4. Prayers of Yielding

Introduction

Good Morning Church, how are we this morning?

Today is our fourth and final week in our series where we are trying to slow down to look at “How We PRAY”. And that is really what we have been after… “How We PRAY” not necessarily how often because we might be all over the map on that with questionable motivations that drive it…but our focus has really been on what is it that we are, can, or should expect to happen when we PRAY.

And to help us track with these idea we have been using an acrostic using the letters from the word P.R.A.Y. looking at one letter and one focus each week.

Our first week we saw a good place to start to PRAY is to recognize both God’s Attributes and His Actions in PRAISE. That we serve a God who not only is, but He does. He is actively involved in the affairs of this world and so a great place to begin is to recognize who He is, His Attributes and be thankful for all He does Actions. And even though we have seasons when it is hard to see the good things that God is doing, we always have something to praise God for in that He sent His Son Jesus to save us from our sin and selfishness.

The Second week we focused on maintaining a right relationship with God by confessing our sins and turning away from them when we REPENT. Our God is perfectly holy and righteous and so there is a need for His Children to routinely confess where they have not lived up to their name as a Children of God. Over time, this cycle of confessing and repenting of our sins will grow us to able to walk longer stretches in the righteousness Jesus purchased for us on the cross. So even though we could never claim to be “sinless”, over time we will find that we “sin less”.

Then last week we got to the most familiar of all the aspects of prayer and that is the “ASK”. Being Father’s Day it was a good time to focus on how our Heavenly Father loves when we come to Him with our requests and He desires to say “Yes”...but as a good and loving Father He can’t always do so. Because God knows, infinitely better than any earthly Father, that children don’t always ask for what is good for them. And as our perfect heavenly Father He won’t give us things that will harm us or hinder us from growing into what He designed us to be. But we can always ask because it draws us closer to God and He will always answers us. Sometimes it is Yes, sometimes No and sometimes Not Yet. And we can be honest about the fact that we don’t always get the answer the want, but we need to trust that it will be the answer that we need.

And we ended last week with an example of a time where God the Son asked God the Father for something and the answer was “No”. The night before Jesus would go to the cross to pay for our sin, we hear Jesus PRAY

Mark 14:36 (ESV)

36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me.

But the cup that He was asking the Father to remove was the cup of His suffering on the cross. This was the very reason that Jesus was sent to us. This was the mission that He was to accomplish so that we could be reconciled to God once again. Still in his humanness Jesus “Asked”. Even though He knew what the answer would be, there was something that drew Him closer to the Father in the Asking.

And then He said the words that are really focus for this week...

Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

The final aspect of How to PRAY that we are going to focus on is to “Yield”

Tension

The truth is that Jesus taught many bold things about the power of prayer and how we should both ask and expect the Father to give us what what we ask for. In other words, in these verses Jesus is boldly promising a “Yes” to our prayers. Listen to these from the book of John. ...

John 14:13–14 (ESV)

13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

That is a pretty broad and bold statement about the power of prayer. “Whatever you ask…ask me anything…I will do it.” And how about this next one...

John 15:7 (ESV)

7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

This time He invites us to ask “whatever we wish” and its a done deal. These are some bold promises of Jesus, and we dare not ever ignore His promises so what are we to do with Jesus words here?

Let’s look at another one. In 15:16 Jesus says...

John 15:16 (ESV)

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

So what is going on here? As much as we talked about how God’s invitation for us to ask does not make him a cosmic vending machine, a genie in a bottle or a signer of blank checks, these verses here…well…they almost sound like that don’t they?

And many people have misapplied these verses in such a way that it has caused a lot of damage, especially in the lives of people who used to PRAY but now they don’t even bother anymore. Because they were told that since God is a loving God all they have to do is “name it” and “claim it” and then it will happen.

And then it didn’t happen.

God said “No” and they didn’t have a category to understand that God can lovingly say “No”. And since they didn’t get “whatever they asked” or “whatever they wish” like these verses seem to say…they just gave up on God and they no longer PRAY.

But is that what these verses are saying? Well...No, not exactly.

