Pain, Prayer and Purpose - Your Nation Awaits

Intro

Hello Church! I am honored that I get to run anchor on this dynamic relay team as we unpack the topic of prayer from different vantage points. We are 26 days into the year and I hope you have had the chance to apply what you’ve been learning!

It only takes 21 days to establish a new pattern or habit .... and when you follow it up with another 21 days of exercising the same pattern, you reinoforce the habit … and before you know it the habit becomes a way of life! My prayer is that these teachings help set us on a course of 21 day cycles that lead to a prayer filled, word-filled way of life for all of us!

I started two new 21 day cycles on Jan 1 … The first was to read the bible chronologically with my husband every single day, which has been great. This is in addition to my personal word time. And the second is, I deleted by social media apps from my phone. So, NO notificaitons and no time spent scrolling. Notifications had conditioned me to pick up my phone ALL the time and I didn’t like that … I want to be present with my family and friends and this constant picking up of my phone was taking away from that. So, I have officially created a new habit and now I’m on my 2nd 21 day cycle to reinforce that habit. I feel accomplished and productive!

But enough about that! Let’s get to the word. Nudge someone and ask “you ready?” … “here we go ...”

Tonight I get to talk on the topic: Prayer That Changes a Nation and I’ve entitled this sermon “Pain, Prayer, and Purpose - Your Nation Awaits”.

We’re going for a deep dive into the riveting book of Esther. I can’t wait to share the wild details surrounding this story but before I do, let’s look at Esther 4:14, I’m reading from the NLT: “If you keep quiet at a time like this. deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise form some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for such a time as this? 15 Then Esther send this reply to Mordecai: ‘Go and gather together all the Jews of Susa and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will do the same. And then, I will go in to see the king. If I must die, I must die’”.

Notes: Esther was 14, King Xerxes was 41. YIKES.

Esther was trafficked … she saw what happened to Vashti …

Esther enters the biblical narrative at 14 years old … by this time She has been exiled from her home town, her people were in captivity, her parents were both dead, her older cousin had taken her in, and she was living in the persian city of Susa.

This week, we are considering the rounding up of the virgins for King Xerxes to find a new queen.

This is no Cinderella story.  There is no fairy godmother to explain to these girls, in their many languages, what is happening. There are no friendly mice and twittering birds to accompany the girls as they undergo their beautification. While Mordecai seems to have enough standing at court to freely move about and inquire after Esther, this would have been a rarity for other fathers. As for Esther and the other girls, they would not have knowledge of anything going on outside the harem.

At essentially the age of puberty, because girls were married soon after, royal officers or military came to their homes and public places and took them away from their families. For a period of twelve months, they undergo “beautification.” They would have received training – not in literature or math – but for their one night in which to please the king. And we should be honest here, this wasn’t simply the talent portion of a beauty contest.

In the evening, the girl was taken to a much-older man she did not know to spend the night. In the morning, she did not return to the only home she had known for at least the last year but was sent to a second harem, literally “the house of wives” in Hebrew. Here, they would stay until they died. I doubt anyone was ever summoned by the king by name – there would have been too many names and too many girls for him to possibly remember.

While they may live for years after their night with the king, their lives ended on the night of their abduction from their homes. They no longer had the freedom of movement. These girls no longer had a chance to marry. They no longer had a future with a family of their own. The second harem was a place of forced exile; a place where their identity was only concubine to the king.

Esther does not go to King Ahasuerus until the seventh year of his reign – four years after the Vashti episode we heard last week. How many girls were “gathered” during this time? How many girls went from young virgin to concubine in a matter of hours? And what of the virgins who were still in the first harem when Esther became queen? Did they remain captive in the palace until the king had experienced them as well?

These are not questions we like to ask of this story. We love the image of the young orphan girl becoming a queen. And we look forward to the part of the story where she becomes the powerful heroine of her people.