I Trust You

I want you to picture something with me this morning. What does prayer look like to you? If you had to draw an image that represented prayer to you, how would it look? What colors would you use? Would there be shapes, figures, symbols, or words? You have sticky notes with you again this morning. Feel free to take a moment to think about it and doodle your own interpretation of what comes to mind when you think of prayer.

Over the past few weeks we have been talking about prayer: help prayers of supplication, I’m sorry prayers of confession, and I’m tired prayers of rest. Today, we consider prayers of trust, but what does trust really look like in our prayer life?

Think about how many decisions you make to trust on a daily basis. You wake up and trust that your body will get you through another day. You get in your car and trust that it will get you from point a to point b. You watch the news and trust it to be a reliable source. You trust the school with your children. You trust the doctor to treat you. You trust your mind to make rational decisions (sometimes).

In a lot of ways, we lend out our trust, but how does this work in our spiritual life. When it comes to our faith, do we treat our prayers more as a measure of trust or as Sarah Bessey says, do we act like prayer is magic potion in order to get what we want and to stay in control. Sarah grew up being taught that the purpose of prayer was “to control outcomes, it was to be a victor, it was to get your health, your wealth, your healing, your whatever it is you were out for.” I used to sing this song that said “Jesus is on the mainline, just tell him what you want. Just call him up and tell him what you want.” But what if prayer is less about want and more about a surrender of our will?

To trust is to surrender. To surrender is to trust. Like this sign Jim had painted for me years ago, to let go is to let God. This is what Richard Foster calls the prayer of relinquishment. To relinquish is to let go. What we surrender might be a particular worry. It could be a sin God reveals. It could be distractions or obstacles to God’s grace. It might even be something good that you need to let go of. Whatever the case may be, there are always reasons that will try to get you to hang on. Let go. Let God. Let go. Trust God.

In order to relinquish we have to open our hands, to let things fall through our grasp, to humble ourselves and to pour ourselves out. Foster suggests one way we can do this is by praying through our text for today in Philippians 2. This is the passage that talks about the self-emptying nature of Christ, a term we call kenosis. Prayers of surrender are kenosis prayers. The text says “3 Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. 4 Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing.” When we pray Wesley’s covenant prayer together today in lieu of our Affirmation of Faith, this is a surrender, I trust you not matter what type of prayer. I am no longer my own, but thine. I freely and heartily yield all things.

Prayer isn’t about puffing ourselves up or saying the right words as if God were a modern genie. Prayer is a conversation with God, a conversation that leads to surrender. Not a surrender of defeat or resignation, Foster reminds us, but one of hope and trust in the character of God. When we let go, the presence of God fills the space between.

Judson Van de Venter (1855-1939) was raised on a farm near Dundee, Michigan. After graduating from Hillsdale College, he taught art in public schools in Sharon, Pennsylvania. Van Deventer was active as a layman in his Methodist Episcopal Church, including participation in revivals held at the church.

Based on his fervent faith and service to the church, friends encouraged him to leave his field of teaching and become an evangelist. It took five years for him to finally "surrender all" and follow the advice of his friends. His ministry took him to various places in the United States, England, and Scotland.

More than sixty of Van de Venter's hymns appeared in various twentieth-century hymnals, but "I Surrender All" (1896) is his most famous.

Each of the five stanzas begins with the line, "All to Jesus I surrender." The refrain includes the phrase, "I surrender all" three times in the melody and an additional two times in the men's part. This means that the one who sings all five stanzas would sing the word "surrender" thirty times. The other key word – "all" – would be sung forty-three times!

Are there ways God might be calling you to let go and trust God?

I have had moments of surrender where I felt like I had to break down for God to break in. I have had moments of letting go where I felt a tangible weight lift off of me. I trust you is the kind of prayer you utter on the other side of not knowing the who, what, when, where, and why. I trust you God- even if it doesn’t turn out as I want it to. Have thine own way Lord, even if things go south. Even when it feels like I am getting nothing but static on the end of the prayer line. I trust you because I know your heart. I trust you because I know what it feels like to be in your presence.

In Phillip Yancey’s book Prayer, there was a man who shared that he used to spend a lot of time bringing a lot of requests and complaints to God. He said “Nowadays, I don’t spend time worrying, “Is there God or not?” I assume God’s presence. I don’t spend much time asking God for things either...Mainly, I want reassurance that God loves me and that he understands what I’m concerned about. I’ve learned to trust God. when I do that, everything else slides down in importance. I used to test God, praying things like ‘If you’re really listening, have a deer walk by in the next ten minutes.’ I don’t do that any more. I’ve learned that the things I grasp and pursue often turn out disappointing and sour. The best things in life are unexpected gifts dropped on me- grace notes as a friend of mine calls them...I treasure the time I spend with God more than the requests I want God to fulfill.”

Prayer is all about presence. Jesus modeled this often, retreating away to recharge. Just like we seek to rest at night to recharge our bodies or how none of our devices will run unless fully charged, prayer is the charging station of our souls. Is there someone that you just feel better once you’ve talked to them? Their voice calms you. They always seem to know what to say or even just how to be present with you. You feel different and off if you haven’t talked to them in awhile. That is what Jesus desires with each of us.

Sarah Bessey shares the story of how one Sunday her son was doing an art project in Sunday school and the teacher asked if she could chat with her. She thought, “there’s a lot of ways this could go down.” Sarah says, “ I remember sitting down, and they had been told to draw a picture of what they think prayer is. And you know, most of the kids had drawn things like, oh, you know, you’re praying around the supper table to say grace, or you have the pastor at your church is praying at the front, or you know, even your mom or dad is praying with you at bedtime. You know, like that kind of stuff. A couple of kids, I remember, of like, they actually wrote out lists of what they wanted just in case it counted, so there was like, a kid who drew pictures of like, iPads and he really wanted an iPad. Then the teacher said, ‘ I want to show you what Joe drew.’ And she showed me this picture that he had drawn, and it was, you know, himself, a picture of himself sitting in our back deck in one of the chairs and beside him he had drawn Jesus sitting right beside him. And they had, like, those little cartoon bubbles, like when, you know, like in a comic strip when they’re talking to each other. And he had written, “I love you, Jesus,” and then Jesus saying back to him, “I love you, Joe.” And then he had drawn these arrows saying they were saying it back and forth to each other over and over again: “I love you, Jesus;” “I love you, Joe.” And underneath he had written this is Joe and his Jesus, this is how we pray.” Sarah says prayer is “the conversation that you’re having underneath all of it all the time, which is to rest and abide in the unchanging, unconditional love of God towards you, and that it’s your place to be able to do that. There’s a lot of different pathways to get there, but I think that picture that Joe drew all those years ago to me is maybe what the purpose is all along.”

Prayer is the language of God’s love and trust. It is a gift.

As we sing I Surrender All, I invite you to write down your sticky note prayers for this morning and leave them at the altar. What do you most want to say to Jesus today?

I trust you.

I love you.

I surrender all.