Conversations with God

Conversations with God

Mark 1:35-38

PRAY

Good morning on this beautiful summer day! Some of you got a little rain, the rest of us didn’t, but that’s OK… we will get the rain.

Before we get into the sermon, I wanted to share about an upcoming opportunity for a mission trip! In March of 2023, Renee (my wife) will be leading a Mission Team to the Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf on the island of Jamaica. Here’s a little video about the place for you to enjoy.

Video

Be watching for more information coming soon.

PRAY

I am always excited when the time of long planned trips is approaching, and the last half of July is no exception. Renee and I are finally taking the trip to Egypt that we have planned for over a year! Starting next Friday, I will be out for 2 full weeks.

Now, here is the exciting part for you…

Next Sunday, Alex will be preaching. I’m sure he’ll share the saga of his puppies and what is going on with the Youth Ministries, but then he will get into God’s Word with you.

Then on the 24th, Priscilla will be leading us through God’s Word as she preaches on “the Inbetween.”

Finally, on July 31, Brittany Padgett-Faught, our Children’s Director will be preaching for us… sharing her first official sermon.

I wish I could be present to see and hear each of the great messages in person. Like I’ve said before, we are so blessed here at FUMC with so many talented individuals.

But today, we are finishing up a focus on prayer. I decided to wrap this study on prayer up with a more general sermon on prayer. If you recall, we spent the last 4 weeks looking at the acronym of P.R.A.Y. as a framework for building our life of prayer… When we pray we need to Pauseto spend time alone with God. This isn’t something we simply do in passing… though that can be a part of our prayer life, but we need to have specific times where we pray, times that we set aside, times where we pause to spend time with God.

And when we pause, we also need to take time to Reflecton God’s Word, that it may be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We also take time to Rejoice in all that God was, is, and will be, remembering what God has and continues to do in our lives.

During our time of pausing with God it is good and it is right to share the requests of our heart with our Lord. God wants us to Ask of him, and God wants to give us the desires of our heart as they align with God’s will.

And last week, we talked about yielding to God. We wrapped up our time remembering Jesus time before the arrest where he is praying in the garden and says, “Not my will, but your will be done Lord.” “Not what I want, but what you want.”

Prayer has to be a part of our life as followers of Christ. It isn’t just for a season like this where our church is making major decisions… yes, we certainly need to be praying our way through this… but prayer needs to be a part of every aspect of our life. Just like a conversation with others we know and love, we need to have our conversations with God. I love the examples Jesus gives of this life of prayer. Turn with me to the first chapter of Mark. Mark’s story of Jesus life doesn’t start with his birth, it starts with the ministry of Jesus and calling the disciples. By verse 35, Jesus has already been healing and teaching throughout Galilee. Then, the disciples wake up and can’t find him. They go searching and here is what happened:

Mark 1:35-58

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.”

PRAYER

PRAY

Have you ever sat down for dinner and, while listening to the prayer wonder if the person was trying to catch up on their prayer life for the previous week? Maybe a better question is, how often do you pray other than meal time? Or, do you even pray at meal time?

A valid question, is it not? As we wrap up our discussion on Prayer, we must begin by remembering that prayer is a spiritual discipline.

A disciplineis defined as a way to “train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way.” Then, when you look at spiritual disciplines, the purpose is: to transform our lives to be like Christ. Foster says that “Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of the spiritual life… Real prayer is life creating and life changing… To pray is to change.” Foster also says that “meditation introduces us to the inner life, fasting is an accompanying means, study transforms our minds, but it is the Discipline of prayer that brings us into the deepest and highest work of the human spirit.” (Richard J. Foster, Prayer)

As we look through the history of great spiritual leaders we see that prayer was central to their life. Martin Luthersaid, “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” John Wesley said, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer.” And backed it up with at least two hours daily devoted to prayer.

PRAY

One of the challenges we face as we look at prayer is to think that we are not capable of this kind of depth of prayer. We think one must be a spiritual giant to pray like that… without ever realizing that maybe it was their life of prayer that developed their spiritual life into the legend that we know of today.

Another fallacy is that it doesn’t matter what we pray, some may thing, “God has everything lined out and our prayersdon’t change God, maybe they change us but they don’t change God.”

