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I Will Glory in My Redeemer. What a
wonderful statement. What a wonderful sentiment as we start our time
together with the word. I’m down here because we are going to try
something a little different today. We’re going to have a little chance
to interact with this message and see what we can craft together. So as
we do that, what I want us to do is start by reading the scripture
together. The scripture is a continuation of the series that we
started, you don’t need to open your books, it’s going to be right
there; don’t worry about it. It is from the series that Chris started a
long time ago about What Jesus Would Say About…., and we are going to
talk about Asking. So we are going to be reading from the seventh
chapter of Matthew, about 7 – 11; so let’s read God’s word together.
“Keep on asking, and you will receive
what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on
knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks,
receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the
door will be opened.
“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! So 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’s pray.
We glory in our Redeemer for you are
the living word, alive to us. We ask that you would quicken our hearts
and our minds to hear what your spirit is saying this day. Lord, we
thank you for this opportunity. It is in your name we ask it. Amen.
Well if we are going to begin kind of
playing with this text a little bit, let’s start with this. What is
Jesus describing here by the asking, seeking and knocking? What’s he
talking about in this text?
Response: Prayer.
Buck: Prayer. Yeah. O.K. Prayer.
Pretty straight forward. O.K. This is easy. This works. Right?
We’re talking about prayer. If you do the devotional, there’s some
other ways to look at it that I give you a chance to look at; but we’re
going to talk about it as prayer. So if it’s about prayer, how would
you define the kind of prayers he’s asking for?
Response: Searching prayers.
Buck: Searching prayers. O.K. He
uses the word “seek.” O.K. Searching. Someone else?
Response: Healing.
Buck: Healing, did you say? Healing
prayers. Yes.
Response: Persistent.
Buck: Persistent. O.K. I like that
word because we will see that a little more. But that’s right. Any
others?
Response: From the heart.
Buck: From the heart.
Response: Guidance.
Response: Sincere.
Buck: Yeah. I think so. What we’re talking
about here, what I’m going to say, is persistence. I think all of those
things are right, but persistent prayers; and I add the little twist of
confidence. You notice that there is this kind of, oomph, like keep on
doing it. There is this positive nature that you could do it; there’s a
sense of prayers with confidence.
What’s the result? When Jesus says “Pray with
confidence,” what’s the result he says?
Response: You get an answer.
Buck: You get an answer. Yeah. You get an
answer. What else do you get?
Response: You get what you’re asking for.
Buck: You get, exactly, you get what you’re
asking for. He says “Ask.” “Ask and you’ll
receive. Knock and the door will be opened. Seek and you will find.”
Yeah, I think that’s exactly what’s happening. O.K. That’s the
result. The result of persistent prayer is that you get what you want,
what you asked for. What I want to do now is to show a video clip, a
video clip from a movie called “Facing the Giants.” It’s a movie about
a Christian high school where the coach has been praying that God would
do something on their school campus. He’s been persistent and there’s
been an older man that has been walking the hallways, praying over the
lockers and praying for the students. As he’s praying, he comes in, he
has a word of encouragement for the coach. He has just gone and told
the coach this word of encouragement and the coach kind of follows him
into the hallway. Here’s what happens.
Video dialogue:
Coach: Mr. Bridges.
You believe God told you to come and tell me that?
Mr. Bridges: I do.
Coach: I admit to you
I have been struggling but I’ve also been praying. I just don’t see Him
at work here.
Mr. Bridges: Grant, I
heard a story about two farmers who desperately needed rain and both of
them prayed for rain but only one of them went out and prepared his
fields to receive it. Which one do you think trusted God to send the
rain?
Coach: Well, the one
who prepared his fields for Him.
Mr. Bridges: Which one
are you? God will send the rain when He’s ready. You need to prepare
your field to receive it.
The kind of prayers I
think that Jesus is inviting us to pray are those persistent prayers;
and those persistent prayers, when we pray those kind of prayers, have
the ability to prepare the ground for what God wants to do. They are
persistent prayers and they have impact. They have the ability to make
a difference. Beyond that, I think they have the power to change lives
and communities; and as you saw in that clip, they prepare the ground
for the rain of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to do great
things in our midst. Jesus is calling us to be about this business of
letting the Holy Spirit come so He can bring what God desires for us.
That’s what I think this text is about. Jesus is calling us to have
persistent prayers, to pray persistently with confidence. Nice thought,
huh? Good stuff. Alright, let’s continue then.
You think back in this
text, who are the people Jesus is saying that should be praying like
this? Who are those people? Who are the “you”s in this text?
Response: Us.
Buck: Us. O.K. Who
is us? Who is you?
Response: His
children.
Buck: His children.
O.K. His children. O.K. Yeah. There is something about this
connection with God’s children. He’s saying, “all you who have had your
heart changed by God, who are now children of God” because that’s where
he talks about this idea how the Father gives good things to His
children. To His children. The other side of that, of course then, if
you’re not His child, you can ask all you want and you aren’t going to
get it. So Jesus is saying “Pray, pray persistent prayers all you
children of God, for our heavenly Father wants to give us good things.”
That’s what the text says, doesn’t it? That statement, the top part of
it, “our Father gives good gifts to His children,” has lots of
implications. I’ve listed a couple of them down below.
