Making the Most of Your Life: Values Jesus Lived By
11/17/2002 - The Value of Prayer
This past Tuesday night our Elder Team met and it was a sweet time together. We spent the first hour or so getting caught up a bit on each other's lives and sharing some of the joys and struggles we've had since we were last together. That's always a sacred time and a top priority for us, because we don't want to be strangers leading God's church. We want to be in community with each other. And we are. And we thank God for that. There's a deep sense of love and trust and respect for one another and we celebrate that. Unity in the church begins with unity at the leadership level.
Then during the second hour we talked about all the ways God is working at Valley View , the lives that are changing, the joys and the struggles that people are going through. We talked about the facility and the possible purchase someday of the Audubon YMCA. That would be a huge undertaking for us, but we know God could do it. We just want to be responsive to his leading and direction, not running ahead of God in our zeal, nor lagging behind him in our fear. We want to keep in step with Jesus, the pastor of the church. But as we talked, before long we all felt overwhelmed, overwhelmed with all the wonderful things that God is doing around here right now and overwhelmed with all the needs and the problems and struggles people are facing.
Which is why for the third hour we prayed, fervent and intense prayers. Because in most of the situations we discussed that's about all we can do. Which is a lot we can do. Someone has said, "When we work, we work. But when we pray, God's works!" And oh how we long to see God work in his church. And as we prayed together we could feel the transfer take place, the rolling of the burdens off of our shoulders and on to God's shoulders. And by the time we left to go home, God had worked. He had worked in us. There was a deep sense of joy and peace and confidence that God was in control and he'll lead the way. Prayer is a big part of making the most of what God has in store for Valley View . Do you pray for the church? Do you pray for the leaders? I hope you do.
Prayer is a big part of making the most of our lives too. Do you pray for yourself and all the things you're up against? This morning we continue our series called Making the Most of Your Life: Values That Jesus Lived By. And the value we want to talk about today is the value of prayer.
Prayer was a big part of Jesus life. In Luke 5:16 we read, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Jesus was a busy man. But he knew how powerful prayer was and so he often got alone and prayed about everything that was going on in his life.
The Bible is riddled with passages that describe the power of prayer. From Genesis chapter 1 to Revelation chapter 22, the Bible's clear that prayer is the key that unlocks God's power in our lives. There is no power shortage in heaven. There is no energy crisis there. And God wants his power to flow into our lives, but we have to throw the switch. And the switch is prayer.
Where do you need to see the power of God in your life today? Where do you long for a breakthrough? Sometimes we're just one prayer away from an incredible display of God's miraculous power in our own lives, power to change our circumstances and power to change us in the midst of our circumstances.
God's power can change anything. He can change any relationship, any habit, any situation, any addiction, any attitude. He can even change our hard hearts. He can heal physical, psychological, and emotional pain. His power can solve marital conflict, reunite families, meet desperate financial needs.
The God who created the universe out of nothing and raised Jesus Christ from the dead doesn't lack for power. And his power is funneled in the direction of those who pray. Which is why Jesus told his followers to never stop praying. It's so easy to stop, isn't it? I know it is for me. It's so easy to give up on prayer when we don't see instant results, when we don't get the things we really want. Yet it's so often in the persevering, persistence of prayer that God does his deepest work inside us. Like a loving father he doesn't want to give us everything right away. That wouldn't be good.
If you have a Bible meet me at Luke 18. In Luke 18, Jesus tells his disciples a story to help them understand how God really feels about our prayers. In fact, he tells them right up front that this story is meant to motivate us to "always pray and not give up."
Unfortunately, the story has often been sadly misunderstood. I know I misunderstood it for a long time. In fact, many believers think it's saying just the opposite of what Jesus intended it to say. So let's take a fresh look at Luke 18 and the story that my Bible calls "The Parable of the Persistent Widow."
Look at Luke 18:1-5, Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said, "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' 4 "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about people, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"
This story has a cast of two leading actors. The first is the widow, this woman who was all alone. Being a widow in Jesus' day was a tough life. Widows had no hope. They couldn't go to school. They couldn't get a job. They couldn't own property. There was no life insurance, no social security, no welfare, no social services to take care of them. In fact, if they didn't have a son who could support them, they couldn't survive. The widow in this story is the 1st century equivalent to a homeless person today, a bag lady that we might see sleeping on steamy subway grate in Center City Philadelphia.