The reason I say this is a fallacy is that nowhere in scripture or the history of Christianity do we see this until modern time. Read the prayers of Abraham, Moses, Deborah, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Mary, Peter, Paul, John, and Jesus and we see that these founders of our faith prayed with a conviction that they expected God to change God’s mind. They prayed “as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference.” Furthermore, these Biblical heroes and founders of the faith through the ages didn’t start out praying the way we read about, they learned how to pray.

Think of the disciples, they learned to pray by watching Jesus, eventually asking him to teach them to pray. These men had been raised in the Jewish faith, fulfilling all the requirements of their synagogue trainings as young men. These early followers of Jesus were men of prayer, but they saw something different in the prayer life of Jesus. They saw him daily going away to pray. They heard his prayers and knew they were different. Finally they asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

That question culminated in the prayer we prayed just a few moments ago:

Matthew 6:9-13

Pray, then, in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

may your name be revered as holy.

May your kingdom come.

May your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.

I know we pray this almost word for word as read in the King James, but what it really is, is a powerful prayer outline.

1) Acknowledge God’s holiness

2) Yield to God’s will on earth as in heaven

3) Pray for our needs

4) Pray for forgiveness, as we forgive others

5) And seek to be rescued from the evil that surrounds us.

PRAY

I recognize that I cannot teach you all there is to know about prayer in this hour, or even over the past 4 weeks. This prayer we just read is certainly a start in learning to pray and live a life of prayer. I also hope that during each hour of worship you have seen and experienced prayer. I hope that you take this time and use it as a spring board to further expand your prayer life. Don’t forget the Acronyms I gave you a couple of weeks ago for modelling your prayer life:

J - Jesus A -Adoration

O - Others C -Confession

Y -Yourself T -Thanksgiving

S -Supplication

Between the Lord’s Prayer and these two acronyms, you are well on your way to a life of prayer. But one more thing I would mention to you about a life of prayer.

Pray with an expectancy that change will occur. Expect that God hears your prayers and that God can and will change situations and circumstances. We may not always see the answer to the prayers. We may pray for healing to take place and never see the healing. We may prayer for a friend and never know the change that happens in their life. But trust that God is working in the situation.

To begin this trust, simply think back to the times we have prayed and seen a change. Don’t fixate on the times your prayers weren’t answered the way you wanted, think of the other prayers too.

You prayed about a test and you passed – or if it was a medical test you got a good result. Think of the times you prayed for a sick friend and they became well. Think of the times you have asked God to take away the pain of a loved one and God did.

Maybe we chalked it up to coincidence, but, as Arch Bishop William Temple once noted, coincidences occur much more frequently when he prays.

Trust that God was at work in these prayers, changing lives and healing bodies. Begin to watch for these ‘coincidences’ and see your trust and faith grow.

My final point about prayer and about living all the spiritual disciplines is this:

As we make prayer a part of our life, we will get closer and closer to God. We will begin to listen to God more closely. We will begin to listen to God for guidance in situations. As our faith grows we will begin to see those we pray for through God’s eyes of compassion.

Think of the relationships in our lives. The more time we spend with others the more alike we become.

I can’t help but think of the funny pictures I’ve seen of owners and pets who look alike.

Owner and Pets

I know, some of these were done for fun to make them look alike, but some of them are just funny. Like, I don’t know if they pic the pet because it looks like them, or they begin to look like their pet over the years.

I’m not saying we need to all look like our pets..

PRAY

But, maybe consider our parents, our spouses, our children, our friends. As we spend more and more time together, we become more and more like the one we are with. As we spend time in conversation our relationship grows. We may begin to finish each other’s sentences. We may begin to share mannerisms. We may even begin to have the same likes, dislikes, and even begin to look alike.

Is not our relationship with God the same? As we spend time with God through the disciplines, especially the inward disciplines of prayer, meditation, fasting, and study, we begin to become more and more like the God we seek to serve.

As we become more and more like God, we will begin to see the world through God’s eyes.

And, as we see the world in this new way, we cannot help but be transformed. Thus, the disciplines work. As we practice them we begin to become more and more like Jesus, we are transformed. And, it all starts with our conversations with God.