Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

My earliest childhood memories of being in church are of the rope that I could ride.

The thick rope hung down through the ceiling in the church entry way.

I was so little that when the rope was pulled to ring the bell in the belfry, I could hang on to it and get a ride as it would pull me up off the floor, and then set me down again.

It is a pleasant memory in my mind, and my earliest thoughts of being in church are memories of church being a fun place to be.

This memory was brought back to my mind when I read this statement by Christmas Evans, the great Welsh preacher.

He said, "Prayer is the rope up in the belfry; we pull it and it rings the bell up in heaven."

For the first time in my life this image linked prayer and fun.

I had never given it a thought that prayer and fun could be compatible partners.

After all, prayer is a solemn and serious business, and that is why we tell children to be quiet, and stop having fun and clowning around.

Bow you head and close your eyes and knock off anything you are doing that could be construed as having fun.

From this childhood lesson we move on to a life time of having it drilled into our brain that prayer is anything but fun.

It is a chore; it is a challenge; it is such a burdensome labor that it is one of the hardest aspects of the Christian life to develop.

C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest Christians of the 20th century, describes the feelings of millions of Christians when it comes to prayer.

"...Prayer is irksome.

And excuse to omit it

is never unwelcome.

When it is over, this

casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the

rest of the day.

We are reluctant to begin.

We are delighted to finish.

While we are at

prayer but not while we are reading a novel

or solving a cross-word puzzle, any trifle is

enough to distract us....

The odd thing is that this reluctance to

pray is not confined to periods of dryness.

When yesterday's prayers are full of comfort

and exaltation, today's will still be felt as, in

some degree, a burden."

We could quote many others who feel the same, and all the evidence indicates the majority of Christians feel that prayer is a hard part of the Christian life.

Seldom to never does anyone relate prayer and fun.

I must confess I certainly never did until this past week when I saw, for the first time, that for Paul prayer was fun.

It was a time to be joyful, and a time of happy memories, and thanksgiving to God for His abundant goodness and grace.

Let me show you what has been before my eyes for years, but which I never saw until the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see.

Now I want to be the instrument to illumine you on what is clearly revealed in God's Word, but is also hidden because Satan does not want God's people to discover that prayer can be fun.

Look at the facts.

Paul says in verse 4, "I always pray with joy."

Then in chapter 4 Paul goes all out to make it clear that prayer is to be surrounded with positive joyful feelings, and the negative feelings of life are to be eliminated.

Listen to 4:4-7, "Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice!

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Paul is clearly revealing a life of prayer full of joy and thanksgiving.

Eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive.

Prayer is to be a fun and enjoyable time, and not a time we dread as a duty we have to be dragged into.

Paul lived the way he wrote for others to live, and he demonstrated these words in his own life.

When he was in the prison there is Philippi, having been attacked, beaten, flogged, and locked in stocks in a cell, we read this of Paul's attitude in Acts 16:25, "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God..."

It was one of the most miserable days of his life, yet Paul is enjoying his prayer time, and he is singing hymns to God.

In the midst of pain he is finding pleasure in prayer.

He is singing songs of thanksgiving, and rejoicing in the Lord with the peace that passes understanding.

Paul demonstrated the power of a thankful heart to overcome enormous negative circumstances.

Prayer is not the dark garment of despair.

Prayer is a bright garment of praise that will dress up the soul even on the dreariest of days.

It is not that there is never a time for lament and a pouring out of the poison in our soul to God.

This is a legitimate aspect of prayer as well, but the dominant note of Paul in prayer is the high note of joyful thanksgiving.

This enabled Paul to look any direction in his life and see reasons for being and optimistic Christian.

We want to focus on each of the directions Paul could look: The past, the present, and the future, and see how his thankful spirit made prayer a fun time.

First look at-

I. HIS THANKFULNESS FOR THE PAST.

V. 3.

"I thank my God every time I remember you."

Paul had fun in prayer because his prayer was full of gratitude for memories of the past.

When Paul says later in this letter that he forgets what is behind, he was not referring to his past blessings, but to the burdens he bore.

His past was not all good at all.

It was loaded with bad things like being falsely arrested, and kept in prison.

He was treated like dirt, and humiliated.

He had to suffer great injustice, but Paul says I forgot all that of my past, and I press on to the future, and the prize God has for me in Christ.

What Paul does not forget is all the good things and blessings he had in Philippi.

We have a choice as to what we bring on to the screen of our mind from the computer-like data bank of our brain.

Some Christians chose to remember the hurts, the failures, and the bad stuff of the past.

That is why you have Christians who are neurotics of all kinds, and depressive type people.

They have legitimate records of life's injustices, and damaging negatives.

There is no question they have had some, and even many, raw deals, but they let these bad memories dominate their memory.

The result is, they seldom feel joyful and thankful, for you cannot have these positive emotions when your focus is on pain.

Imagine how depressed Paul would have felt if he would have written to the Philippians, "I can't help remembering how miserable it was to be in that damp moldy prison.

I still wake up in the night remembering the stench of the other prisoners, and the unsanitary conditions of the jail.

The injustice of it all still burns me to the core as I languish here in Rome incarcerated for doing good.

It truly is a rotten world, and hell is too good for the scum who treat people like this."

All of this would be authentic reality, but it was not the reality Paul chose to remember.

Paul was thankful for the past, not because it was free from evil and hurts, but because he forgot that bad stuff, and remembered instead the goodness of the Philippians, and the grace of God in his life.

Everyone of us could look back and pick out bad things in our past.

People who did us wrong, and events that were unfair are in everyone's past.

Everyone has their own personal copy of, when bad things happen to good people.

Some feel it is their gift to be able to recall the negatives of life, and remember every terrible detail.

Then they wonder why the Christian life is not making them happy, and why prayer is a laborious chore.

We need to see that the only way to be a happy Christian, who can even make prayer time a fun time, is to forget the bad past, and remember those things that fill our minds with a sense of gratitude.

Precious memories for which we can thank God are the key to joyful praying.

Tom Landry, the Christian coach for the Dallas Cowboys for many years said, "I suffer over a loss like everyone else, but its how soon you forget it and get going again that's important."

If your thankometer needle gets stuck on the negatives of the past, it will not work, and you will be locked into a non-thankful mode letting life's burdens, rather than life's blessings, be the dominant influence in your life.

In the book Tiger Of The Snows by Tenzig Norgay, one of the two men, who on May 29, 1953 reached the top of Mt.

Everest said, "What I felt was a great closeness to God and that was enough for me.

In my deepest heart I thanked God."

All the fears and frustrations, and the pain and struggle, were forgotten.

All that mattered was the blessing.

Only those who learned this can live like Paul with a perpetual thankful spirit.

Examine your memory bank, and ask yourself which memories do you tend to focus on in the past.

If you find you tend to remember the negatives, you need to listen to Paul, and follow his instructions.