Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response
This was my first sermon delivered at Middleton. This was preached at an outdoor service without any microphone. I had to use my outdoor big voice without any enhancement for the first time to preach this one. I am not really very good at picking names for my messages, so please forgive me for that.
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Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response
Sermon Text: Luke 11:1-13
“Dear Lord, are you really calling me into ministry for you? Are you sure that you have the right guy? I don’t like getting up in front of people and speaking. I prefer to sit back and observe everything that is going on around me before I open my mouth to say anything. I am much more of a listener and natural student than I am an orator, speech maker or preacher. It sure seems like you could pick any number of other people with more natural gifts for preaching than what I have. Besides I already have a job, and school and a pretty busy life.” This is an example of one of my recurring prayers over the last two years. Here’s an example of one of my wife, Jenny’s prayers that dates back to her childhood, “Lord, please don’t ever let me marry a pastor.” Well be careful what you don’t ask for, because you just might get it.
I took this sermon topic, Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response from A Guide to Prayer for all who seek God, a devotional book from Upper Room Books that uses the lectionary readings for its daily readings. I can think of some pretty audacious prayers from biblical times. Thinking of prayers as talking to God, or having conversations with God, I think of some of the conversations that Abraham and Moses had with God. I think of the account in Genesis 18: 16-33 when God told Abraham of his plans to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham new that his nephew Lot had settled there, and he therefore bargained with God. He asked, “will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a wicked thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. The Lord answered his plea and said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”.
They went round and round. Abraham negotiated with God, would you spare the city for the sake of forty-five, for forty, for thirty, for twenty, and finally for ten. And each time the Lord responded saying that even for the sake of just ten righteous people he would spare the city. Then only after finding that only Lot and his family were righteous among the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah did God send angels to lead them out of the city as God rained down burning sulfur on them and wiped them from the face of the earth. Abraham’s payers were pretty audacious and God had the perfect response.
In Exodus there are at least a couple of examples of audacious prayer conversations between Moses and the Lord. In the record of the burning bush meeting between Moses and the Lord, God told Moses that he was sending him to appear before pharaoh and to bring the Israelites up out of Egypt. How does Moses react? He doesn’t just say yes Lord, I will be your faithful servant, just let me get my family together and I will be on my way. No, he says, God why would they listen to me, who am I that I should go to pharaoh and bring you people out of Egypt. He asks God, what am I, of all people, supposed to tell the Israelites to get them to believe that you sent me and to get them to follow me? God gave him messages to deliver to his people in Egypt that would help them to recognize Moses as being sent by God. Then Moses asked God again, what if they do not believe me; and God provided him with signs like his staff becoming a snake, turning Moses’ hand leprous and white and then restoring it to health, and then taking water from the river and turning it into blood.
Even after all of that Moses still says, “O Lord I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” Audacious! It seems that Moses might be hinting here that God has forgotten to bless him with a silver tongue. It’s a little like in Cinderella when the fairy god-mother has given Cinderella a carriage and horses and a coachmen and footmen and has almost forgotten the dress. God’s perfect response was this, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say”
Even after all of this Moses has the audacity to say, “O Lord, please send some one else to do it.” Well, if even Moses has the gall to say that to God, there just might be hope for all of us. The bible says here that God’s patience was just about warn out by Moses here and his anger burned against him, but even at that he says, and I am paraphrasing here, all right then your brother Aaron the priest can speak well and he is already on his way out to meet you. He will be happy to see you. How about if you speak to Aaron and he can speak up for you and I will help both of you speak and teach you what to do. How would that be for you? So finally after all of that Moses went down to Egypt for God.
If we jump ahead a few thousand years we can read the account of how Jesus prayed for himself and for his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke the record states that Jesus became troubled and sorrowful as he must have been contemplating his passion. He prayed three times over that if it was possible, the cup of suffering and death for the sins of all people would be taken from him, but each time he prayed that these things would unfold not according to his own will, but according to the will of God the Father.
From the gospel of John the record of Jesus’ prayers before he was betrayed states that he prayed for God’s protection and guidance of his disciples as he was not going to be able to be with them much longer. Jesus prays that God would sanctify them as he has sent them into the world, just as God had sent Jesus into the world.
So Jesus prayers are a bit different than the prayers of Abraham and Moses. Abraham negotiates with God over how many righteous people would have to be found in Sodom and Gomorrah for God to consent to spare those cities from his punishment. This was probably motivated by Abraham’s desire to save his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. In the prayers of Moses, he is alternating between bargaining with God over God telling him what he should do and say and trying to God, hey, I think you have the wrong guy here. Jesus on the other hand shared his sorrows and worries with God as he was facing his betrayal, abuse, and crucifixion. He was open and honest about his feelings, but he still prayed that events would unfold according to God’s will. Even under that burden, Jesus, prayed for his friends, his disciples. He knew that his time as true man and true God on earth was winding down, so he prayed for his followers.
