A Praying Church Part 5

10/03/2010

Praying

A Praying Church part 5

Well, today we conclude our sermon series, “A Praying Church,” and this is an exciting time for us. We spent one month digging into the concept and the discipline of prayer, and hopefully our church is a marked church and a different church than we were, say, a month ago. And as most of you know, this is the clear-cut direction that we’re heading—to be a praying church. Our mission is “to connect people to Jesus and one another.” The mission is what an organization does, but a vision is who an organization is. And our new vision for Southeast is “to be a praying church who reaches out and challenges everyone to follow Jesus completely.” See, prayer is a lifestyle. It’s not an event. Prayer is not the end goal. Life change and life transformation is the goal. But we seek, through our prayers, having that seamless relationship with an all-powerful and an all-knowing God who somehow longs to have a very personal relationship with us.

Some of you probably came into this worship service just like you always do. You left your house a little later than you normally do. Traffic was a little thicker than usual. You searched for a parking spot that was close. It took you a little bit longer to get your children checked in. And you come into here, into this sanctuary, and you thought to yourself (Dave sighing), “Well, I’m here. I’m a little frenzied. I’m a little frazzled. It’s been very hectic. I’m restless. I’m preoccupied. But I’m here.” And you’ve settled in…or you are in the process of the next couple of minutes kind of settling in…for whatever it is that you have come to expect from a Southeast worship service. But can I let you in on a secret? This won’t be a normal service. It just won’t. And it can’t be, because we’re a different church than we were a month ago.

I’ve heard so many cool stories from you all of what God has been teaching you and what you’ve been doing in the last month as this series has been going on. I had one couple say to me that now they kneel and they close their day out together and they pray together, and they’d never done that before. I had one family say that they pray together before their kids go off to school. I had someone else tell me just yesterday they have kids that go to a public school here not too far away, and after the very first week of this series they thought, “You know what? We need to do something.” So several students went to their school and they found, “Where could they pray?” because they’re allowed to pray if they have a room and if they have a teacher who sponsors that. So they didn’t start getting together weekly; they started getting together daily. It started off with just a handful of kids to where, finally, it became a dozen. Now every single school day, at this public high school, there are forty students who come together and pray for their school. Is that unbelievable to think about and to see what God is already doing there? (Audience applauding)

So this weekend what we want to do is we want to take the whole month and we want to put those sermons into practice. We’ve talked about opening our eyes and praying for what we see around us. We’ve talked about kneeling, raising our hands. We’ve discussed extending our hearts and our hands to others. We’ve talked about raising our voices. We’ve even discussed fasting and praying. And if you’re new to that concept of fasting then simply understand it’s just one more way that at times we deny ourselves in our quest to put God first.

Let me illustrate how I hope that you will approach this worship service today. John Piper in his book called Hungering for God writes these words. He says:

It was the summer of 1967. I had been in love with my wife-to-be for a whole year. If you had told me that we would have to wait another year and a half to marry, I would’ve protested firmly. For us it seemed the sooner the better. It was the summer before my senior year in college. I was working as a water safety instructor at a camp. She was hundreds of miles away working as a waitress. Never had I known an aching like this one. I had been homesick before but never like this. Every day I would write her a letter and talk about this longing. In the late morning just before lunch at camp, they always had mail call. And when I would hear my name called out and I would see the lavender envelope, my appetite would be taken away. Or more accurately, my hunger for food was silenced by the hunger of my heart. Often, instead of eating lunch, I would take the letter to a quiet place in the woods. I would sit down on the leaves for a very different kind of meal.

It is with that level of desperation and dependence that I am asking you to enter into today’s worship experience. I am asking you, in your mind, to go to that quiet place and to enter into a different kind of worship service.

You know, in the Lord says, “Be still and know that I am God.” And my hope is that your conversations with God will fulfill a longing and a hunger, that spending time with Him will breathe life into your weary bones, that it will supply strength to overcome temptation and discouragement.

