Scripture: James 5:13-16; Matthew 6:5-15

February 1, 2004

Rev. Marietta T. Smith
Associate Minister

Our church has been engaged in a study of Natural Church development over the past ear and some months. In this study we have used surveys to determine the strengths and weaknesses of our church by which we have gauged the spiritual vitality of our congregation. It is interesting to study the information that comes to us about these surveys. They have been done all the United Methodist Churches, those churches who choose to do this. And it has been interesting to notice that the vast majority of United Methodist Churches fall shortest in one of the two weaknesses that we fell short in — that of passionate spirituality. Christian A. Schwarz wrote the book, Natural Church Development. He defines this area of passionate spirituality with two questions: “Are the members of this church ‘on fire’?” Do they live committed lives and practice their faith with joy and enthusiasm?”

Passionate spirituality is characterized by a real hunger for the things of God. Passionate spirituality really believes God can make a difference and yearns to see this happen. Of course it is critical for the pastors and the key leadership to lead by living out passionate spirituality themselves and if the congregation sees this, they will be much more willing to move in this direction.

The power of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life can move that person into a higher level of spiritual living. We need to cooperate with Holy Spirit by practicing the classical spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, solitude, silence, simplicity scripture study, service observing Sabbath, worship and tithing.

We can talk a lot and write a lot and read a lot about these disciplines, but the glue that will hold them all together is prayer. Our Senior minister preached a series on these disciplines last fall and in his sermon on prayer, he mentioned that we need to have a plan and a place and a priority, and people for whom we pray.

Today I’d like to take that discipline of prayer to a deeper level to suggest that we need to have a prayer life that really matters.

In order to do that, we need to understand what prayer really is. The definition of prayer that John Bunyan gives goes like this:

True prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart

And soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of Holy Spirit

For such things as God has promised, or according to the Word of God for the

Good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.

We might paraphrase that by saying that prayer is a conversation with God. Notice I said it is “talking WITH God.” When we have a conversation we are talking WITH somebody. It’s a two way street; we talk some and they listen and then they talk and we listen. I’m afraid that much of our prayer consists of talking AT God without waiting on Him or listening for what He has to say to us. Could it be that we don’t really want to wait on God or listen for what God has to say because we are afraid of what He might ask us to do.

We ask the question: Why are we lacking in passionate spirituality? One answer could be that, as Lovett Weems has stated, “We are looking for the end without using the means.” He says that the primary means by which God transforms the life and ministry of a church is through disciplined, listening, obedient prayer.”

We talk about prayer a lot and it seems like we pray a lot but sometimes our prayers are just words. They don’t have any real effect. I worked in a church once, years ago — a Methodist Church — in the days when the Administrative Council was known as the official board, so you know how long ago that was; we never prayed at the beginning of a meeting. We never prayed at the end of the meeting. Sometimes, even though we might even pray at the beginning and the end of a meeting, the opening and closing prayers have not affected what goes on in the meeting.

James Harnish wrote an article for Circuit Rider Magazine from which I took the title for this sermon — “Prayer That Makes a Difference.” Harnish says in this article that: “What we actually do and how we do it do not indicate that we expect the God to whom we pray to become an active participant in the meeting. We offer a polite nod, a tip of the hat to God, but we act as if we are called to make decisions, with God sitting on the sidelines, waiting to be asked to ‘bless’ what we have decided to do.”

We need to be praying prayers that make a difference. And how shall we pray this way? Prayers that make a difference are aligned with the redemptive purpose of God, which purpose is to bring people into a right relationship with God and into a right relationship with each other.

Adam and Eve were created to have fellowship with God and they did so. They walked with Him and talked with Him in the cool of the day. And we have the same privilege of walking with Him and talking with Him.

We are saved to have fellowship with God and part of that fellowship is to be in conversation with Him through the discipline of prayer. We need to be praying for God to reveal Himself to us through the reading of His WORD. That’s one of the ways God speaks to us, through His WORD and through the promptings of the Holy Spirit that comes from reading His word, or as a result of being in conversation with Him through prayer. So you see that the disciplines of Bible study and prayer go hand in hand.

We need to be asking God to show us programs and activities we can engage in so that our church will move out beyond these four walls into our community, our district and our conference and our world at large to bring the good news of salvation to a lost and dying world.

Harnish says that

Prayer that makes a difference to aligned with

The larger purpose of the way God’s self-giving

Love in Christ brings all things into right

Relationship with the promise of God’s Kingdom

Coming on earth as it is already fulfilled in heaven.”

Prayer is the process by which we bring everything we do into a proper relationship with the redemptive purpose of God as revealed in Christ Jesus so that our lives become translucent centers of loving power for the transformation of the world.

