picks this title because it tells us about Him. We can boil down God's desire for man into one word: Savior. Like the purest 24k gold, God is pure Savior through and through.

In verse 4 will (will have) could be translated wishes. There are two words commonly translated will in the King James. The one used here is more of an emotional word. It pictures will in the sense of wishing. The other word translated will means to make a determination from the facts (as in verse 8). By choosing the word he did, it emphasizes that God our Savior wishes or desires for all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. He will honor our decision, even if we reject Him, but He tugs on us to make the right choice. Isn't that an expression of love? God wishes for you and me to be saved. God is asking us to please marry Him. He truly wishes for us to be saved.

In the midst of telling us all the things we need to do to reach out to people, God stops to tell us why this is so important to Him. Why does God tell us all this stuff we need to do? It's because He has feelings for people, and He wishes for everyone to be saved. Witnessing is not some meaningless formality. God's not some giant computer in the sky without any feelings. God cares about us, and He wants us to keep reaching out because He wants everybody to be saved. This is what floats His boat. Some people are caught up in money or pleasure or popularity or sports. He's totally wrapped up in saving people. Saving people is His thing. For this cause He laid down His life for us (6). He loves us and wants us to be saved.

Because God wishes for everyone to be saved it is very important to keep communicating with Him and reaching out to others. God, please help me care about people's souls more than popularity or money or the pleasures of this world. Help me live the lifestyle that You want. Everything in our life ought to be focused around getting the truth out. This goes for all our actions, both physical and mental.

There are two common words for good. The two can be used almost interchangeably, but they do have some distinctions. The other word for good emphasizes more that something is intrinsically good. We are not good on our own merits, which is probably one reason that word wasn't chosen. The word used here more emphasizes being beautiful or valuable. It's good because it fulfills it's purpose. Berry defines this word as "beauty which comes from harmony, the beauty which arises from a symmetrical adjustment in right proportion, in other words, from the harmonious completeness of the object concerned."

This lifestyle is beautiful to God. It's valuable, fitting, and suitable to Him because He wants everyone to be saved! It's like an artist finishing his work and saying "It's beautiful! It fulfills what I wanted to express! It is good!" God said this about us when He first created us, but then we fell into sin. This lifestyle, however, helps us go back to where God can once again say that this is good! It's like a woodworker saying, "This is a good tool! It's valuable to me because it will help me accomplish what I want to do!" That is what God is saying to us!

Acceptable has the idea of acceptable, agreeable, to receive fully, to welcome, to be pleasing, to be grateful. This is pleasing to God. He receives it fully. Because He is wrapped up in being our Savior, this is something He agrees with and receives gladly from us.

Have you ever given someone a present and it didn't seem like they really liked it? When they said, "you shouldn't have", they really meant it. This is different. This is a gift we can give to Almighty God and know that He really likes it. It's great when someone gets all excited about our present, and we can tell that they really like it! God is really excited about this gift. He really likes it.

It's hard for a poor servant to give a fitting present to a king. Imagine being at a birthday party for the president of the United States. What would you give him? When we consider how sinful, insignificant and poor we are, it's amazing that we can offer something to the King of Kings that He fully likes and receives. Then again, these prayers don't come from the sinful flesh, but from God living through us. We're simply giving back to God what He helps us to do. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is a miracle, but God wants to help us experience something miraculous! This is a great deal: God helps us do this, and then rewards us for doing it.

Prayers are often invisible to men. They are often overlooked, so to speak. God, however, notices them, and they are good and acceptable in His sight. Let's care about what God sees. In the final analysis, all that will matter about our life is what was good and acceptable with God. If we miss this, we miss everything. Everything else will burn up. But what is good and acceptable will stand forever, and be rewarded eternally. Let's not face death regretting what we shoulda woulda coulda done with our life. God, please help me seek you in prayer. I need it desperately!

This passage goes slap against the doctrine of "predestination." When Calvinist's say that men don't have a choice about their salvation, they are wrong. They are perverting the good nature of God, and insulting the graciousness of God. They are blaming God for man's wickedness and rebellion. Bad doctrine takes responsibility away from man for his sin. God is willing to deliver us from our sin. Lost people are not willing to turn from their sin. We are the ones to blame for sending ourselves to Hell (and not God)! Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That is still the context. God is willing. He wishes, He desires for ALL men to be saved. All means all. All men means all men (all human beings in the Greek). Don't buy the lie that "all men" refers only to the small percentage of people who get saved. Predestinationists pervert this passage to say that God wishes for all the people who are going to be saved to be saved. Come on! That's a pathetic twisting of the Holy Scriptures!

