Prayer Blockers
Notes
Transcript
This morning we’re wrapping up our series on school of prayer. Beginning next week we’ll be taking a journey toward the cross in the season of Lent. So, I’ll make a shameless plug here for our Ash Wednesday service this Wednesday. It’s a self-directed time of prayer and reflection, including the ashes imposed on your forehead. The church building will be open from 6am - 9am for that.
Some people may wonder why 3 hours? Well, we wanted those who still work to be able to swing by before work, and those that don’t work not to have to get up at “Oh my goodness, it’s early.” It’s a good service, and I encourage you to take part.
As we wrap up our series this morning I want to give credit to two books that have been instrumental to me in this series: Hearing the Heartbeat of God, by Michael Neelley; and Prayer: Finding the heart’s true home, by Richard Foster.
This morning, I want to speak to prayer blockers. We’ve all felt it: that sense of speaking into a void, talking to the ceiling, leaving a message on some unattended prayer line in God’s heavenly office.
Our goal throughout this school of prayer series has been to not only lift up our prayers to God, but then to hear God’s heart about that which we are praying. If you have prayed, you no doubt have at one time or another felt some sort of block to hearing from God.
Here are some typical blocks to our hearing form God.
Mental Obstacles
Mental Obstacles
There are mental obstacles that block us from hearing from God. These are often messages, in fact lies, that we repeat to ourselves. We say things like “God doesn’t speak,” or perhaps we go so far as to say, “God doesn’t speak to me.”
Paul’s letter talks to us about how to combat these lies, we read in our passage this morning:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Too often we more readily believe the messages of the world than we do The Message from God! God says, “you’re my beloved.”
The world says, “you need to clean yourself up to come to God.”
The world will give us formulas for having our prayers answered.
God reminds us over and over and over again, we are beloved children.
We need to allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
We need to allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
As presbyterians we tend to look very much to the academic. Our history is very much formulaic, liking things to be done decently and in order. In my career I’ve been a part of more than one conversation on whether clapping was appropriate in worship. Really?
What about shouting out an Amen?
What about bursting into song?
What about…brace yourselves…dancing?
The truth is these limitations have come from societal rules rather than any guidelines given to us in Scripture.
Do these limitations impact our prayers and hearing from God too? Yes!
We put God in a box. As J.B. Phillips titled his book, “Your God is Too Small!” We need to renew our mind.
Expectancy
Expectancy
In his book Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Stephen Covey talks about how we plan or organize our lives. He makes the statement regarding goals, “If you aim for nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”
He goes on to explain the importance of having a purpose.
Prayer is much the same way. If we are just offering up prayers as words without any real meaning or purpose without any sense of expectancy that there will be an answer, that’s likely exactly what we will get.
If you believe God no longer speaks, guess what you’ll hear from God. That’s not to say God will not answer your prayer, the question is will you hear it?
Selective attention visual - describe video.
If we are not expecting to hear from God, if we’re not expecting to see a gorilla walk through the room, often we won’t see it.
A few weeks ago, we talked about the acronym in prayer:
ASK: Ask, Seek, Knock
ASK: Ask, Seek, Knock
If our expectation is that God no longer speaks, or God doesn’t speak to me, we will not be seeking God’s response. We don’t expect it so there is no reason to anticipate it to do anything about it. This lack of expectancy begets a passivity and laziness in our prayer lives.
Paul writes his prayer for the church at Ephesus:
having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know …what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…
Where is the power? Neelley writes:
If we do not genuinely trust that the God who is revealed to us in Jesus through the Scriptures can speak to us today, we will miss out on hearing his voice!
Spiritual Obstacles
Spiritual Obstacles
The obvious spiritual obstacle in our lives is sin. When we are determined to hold on to our sin we block our hearts from listening to God, because (if we’re honest) we don’t want to know God’s heart. Our sin feels to valuable. But James reminds us that if we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. (James 4:8).
John in his first pastoral letter wrote much of us being children of God. In the opening chapter of first John we read these words:
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
In our honest moments we acknowledge we don’t like to admit to our sin. Why? because we fear punishment, we fear being thought less of, we fear the withholding of love.
John continues, v.9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Freeing, isn’t it?
Fear
Fear
Fear is such a liar in our lives. Whether it be in relationship with one another or our relationship with God. We live so much of our lives in fear. It’s why Adam and Eve hid in the garden. It’s why the Israelites looked for other gods when Moses didn’t come down the mountain in their time, it’s why the Israelites didn’t challenge Goliath; it’s why Peter denies Christ three times before sunrise.
How often do we see a messenger of God show up and begin with “Fear not…”
Fear prevents us from laying out our hearts before God, from offering ourselves up in full and complete worship to God, from seizing the fullness of life God created us to embrace.
Facing the Obstacles
Facing the Obstacles
In the biography of Fred Rogers, The Good Neighbor, Maxwell King quotes a mantra of the man more widely known as Mr. Rogers. According to King, Mr. Rogers often said,
“Whatever is mentionable is manageable.” ~ Fred Rogers
When we name the obstacle in our way we tend to see it. To see it we need to face it. The way to freedom, the way to the openness in our relationship with God is through the obstacle.
Most of us, our reaction to an oncoming storm is to try and outrun it. I recently was reading about Bison and how they actually face into and walk toward the storm.
In a post from Yellowstone National Park, the park service commented on how the bison will face into the wind of a winter storm and walk towards it. Rather than turning away from the storm which would prolong the time they needed to endure it, they instinctually walk into the storm. As the storm continues to move on and they move into it they are able to get to the end of the storm sooner.
One person on their journey toward recovery from addiction commented, “What’s in the way is the way.” So often we want to go around.
Imagine how Moses felt leading the Israelites out of Egypt. God is leading him by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Yet the Egyptians are in hot pursuit. He has to be knowing that he’s heading to the Red Sea. He has to be considering what routes there might be along the sea, and how to avoid the massive Egyptian army behind him. And then he’s at the sea and what does the Lord tell him to do? “Turn back and camp between Migdol and the sea.” Turn back? Stop and camp? What!?
Face the storm.
…you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.
What blockages to hearing God’s voice are you experiencing in your life? What is “in your way” from hearing from God?
Are you facing it or are you running from it?
During one particular trying time in my ministry I wrote in my journal, “God, I can’t take this any more.” I’m not going to say I heard anything audible, but I got a very clear sense of God saying, “That’s the point. You’re not the one who is supposed to be taking it.”
We read in our Scripture this morning, Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
One pastor noted, “the problem with living sacrifices is they keep crawling off the altar.”
James wrote James 4:8
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Let us invite God to shine his light into our lives and seek to draw near.
In closing this morning I want to read Psalm 139 as our closing prayer and as our preparation for holy communion.
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!
To God be the glory. Amen.
