How to Kill Your Faith - Week 2

INTRO.

Have you ever felt like someone isn’t hearing you? Or they’re not understanding what you’re trying to say?

It reminds me of the classic game of telephone, I need 5 volunteers. Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to line you all up, and show the first person a sentence. Their job is to whisper, whisper, that sentence into the next persons ear, so on and so forth, then the last person is going to tell us what they heard. If they get it all right, they all win snacks from the café… if they get it wrong… I’ll throw out one piece of Wednesday’s drip into the crowd… so listen y’all are invested in them getting it wrong… so when I tell you, make as much noise as possible!

Okay first person, here’s the sentence:[have it printed out on a sliver of paper] Wednesday’s are my most favorite night of the week. (Continue playing the game until the last person)

Alright, last person, what was the sentence?

Oh that was close but not exactly right… the sentence we were looking for was: Wednesday’s are my most favorite night of the week. Stay up with me for a second… why do you think that was so hard… it was hard to hear, you know they have something they’re trying to communicate to you… but there’s so many obstacles that get in the way of us being heard AND for us listening.

You guys are awesome, go ahead and grab a seat.

TENSION

We need to be heard, whether you’re talking with your friends and they don’t pay attention to what you say or you’re talking with your parents and they don’t understand you. It’s frustrating when you don’t feel heard, isn’t it?

Of course it is! Coming out of CAMP, I wanted to walk through a series called How to Kill Your Faith, because I am convinced that the fastest way to kill the faith that came alive for a lot us this summer, is to not pray. That’s why we’re spending the month talking all about prayer, and in particular, we’re talking about the pieces of prayer that trip many of us up and keep us from praying.

Last week we talked about how prayer is relational, not transactional. It has to be cultivated over time, it’s not just a switch that you can flip in a second.

This week I want to answer a question that’s kept me from praying in different seasons: Does God hear me when I pray?

You ever asked that before?

It’s easy to feel like if my parents don’t even hear me… How can God hear me? I don’t even know what I’m feeling/thinking half the time, I just know something is going on inside me that I can’t make sense of…

Or maybe you’ve experienced this: have you prayed before and nothing happens? Have you prayed for a good grade on a test and failed? (Okay you probably should’ve studied) Have you ever prayed for a loved one to be healed and nothing happened? Or maybe you prayed to experience God for him to be near to you and for you to feel him… and you feel nothing?

What do you think? Does that happen because God actually doesn’t hear us when we pray? Does it happen because, even if He hears us, He just doesn’t care enough to do anything about it (like when Shelb used to ask me to do chores while I was playing Xbox)? Or…is there a different way to think about prayer that can account for the moments where it doesn’t feel like we’re being heard?

TRUTH

I want to go back to the story that we read to start the teaching, but I want to look at it with our question in mind: does God hear me when I pray? Open your Bibles and let’s look at Mark 10:46-52:

46 Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging.

Help me teach this real quick. Where was Bartimaeus sitting? By the roadside. He might’ve been blind and he might’ve been a beggar, but he wasn’t a dummy. Bartimaeus positioned himself in places that gave him opportunities to have encounters. If he’s a beggar, he needs money. He needs food. He needs clothes. You know how he’s going to get those things? From people. So what’s he do? He positions himself where he expects people will be, and it sets up opportunities for him to have encounters with people who could potentially help him.

47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

One thing I know about people who are blind is that they have unbelievable hearing. Bartimaeus is sitting by the side of the road, and even though he can’t see Jesus, He’s listening close enough that eventually he can hear Jesus.

48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”

So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” 

Soooo interesting to see how quickly the crowd turns. When Bartimaeus first begins to call for Jesus, they tell him to be quiet and stay in his place. But as soon as Jesus actually listens to Bartimaeus and speaks to him, now all of a sudden they’re encouraging him?

50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.51 “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

52 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

The first time I read this I thought that Jesus was annoyed. Like Jesus was walking through Jericho and this dude starts yelling at him “HAVE MERCY ON ME,” and He’s like “just keep walking y’all. Just ignore it. He’s just a crazy blind guy…” I mean the Word says that Bartimaeus CRIED OUT, there’s no way Jesus didn’t hear him, right?

And yet, Bartimaeus had to cry out how many times? Twice.

Only after Bartimaeus KEPT crying out did Jesus hear him. In the face of embarrassment, in the face of opposition from the crowd and people around him telling him to be quiet, Bartimaeus KEPT crying out, and then Jesus responded. It sounds just like another passage of Scripture on prayer.

Flip over to Luke chapter 18.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Oh boy. Look at this, this is two passages of Scripture in two different books of the Bible that are teaching the SAME THING. In the Luke passage, Jesus is teaching His disciples the lesson in theory, and then in the Mark passage He is showing His disciples the lesson in practice.

The lesson He was teaching was persistent prayer.

It’s how to pray, and then KEEP praying. It’s how to ask, and then ask AGAIN.

The story in Luke isn’t to show that God is like the unjust judge… it’s actually to say if this judge is just, how much more just is God. It would be like saying I can play basketball, but how much better at basketball is LeBron James than me… I can sing but how much better is Taylor Swift at singing than me. If I can be just and give out justice, how much more is God going to give out justice?

But there’s a key line in verse 8. “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

For Bartimaeus, he had an opportunity where the Son of Man came to him. And what did Jesus find? Faith. Jesus told him “your faith has made you well.” See, Bartimaeus had the faith to ask again. As a blind man, even though he couldn’t see Jesus moving yet, He could hear what He said and in faith cry out to Him.

Maybe for some of us, the reason we’ve stopped praying, or that we don’t pray, is because we’ve gone a long time without seeing God move and so we don’t have any faith.

But I want to encourage you, even if you haven’t seen God move yet there is hope.

There was hope for Bartimaeus. He hadn’t seen Jesus move the first time, but because of his faith to keep asking, eventually, God moved and Bartimaeus saw. Jesus heard him before He healed him.

And maybe Jesus hasn’t done what you’ve asked just yet, but He’s listening. Maybe He’s hearing you now before He heals you. And in the in-between, what is building in you is faith to pray persistently.

Hebrews talks about faith like this,

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)

So how do we practice praying persistently? Be in the relationship consistently.

Remember, prayer is relational, not transactional. A prayer life is a relationship to be cultivated, not a switch to be flipped. And often God hears us before He heals us. So as we are in the relationship consistently, what God builds in us is a greater faith. Faith to hear what He’s told us about prayer in His word. Faith to hear what kind of power prayer has that God tells us about in His word. Faith to believe that what we’ve read happened by the hand of the same God who walks with us now.

So where do we start in persistent prayer?

Start small – God wants your small prayers too, so think of the smallest thing you could think of… that parking space, that you would remember that thing you always forget, that your parents would be in a good mood when you get home… starting small will start to feel like a snowball building that prayer momentum of more and more things you feel like you can trust Him with!

Pray God’s promises – Prayer and Scripture are like peanut butter and jelly. They go together! If prayer is relational, then there are two sides in the relationship that are speaking. We often speak to God in prayer, but we often hear God in Scripture, His word. There are promises that God has made to us in scripture, that we can count on!

Be consistent – Pray persistently by being in the relationship consistently. This can be as simple as deciding as a small group that you’re going to commit to praying for something every day until next Wednesday, keep each other accountable to that!

As we go to groups, remember God hears you! Let’s pray!