Send Me
Notes
Transcript
Did you know that:
97% of the world has heard of coke-a-cola
72% of the world has seen a can of coke-a-cola
51% of the world has tasted a can of coke-a-cola
Did you also know that Coke has only been around 80 years (1984). If God had given the task of world evangelization to the Coke company it would probably be done by now. Scary thought isn’t it.
This morning, we are wrapping up our series on dangerous prayers. We’ve talked about:
boldness
listening to God speak
search me - 4 parts -
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
break me
break us of the things that are inconsistent with God and His character
This morning we are going to talk about the last prayer, send me and use me.
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.
3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.
7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
9 He said, “Go and tell this people: “ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “For how long, Lord?” And he answered: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged,
12 until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.
13 And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”
Speak through first verses culminating in Isaiah offering himself to God. Isaiah’s realization that he needed God’s forgiveness and cleansing - then offering himself completely to God
Speak through God’s commission in 9-13. God commissioned Isaiah to preach to the people as he has been doing, but with a renewed fervor and intensity, knowing that the only antidote to his people’s uncleanness is the same as was for his own - confession that they are unclean and in need of God’s forgiveness and removal of their sins.
A few years back, when Pastor Cindy and I started our ministry journey’s, we had quite a bit of conversation that walking into our callings meant that we had to be willing to go wherever God calls, no matter what. We do not know what that will bring in the future. We don’t know if he will ever call us to go somewhere else. He might. Regardless, we will follow his call.
Here’s the thing - surrendering ourselves to God like this is scary. But here’s the things - he has a specific call to all of us. Some will be pastors for sure, but God doesn’t call everyone to be a pastor, but he does call us all to be ministers or sharers of His gospel, His message of hope and salvation for all mankind. We all play a part. Some will be called to go elsewhere and serve in a specific way, while some will be called to stay right where they are and serve in a specific way in that context.
Did you know that the US is one of the largest, if not the largest, mission field in the world? Right here in our own back yards? It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it.
Whatever God’s call is on your life, we need to be willing to surrender ourselves before Him to whatever that is. Let’s be honest, we humans are great at coming up with excuses - unqualified, inadequate, unprepared. It doesn't matter however, God will give us what we need to serve him! That is exciting news!
Let’s look at some biblical examples of the people God chose to use:
Jonah - You might remember that he told God he would do anything that God asked of him, until God asked him to go to Nineveh. That was too far and Jonah ran as we know from the account of him and the big fish. He ended up going to Nineveh and had a great impact.
Moses - Moses had all kinds of excuses why he couldn’t do what God wanted him to do. He had a stutter! So God’s solution - send his brother Aaron too.
Noah - he was a drunk - he followed God’s call to build an ark even though he was severely ridiculed
Isaac - a daydreamer
Gideon - he was afraid
Joseph - he was abandoned by his family
Jeremiah - too young
Abraham - too old - yet God fulfilled his promise
Naomi - she was bitter
Martha - a worrywort - she asked Jesus to chastise Mary for not helping
God calls everyday people like you and I to play a part in His story, to have an impact for His Kingdom! We should be honored and humbled that he would even choose to use us - he certainly doesn’t need us and could do it without us, but he chose to work through us humans to bring about His Kingdom in the here and now!
This type of prayer to send me is not one that we will be inclined to pray at first. In fact, it comes once we get to know God better, understand his character and holiness that we become more willing. Here’s the thing - if we start praying for boldness, praying for God to search us, for God to break us - we are going to get more intimate in our relationship with him! It will become more natural for us to pray this dangerous prayer of submission!
As we wrap up this series, I want us to consider this prayer of submission is something that is not a one time thing, just like search me and break me. They are daily prayers - they should be a part of our daily time with God. This is vital to help us keep proper perspective and proper focus on our relationship with God and what he wants us to do. If we do not stay consistent with our disciplines, that daily communing with God, we will start to grow farther from him. Our human nature will start to take over.
There’s a basic concept that we need to remember. What we feed grows and what we starve dies off.
This prayer of send me, use me, what would happen if we made this a daily prayer, asking God to do one thing through us each day? What might happen? I bet it would change us and also change those around us.
