PRAY: Yielding
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· 23 viewsGreg Osborne - Luke Commentary Douglas Moo - Colossians TNTC Pete Grieg - How to Pray
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Transcript
Hello and good morning church. For those of us that haven’t met, I’m Brian.
2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: “ ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”
Lk 11:2–4.
I’m honored to be wrapping up our series on prayer, as we’ve been preaching through themes laid out in Pete Grieg’s book, “How to Pray”. Which, by the way, is a great book, and is worth picking up and giving a read.
As you probably remember by now, the word PRAY is made into an acronym that sets the structure for how the book teaches on prayer. Our series has followed that same structure.
P: Pause
R: Rejoice
A: Ask
Y: Yield
And this week I will be preaching on Yield.
As we’ll handle it today, yielding means surrendering to God. Surrendering to His will for your life.
Yielding is what our response should be to His instruction. Releasing your own way of doing things in order to follow Gods.
This final letter in the acronym of PRAY is kind of a response to the previous three topics prior.
In moments that we pause, rejoice, or ask, we are also called to surrender, to yield.
It’s important that you all know, I was not asked to preach on this weekend because of my expertise of surrendering in prayer. If anything, I’m known as the control freak in my house. Surrendering is not my strong suite.
I tell you this because much of what I will be sharing this morning is the very things I’ve been learning over these last few weeks that I need to apply in my own prayer life.
I need to learn to release the death grip I have on my life. My wants. My things. My loved ones. My expectations. My hopes. My plans.
Yielding to God in prayer is still hard for me. Truth is, I am scared of what God might tell me.
Scared that He might tell me something I don’t want to hear. Send me somewhere I don’t want to go. Convict me of something that I don’t want to be convicted of.
I’m also scared that He might not say anything at all, just silence on the other end of the phone.
Regardless of my fears, God has things He wants me to hear and know.
God speaks to us because we belong to Him, and He calls us to live our lives like Jesus. To live a life that is holy, obedient, and glorifying to Him. A life that is greater than anything the world could ever offer us. A life that when surrendered, will bring is deeper into relationship with God than our own efforts could ever take us.
Guys, I want to experience being someone that belongs to God.
I want to experience that.
It’s time for you and me to stop worrying about the things I hope God doesn’t tell us, and start focusing on what He wants to reveal to me.
Church, we need to surrender everything to God. And today, that starts with surrendering in prayer.
So what is it like to surrender to God and have Him lead us through life in relationship with Him?
David tells us in Psalm 23.
Psalm 23:1–5 (CSB)
The Lord is my shepherd;
I have what I need.
He lets me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside quiet waters.
He renews my life;
he leads me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even when I go through the darkest valley,
I fear no danger, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
God wants you to hear Him and surrender because He wants to bring you deeper into experiencing that kind of relationship with Him.
Surrendered to His provision, His way, His protection.
So what does surrendering to God look like?
Surrendering to God is the act of releasing our motives and opinions, and yielding to Gods will and truth.
Jesus describes it as “denying ourselves”
Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.
Paul takes it even further in Romans when he tells us
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
This act of surrender. Of yielding to God. It involves every part of our being. And it plays a key role in our walk as Christians. And if we want to see surrender develop in our life, one of the best places to start is prayer.
You see, when Jesus says in Luke that those who want to follow Him are to deny themselves and take up their cross, He’s revealing that in following Jesus, our life will be different than our way or the worlds way. Our experience will be different. How we respond will be different.
As Grant Osborne puts it
“Being a Jesus “follower” is not an individualistic walk with Christ in which we decide the path we wish to take and do whatever we like. It is following Christ’s path and imitating him.”
When we surrender, we are saying “I want to go Jesus’ way. I want to be like Him.”
And as we press into practicing pausing, rejoicing, and asking through prayer, it is crucial that we have our hands open, ready to receive Jesus’ way in all these things.
Continuing with Grant Osborne’s notes on Luke 9
“To save one’s life they must “lose” or surrender it. It means Jesus’ followers refuse to allow the “self” to control their life. To confess Christ we must deny self. And to “take up our cross daily,” reveals the ongoing nature of this—that this happens every day for the rest of their lives.”
There is no better place to start denying yourself and taking up your cross daily than to do so in prayer
What then do we gain from surrendering to God in prayer that helps us to walk along the path that Christ has for us? How do we begin to better imitate Him? What about our surrender in prayer will cause Christlikeness to spill over into other areas of our life? What will we hear from God?
I’m not going to venture too far into the details of what you should expect to hear from God. Each of you has your own walk with God, and He has something unique that He wants to reveal to you as you surrender to Him.
What I do want to share with you today, though, is what God will reveal to all of us if we surrender to Him in prayer.