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth,” we pray, “as it is in Heaven.” This means that we CAN live in the Kingdom of God in the here and now, and we do it by living in responsible, loving relationships with our fellow men and our sister women. This means that we say yes, Lord, yes to YOUR WILL and to YOUR WAYS. This means that we are willing to become the answers to the prayers we pray. Remember that I said a while ago that the primary means by which God transforms the life and ministry of this church of any church, is through disciplined, listening, obedient prayer. Prayer that has a plan and a purpose. Prayer that has a high priority in our lives. Prayer is a vital key that connects us with our heavenly Father.

Prayer like this takes time. Prayer like this is more than the sweet little, “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayers we pray with our children or the nice little invocations we pray at our meetings.

Pray like this involves being fully present with God.

It is both an incredible privilege and an awesome responsibility. It can move the hand of God in situations where there is no other hope.

Biblical prayer is the crying out to God out of the depths of our being; it is the pouring out of the soul before God.

As Harnish puts it: Genuine, Christ centered biblically rooted prayer lifts our vision beyond the survival needs of our own congregati0n to see the way this particular congregation can become part of God’s redemptive purpose at work in the world. Praying the way Jesus taught us forces us to realign our miniseries around the vision of God’s Kingdom coming on earth as it is already fulfilled in Heaven.? The judge finally gave in and granted the woman’s request. The widow’s persistence is the lesson of the parable. God is the counterexample to the judge. God does not begrudge answering prayer. Jesus point is that if an insensitive judge will respond to the CONTINUAL requests of this widow, He certainly will respond to the continual prayers of believers.

Jesus told this parable of the persistent widow to help His disciples to remember always to pray and not to faint, not to give up. He admonished them and us to ask and keep on asking, to seek and keep on seeking, to knock and keep on knocking until we receive what He wants us to receive, find what He wants us to find and have opened the doors He intends for us to pass through.

Harnish maintains that in a very practical sense, “persistence in prayer has meant that we have structured unto our lives some basic patterns of spiritual discipline and prayer.” And if we want empowered leadership in our churches, we need to have leadership that is disciplined in Bible reading and prayer. If we want power in our lives and in our ministry, we need to have members who are also disciplined in Bible reading and prayer. It isn’t just the responsibility of the pastors, though we need to model what we want our members to be and do.

I attended the workshop on Prayer at the District Leadership Conference. And what a blessing. Reverend Mary Medford gave the illustration about the Chinese church, which exists amidst much persecution, and where 35,000 people accept the Lord daily. Their secret? The disciplined prayer life of Chinese believers.

Chinese Christians pray to the Lord for a watchful and praying spirit, a burden to pray for others, a time and a place to pray, energy to pray with fellow workers and the right words to use in prayer.

Chinese Christians have a widespread motto: ‘Little prayer, little power; no prayer, no power.”

We need to be persistent in finding practical ways of shaping our life together around the experience of prayer.

Prayers that make a difference are centered in the love and mercy of God. In the same chapter about the persistent widow, Jesus tells about the two men who went to the temple to pray. One of them walked right in front and began to tell God how good he was and how he did all the right things and how he was glad he was not like this other man who had come.

The other man who came in to pray stood apart from the first man, hardly inside the main door till he bowed his head and said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus listeners were surprised when He told them which one was justified in his prayer. Of course they all thought the Pharisee because he did all the right things and said all the right things in his prayer.

But Jesus turned their expectations inside out when he said, “I tell you that this tax collector went home justified.” What do you mean? Simply put, the tax collector knew what he was and that he couldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t. The tax collector humbled himself before God because he knew he needed to repent of his sin and ask God for mercy.

2 Chronicles 7:14 says that

If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.

Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.

And what is the condition for that attention? Repentance and confession and humility and prayer. Prayer that makes a difference lives in a humble awareness of the fact that we all need God’s mercy. It develops out of a keen sense that at our very best, we are fallible human beings. At our highest, we fall far short of the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Where we think we are the strongest, we are actually the weakest in comparison to the strength of God’s redemptive purpose for the world. It’s the kind of praying, Harnish says, that engages us in the process of transformation by which the self-giving love of God that was made flesh among us in Jesus becomes a tangible reality in and through our lives as we become the answers to the prayers we pray. It’s the kind of praying that gives us a tender heart for the street people and the alcoholic and the cocaine addict and the prostitute. It also gives us a heart of love for the self-righteous Pharisee.

Lord, listen to your children praying.

Lord, send your spirit in this place.

Lord, listen to your children praying:

Send us power, the power of transformed lives and

ministry through disciplined, listening, obedient prayer.

Send us love that we may become translucent centers of loving power in this community and in our world.

Send us grace that we might learn to live with a tenderhearted sense of our own need of God’s mercy and grace that will enable us to extend that mercy and grace and love to others.

O Lord, Listen!

O people, pray!