Wrestle Mania
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Jacob was alone. His wives, servant wives, his sons, and all of his possessions just crossed the Jabbok river. While alone thoughts of facing his brother after all that had happened between them. Even at birth I was holding his leg. I stole his birthright I’m sure he is still probably mad about that. I also stole his blessing and I sure he is still furious about that. I still have a rash from glueing all that hair to my arm. Maybe some quick reflections about how uncle Laban was doing the same things to him. All the deception, all the issues, all the problems. Alone in his thoughts with the sounds of the river in his ears when a man comes up and begins to wrestle with him. And this was no easy or anything we could call a normal kind of match. It went on until daybreak. In that match we even saw Jacob get injured in which he would walk with a limp. But he still managed to hold on. He refused to let go. We find out that this man was God himself in disguise. He refused to let go until God blessed him. Many of us want to be blessed by God, but how many of us are willing to wrestle him for it.
In my whole 30 plus years in ministry, this is the one arena where I find myself in constant wrestling with the Lord. It shows me things, motives, false beliefs, lack of sanctification, self-centeredness, self-dependance, lack of faith. It is when I am asking the living Lord for a blessing… When I am in prayer. What we pray, how we pray can be very telling of who we are and what we really believe. It is what happens when we do not get what we ask for. Was our motives bad? Were we lying to ourselves and to God? Maybe we don’t believe. Maybe we don’t really need it. Maybe we are fooling ourselves. Maybe I believe something thats not right. Maybe we do not trust that God has our best interest in mind. We conclude that prayer is a big disappointment. Why even bother anymore. So we don’t even ask. We don’t even try. He’s not going to help us. He never answers my prayer. Is he really a liar. I believe that He can do something, but I just don’t believe He will. He gonna say no anyway so why waste my time.
Because of this… lots of books, videos, blogs, and stuff after stuff purporting new methods, devices, apps, and now even supplements to take that will help us to pray better. It does not take much time searching online to find the total mania we are faced with when it comes to prayer. Not only is some of this out of control, but even out of bounds. Now of course some just won’t wrestle and don’t care. I just don’t waste time praying anymore. But for the many that do, it is wrestle mania. Out of control and out of bounds.
It is a wrestling match that has been and will be for the life of all christians. But Shane its not supposed to be a wrestling match. Its not supposed to be hard. Oh but it is.
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.
Like Jacob, we want a blessing from God, then we gotta hold on, we cannot let go, even when we are injured, we don’t give up. Our culture today does not like the struggle. Jacob showed the wonderful blessings of those who overcome for those who strive to be overcomers, but instead in our culture we strive to be victims. And when we get injured, we lean into the excuse. Jesus wants us to pray and overcome. Pray and never give up. Pray and persist.
In reality, we should know that giving up is not an option. If we think we can not pray, it is showing the cause of much of the mania. Much of our problems in prayer stem from the fact that we don’t know what prayer really is. I know this might sound kinda silly… Shane we know what it is, its simply a conversation with God. It can’t be that. This simple belief is why so many of us struggle with prayer. Let me say this… If we pray because we are really dependent on God, then where else are you gonna go if He does not give us what we ask for? This is the arena where dependance on God battle with independence from God. So what are we really telling God when we don’t pray? What are we telling Him if we are not willing to wrestle for it? I want us all to enjoy our prayer life. We want to make sure that our prayer time, is not simply the first business meeting of the day. Let’s take a look at this today.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
The grass withers the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever
The Chief Exercise of Faith
The first and only thing we will look at today is the best and most beneficial definition for prayer as being the chief exercise of of faith.
Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world cause us to give up on prayer it is the power of the Spirit and the truth of the scriptures that will cause us to see the beauty of prayer in the delight of the Lord in the light of the Gospel.
I. The Chief Exercise of Faith
-Not a conversation with God, but a symptom of what we believe about God.
A. One of the things we have got to do is a bit of introspection. When we struggle with prayer, it comes down to our incessant and consistent issue with self-dependance. We feel the weight of responsibility and we are wearing out. And we need God to help us out so that we can continue to be self-dependent. However, one of the things we have in the church is that this problem is not that obvious to uncover, because as Christians we pray.
B. But we see prayer as one of those things that Christians do. Christians go to church, they go out to eat at golden corral, they put fish emblems on their cars, they shop for clothes at costco, they listen to KLove, they watch fox news, they like to judge people, they gossip at prayer meetings, they have pot lucks, the homeschool, they listen to country music, they don’t cuss, and they pray. It is impossible to see it merely as a christian activity if it is THE SPIRITUAL GAUGE for Christian health. It cant just be one of those things that we do. We fall into either being prayerless or prayermess.