I’d like us to each think for a moment and do an audit on our prayer lives. We can find out quite a bit about someone’s relationship with God by what they pray for. Do you pray for yourself or what matters to you? Or do you pray for others and for things that are not necessarily for you?
I’d challenge us all to start keeping a prayer journal. Write down everything we prayed for each day. We might be surprised when we look over the course of a week or a month. Would what you prayed for this last week change the world - how would it be different? If not, I would challenge us to pray bigger, bolder prayers - prayers that would change the world and have an impact for God’s Kingdom!
The following article was published in 1983 is based on a sermon by missionary Del Tarr who served fourteen years in West Africa with a mission agency. His story points out the price some people pay to sow the seed of the gospel in hard soil.
I was always perplexed by Psalm 126 until I went to the Sahel, that vast stretch of savanna more than four thousand miles wide just under the Sahara Desert. In the Sahel, all the moisture comes in a four month period: May, June, July, and August. After that, not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks from dryness, and so do your hands and feet. The winds of the Sahara pick up the dust and throw it thousands of feet into the air. It then comes slowly drifting across West Africa as a fine grit. It gets inside your mouth. It gets inside your watch and stops it. The year's food, of course, must all be grown in those four months. People grow sorghum or milo in small fields.
October and November...these are beautiful months. The granaries are full -- the harvest has come. People sing and dance. They eat two meals a day. The sorghum is ground between two stones to make flour and then a mush with the consistency of yesterday's Cream of Wheat. The sticky mush is eaten hot; they roll it into little balls between their fingers, drop it into a bit of sauce and then pop it into their mouths. The meal lies heavy on their stomachs so they can sleep.
December comes, and the granaries start to recede. Many families omit the morning meal. Certainly by January not one family in fifty is still eating two meals a day. By February, the evening meal diminishes. The meal shrinks even more during March and children succumb to sickness. You don't stay well on half a meal a day. April is the month that haunts my memory. In it you hear the babies crying in the twilight. Most of the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel.
Then, inevitably, it happens. A six- or seven-year-old boy comes running to his father one day with sudden excitement. "Daddy! Daddy! We've got grain!" he shouts.
"Son, you know we haven't had grain for weeks."
"Yes, we have!" the boy insists. "Out in the hut where we keep the goats -- there's a leather sack hanging up on the wall -- I reached up and put my hand down in there -- Daddy, there's grain in there! Give it to Mommy so she can make flour, and tonight our tummies can sleep!"
The father stands motionless. "Son, we can't do that," he softly explains. "That's next year's seed grain. It's the only thing between us and starvation. We're waiting for the rains, and then we must use it."
The rains finally arrive in May, and when they do the young boy watches as his father takes the sack from the wall and does the most unreasonable thing imaginable. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field and with tears streaming down his face, he takes the precious seed and throws it away. He scatters it in the dirt! Why? Because he believes in the harvest.
The seed is his; he owns it. He can do anything with it he wants. The act of sowing it hurts so much that he cries. But as the African pastors say when they preach on Psalm 126, "Brother and sisters, this is God's law of the harvest. Don't expect to rejoice later on unless you have been willing to sow in tears."
And I want to ask you: How much would it cost you to sow in tears? I don't mean just giving God something from your abundance, but finding a way to say, "I believe in the harvest, and therefore I will give what makes no sense. The world would call me unreasonable to do this -- but I must sow regardless, in order that I may someday celebrate with songs of joy."
Copyright Leadership, 1983.
Do we really believe in the harvest?
2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
God tells us there is a harvest ready - do we really believe that and are we willing to be part of the harvest? We need to be willing for God to use us however he sees fit. We need to be willing to pray the dangerous prayer of send me.
This morning, as we wrap up, I have a few questions for us to consider. They are challenging, but I think they are necessary as we consider this prayer of “send me.”
Rather than asking God to serve us, what if we told God we are available to serve him?
What if instead of asking God to do something for us, we prayed a dangerous, self-denying prayer of availability to our Heavenly Father?
What if instead of asking God to do something on our behalf, we dared to ask God to use us on our behalf?
What if we had the courageous faith to surrender our whole future, beginning right now to God?
As we close this morning, I want to share:
Prayer of Sir Francis Drake
Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true Because we have dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity And in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wider seas Where storms will show your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars. We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.
AMEN