"To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, emphasis added)

If you've ever received a Veritas prayer postcard with my name at the bottom, you may recognize this verse. It's my go-to when praying for others—especially when I don't know exactly how to pray for someone—and it's a passage I return to often in prayer for myself.

The reason this has been a meaningful go-to text for me is I think it is somewhat of a microcosm of how pursuing holiness works in the Christian life. Three things stand out in this passage:

We make resolves. We are called to make "good resolves"—everyday resolutions in our pursuit of Christ and holiness. This is the everyday, ordinary, active work of endeavoring to bear spiritual fruit.

God provides the power. God is the definitive and essential force behind the fulfillment of our resolves and works of faith. Our efforts are real, but God's power is essential and decisive.

Jesus receives the glory. The ultimate aim of our God-empowered fruit-bearing is that the name of Jesus would be magnified—in us and through us.

Now, there's a danger worth naming here. There is a sense in which our resolving can slip into a form of legalism—a hollow, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps approach to the Christian life that's more about box-checking than genuine transformation. If you’re like me, you can turn certain activities that are oriented towards pursuing Christ as tasks that we complete, not as the means to produce fruit. We might resolve in our minds: attend church more, keep my eyes and thoughts pure, be less materialistic, read the Bible more. These are all good things. But when those resolves are exclusively powered by self-effort alone—or motivated by the wrong things (guilt, image, or performance) —they become devoid of God’s wonder-working power and are therefore not Christ-glorifying.  

That's not what Paul has in mind.

Paul is pointing us to something far better: a “both and” approach in which our wills are genuinely engaged in the resolving, but God's decisive power is working in, over, and through our effort to produce real, lasting fruit. And ultimately, the fruit-bearing honors Christ as the treasure. Our resolve is not nothing, but it is not sufficient. God's power is not a supplement to our striving—it is the decisive power of it.

In this arrangement, God is unmistakably supreme. Pastor John Piper puts it well: "The giver gets the glory. God gave the power. God gets the glory. We have faith; he gives power. We get the help; he gets the glory. That's the deal that keeps us humble and happy, and keeps him supreme and glorious."

So here is my simple invitation: make Paul’s prayer in 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 part of your prayer rotation, either for yourself or someone else on your prayer list. Make resolves and invite God to come in power to do those things that only he can—supplying the strength to fulfill those resolves—so that Christ would be magnified and God would get the Glory.   fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power