You know, this service will be very unique in that it will focus completely on prayer. It will be more interactive and I will lead you through each section. Sprinkled throughout the service we will have baptisms. We have a lot of baptisms this hour. It’s so exciting. We’ll take up the offering in the service. At the end, you will have an extended time in which you can experience the Lord’s Supper on your own. But to begin I’d just ask that you pray with me. Then for this first section we’re going to sing together a couple of songs with open eyes as we praise and pray to the God of the Universe. So pray with me.

Our Father, open the eyes of our heart. Open the eyes of our heart so that we might see You—to see You high and lifted up, shining in the light of the darkness. And we ask that You pour out Your power and love as we cry “Holy, holy, holy!” So with open eyes, Lord, may we use these next few minutes of worship to sing our prayers to You? It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.

(The congregation worships the Lord in song)

On Tuesday night the Cincinnati Reds did something that they haven’t done in fifteen years: They clenched the division championship and they did so in royal fashion with a ninth-inning walk-off homerun by Jay Bruce. My brother was at the game in Cincinnati. He said it was unbelievable. He said it was electric. Everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs. If you saw any reports of it on TV or watched the highlights on the web, then you know what I’m saying when I say, “They had raised voices and they made no apology about it.” Maybe you’ve watched some of the Ryder Cup this weekend. The Ryder Cup, when you see it, it brings us back in our minds to two years ago—the last time it was played—and it was five minutes away from here. And we watch that and it brings back all those memories. I can remember I got tickets for the very last day of the Ryder Cup. My son and I were on the 17th hole right there about 150 yards from the green when the Europeans conceded and the Americans won, and that place erupted in noise and applause and cheering. It just reverberated throughout the mountains and the hillsides. Everything around there just shook. Tomorrow night when Bear Grylls is here, do you know that we will have more people in this room than we have ever had at anytime in the 11 ½ years that we’ve been in this building? In fact, we’ve got 9,300 people. And you say, “Well, that’s tough because it only seats 9,000.” Well, we’ve got 300 more who are watching on video in the chapel. And when they introduce him tomorrow night this place will explode. Now why is it that when we’re at a sporting event or when we’re coming to see someone that we watch on television or when we go to a concert of our favorite group—why is it that in those settings we find it very easy to collectively raise our voices? Why is it that we’re uninhibited in those settings, but when it comes to worship or praying our boldness subsides (and) our insecurities win out? We plead ignorance, “Oh, I don’t know what to say.” We beg secrecy, “Well, what if somebody sees me?” We cry anything but raising our voices.

Several years ago one of our church members, Tim Meiners, had a business issue that he was kind of going through and he wanted some advice on it, so he called up one of our former elders, John Foster. And John said, “Well, you know, I’d love to talk with you.” He said, “Why don’t you just come on over to my house?” So later that day Tim came over to John’s house and John met him at the door. And the very first words out of John’s mouth were this. He said, “I’m not wise enough to help you.” He said, “Let’s get in here and let’s get down on our knees and let’s pray and ask for God’s help.” That’s what we’re trying to get to: that place where prayer is our default mechanism, where our natural response is to raise our voices to God—whether we are in a car, whether we are in our home, whether it’s actually saying it out loud or whether it’s in our heart.