And if that wasn't bad enough, this poor woman was being harassed. She was being bullied. She had an adversary , Jesus says. We don't know who it was or what was happening. Maybe she was being intimidated or threatened with eviction from her cardboard house. Or maybe the villain was withholding or stealing money that was earmarked for her support. Whatever was going on put her in a desperate situation. In fact, she was so far down that she had to look up to see bottom!
Her only shred of hope and it was a long shot, was to stand before the local judge, plead her case, and throw herself on his mercy to get justice. And that's exactly what she decided to do.
Enter the second actor in the drama, the judge. In one crisp statement, Jesus says two things about him. Neither of which are flattering. First, he says that he didn't fear God. And second, he didn't care about people. I was with a guy this week who said that's the way he was before he came to Christ.
This man had no moral compass. No ethical absolutes. No sense of right and wrong. No fear that one day he would stand before a holy God and give an account for every decision he handed down. He was law unto himself. He was a loaded, loose cannon.
God was a non-factor in his life and people didn't matter to him either. They were problems, interruptions, headaches and hassles. The mud flaps on his car said, "Back off!" and his vanity plate read, "MAKEMYDAY." That's the kind of grizzly guy he was. So what chance do you think this widow had pleading her case before the judge? If you guessed "zero," you guessed too high!
But she goes before him anyway and states her case. The judge laughs and says, "Get this bellyaching bag lady out of here! Case dismissed." And she's thrown out into the street. But that's not the end of the story because this woman is resilient and she won't be denied.
So after she collects herself, she thinks, "Hey, I've got nothing to lose. I'm going back to pester this judge. I'm going to get in his face. I'm going to stalk him. I'm going to follow him to work, to his home, to the club, to the track. I'm going to stick to this guy like a wet shirt until he gives me what I want. I'm going to become his worst nightmare." That's all in the original Greek text!
And she does. She keeps bothering him, Jesus says. And she finally wears him down. And one day he opens the window in his office and screams, "I can't take it anymore. Will somebody fix this lady's problem? I don't care what it takes. I don't care how much it costs. Just do it before she drives me nuts!" The widow finally gets what she wants. And we think the moral of the story is that it pays to pester! The squeaky wheel always gets the grease! And we all know how that works. But is that the point Jesus is making?
You see if we treat this story as an allegory then we're like the widow. We're penniless and powerless. We're harassed and bullied by life. We're out on the street. We're not able to handle our problems. And we have nowhere to turn but to God.
And God is like the judge. He is hardnosed, into himself, and way too busy to be concerned about us. But if we get really desperate, if we really have something important, we can do what the widow did. We can pester God and bug him and wear him down by making a nuisance of ourselves. We can squeeze our hands together real tight and dig our knees into the floor and beg and plead and hope that he'll listen to us. And if that doesn't work, we can get our friends to pester him too in the hopes that together we can gang up on God and pry a blessing out of his tight fisted grip.
And finally, like the judge, we just might drive God nuts and get him to point where he says, "Uncle! I give up! I can't take it anymore! Somebody please fix Bruce's problem!"
Does that interpretation sound right to you? For a long time, that's what I thought the point of the story was. And I'm convinced that there are a lot of people, maybe you're one of them, who think that the challenge of prayer is to wear God down. To bug him and pester him until he finally gives us what we want. We think that prayer is like trying to find the lost key that will somehow unlock the vault of blessing and favor that God, for some reason, doesn't want to open up to us.
But that couldn't further from the truth. That's not who God is. Please don't believe that God is like that. He's not. And in this story, Jesus never meant to imply that God is like a callous judge or that we're like the wounded widow, because the story is not an allegory. The story is a study in contrast. It's a good lesson on prayer from a bad example.
How do we know that? Because that's the way Jesus interprets it. Look at verses 6-8, And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
Jesus says we're not like the widow. We're not bag ladies. We are God's chosen ones. As believers in Jesus, we're totally the opposite of the widow in the story. Instead of being abandoned and living out on the street, we're God's children living in his palace. We're his adopted sons and daughters. Instead of being strangers, we're members of God's family. Instead of being a number and nuisance on some judge's docket, we matter to God so much that he laid down his life for us.
And just as opposite as we are from the widow, so is our heavenly Father from the judge in this story. The judge was hardnosed, insensitive, crooked and cruel. He wasn't someone you wanted to meet under any circumstances. He was nasty. But God, our heavenly Father, is loving and tender and responsive to our cries. He loves the down and out. He's the champion of the underdog. He's not out to get us. He's out to help us. He's on our side.
