Formed in Prayer

Introduction

For Their Sake: Deeper With God

Formed in Prayer

Prayer in 2021

Something as a Christian I’m supposed to do

Quiet Time, pray before meals

Event/Activity

Formula/How to: We've tried to pull out of scripture a set of elements or pattern to follow (formula), a set of conditions, attitudes, motives, what gets answered and what doesn't and why, specific words we have to say.

Something I do when I have a need

Transaction

We do all the talking, very little listening.

Disruption, Adaptation, Reset

Jeremiah 29:10–14 ESV

“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Context

Babylon captivity -

The “Babylonian exile” can refer to a number of separate events, though it usually refers to the deportation of most of Jerusalem to Babylon after the destruction of the Judahite capital (including the Jerusalem temple)

most of the people of Judah lived in captivity in Babylon or its territories.

Fall of Judah

God's presence at that time was in the holy of holies. Destroyed, not going with them. They're being separated from God's presence.

Israel divided into two countries: Judah and Israel.

King at the time is Zedekiah.

Sent (into exile) - uncover, have to leave, expose or reveal oneself, be exposed, remove

You're going into exile.

God decentralized his people (not the first time nor the last).

Not written to just the leaders - to every person.

I want you to prosper. I want your city to prosper. This is discipline but don't give up. I will bring you back when the time is right.

What does ancient Israel have to do with America in 2021?

- God doesn't change

2020 can be considered a mini exile

You Will Seek Me: Desire to Live in Union With God

The word seek appears twice in verse 13, but is actually the translation of two different Hebrew words which often occur together. People can ‘seek God’ for advice, in the sense of ‘enquiring’ of God via the prophet in order to know his will (see 21:2; 37:7). However, in 29:13 seek indicates an attitude of actively desiring to live in fellowship with God.

When you get serious about finding me and want me more than anything else, you'll find me.

It is in Paul’s writings that the theology of prayer is most fully developed. The NT believer is a son, not only a servant.

Prayer is a Posture

The phrase when you seek me seems to be more of a fact, something that is definitely going to happen, rather than a condition (‘if’; see also 28:7 and comments).

All (your heart) - completely, the totality of it.

Prayer is an expression of sincere desire to be in union with God who makes it possible to know him - covenant.

Jeremiah: the promise of help and deliverance on the basis of that covenant. It is this covenant relationship that gives the warrant for prayer.

Paul helps us understand this in Romans 12:2: Prayer (proseuche) seems to be Paul’s term for the deep inner posture of one’s being toward God in open receptivity and pliable responsiveness.

Prayer as a posture as part of our spiritual journey seeks as its outcome, union with God; radical trust in and abandonment to God. Complete oneness with God where we are caught up in worship.

Not a call to the isolated action or event of prayer

It is not to inform God of matters that he would otherwise be ignorant of, and the validity of prayer is not affected by length or repetitiveness.

but to the habitual orientation of our being toward God at our deepest place.

John in the last supper scene as

Kari Jobe, The More I Seek You

The more I seek You, the more I find You The more I find You, the more I love You

[Chorus] I wanna sit at Your feet, drink from the cup in Your hand Lay back against You and breathe, feel Your heartbeat This love is so deep, it's more than I can stand I melt in Your peace, it's overwhelming

[Verse] The more I seek You, the more I find You The more I find You, the more I love You

The posture of prayer puts us and our situations into the deeper matrix of God’s presence and purpose. What we bring to God then becomes the bridge between our desires and God’s purposes.

We begin to put the situations in live into the deeper matrix of God’s presence and purpose and find we can release our tenuous control and fragile ordering of life to God.

From that place, every connected part of what we call prayer comes: supplication, gratitude, etc.

Prayer and intimacy with God belongs and need to be developed in the middle of everyday life.

Delivered

For Jeremiah and Judah: when you live every moment of every day in that posture of seeking union with me, I will be found by you. My presence will be real to you and I will bring you back home. My plans are to not abandon you but give you a future you hope for.

deliverer is expressed in a Hebrew word for “next of kin.” A close relative was responsible to aid an individual in distress and to redeem him or her from slavery. God sent deliverance when his people were in danger, or God himself acted as deliverer, uniquely and forcefully in the exodus from Egypt (Ex 3:7, 8).

In the NT, Jesus quoted a messianic passage (Is 61:1, 2) as describing his own mission “to proclaim release to the captives”

Restored

I will gather you back to me: relationship not place (holy of holies)

Fortunes

Welfare (shalom) - completeness, health, friendship, deliverance, salvation.

So they can get back to fulfilling his purpose for them.

NT: For the sake of God’s Kingdom, those he loves and is drawing to himself.

Wrap: For Their Sake

My Story: I will return you to your roots.

2020 was maybe a mini exile. May have felt scattered. We missed the way life was, the way church was.

Many of us have had a hard time adjusting, adapting. Our spiritual life revolved around a set time, place and formula. That was disrupted.

May have felt distant from God because those things were not available to us.

We’ve maybe fought the hardship rather than seen it as something God was doing.

Realizing that much of what was didn’t mature us but left us immature.

Katie: Learning with another person how to cultivate union with God in a new, deeper way, in everyday life, moment by moment. Not separate from the community but supported by it. No one taught me how to do that before.

We forgot it’s Our Father, not My Father. Prayer is what we do together whether we are physically in the same room or not.

So many have worked hard at keeping things the way they were or can’t wait to go back to the way things were.

Israel during the Exodus

Even (maybe especially) when we are feeling exiled, distant from God

It is time to seek union with God

He will hear us, restore that union and bring us back from where he scattered us.

Being scattered isn’t a bad thing. What God has done in the church in 2020 is a good thing.

Restoration to his presence and bringing us back isn’t about going back to the way things were. Getting back to a building on Sunday morning.

It’s about so much more. He has plans that are better than that - for our welfare, maturity, future and hope.

Restoring us to union with Christ so we’re prepared to live his purpose.

Love for God must be tied to a concern for the broken and bleeding of humanity. A genuine prayer life powerfully connects us with the suffering and pain and injustice of our fallen world.

Lean into the hardship - live life; pray for, live for your city. Don't despair of life. Seek me in it and I will transform you. Don't put your life on hold waiting for it to be over to go back to they way things were.

We train in the spiritual life so we have the ability to live rightly - to freely live and do the will of God regardless of our circumstances. That’s our future and our hope.