And it is not like we have to dive deep into the Greek language or something to mine out the meaning here, it is really right there in front of our face…it’s just that it doesn’t register because we don’t have things like this in our daily life today. Or if we do experience it, it is drastically different from how it was understood in Jesus’ day.

What we are missing in these verses is the profound qualifier, “…in your name.” Did you see that? We are not promised to get “whatever we want” or “whatever we wish” whenever we pray…but only when we pray… “...in Jesus’ name.:

And those are not some sort of “magic words” that we can say at the end of an “ask” to get what we want like some sort of magician or wizard. They are much more significant than that.

To say or do something “…in someone’s name” was to communicate a particular position and posture toward that person. In short, we are acting on behalf of that person and doing what that person would be doing if they were here.

This was language of authority, it was Kingdom language. To come “in the name of a Lord or a King” is to come with His authority yes, but it is also to come on His errand, under his command and on his mission.

To pray “....in Jesus name” is to take the position of His ambassador where we are asking for His will and ways to be realized in our world and the lives of those we are praying for. .

It is to pray as Jesus taught His disciples to pray…Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10

That is the key to our fourth and final aspect of How To PRAY. To YIELD ourselves and our prayers to the work of Jesus here on earth. Remember, we don’t just serve a God who is, but one who does…and He is working to ever increase His Kingdom here so that He rules and reigns on earth as He does in Heaven.

So to explore this further I invite you to turn to the book of James chapter 4, it is on page 1012 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and we will finish strong this series on How we PRAY.

Truth

So you might want to keep your bookmark here in the book of James, because beginning next week, and for the next 6 weeks during my Sabbatical the Overseers, will be leading us through a series on this very practical book .

And I didn’t mean to steal any of their thunder, but I could not find a better way to untangle the promises of Jesus from these false teachings than to learn from it from James’ letter.

We are going to start in chapter 4, starting in verse 1 where we read…

James 4:1–10 (ESV)

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

Who is being caught up in these quarrels and fights, even lust (desire) to the point of murder? The people of God, the early Church. This is some pretty serious stuff.

I know that Tim will get into this more next week, but James is writing to the Christian Church after it experienced this wave of persecution that drove most of them away from Jerusalem and into the rest of the Roman Empire. James was still back in Jerusalem and he has heard of their fighting and he writes to them to correct them.

We might think that in light of their difficult situation, having been driven from their homes that James might have take a more understanding tone, but he is pretty straight forward with them.

You are fighting because you have forgotten that as Christians, no matter what you face or where you find yourselves on this earth, God’s people are never outside of the rule and reign of their King.

So James says You do not have, because you do not ask.

And then, as if he knows that they are going to say, “but we did ask”…he follows up with something that helps clarify things for them but also for us. He says...

3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

The Greek word translated ‘passions” here is the word ἡδονή (hedone) which you might recognize from inside the English word “hedonism”. This is where that word comes from.

If you are not familar with Hedonism, the dictionary defines it as “the egoistic pursuit of short-term gratification by indulging in sensory pleasures without regard for the consequence.” That idea of unguarded and misguided passion or pleasure seems to fit what James is talking about here.

In James’ day, when a servant or ambassador asked for something “...in the name of the King”, then it was to be something that was in line with the King’s business, the Kings agenda, the Kings work.

If, however, you used the King’s name to accomplish something of your own agenda, to satisfy your own passions or pleasures…that was something very different. It was setting yourself up as a “rival” King. It was an act of Treason!

Too strong? Listen to what James says in the next verse. He says...

4 You adulterous people! (You are cheating on God) Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

To ask God to do something according to our will, our passion our pleasure…what we want for ourselves out of this world...is to make ourselves His enemy. This is what is happening when...

3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

And that is why so many people have “given up on God” and no longer PRAY. They were told that becoming a Christ follower somehow means that He follows you instead of the other way around and when that didn’t happen they figured “Why PRAY, it doesn’t really work”.

Well that depends what “working” means. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish when you Pray. Just because the fancy dressed preacher man on TV said you only need ask and it is yours doesn’t make it so.

And it breaks my heart to see how much of what is being called “World Evangelism” right now is following this false teaching and all it is doing is pushing people further away from God because it isn’t how God designed prayer to work.