And today I want some of you to pray in this service. You don’t need to feel uncomfortable but in just a minute we’re going to raise our voices and we’re going to pray throughout this room. Now if you’re visiting with us today, rest assured you are exempt. You don’t have to pray out loud. But here is how we’re going to do this. In a minute I’m going to have you stand up and circle up in a group of four to six people. You can kind of turn around and kind of match up, and make certain that there is nobody who is left out around you. Then immediately I want somebody to take the pressure off and I want you just to quickly volunteer and say, “Hey, I’ll pray for our group.” And if someone says that, that will keep some of the others from passing out, all right? (Laughter) So take a minute and go around then, and I want you to have each person say an attribute, a quality of God that they are especially thankful for right now. Then your designated prayer will pray a prayer and will thank God for who He is. Let me add that those of you who typically don’t pray out loud…and maybe this month has been just a real stretching month for you and you kind of have sweaty palms even as I talk right now…this might be the day for you to kind of take it a step further and for you to raise your voice to God, for you to say, “You know what? I’d like to throw a prayer in there, too.” I guarantee you God will hear your prayer. Don’t ever worry about that. God will hear your prayer. And you are here with family. So if you have two people pray in your group, that is legal, all right? But if one of you needs to take the lead on that, that is okay, too. So four things I’m asking you to do. Form a group. This does not require a long-term commitment. (Laughter) They’re not coming over for Thanksgiving, all right? It’s just a three-minute commitment, so bear with me. Form a group. Someone volunteer to pray. Go around your circle; share the attributes of God. Just share one, each of you. And then someone just take the lead and pray. And in about three minutes you’ll hear some singing start and you can wrap up your prayers and join us in singing. But this is going to be a special time for you. It was the coolest sight the last hour just to see fifth floor, third floor, first floor, second floor—just to see everybody in groups praying. So enjoy it and experience these next few minutes as you talk to God. Let’s stand. (Audience standing and getting into groups; They pray, sing, and then Dave gets up onstage to talk again.)

I hope you’re enjoying this worship service. I admit that it’s a little different. And it’s not just different for you; it’s different for me. I’m accustomed to standing up and preaching for thirty minutes and, hopefully, your eyes are open and you’re listening. But today it is a little out of our comfort zone and we’re focusing on prayer.

I remember when Kyle began this series he had us turn to Colossians chapter 4, and in Colossians chapter 4 he read from the apostle Paul’s words. Verse 2:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

And I love that phrase: “Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” That is what we want to do for the next few minutes. We want to take the focus off of ourselves and place it on other people. Pray that our message that we share, our invitations to the Momentum Week, all the different things that we’re trying to do to connect people to Jesus and one another—pray that those come through clearly. You know, the challenge for us these days is to try to take the message of Christ and the message of God’s Word and to make it relevant and to make it really come across well in this culture. That happens when we begin to pray on behalf of others and we extend our hands in their direction.

Last week I was over at the Indiana Campus and while I was there I would just poke my head in different offices and visit with different folks. I was in Jerry Naville’s office talking with him, and when I got ready to leave Jerry said, “Hey, have you got a minute?” And I said, “Well, yeah, what do you need?” And he said, “Can I pray for you?” So he got from behind his desk and walked over, and he just put his hand on my shoulder and he prayed for me. And I can’t remember the last time where somebody just, out of the blue, chose to do that, and it really touched me because it was his way of saying, “You know what? I’m really getting into this series and God is teaching me some things.” As soon as he finished praying, I immediately prayed on his behalf.

But that is what I want us to do these next few minutes. You don’t need to do it out loud with the people around you, but just silently I want you to pray on behalf of others. Maybe it is a family member. Perhaps it is a neighbor who is going through a rough time or a coworker. Maybe you want to lift up someone who is coming to the Momentum Week and you just want to pray that their heart will be open and receptive to the different Christian testimonies that they hear from different people. For the next few minutes, I want you to get out of your comfort zone and I want you to maybe even get out of your seat, because there are a lot of empty seats that are around you in this vast sanctuary. But can I tell you something? On Monday night, every seat that you’re looking at will be filled. And throughout this week we will have thousands of people who will come in this room—some of whom have said, “I will never go to that church.” Yet you have extended an invitation to them and they’re coming because of someone that they want to hear speak. So take the next couple of minutes, the next two minutes or three minutes. If you have some empty seats around you, feel free to just spread out, walk over to those seats—anywhere that you see them—and pray on behalf of someone else. And pray for Momentum Week—that a connection will take place to where people are open to the Gospel. Pray for some of your neighbors who are going through tough times. Pray for a family member. Pray for government leaders. Take the focus off of yourself, extend hands and you silently pray for the needs of someone else. (Audience begins to pray silently as piano music plays)