January 2, 2022 "New Year's Resolutions: Pray More", Jeremiah 33:1-9

Sermon for Sunday, January 2, 2022

“New Year's Resolutions: Pray More!”

Jeremiah 33:1-9

According to an article on the website Statistic Brain, these were the top ten New Year's resolutions (for 2012):

1.Lose weight

2.Get organized

3.Spend less, save more

4.Enjoy life to the fullest

5.Stay fit and healthy

6.Learn something new and exciting

7.Quit smoking

8.Help someone else achieve their dreams

9.Fall in love

10.Spend more time with family

As we ponder our New Year’s Resolutions, I give you permission to come up with one today or perhaps to evaluate whether you like what you’ve already got! May I propose that one resolution be to draw closer to God, especially in prayer. I invite you to stand for the reading and hearing of God’s Word this morning from Jeremiah 33:1-9,

33The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still confined in the court of the guard: 2Thus says the Lordwho made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is his name: 3Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. 4For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and the houses of the kings of Judah that were torn down to make a defence against the siege-ramps and before the sword: 5The Chaldeans are coming in to fight and to fill them with the dead bodies of those whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath, for I have hidden my face from this city because of all their wickedness. 6I am going to bring it recovery and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security. 7I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first. 8I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. 9And this city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them; they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.

Deal with Scripture:

healing and wholeness are found in prayer.

Ted Turner

In an interview with Fortune, Ted Turner, the media mogul and founder of CNN, was asked, "I know you were religious up to the point of seeing your sister suffer for five years and die at 17. You've gone back and forth about whether you're agnostic. Has your lack of belief that God will save humanity motivated you to fell a level of responsibility that others don't feel?"

Turner replied, "If God's going to save us, it's time for him to show up. We're not showing evidence that we're ready to save ourselves. That's what bothers me."

But when asked if he considered himself "agnostic today," Tuner said, "Yeah" but then he also offered some surprisingly thoughts on prayer: "I still say prayers for my friends who are ill. Little short prayers. Mini-prayers. It can't hurt anything." (Remember this is from a man who once said that Christianity is a "religion for losers.")

The Psalms are one of our most powerful resources that can teach us how to pray... or that can pray for us.

“Most of Scripture speaks to us … the Psalms speak for us.” That is how the leading theologian of the 3rd century, Athanasius of Alexandria, expressed the blessing the psalms are for the people of God.

The Psalms express both our ease and frustrations in praying to God.

Psalm 109: 30 says—“With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord; in the great throng I will praise him.” Perhaps David was was happy or excited when praying this prayer to God. He could clearly see God's blessings at work in that moment.

Psalm 109: 7 and 8 says—“When he [the one who has spoken ill of me] is tried, let him be found guilty. May his days be few; may another take his place in leadership.” Clearly, David has had someone say things that hurt him. David in his moment of grief is letting the Lord hear his honest hearts cry.

Psalm 109 is not the only psalm that prays this way.

In a number of places in the Old Testament, the people of God tell God their true emotions and feelings, but always as a way to carry them away from sorrow and back to our ever-loving God.

In the New Testament, Jesus clearly tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.

Prayers that emphasize how we are really feeling are not only appropriate for us to pray, they liberate us to pray authentically.

Think about these things as you pray:

#1: Bring it all to God.

First, a basic conviction of Scripture is that all of life is to be brought into relationship with the Living God. Nothing is to be left out.

This explains why the psalms are not assembled in a nice, neat order...if you read the Psalms through, you’ll begin to see how one moment David was up, the next moment he was down… and the cycle repeated itself. That’s life! Life does not happen in a nice, neat, systematic order.

On the up and down nature of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann says that we have psalms of orientation and disorientation.

The Scriptures express a full range of human thought and emotion, so why don’t we?!

In his book Answering God, Eugene Peterson says: “It is easy to be honest before God with our hallelujahs; it is somewhat more difficult to be honest in our hurts; it is nearly impossible to be honest before God in the dark emotions of our hate.”

Reading the Scriptures help us to open up and entrust the full range of emotion to God and sometimes to clarify how we really feel

C. S. Lewis put it this way: “The prayer preceding all prayers is, ‘May it be the real I who speaks.’”

God knows it all anyway! We can never hide anything. So we may as well open it all up to him.

#2: In the process of prayer, remember that God can handle it all.

A wise man once said that “What we bury rules us”... in other words, if we don't deal with it, it eats us up. We stuff our displeasure at the office, and we gripe at home. We stuff our anger at one person, and it comes out in our relationship with someone else.

The Scriptures help us to understand that we can express our desire for vengeance to God and then leave it in God’s hands.

Yahweh, the Living God, “is not a soft romantic god who only tolerates and forgives, but one who takes seriously his own rule and the well-being of his covenant partners.” (Walter Bruggeman)

God is not the God who requires sugar coating. He is God Almighty and our God who is closer than our best friend. We should lean into God before we take our baggage and lean into someone else!

#3: Prayer can help us to love our enemies.

Prayer helps us obey Jesus’ command to love the enemy. We cannot love our enemies until we acknowledge that they are enemies. It does not give us the permission to make new enemies, but it does give us the permission to realize where relationships may be broken or strained and begin build bridges to healing and wholeness, or at the very least to make sure that no more damage is done.

C. S. Lewis wrote about this in his book Reflections on the Psalms. “Thus the absence of anger, especially that sort of anger which we call indignation, can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom. And the presence of indignation may be a good one.”

We are not alive in God’s passion for Shalom if we do not hate evil. The Scriptures help us to realize when we open up and express it to God, we leave it with God and gain the capacity to love, even those who may be hard to love.

Conclusion

Prayer trains us to come to the Living God with our real selves. Then and only then do we find the One who takes it all, heals it, and leads us in the way of peace.

I invite you now to do a little prayer exercise with me. Bring to the forefront of your mind the an “enemy”… be it someone or something in your life.

Then, if you are able, say: “Lord, I do not want to live with this hate in my soul.”

Hear Jesus say to you: “I know. So do this: As an act of your will, will the goodwill of the person. Give me the deep wound. Look away from the enemy and the hurt, and look to me instead.”

Salvation Poem

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, AMEN.