When we surrender to God in prayer, He reveals to us how we can live as one made alive in Christ.
Made alive in Christ
That means those who believe in Jesus and accept Him as their Lord and Savior, have been given knew life in Him. Made newly alive. Living a life where they are in relationship with Jesus and will spend eternity with Him.
As we WILL see today in scripture, there are four things that will inevitably change about every single one of us when we surrender to God and live as one made alive in Christ.
Yes, there are specific ways that He will likely speak to each of us outside of this, and as I mentioned, that isn’t the direction that I am heading in today’s sermon. But I want to encourage you, press into all that God might have to say to you, even what isn’t discussed today.
Because, yes, God might say to you tonight to go to your neighbors and knock on their door to see if they’re okay. Those kind of things do happen.
That’s just not what we’re going to dig into today.
What we’ll see today, is that scripture indicates that God has something to reveal for each one of us when we surrender and live as one made alive in Christ. And there are four things that apply to anyone surrendering their lives as such.
And for those of you with Bibles, or Bible apps, or even just google, I would encourage you to open your Bibles, apps or googles to Colossians 3.
When we surrender in prayer:
1) God reveals how He sees the World.
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
God is going to reveal to you how He sees the world.
He is going to do that by setting your hearts to things above. That means that when we live like Jesus, we see the world as one that is looking to Christ in Heaven. Our minds seeking the things of our Father God, not the things of this world.
Our eyes set on the place where we belong and will someday be with God forever.
Philippians 3:20 (CSB)
Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
A believers, we are citizens of heaven.
As one of my favorite New Testament scholars, Douglas Moo, puts it, “we are to make our heavenly status the guidepost for all our thinking and acting.”
God wants to reveal to you what that looks like.
What it looks like to surrender to God’s values. Letting God’s priorities become our own.
January 2020, I was working as a sales manager. A role I worked hard to be promoted too a few years prior, building on a blossoming career at a company I loved. My first day in the office that year, pre-covid okay, I printed out a picture of a honey badger eating a cobra.
For those of you that don’t know.
Honey Badgers are straight up savage.
Now, for the sake of those with weak stomachs, I didn’t get a picture of a honey badger eating a cobra, but these furry dudes are full on crazy. Ferocious. They do they want. Honey Badger don’t care.
And in 2020, I was going work like a Honey Badger. I was going to run all over the place. I was ready to be like the most fearless animal in all the animal kingdom.
And I was. I worked my butt off in 2020.
My sales team hit record sales numbers. I was promoted to oversee a second department to help develop their team.
Even outside of work, things were going great.
Jessie and I bought a new house and shortly after found out we were pregnant with Heath.
Friends, covid aside, 2020 was really great year me. My family grew closer in ways that I couldn’t have expected. I read books that grew my understanding of God in ways that have forever changed my life. I was playing in a band with a group of friends I loved dearly. Jessie and I were growing everyday in our second year of marriage.
But in December of that year, almost a year later, something that had been pushing inside of me began to burst out.
For some reason, despite all that was happening in my life, I felt overwhelmed in a way I had never felt before. It was like, no matter how good things were, something was missing. And that something was beginning to take over.
It was evening not many days after Thanksgiving the first time that I found myself laying on the floor in the middle of our living room.
How I ended up lying on the floor, I don’t remember. It was like my entire life had pressed down on me to the point of not being able to stand anymore. It was the least Honey Badgery thing I had done all year. But I couldn’t help it.
I had never felt so weak.
I didn’t know why I was there. But I laid there and wept, expressing to Jessie and God my confusion over why I was so unexpectedly exhausted and defeated.
A few weeks later, it happened again. By the end of the third week of December, I had nearly every night that week found myself lying on the floor in a growing spiral of defeat and confusion.
That weekend, I called my boss and told him that I needed to take some time off. He let me take the last two weeks of December off.
I didn’t know what I needed to get better. But I knew it wasn’t just rest or a vacation. There was something in my life that needed to change.
So, upon the advice of my wife, I decided that not only would I rest, but that I would journal, twice a day, surrendering to God my thoughts and my heart. And not only would I do that, but that I would also surround those moments with time in the Bible. I was going to slow down, and listen.
Through those two weeks, I surrendered to God, and searched for what He might have to say to me.
It was only a couple days into my vacation, a handful of journal entries, a few chapters of the Bible, that God spoke to me in a big way. Not all at once, but a little bit each hour that I surrendered to hearing from Him.
See, God had put on my heart years before this that He wanted to use me someday to share the gospel and serve the church through ministry, and that when I was married, He would reveal what the next steps towards that would be.
The problem was, after I got married, I fell in love with the idea of being the ultimate provider. Building the dream career. Building an amazing life and home for my family.