They are being taught to PRAY without this last crucial part…to YIELD

Thankfully, James doesn’t leave us in hopelessness. In the subsequent verses he gives us the way forward. In verse 6, he says

James 4:6 (ESV)

6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

God’s grace forgives our Tyranny when we humble ourselves before Him. But his grace goes even further than that for in verse 10 we read:

James 4:10 (ESV)

10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

The big question of whether or not we can claim Jesus’ promises of having “whatever we want” or “whatever we wish” is that whether or not we want and wish for what God is doing to increase His Kingdom here on earth.

This is at the heart of what it means to YIELD when we pray. It is to humbly PRAY according to the will and ways of God and for the growth of His Kingdom instead of thinking of ourselves as King and asking God to honor us.

It is to PRAY as Jesus did, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

and how He taught us to PRAY “Your kingdom Come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Gospel Application

So how do we practically get after this kind of “Yielding”?

One way is, we could tag every “ASK” with Jesus’ words “Yet not what I will, but what you will” and that would be a good practice. Any time we find ourselves doing what Jesus did we are headed in the right direction for sure.

But I wonder if there isn’t more there for us than just that. And maybe after that has become routine for us we will naturally just do this, but I wonder what it might look like to go into every “ASK” with that in mind at the start. It could be that keeping that in the front of our mind as we go into prayer will help us to “Ask” for even better things and it may change how we respond when we don’t get the answer we were hoping for.

But along with keeping “your will be done” in our minds as we pray, Jesus also taught us to pray “Your Kingdom come”.

And certainly there is something in there that is a longing for Jesus’ to return and rid our world of the presence of sin once and for at the end of time…but since Jesus prayed “on earth as it is in heaven” there must be something of God’s kingdom that we can experience more of right now.

If you listen, you probably will find that most of our prayer requests in the Church are aimed at things like sickness, joblessness, children in crisis and maybe an occasional missionary…and I am not suggesting that we stop praying for those things.

What I am asking us to consider is what would it look like to pray “Your Kingdom Come” into each one of those and any other prayer request that we ever ASK?

How could praying for an increase of the rule and reign of Jesus in someone’s life change things for a person who is sick, injured or ill?

Or how could praying for a recognition of King Jesus as sovereign over every authority on earth bring change for that person who is struggling in their employment or lack there of.

How might in change their lives, and even ours if as parents we began praying “Heavenly Father your Kingdom come, your will be done” in the life of my wayward son or my lost daughter.

What kind of effect could it have on our communities, our country or cultures around the world if we hit our knees to implored God to increase His Kingdom so that all the nations might know Him as the rightful King that we know Him to be.

We know these things are a part of God’s will, and so at least in these endeavors we can know that we are YIELDing to Him when we pray.

Landing

You might remember that I began this series 4 weeks ago with my upcoming Sabbatical in mind. Knowing that a big part of this upcoming experience for me would be to seek to meet with God in intentional times of prayer.

And I drug you all along on my journey.

But my hope, both at the start and now is that this has been a good journey for you as well. A time to be intentional about slowing down…taking a deep breath…remembering who is ultimately in control…and spend time in

Praise... to our God who both is and does wonderful things

Repent…so we can turn our backs on the dark and walk in the light of Jesus

Ask…because our heavenly father delights to give us good gifts and

Yield…because we don’t always ask for the things that are truly good for us.

As we have in weeks past we are going to end our time with some intentional an personal prayer time. Today I have printed out for you a prayer on the back of the notes page that I believe will be helpful in leading us toward a better understanding of how to YIELD when we pray.

I will lead out with the first couple lines of this wrote prayer and then leave some silent time where you can pray the words found on the page or chose to explore any of the other ways that God leads you in praying for His Kingdom to come and His will to be done.

Then after a few moments I will lead us to say the Lord’s Prayer together, the words will be on the screen.

Please Join me in praying the words of the Lord’s prayer...

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name,  thy kingdom come,  thy will be done,  on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our trespasses,  as we forgive those who trespass against us.  And lead us not into temptation,  but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom,  and the power, and the glory,  for ever and ever. Amen.