Prayer is not about trying to wrench a blessing away from a reluctant God. It's not about trying to trick God into giving us what he'd rather keep to himself. Prayer is a child climbing up on to the lap of his or her heavenly Father and finding him never too busy to listen to them with his full, undivided attention. That's the privilege of prayer! Prayer is a child talking to his or her heavenly Father who loves to respond, not a widow pestering an unfeeling judge who could care less. Is that how you feel about prayer?
It's so important that we understand what prayer is, because we need to pray about everything if we're going to make the most of our lives. But we're not going to pray about anything if we view God as a stern judge who's way too busy to hear us.
This week I had my five year-old daughter, Avery, up on my lap and we were giving each other big hugs. And I asked her, "Do you know Daddy loves you?" And she said, "Yes. I know Daddy loves me." And I said, "How do you know Daddy loves you?" And she said, "Because you give me hugs and kisses, Daddy." Then I said to her, "If Daddy could do anything in the world for you, what would it be?" And I was bracing myself for a trip to Disney World or some expensive toy she saw advertised on TV. But instead she said, "Read me a book!" And I said, "That's it. That's what you want Daddy to do?" And she said, "Yes." And I thought to myself, "Why can't they stay five years-old forever!"
Those are the tender moments that remind me of what prayer really is. It's a child talking to his or her father. I love to respond to my children. I love to be able to say "yes" to their requests. I want them to be able to approach me anytime about anything. And I know that's not always the case, because I'm not the perfect Dad. There are times when I want everybody to just leave me alone. But God's never that way. God is the perfect Dad and his lap is always open to us.
I'd be real concerned if my kids started trembling in fear when they wanted to approach me saying things like, "O father please, oh please listen to me, I beg you, I plead with you, I petition you, I entreat you." If they started coming to me like that. I'd say, "Wait a minute. Time out. Something has gone horribly wrong in our relationship." And I would know it was my fault.
If we're going to make the most of our lives we need to pray and pray a lot. But we're never going to do that until we understand that prayer is the privilege to jump up into God's lap anytime, anywhere and have his undivided attention. Because no voice sounds sweeter to God than your voice. None.
Jesus put it this way in Matthew 7:9-11 (NLT), You parents-if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him!
Let me close by giving you three simple lessons about prayer that this story teaches me. First, the most important thing in the universe to God is what's going on in your life right now. If we're going to take a step forward in our prayer lives, we need to be convinced of that. God is interested in your prayers, because God is interested in you. He has nothing more important on his plate than to have you crawl up in his lap and talk to him. Nothing. The best time to talk to God is always now.
We don't have to pester him, spend hours on our knees to get him to hear us, whip ourselves or starve ourselves to show him we mean business. He's ready to listen to us anytime. He wants us to call on him. And in this hi-tech, automated, cyberspace age, God still answers his own phone. You want get voice mail or elevator music while you're put on hold. The moment you start talking God drops everything else, because he loves you infinitely more than even the world's best father loves his children.
Second, this passage teaches me that God can handle anything you're dealing with. It wouldn't make much sense to cry out to a God who was impotent, who couldn't do a thing about our situation. How pathetic would that be? But our God is omnipotent. The God who created the universe out of nothing and raised Jesus from the dead can handle anything we're facing. But he doesn't just want to change our circumstances. That's often all we want him to do. He wants to change us and he will use our circumstances to do that. So if what you're praying isn't going away or getting any better, it's a signal to take a look inside your own life and see what God wants to teach you in the midst of the circumstance.
Third, God invites you to bring everything to him, big or small. Nothing is too insignificant to talk to God about. God wants to hear about everything that's going on in our lives. Again and again in the New Testament Jesus invites us to come to him. "Come to me. I'm ready. I'm willing. I'm able. And I'm inviting you to talk with me." And when we do, our prayer gets to priority.
It was amazing for me to listen to the Ghanaians pray when I was over in Africa this summer. They don't pray silently. They don't pray softly. They don't keep their hands folded and their eyes closed. Instead, they pray aerobically. They walk around the room when they pray. They lift their hands when they pray. They shout and they sing when they pray. They work up a sweat when they pray. And they all pray at once. It's a sight to behold. Prayer is the strength of the African church. And how cool it was to realize that God was hearing every one of those prayers as if it was the only prayer he was listening too. That's the kind of God we have.
Jesus says we should always pray and not give up. If you make to make the most of your life don't give up on prayer. Keep the dialogue running all the time with your heavenly Father and watch him work in your life.