C. If we just think of prayer as one of those things we do, we are always then searching for ways for us to get better at it. How can I be better at praying. How can I be more consistent with it. Here is where the mania of it comes. The solution we will think are always tips and new methods, apps, diaries, to help us to be better at prayer, but for many it makes prayer a burden. And it then gets worse when it eventually is seen as a kind of magic formula to get the vending machine to give you what you want. And when it doesn’t, we stop trying. So then we become prayerless. Or if we continue to see prayer this way we become prayermess. Which further shows why prayer is not just somthing we are supposed to do.
And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.
D. So you see we can actually pray and still make a mess of things.
God detests the prayers of a person who ignores the law.
E. So you see we can actually do prayer and still make a mess of things. Prayermess. If not prayerless, then prayermess.
You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.
F. There is something underneath that undergirds our conversation with God. One of our great reformers foundational to our historic protestant fatih. Called faith the chief exercise of faith. It is the primary way in which faith expresses itself. I like to say it this way… If you really have faith in God you will see it first and foremost in the fact that you pray. Not a conversation with God per se, but a symptom of what we believe about God. If you really do depend on God then you just can’t help it… you are gonna pray.
G. This is why it is said that prayerlessness is actually practical atheism. We don;t pray because we don’t believe. This is why sermons about doing better with prayer… like 5 ways to Get better at praying. A prayer warrior manifesto. A more effective prayer. Don’t be a player be a prayer. this is why it does not help. I am not asking you to do better. You cannot do better if you don’t believe. Prayer is symptom of faith. If you believe that is what you will do. If you don’t believe you will be prayerless. If you don’t believe and you still pray you will be prayermess. If you really believe that God is our source and our fountain of all things, then we cannot help but pray and wrestle with the living God. It is not about ability and commitment, it is about what we really believe.
H. I am no judge today… I am just as unbelieving as anyone. Our prayer life is sooo revealing of just how little faith we really have. It shows who we really are and what we really believe. It shows how much we really want God. Its shows how much we really depend upon God. It shows what we really believe about whether or not God is our only source in life. It shows us our true maturity in the faith. Are we being a hypocritical?
I. The issue with prayer is not… hey wake up. Do a better job. Get on your knees. Stop being a bad christian. Do better. It is the same as James… instead I’ll say faith without prayer is dead. The problem is not the lack of prayer the problem is a lack of faith. It is because we do not truly believe. We are not truly dependent on God because we do not believe that He is someone we can depend on. But can we depend on anyone else… or ourselves for that matter.
J. But do we believe that all things good come from God and from God alone? If we have come to the place where nothing we need for life and godliness comes from ourselves. Why then do we not pray. There is no self reliance here. We can’t do it. Others cant do it for us. God has it and wants us to ask Him for it. If we don’t what are we saying?
John Calvin writes, “But after we have been instructed by faith to recognize that whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide so that we may all draw from it as from an overflowing spring, it remains for us to seek in him, and in prayers to ask of him, what we have learned to be in him. Otherwise, to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him.”
K. So we see that the problem is not lack of motivation, it is lack of faith. The solution is not let me help you do better, it is let me help you seek after God. In the end it is all in seeking the Lord. We need the Lord to increase our faith. And as we saw in our passage today. Faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of Christ. This is huge. All of our issues stem from unbelief. O ye of little faith. But our wrestling match with the living Christ shows us just how little our faith is. The testing of our faith… Biblically it is the goal. It is the position on which we are to fix out eyes. It is what we are commanded. Faith.
Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”
L. Unbelief is the symptom of sin. It is sin and its grip that causes us to doubt. We are by nature those who doubt. We doubt that He is good. We doubt that he is all that we need. We doubt that He has our best interest in mind. We doubt. It is sin and unbelief that causes us to sin. We by nature desire independence from God. We by nature desire to be self-sufficient. We want to do things our way and when we need God to help us out doing things our way, we pray. And get mad when he does not answer. We do not know what is best for us… He does. But in sin we don;t believe it. This is why by nature many of us are born to struggle with prayer. We by nature don’t believe.
M. This is all of us. Me included. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no one righteous no not one. There is no one on earth who always does good and never sins. We are all by nature children of wrath. We all like sheep have gone away each of us to his own way. We all desire to do what is right in our own eyes.
N. And the wages of sin is death. Eternal fire. Eternal darkness. The wrath of the living God. The unquenchable fire, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But this does not have to be our end. There is hope for us. Believe that the Lord is a good God. And we can believe this because the Word of God says…
O. Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures and he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners. Jesus came into this world to seek and save that which was lost.
P. All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hearts that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God you will have life in His name.
Q. He is our fountain of Life. He is the light of life. Is is the source and the only source. He is our treasure. He has treasure for us today. He wants us to ask Him for the treasure. He want to wrestle us for the treasure. It is the only treasure worth anything. We know where to get it. He told us how to get it. Ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find, knock and it will be opened to you.