Don’t get me wrong, these were not bad aspirations. I still strive to do all these things the best that I can.
But they became my greatest focus. And the things of God. The priorities of the Gospel. They began to be put on the back burner.
As I got better and found more success at my job I thought less about what God wanted for my life, and more about what I could get if I kept improving and climbing.
My eyes were no longer set on the things above.
So during those two weeks, through hours of conversation with my wife, and even more hours of journaling, praying and pursuing God through the Bible, it became clear that the direction of my life needed to change.
Within a few weeks I was enrolled at Whatcom Community College and online seminary classes, to begin a long road of education.
Not long after starting school, God revealed that my career had become an idol, and that I needed to step down from my position as a director, to become a sales rep in order to have more time and energy to put towards ministry and school.
Over the last nearly 3 years since that December, Jessie hasn’t once found me laying on the floor in despair, not to say it could never happen again.
But more importantly, I learned that what God provides is better than anything I could attain through worldly pursuits.
God not only has taken care of my family, build a great home, helped me to be a good provider, but more importantly, He has shown me that when I follow His ways, there is greater joy and passion and purpose than I could find anywhere else.
No longer is my joy dependent on my success or my abilities. My joy is found in Christ, in doing His work.
But without surrender, I could not have seen that His way was better. I would not have experienced the fullness of life that comes from trusting Him.
His ways are better than my ways.
Friends, God has a higher calling for your life. He has something He wants to reveal to you.
Maybe it’s not a career change for you.
Maybe it’s a ministry God wants you to serve in.
Maybe it’s a relationship.
Maybe it’s a different use of your money or time.
Maybe it’s just a different approach to the things you’re already doing now.
Whatever it is. Prayerfully seek God’s ways, not your own.
We are called to yield to higher things than what the world has to offer.
2) God reveals our sin
Colossians 3:5–10 (CSB)
Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God’s wrath is coming upon the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now, put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.
When we surrender to Him, God is going to reveal our sin. He does this not to shame us. Jesus already paid the penalty for the sins that will be revealed. Thus, we are declared innocent of our sin my Christ’s blood.
Remember, we are already called citizens of heaven. There is no more shame.
So why reveal our sin? Because God wants us to be more like Jesus. To be able to enjoy Him more right now.
In the Bible, we see that the revealing of our sins by the law is actually a kindness. For we cannot live and follow the path of Christ if we are not daily turning away from our sins and towards God. It is a kindness that we know our sins so that we might know what to turn from. So that we might know what is hurting us and pulling us away from God.
As we read a moment ago
Colossians 3:9–10 (CSB)
You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.
I’ve got to tell you something friends, we’re being ignorant if we think that we can put off our sins without actually knowing what our sins are.
We need to know what the old self is in order to take it off. And each of us has a unique old self that needs to be revealed so it can be removed.
For example. In Romans we read the instruction that if angered, we are to told “be angry and do not sin.”
Friends. If you’re telling me that you can be angry and not sin, despite not knowing all the ways in which you are tempted to sin when you’re angry.
That ain’t gonna happen.
Avoiding sin isn’t just a “oh I tried really hard” kind of thing. Guys, the devil is a liar. His greatest strategy is to deceive. You’ve got to know what aims to hurt you if you want to better recognize where to look for safety.
So if sin is deceitful, when we are surrendering in prayer, it’s important that we recognize that sin can’t only come up when we bring it up. Does Jesus command us to regularly confess our sins. Yes. Are some of our sins pretty obvious. For sure. But there is something else here that I am trying to get at.
We are not aware of all the ways that we are sinning.
Take gossip for example. We may recognize when we have gossiped about someone. But what we could be unaware of is that we are actually jealous of that person, or struggling with pride. If we aren’t listening and surrendering, we can easily miss that our act of gossip is absolutely the result of a deeper more hidden sin.
Or perhaps we have pursued lustful or evil desires, not realizing that there is a deeper reality of our sin. A deeper sin that when revealed shows that instead of turning to Christ in times of stress or struggle, we turn to sinful vices.
What about lying. We all know that’s a sin. But what about the reason you lied? What about the lies that you’ve been telling yourself?
The lies that are hiding your deepest and most secret sins. The ones that you don’t even realize are there.
This is why we must surrender to God, that the Holy Spirit might reveal those lies, and that we might be able to look more like Jesus.
We’ve got to listen and surrender.
And know it is safe to do this beacuse the one who wants to help you address your sins and turn from them, is Jesus, the same person that died for your sins so that you are no longer guilty of them.
Jesus has already conquered them and declared you innocent. Thus, we can more confidently face and confess our sins as we put off our old selves and put on our new selves. A new self that is born again in Christ and being made into His likeness.
3) God reveals His heart for people.
Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
God reveals His heart for His people, meaning that when we surrender in prayer, He is going to reveal how He sees people and how He wants us to see them. And this passage right here shows us what that looks like.
Therefore, when we pray for other people, whether it is a loved one, someone who hurt us, someone who is living recklessly, someone whom we are upset with or scared for.
Whoever it is, we must surrender to God’s heart for them, not ours.
And seeing people through a lens of love and compassion, it’s something I am sure you’ve experienced many times in life. With your kids, your friends, your family. You’re favorite sports star or celebrity. Seeing them with love and compassion.
But what about when you think of that person at work who at every turn seems to be out to make your work life miserable.
How about the neighbor who is just the worst. He’s got no respect for anybody but himself.
Or those people in that parents group, that are just ignorant and don’t care.
What about the person who you are hoping with all your heart doesn’t get elected to the school board, or the county executive seat.
What about homeless people.
Or maybe it is a family member. Or close friend. Maybe your spouse, or kids.
I don’t know about you, but when I said there is stuff that is hard for me to surrender, this might be the toughest one. Because truth is, I often times don’t want to look at people in a loving way like Jesus does. I don’t like them, why would I want to love them.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
When reading this verse, it’s as if Jesus hears my thoughts about people and asks me, “Brian, I died for that person. I forgave them of all their sins. I love them. Who are you to think their sin against you is not worth forgiving?”
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
How dare I judge someone with whom Jesus died for. As if what they did to hurt or anger me is so much worse than what they’ve done against God.
When I withhold a Christlike attitude and care towards someone else… I withhold what Christ Himself died for, forgiveness of sins. Praise God that not a single soul on this earth’s salvation and forgiveness of sin is dependent upon me. And praise God that I am forgiven of refusing to give what Christ gave freely.
None of us deserve the good things that Christ has. So who are we to hold back what Christ wants to give others through us.
Friends. Surrender to God. Yes. He is going to humble you. And not just in private, but in front of others. But I promise you that you cannot experience the joy of Christs love and forgiveness fully if we ourselves are unwilling to forgive as He has.
That’s why when Jesus instructs us to pray, when we read it in Matthew, He tells us to say
Matthew 6:12 (CSB)
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
When we pray to be forgiven, it is evident that we must come as a forgiver.
That is why, we must be ready to surrender, for God is going to reveal to us how we must look at others.
Surrender in prayer means letting the Holy Spirit dictate how we look at people. Revealing that we must look with eyes that are clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. A heart that does not hold grudges, ever.
A heart that forgives as the Lord forgave you. A forgiveness that none of us deserved. Yet all those who have accepted Jesus, have received, no matter how bad the sin, or how many times it was.
4) God reveals His Truth
And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
God reveals lastly His truth, and our call to let it dwell among us.
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.
God reveals His truth.
That’s what’s in this book. That’s what we’ve been talking about today. That’s what the Holy Spirit has for us.
God reveals His truth.
Maybe a better starting place is this.
Sometimes in prayer, we ask for something. God, help me in this time of trouble. Lord, heal them of this sickness. Lord, please, help my friend to see that you are God and you love them.
Sometimes in prayer we ask for something.
But sometimes.
Sometimes in prayer, we ask questions.
God, why do you allow suffering in the world?
How could something so many people think is good be a sin?
Father, why am I still in this season of hardship?
God, why is my marriage falling apart?
Lord, why didn’t my baby girl survive?
God, why did Jesus have to die?
Why would He die for me?
How can I know if I am saved?
Lord, what should I do?
What do you want from me?
God, are you there?
I can’t count how many times in my life I’ve asked questions like these.
I don’t know the answer to all my questions yet. And honestly, it’s unlikely that many of them will ever be answered on this side of heaven.
But I will tell you this. God has answered more questions than I need in order to know and experience that His truth is good. That He is good. And that I can trust Him.
And not just answered questions that I asked, but even more so, He has proven He is good and worthy of all trust and praise because of the things He has taught me that I wasn’t even asking about.
There is an abundance of riches and joy to be found in learning the Word of God.
Church, when we surrender to God in prayer, God will begin to reveal His truth. And you and I both know, we need His truth.
And not only do we need that truth because we have questions, but because there is closeness in Christ in knowing it.
So I will end with this today.
As revealed in this last section of today's scripture. The path of Christ comes with a community. And when we surrender in prayer we can begin to see the truth that God has for us in reading the Bible, going to church, being in community and in close relationships where we are humble and real. We will see the path of Christ calls us not only into relationship with Him, but with others. And through those relationships, through the church, God will reveal more of His truth.
And as the last verse in our passage reveals, when we yield to God in prayer, and in life, it is in only a matter of time before we find ourselves living completely for the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.