We could learn a lot from the way Jesus said to pray and the way the gospels show that he prayed. Our nature is to pray for what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. God listens to our prayers. He knows what we are thinking about and worrying about, but praying to God is not like rubbing a lamp and getting a the genie to grant our wishes. God knows what we need. God also knows what his plans are for each of our lives.
I have tried praying for and working for the things that I wanted, success at work, financial security, improving my life through material things. That never worked out, I felt like I was fighting an irresistible force and getting no where fast. It did not do my marriage any good either. I started to change my life and grow in my Christian walk with Jesus, but still my pride would kind of get in the way. I figured that I could trust God with my spirit, but I should be able to take care of the everyday stuff.
This not really what God wants. He knows all about our most basic and simplest needs. He created us. He can help us with everything that we have to do in a given day if we let him. It may sound to simple and easy to lay all of your cares and worries at the feet of Jesus, but it is an amazingly uplifting experience to do just that. It is in our human nature to worry about what we are going to do tomorrow. What are we going to eat? How are we going to get that project done at work? How are we going to get ready for retirement? Are we going to be able to get ready to go back to school or find a job, or find time to take a vacation. It easy to become weighed down by all of the things that we have to worry about. But the bible tells us that we cannot add an hour to our lives by worrying about what is going to happen next. God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field, and he has plans to take care of our needs as well.
I learned about putting everything in God’s hands five or six years ago. I had a condition known as mid-face hypo-plasia, in layman’s terms I had a severe underbite where my lower jaw stuck out prominently under my top jaw. I worked with an orthodontist to straighten out me teeth and it just made it more obvious that the problem was that my top jaw was too short. I had many problems from pain in the joint to difficulty breathing through my nose and sinuses because everything was restricted. I worked and worried trying to find the right doctor’s and treatments. I talked to a regular oral surgeon and he said that my case was too severe for him to correct. He gave my wife and I a couple of different options for referrals and we prayed about it and gave the issue to God because we were getting no where with it. God lead us to a team of surgeons and orthodontists in Chicago that had an innovative way to correct the problem. After we decided to put things in God’s hands much of the weight of this burden was lifted from our hearts and minds. I would not say that it was an easy thing to get through with two operations and many weeks of care at home and trips to Chicago for check-ups, but God worked everything together for our good so that we could feel his blessings on us.
Even in the last year my wife and I have learned more about trusting in God and following his will. My job has been under threat of being out of the country for the last couple of years. Last year my brother’s daughter our niece lived with us from October to February in our little one bedroom cottage of a house. We prayed deeply and repeatedly about whether we should try to get a mortgage to buy our house out of the five year old land contract and tap into accumulated equity to add on to it. God lead us to do it, and everything came together for us to increase our living space by 50%. Since we only used a contractor to build the shell of our addition that meant we were busy working on the inside many evenings and every weekend from August through March.
That addition project effected my pastoral candidacy and ministry training and work. After days of praying about it, I decided to sit out the lay speakers training weekend to work on the house. Once we passed our final inspection we prayed to God to thank him for getting us through the project and dedicated the added rooms to God. Since April we have hosted a bible study group in our home that we would not have been able to hold without the extra space.
As the school year wound down this spring and early summer, I was praying again for God to show me what his will was for my ministry. I have had a difficult time identifying a conservative United Methodist seminary. I had not met with my candidacy mentor since November of last year. I felt like even though my heart was still burning with a call to ministry from God, I was getting no where fast. I asked God to show me his will and let me know what he wanted me to do next. Then at the end of the first week of June, I received this call out of the blue from District Superintendent Allie about an opening for a pastor. He asked if I would like to be considered for it. I said a quick prayer and said that I would. Eighteen days passed and I had not heard anything, then just when my wife and I thought that the district must have decided to follow some other plan, Dr. Allie called to offer me the appointment and gave us 48-hours to respond with our decision. That evening we took a drive through a summer thunder shower and talked and prayed and meditated on it. The three of us, God, and Jenny, and I all decided that this church is the next step for our ministry and a clear sign from God that he is guiding our growth in his ministry.
Romans 8:28 says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I have heard this verse everyday this week because it was the verse of the week at the community Vacation Bible School program in Bancroft. It is not like making a wish and having it granted when we pray to God to work things out in our lives according to his will, but I can tell you that our Father in Heaven can bless us beyond what we would even imagine if we just lay our dreams and cares in his hands.
