Strive together with me in your prayers to God (Romans 15:30)

Here is an excerpt from Moo's commentary on Romans about Romans 15:30.

Paul’s request is that the Roman Christians “strive together” with him in prayers. Paul’s use of the metaphor of fighting or wrestling may imply something about the nature of the prayer that he is requesting: that it involves a “wrestling” with God; or that it must be especially diligent. But Paul’s use of the language of “striving” to describe his own ministry might suggest rather that he is inviting the Roman Christians, through their prayers, to participate with him in “struggle” to complete his ordained missionary work. Though so many are unknown personally to him, Paul can nevertheless ask the Roman Christians to identify with him in his own struggle so that they might sincerely pray on his behalf. As Calvin remarks, Paul “shows how the godly ought to pray for their brethren, that they are to assume their person as though they were placed in the same difficulties.”

Do we strive together in prayer with our missionaries and leaders? Do we envision their difficulties and sincerely pray for them?

Calvin on the Supreme Power of the Pastor

Calvin was contrasting the power of pastors/elders against the role of priests in the Roman Catholic Church. I thought this outlined Brooks's goals as well.

"Here is the supreme power with which pastors of the Church, by whatever name they are called, should be invested— namely, to dare all boldly for the word of God, compelling all the virtue, glory, wisdom, and rank of the world to yield and obey its majesty; to command all from the highest to the lowest, trusting to its power to build up the house of Christ and overthrow the house of Satan; to feed the sheep and chase away the wolves; to instruct and exhort the docile, to accuse, rebuke, and subdue the rebellious and petulant, to bind and loose; in fine, if need be, to fire and fulminate, but all in the word of God".
(Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 4:8:9).

Jonathan Edwards on the function of the Holy Spirit in the bond of Union

Jonathan Edwards not only asserts that the Holy Spirit is the bond of the Trinity, but also the perfect bond of the two natures of Christ (hypostatic union), the bond of the Church to Christ, and the bond of believers to each other in the Church. Edwards fully asserts that the Holy Spirit is God and a person, but his main ministry is creating the bond of unions.

Both the holiness and happiness of the Godhead consists in this love. As we have already proved all creature holiness consists essentially and summarily in love to God and love to other creatures; so does the holiness of God consist in His love, especially in the perfect and intimate union and love there is between the Father and the Son. But the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son is the bond of this union, as it is of all holy union between the Father and the Son and between God and the creature and between the creatures among themselves.

(Jonathan Edwards, "The Treatise on Grace")

Jonathan Edward's view of History

Jonathan Edwards wrote in the treatise "A Call to United Extraordinary Prayer" about how God is driving history to its ultimate end of God establishing His Kingdom of truth and righteousness.

...All the changes brought to pass in the world from age to age, are ordered by infinite wisdom, in one respect or other to prepare the way for that glorious issue of things, when truth and righteousness shall finally prevail, and he whose right it is shall take the kingdom. All the creatures in all their operations and motions continually tend to this. As in a clock all the motions of the whole system of wheels and movements, tend to the striking of the hammer at the appointed time. All the revolutions and restless motions of the sun and other heavenly bodies, from day to day, from year to year, and from age to age, are continually tending thither as all the many turnings of the wheels of a chariot in a journey tend to the appointed journey's end. The mighty struggles and conflicts of nations those vast successive changes which are brought to pass in the kingdoms and empires of the world, from one age to another, are as it were travail pangs of the creation, in order to bring forth this glorious event. And the scriptures represent the last struggles and changes that shall immediately precede this event as being the greatest of all as the last pangs of a woman in travail are the most violent.