Sermon for
Sunday,
July
25,
2004
Prayer
12th in a
Series on "Building
Your Life on a Solid Foundation"
By
Rev.
Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture:
I Thessalonians 5:12-22
12
But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who
labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish
you; 13 esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at
peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the
idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with
all of them. 15 See that none of you repays evil for evil, but
always seek to do good to one another and to all. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in
all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for
you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise the words of
prophets, 21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good; 22
abstain from every form of evil.
We
are looking at the foundation stone of prayer this morning in our
series on building your life on a solid foundation and I want to begin
by sharing two of my memorable experiences with prayer.
Both
these stories have to do with my children. When Todd was born in 1972
and we had just learned of his disability, there was a prayer group in
our congregation at that time that immediately began to pray for Todd;
they prayed that every extra 21st chromosome in his body would be
removed and he would become a typical person instead of a person with
Down syndrome.
When
I learned that was their prayer, I became angry and let them know that
God does not work like that. Their prayer was misguided I thought. But
there were other prayers that were very powerful for our family during
that first few weeks, prayers for us to see the possibilities in life
as we were rebuilding our dreams for the future and figuring out what
it was going to mean to have a family member with a disability. Those
prayers really made a difference for us and we felt the support and
love of that congregation surrounding us and lifting us up.
One
other significant prayer experience has to do with the adoption if our
daughter Meredith. We had been on the adoption waiting list in El Paso
County for four years and it did not look very promising. We were
eager to decide on a direction on our lives. We were hoping for Judy
either to go back to teaching high school English part time or for an
adoption to come through.
We
were in a prayer group in our church in Colorado Springs and the study
guide for one of those sessions gave us this homework assignment:
think of the boldest prayer you can think of and then pray that prayer
persistently. Share with your group what you are going to be praying
for. We said that the boldest prayer we could think of was for us
either to get some word about an adoption or for Judy to be able to go
back to work.
We
prayed that prayer and over the next few weeks here is what happened:
Judy got called to go back to work for an eight week session teaching
at the year round high school near our house. And then in her second
week of teaching, we got a phone call from a social worker in Durango
saying that there was a six week old baby girl there waiting for us to
come and pick her up and be her parents.
Prayer
does not always work that way, but it did that time and we are very
careful about how boldly we pray!
I
don't understand prayer and I am still growing in knowing how to pray.
I want to share what I do know about prayer. Prayer is a conversation
with God. It is not just a one sided conversation consisting of Gimme,
Gimme, Gimme. It means that I take time to be in the presence of God
and to listen. Perhaps I use one of the prayer lines such as the one
from Marcus Borg on your bulletin cover and then just stay quiet. Or
it may mean that I read a scripture verse or a story about Jesus and
then meditate on that.
But
it always involves some speaking and some listening, some honest
outpouring of my thanks and my hurts and my worries and then some
quiet time.
We
pray for many reasons. We pray because we have to, because we are
driven to our knees. We pray because Jesus prayed and we're trying to
be followers and disciples of Jesus. We will promise as new members
join us today that we are going to "order our lives after the
example of Christ". That is a profound promise! One of the
examples that Christ gives us is the example of prayer. He took time
alone with God. He would begin his day with prayer before the
disciples even woke up.
He
began his three years of itinerant ministry with prayer. Right after
he was baptized by his cousin John the Baptizer, what did he do? He
went directly to the desert, to the wilderness, to pray and fast for
forty days while he listened to God's direction for his life and
ministry. He prays all night in the garden of Gethsemane on Thursday
night as he is trying to decide to complete his mission as the messiah
or not.
We
pray because Jesus prayed, and when his disciples asked him to teach
them to pray what did he do? He taught them the prayer we know as the
Lord's Prayer. We will come back to that prayer model in a moment.
We
follow his example of prayer because we have promised to be his
followers and his disciples; we will promise this morning as 14 new
members join our church that we will
"order our lives after the example of Christ".
A big part of that promise means that we will pray - even if we
do not know how prayer works.
We
tell each other in our new member sessions no one knows exactly how
prayer works, but we do not need to know how it works to use it. We
know that prayer is not manipulating God; it is not a wish list for a
supernatural Santa Claus. But
when we pray for each other and pray for some cause, something
happens. Something happens in us, and something happens in the world.
I
pray in a variety of ways and settings. I pray in the shower often by
singing: "Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me; melt me,
mold me, fill me, use me." There is in your bulletin insert a
prayer to use in the shower! I pray for strangers as I see them or
pass them on the street. I pray by using the psalm that came to be
meaningful to me my first visit to Israel, psalm 63, which we began
our morning with in our call to worship. I pray when I drive by our
new building that it will be a place where all are welcomed and all
are formed into the likeness of Christ. I pray the Lord's Prayer at
least once a day and try to say it slowly enough so that I realize
again what a life changing prayer it is; it is a radical thing to pray
for God's will to be done through me, for God's kingdom to come
through me.
And
I really like Anne Lamotte's all-purpose prayers. She says there are
only two prayers that we need to get through life. The first is HELP
ME, HELP ME, HELP ME!!
The
second is: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
I
use other forms of music in my prayer life. I use the hymn we sang
last week: "More like you Jesus, more like you. Fill my heart
with your desire to make me more like you."
I
use the breath prayer that is on the front of your bulletin from Dr.
Marcus Borg and repeat it several times: "Lord Jesus Christ, you
are the light of the world. Fill my mind with your wisdom and my heart
with your love."
The
psalm we used last week that is said to be a psalm written by King
David is a useful prayer: "Create in me a clean heart O God and
renew a right spirit within me."
It
is one of many psalms that can be used as models for prayer. In fact,
Kathleen Norris in one of her books says that the thing that got her
through the crisis of her husband's illness was the practice of
praying the psalms because we find in the psalms the entire gamut of
emotions from people being angry with God to people celebrating what
God is doing each day.
The
bulletin insert which I mentioned has some other resources for prayer
including one of my favorites by Thomas Merton, but the most important
thing we can do for the rest of this sermon time is not to talk any
more about prayer but to give you some time to pray right now, to
offer some quiet time for you to remain in your pew or to come forward
to the altar rail and to be in prayer. If you need some guidance, use
the prayers in your bulletin or the back of your hymnal where the
psalms are listed beginning with number 738.
We
will take about four or five minutes for this. Let us be in an
attitude of prayer.
We
Pray This Day
- O,
God, we pray this day;
- for
all who have a song they cannot sing,
- for
all who have a burden they cannot bear,
- for
all who live in chains they cannot break,
- for
all who wander homeless and cannot return,
- for
those who are sick and those who tend them,
- for
those who wait for loved ones and wait in vain,
- for
those who live in hunger,
- and
for those who will not share their bread,
- for
those who are misunderstood,
- and
for those who misunderstand,
- for
those who are captives and for those who are captors,
- for
those whose words of love are locked within their hearts
- and
for those who yearn to hear those words.
- Have
Mercy upon these, O God.
- Have
mercy upon us all.
Ann Weems
Amen.
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