--------
Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response
Sermon Text: Luke 11:1-13
“Dear Lord, are you really calling me into ministry for you? Are you sure that you have the right guy? I don’t like getting up in front of people and speaking. I prefer to sit back and observe everything that is going on around me before I open my mouth to say anything. I am much more of a listener and natural student than I am an orator, speech maker or preacher. It sure seems like you could pick any number of other people with more natural gifts for preaching than what I have. Besides I already have a job, and school and a pretty busy life.” This is an example of one of my recurring prayers over the last two years. Here’s an example of one of my wife, Jenny’s prayers that dates back to her childhood, “Lord, please don’t ever let me marry a pastor.” Well be careful what you don’t ask for, because you just might get it.
I took this sermon topic, Audacious Prayers/Perfect Response from A Guide to Prayer for all who seek God, a devotional book from Upper Room Books that uses the lectionary readings for its daily readings. I can think of some pretty audacious prayers from biblical times. Thinking of prayers as talking to God, or having conversations with God, I think of some of the conversations that Abraham and Moses had with God. I think of the account in Genesis 18: 16-33 when God told Abraham of his plans to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham new that his nephew Lot had settled there, and he therefore bargained with God. He asked, “will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a wicked thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. The Lord answered his plea and said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”.
They went round and round. Abraham negotiated with God, would you spare the city for the sake of forty-five, for forty, for thirty, for twenty, and finally for ten. And each time the Lord responded saying that even for the sake of just ten righteous people he would spare the city. Then only after finding that only Lot and his family were righteous among the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah did God send angels to lead them out of the city as God rained down burning sulfur on them and wiped them from the face of the earth. Abraham’s payers were pretty audacious and God had the perfect response.
In Exodus there are at least a couple of examples of audacious prayer conversations between Moses and the Lord. In the record of the burning bush meeting between Moses and the Lord, God told Moses that he was sending him to appear before pharaoh and to bring the Israelites up out of Egypt. How does Moses react? He doesn’t just say yes Lord, I will be your faithful servant, just let me get my family together and I will be on my way. No, he says, God why would they listen to me, who am I that I should go to pharaoh and bring you people out of Egypt. He asks God, what am I, of all people, supposed to tell the Israelites to get them to believe that you sent me and to get them to follow me? God gave him messages to deliver to his people in Egypt that would help them to recognize Moses as being sent by God. Then Moses asked God again, what if they do not believe me; and God provided him with signs like his staff becoming a snake, turning Moses’ hand leprous and white and then restoring it to health, and then taking water from the river and turning it into blood.
Even after all of that Moses still says, “O Lord I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” Audacious! It seems that Moses might be hinting here that God has forgotten to bless him with a silver tongue. It’s a little like in Cinderella when the fairy god-mother has given Cinderella a carriage and horses and a coachmen and footmen and has almost forgotten the dress. God’s perfect response was this, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say”
Even after all of this Moses has the audacity to say, “O Lord, please send some one else to do it.” Well, if even Moses has the gall to say that to God, there just might be hope for all of us. The bible says here that God’s patience was just about warn out by Moses here and his anger burned against him, but even at that he says, and I am paraphrasing here, all right then your brother Aaron the priest can speak well and he is already on his way out to meet you. He will be happy to see you. How about if you speak to Aaron and he can speak up for you and I will help both of you speak and teach you what to do. How would that be for you? So finally after all of that Moses went down to Egypt for God.
If we jump ahead a few thousand years we can read the account of how Jesus prayed for himself and for his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke the record states that Jesus became troubled and sorrowful as he must have been contemplating his passion. He prayed three times over that if it was possible, the cup of suffering and death for the sins of all people would be taken from him, but each time he prayed that these things would unfold not according to his own will, but according to the will of God the Father.
From the gospel of John the record of Jesus’ prayers before he was betrayed states that he prayed for God’s protection and guidance of his disciples as he was not going to be able to be with them much longer. Jesus prays that God would sanctify them as he has sent them into the world, just as God had sent Jesus into the world.
So Jesus prayers are a bit different than the prayers of Abraham and Moses. Abraham negotiates with God over how many righteous people would have to be found in Sodom and Gomorrah for God to consent to spare those cities from his punishment. This was probably motivated by Abraham’s desire to save his nephew Lot and Lot’s family. In the prayers of Moses, he is alternating between bargaining with God over God telling him what he should do and say and trying to God, hey, I think you have the wrong guy here. Jesus on the other hand shared his sorrows and worries with God as he was facing his betrayal, abuse, and crucifixion. He was open and honest about his feelings, but he still prayed that events would unfold according to God’s will. Even under that burden, Jesus, prayed for his friends, his disciples. He knew that his time as true man and true God on earth was winding down, so he prayed for his followers.
