01.08.2023 - Prayer that Moves Us - The Voice of the Lord

Scripture: Psalm 29

Psalm 29 NRSV

A Psalm of David. 1 Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; worship the Lord in holy splendor. 3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over mighty waters. 4 The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. 5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. 6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. 7 The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. 8 The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. 9 The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!” 10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. 11 May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!

Prayer that Moves Us - The Voice of the Lord

01.08.2023

Voices

I think the Christmas Season may have inspired some of the most excellent music ever written, and we had some beautiful examples in our church these past weeks. I bet nearly every instrument has been used for Christmas music across history. You may not be aware of it, but one of the unintended blessings of a worldwide pandemic was a jump in music technology, specifically in simulating real instruments. I studied music in college, and twenty years ago, electronic music was just a bunch of weird beeps and buzzes that you could set to rhythms.

Today, we have the technology to create the sound of a pipe organ, a violin, a guitar, or even handbells without ever recording an actual instrument. We can do it all with math. During the past few years, when musicians had to find ways to play without live audiences, that technology jumped ahead tremendously. It is now very difficult to tell if you are listening to actual instruments that were recorded or if you are listening to a computer pretending to be an instrument.

Of all the instruments in the world, do you know the hardest one for a computer to emulate? The human voice. It makes sense if you think about it. Most guitars, trumpets, pianos, and other instruments have similar shapes and sizes and have a limited number of sounds they make. The human voice, though, comes from vocal cords, mouths, and sinuses, where no two are exactly alike. There is no perfect voice, and our imperfections make our voices unique and recognizable. Technology has grown tremendously in mimicking our flaws, but we are not there yet. We can still tell when we get phone calls whether or not we are talking to a real person.

Our voices allow us to communicate with the world around us, and they change as we grow and yet somehow stay uniquely our own. They are gifts of God and can shape some of the most powerful and beautiful works of creativity. Indeed, having a voice at all may be one of the ways we are created in God’s image. That makes me wonder if the human voice is so powerful and creative, what is God’s voice like?

We use our voices to talk to God, and I think He loves hearing them. Our prayers might sound like music to his ears in all the different words and phrases we use. But what do you hear when you stop using your voices in prayer and listen to God? What does God’s voice sound like? This month, we focus on prayer as we start our year together, following God and growing into the church God is leading us to become.

Today we recognize that the most important part of prayer is listening to God.

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Ascribe

“Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.”

King David, the writer of this psalm, gives us a command. This is a call to stop what we are doing and worship God. However, David uses an unusual command word here. He doesn’t tell us to sing or shout about or to God. Instead, he uses the fancier word “ascribe,” which makes us think about writing something down.

In my first year in seminary, I was working on a research paper and came across a book about the Gospels. The book's introduction said, “Here are some things Jesus may have said,” and then proceeded to list about thirty sets of statements. Some of those I recognized as coming from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. There were some others that I did not recognize at all, and I was pretty sure they were not from any book of the Bible. It frustrated me, not because the author was using books outside the Bible and saying they were words of Jesus, but because he never mentioned where any of those statements came from. He could have dreamed them all up. People do this on social media, on their clothing and bumper stickers, and in conversations with each other. What frustrated me the most was that this author was a professional, paid to teach others about Jesus, and did not cite his sources. Citing your sources is essential.

In these opening verses, David tells us that citing the source of our blessings is important. When we experience beauty in nature, that was provided by God. When we experience escaping a dangerous situation or healing from sickness, God is at work in our lives. When we follow this psalm’s directions, we cite God as the source of everything good in our lives. In this psalm, we are invited, along with David, to praise God as the powerful source of blessing behind all of creation, whether we are feeling directly blessed today or have benefitted from creation, less specifically, for all our lives.

But praising God’s power and majesty does not stop with creation. David tells us that God continues to use His mighty voice to shape the world daily.

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Resonating

What does God’s voice sound like when it enters our world? God’s voice is powerful and full of majesty. It thunders over the oceans and can cause forests to fall. David says it causes entire nations of people to skip and run in joy or fear like a young cow or ox. It can come out as fires, earthquakes, floods, and windstorms with devastating effects on our world. This is how the ancient Hebrew people often remembered God - as a devastating force of power, and they wanted to be sure that they were on the right side of that voice. They suffered disasters themselves, but God just as often used that force against their enemies, which gave them freedom and protection in our world. This was why the people wanted Moses to go up to Mount Sinai to talk to God in their place. They were terrified of His voice and what it might do to them.

Moses, however, was not afraid of God’s voice. He had heard God from the burning bush calling him by name. All the prophets heard God’s voice, and many people who were not prophets did as well and lived to tell the tale. One of my favorite examples of God’s voice comes from 1 Kings 19. In this chapter, the prophet Elijah was running from the people of Israel who persecuted Him by order of their corrupt leaders. God gave Elijah all the usual shows of power: a windstorm, an earthquake, and fire, but it says that Elijah did not hear God’s voice in any of those great disasters. Perhaps they were just distractions. Instead, after it all faded away, Elijah heard God in a still, small voice, telling him to get out of his hiding place and raise a new prophet to follow in his footsteps. Everything was not as devastating as he was making it out to be. God was still with him and was still working in the world.

God’s voice resonates through the world, sometimes in those dramatic and momentous occasions, and other times through small quiet things. I’ve met people who fought battles against forces that kept them addicted to false idols and lifestyles and were broken by fears and suffering but found the strength from God to live differently, even for a moment, when they heard the voice of their newborn baby.

God’s voice doesn’t stop with just one person, either. It resonates through us, through our families, churches, communities, and the world. It resonates across time, sometimes in echoes, as each generation is reminded of our calling to follow Christ. Sometimes God gives us a new calling as He tells us who we are as new creations in Christ. The disciples remembered the day they heard God’s voice from the heavens declare at the Baptism of Jesus,

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Mt 3:17). (1989). Thomas Nelson Publishers.

When God speaks to you, do you recognize His voice?

How does it sound to you?

What does He call you?

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Listen to God

The most important part of prayer is listening to God because prayer is the communication that builds our relationship with Him. Sometimes prayer may feel like one-way communication, making us want to be larger and louder, imagining that God is too far away to hear us. If we only hear God in the thunder, we may feel like we have to be that loud to get His attention. However, I think God’s voice is so powerful because He can whisper with a force that can change the world. He hears our whispers as well. He listens to the prayers we don’t even know how to say out loud. (The source for that is Matthew 6:5 and Romans 8:26-27)

Volume is not power when it comes to prayer. We can build weapons and do godless acts that mimic fires, earthquakes, and whirlwinds. That is happening in war zones across the world today. But our missiles and bombs can’t hold a candle to the life-changing power of God’s voice saying, “I love you.” Hearing God’s voice say those three words will change your day. It will change your year. It will change your life.

Will you commit today to listen for and listening to God’s voice daily this year? It will change everything.

Will you commit to allowing God’s voice to resonate through you as you carry His Word to others? It will do more good for the world than anything else we have to share.

I invite you to join me today in a moment of silence, listening to God, and then a prayer of commitment as we promise to listen to and follow God together this year. (Wesley Prayer of Covenant Renewal)

From UM Hymnal #607

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

Sunday School begins in just a moment, and you are invited to join us this evening as Gary Motta shares with us in worship at 6 pm.