It's not just verse 4 that teaches this, as it's the heartbeat of this passage. God is our Savior. The very heartbeat of the Word of God is encouraging men to choose and put their trust in God. If we stand back and see the big picture of the Word of God we'll see that this is a no-brainer. The scriptures are not some cruel game where God pretends to give us a chance, but He really doesn't unless we're one of His predestined choices. When He tells us to flee from the wrath to come, He is being truthful and giving us a chance to flee. He not like the cruel cat who just pretends to give the mouse a chance to flee, only to prolong the agony. When God says He desires for all people to be saved, He is not lying. He is telling the truth about Himself. I choose to believe Him. How about you?

We need to use clear facts to help us interpret something vague or unknown. This is a universal principle that is (supposed to be) used by scientists and students of every field, and should be used by students of the Bible. We shouldn't use something vague to overrule something clear. For example, God tells us clearly not to steal. Even if we are hungry, we should still not steal. People develop situational ethics to justify all the reasons why it's ok to steal when their family is hungry. But as Christians, God wants us to have the attitude that we would rather starve to death than to disobey Him. When we are forming our doctrine, we need to use clear, easy to understand passages to help interpret the difficult ones. I ask you, do we have a clear, easy to understand passage here? Yes, it is very straightforward. Is the verse talking specifically about whether or not God wishes for every single person to be saved? Yes, that's exactly what it's talking about! Is it clear that it's talking about heaven and hell type of salvation? Yes, it's clearly talking about salvation!

People use Romans 9 to say that God had no desire to save Pharaoh, but it does not clearly say that. It does seem to clearly say that God caused Pharaoh to do stupid things so that He could show His mercy and strength to the whole world. It's not clear, however, that the passage is talking about Pharaoh's salvation. By the time Moses confronted Pharaoh, he had already rejected God. He was already persecuting God's people. Yet he would be used of God, even though it was in a way that no one would choose to be used of God. Once we reject God, God will let us be deceived and believe a lie. Ro 1:18-32; 2 Thes 2:10-12. I Timothy 2:4, on the other hand, is a clear, simple, straightforward teaching on God's will regarding whether or not He wants everyone to be saved.

I can hear someone saying "you need to use this verse in context". I couldn't agree more. Does the surrounding context agree with our premise? Obviously it does! Why do we pray for all men? It's because God wants everyone to be saved. Chapter 2 can be summed up by saying that our thoughts and actions should revolve around God's desire for men to be saved. Chapter 1 tells us to hold people to good doctrine because God wants messed up people to experience love and real faith! Our words (chap. 1), our thoughts (beginning of chap. 2) and our actions (remaining part of chap 2) all revolve around this. The purpose of this letter is to help us be Timothies and help others experience God's goodness. The whole point of the Scriptures is to help us experience the blessings instead of the curses.

When we are filled with the Spirit we will love others, because God is directing us, and God loves them. His Word tells us to love others, and we will when we are moved by the Spirit of God. He fills us with love for others because He is love. Don't you see that it all fits together and that God truly loves every single person? Don't fight against the Holy Spirit.

Don't miss out on this passage. Praying produces in us what is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, because it helps us more effectively reach out to others. Invoking God to help us reach people with the gospel, so they can be saved, is praying according to His will.

So that we don't take this too far, I would like to talk about praying for people's salvation. As we pray for others, I don't believe we can "claim" people's salvation (as I once did based on an incorrect interpretation of the narrative passage about the Philippian jailer). I don't fully know how to pray for someone's salvation. I think it's safe to say we should be asking God to help us do all we should, so that they have the best chance to be saved. He tells us to Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. This helps me see my need to get past my laziness and faithfully do the work.

He tells us here (2:4-6) that He wants to forgive people. That's His desire, but He also gives us a choice. He could have made robots that had no choice, but He made us with a free will. He somehow knows ahead of time what we will choose, but it's still up to us. On our part, we keep asking God to do a work behind the scenes so that people have the best chance to be saved. I pray for God to have mercy and make up for my shortcomings, and to help me be a good witness to others. I sometimes pray that God would let people hear words that will penetrate and convict them, and words that will counteract the lies of the Devil. Sometimes I also pray that God would use circumstances in their life, whatever that may be, to help them have the best chance to be saved.

God also tells us that He wants all men to come unto the knowledge of the truth. Truth is truth whether we realize it or not, yet it can't help us unless we know about it. If people don't know how to be saved (come unto the knowledge of the truth), how will they be saved? The world, and even false teachers in the church, are speaking lies. God hates lies because they war against the truth that sets us free and saves our soul. As believers, we are the vehicle that God has chosen to reveal truth (chap. 1, 3:15), which is why we need to pray and ask God to help us.

America is full of well-churched people who don't understand salvation. God called the prophets to stand against the phony religion of their day, so that people would know the truth about salvation. He is telling us to do the same thing. God wishes for all men to know the truth, which includes the people in our generation. He wants us to keep praying, so that we can be as effective as possible in accomplishing this.