We could learn a lot from the way Jesus said to pray and the way the gospels show that he prayed. Our nature is to pray for what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. God listens to our prayers. He knows what we are thinking about and worrying about, but praying to God is not like rubbing a lamp and getting a the genie to grant our wishes. God knows what we need. God also knows what his plans are for each of our lives.
I have tried praying for and working for the things that I wanted, success at work, financial security, improving my life through material things. That never worked out, I felt like I was fighting an irresistible force and getting no where fast. It did not do my marriage any good either. I started to change my life and grow in my Christian walk with Jesus, but still my pride would kind of get in the way. I figured that I could trust God with my spirit, but I should be able to take care of the everyday stuff.
This not really what God wants. He knows all about our most basic and simplest needs. He created us. He can help us with everything that we have to do in a given day if we let him. It may sound to simple and easy to lay all of your cares and worries at the feet of Jesus, but it is an amazingly uplifting experience to do just that. It is in our human nature to worry about what we are going to do tomorrow. What are we going to eat? How are we going to get that project done at work? How are we going to get ready for retirement? Are we going to be able to get ready to go back to school or find a job, or find time to take a vacation. It easy to become weighed down by all of the things that we have to worry about. But the bible tells us that we cannot add an hour to our lives by worrying about what is going to happen next. God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field, and he has plans to take care of our needs as well.
I learned about putting everything in God’s hands five or six years ago. I had a condition known as mid-face hypo-plasia, in layman’s terms I had a severe underbite where my lower jaw stuck out prominently under my top jaw. I worked with an orthodontist to straighten out me teeth and it just made it more obvious that the problem was that my top jaw was too short. I had many problems from pain in the joint to difficulty breathing through my nose and sinuses because everything was restricted. I worked and worried trying to find the right doctor’s and treatments. I talked to a regular oral surgeon and he said that my case was too severe for him to correct. He gave my wife and I a couple of different options for referrals and we prayed about it and gave the issue to God because we were getting no where with it. God lead us to a team of surgeons and orthodontists in Chicago that had an innovative way to correct the problem. After we decided to put things in God’s hands much of the weight of this burden was lifted from our hearts and minds. I would not say that it was an easy thing to get through with two operations and many weeks of care at home and trips to Chicago for check-ups, but God worked everything together for our good so that we could feel his blessings on us.
Even in the last year my wife and I have learned more about trusting in God and following his will. My job has been under threat of being out of the country for the last couple of years. Last year my brother’s daughter our niece lived with us from October to February in our little one bedroom cottage of a house. We prayed deeply and repeatedly about whether we should try to get a mortgage to buy our house out of the five year old land contract and tap into accumulated equity to add on to it. God lead us to do it, and everything came together for us to increase our living space by 50%. Since we only used a contractor to build the shell of our addition that meant we were busy working on the inside many evenings and every weekend from August through March.
That addition project effected my pastoral candidacy and ministry training and work. After days of praying about it, I decided to sit out the lay speakers training weekend to work on the house. Once we passed our final inspection we prayed to God to thank him for getting us through the project and dedicated the added rooms to God. Since April we have hosted a bible study group in our home that we would not have been able to hold without the extra space.
As the school year wound down this spring and early summer, I was praying again for God to show me what his will was for my ministry. I have had a difficult time identifying a conservative United Methodist seminary. I had not met with my candidacy mentor since November of last year. I felt like even though my heart was still burning with a call to ministry from God, I was getting no where fast. I asked God to show me his will and let me know what he wanted me to do next. Then at the end of the first week of June, I received this call out of the blue from District Superintendent Allie about an opening for a pastor. He asked if I would like to be considered for it. I said a quick prayer and said that I would. Eighteen days passed and I had not heard anything, then just when my wife and I thought that the district must have decided to follow some other plan, Dr. Allie called to offer me the appointment and gave us 48-hours to respond with our decision. That evening we took a drive through a summer thunder shower and talked and prayed and meditated on it. The three of us, God, and Jenny, and I all decided that this church is the next step for our ministry and a clear sign from God that he is guiding our growth in his ministry.
Romans 8:28 says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I have heard this verse everyday this week because it was the verse of the week at the community Vacation Bible School program in Bancroft. It is not like making a wish and having it granted when we pray to God to work things out in our lives according to his will, but I can tell you that our Father in Heaven can bless us beyond what we would even imagine if we just lay our dreams and cares in his hands.
posted by Robert C. Howell at
6:56 PM