Let me start by this
idea of being a child of the Father. It is that notion that we are
indeed children of the Father. To be a child of the Father is one who’s
had his heart or her heart renewed and that renewal begins with
repentance. You have to turn away. That’s what repentance is, turning
away from the things that would take you away from God and turning to
things that would draw you closer to God. That’s a prerequisite for
being a child of God. If you haven’t done that, then check to see if
you’re a child of God.
The second prerequisite
for being a child is obedience. Now this idea of obedience is not
implicit in our text, is it? Jesus doesn’t say “You have to be
obedient.” But if you look at the whole context of the Sermon on the
Mount, which our scripture is from, the notion of being obedient is
implied throughout it. It also becomes very clear if you continue to
look at scripture. 1 John 3. John says “you’ll receive when you keep
my commandments and do what pleases me.” So there is this notion of
getting good things from the Father starts when we are a child of God;
and when we are a child of God it means that we will be repentant and we
are going to be obedient to what God asks us to do. That’s the one
side; you are a child of God if you’ve done those things.
The other thing that is
implicit in this statement that “our Father gives good things to His
children” is that He’s our Father. He’s our Father. You know, Jesus
could have picked any word he wanted to describe God. Jesus is pretty
particular in the kind of language he uses, and in this text he chose
“Father.” He’s our Father. He’s our Father and Jesus chose that word
because he’s attempting to paint a picture for us to understand the
notion of being children of our heavenly Father. He wants to convey
this kind of intimacy of our relationship. What else did Jesus call the
Father? Anyone know? It’s the word for like “daddy”.
Response: Abba.
Buck: Abba, yeah. He
says “Abba, Father,” doesn’t he? That is what he’s talking about,
again, here. He wants to convey this notion that God’s heart is wide
open to His children; it’s wide open. You think of the story of the
Prodigal Son, how the Father is waiting, looking down the road waiting
for the younger son to return. Why is he waiting? Because his heart is
open, he wants his son to come back. That’s the kind of relationship
God wants to have with His children, an open, welcoming relationship.
It also implies that He is approachable. He’s not distant and He
desires good for us. God wants to build us up. He wants to build us
into the image of the Son, for our God loves us unendingly. He forgives
us over and over and over again. He is merciful. Jesus is painting
here the picture of a family, the intimate family. Probably even the
relationship that Jesus is experiencing and enjoying with the Father, he
wants us to enjoy that kind of relationship as well. So Jesus is saying
“Pray persistently you children of the Father, knowing that your Father
welcomes you in as family members. Come, you children of the Father.”
That’s why I use the acronym for our sermon, PUSH. Does anyone know
what that means?
Response: Pray Until
Something Happens.
Buck: Yes! Pray Until
Something Happens. That is what Jesus is saying. “All you children of
the Father pray, pray, until something happens.”
Because we have that
kind of relationship with the Father, we can in confidence enter into
His presence and ask away. The kind of persistent prayers we’re talking
about with the confidence that comes from knowing that we are children
of the Father, when we can pray those kind of prayers, I think what
happens as a result is what I call “prevailing prayers.” Prevailing
prayers have all that same kind of power, to change lives, to change
communities, to make a difference for God.
Well if that’s what
Jesus is saying in our text today, how many of you have experienced that
kind of prevailing prayer? Raise your hand.
Good. I love that.
That’s excellent. I should let you guys come up and finish this. I
love it, because I think the experience for many of us is not that at
all. We know that God wants us to come into His presence and ask away;
but it doesn’t happen. We don’t get there, do we? We don’t get there.
Why is that? What do you think keeps us from praying prevailing
prayers?
Response: We don’t
believe.
Buck: We don’t
believe. O.K. Yeah, that’s right.
Response: Not
persistent. Too Busy.
Response: Unforgiven
sin.
Buck: Unforgiven sin.
That goes back to that repentance maybe, that child of God. Maybe we
are a little askew in our relationship with God. O.K. Good. Yeah.
What else keeps us from praying prevailing prayers?
Response: Guilt.
Buck: Guilt. O.K.
You want to say any more about that or is that….(laughter) I’m sorry.
What other barriers?
Response: We want a
quicker answer.
Buck: We want a
quicker answer. O.K. Yeah.
Response: We want to
rely on ourselves.
Buck: We want to rely
on ourselves. Yes.
Response: Are we
asking for too much?
Buck: Are we asking
for too much? O.K. We think that. We think that we can’t be asking
for too much. Yeah. I think that’s right on.
Response: We don’t
want to wait.
Buck: So it’s that
waiting thing that sort of throws us off the course.
Let me give you a
couple that I came up with. I think you guys have hit on a couple of
them and you also added some more. The best thing about this
interactive sermon we get a lot of good answers. Here’s some I came up
with.
One is I think we are
afraid to change. I think we all like the comfortable, predictable kind
of lives. The idea of praying these kind of prayers that Jesus is
telling us to pray, these kind of prevailing prayers, in doing that it
means we might encounter God. And if we encounter God we know we are
going to be changed people. All we need to do is think about Moses,
think about the disciples. They were definitely changed as a result of
their interaction. So to kind of go there, man, I don’t know if I want
to do that because I don’t know if I want to change. I mean, Hebrews
says “it’s a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God.” So
as a result many of us don’t want to risk; we’d rather have our prayers
be safe, be prayers that don’t depend on God, that don’t require
dependence. I think that’s part of that idea of being afraid.
I think another side of
that is we desire safety over obedience. Safety requires that we don’t
have any change. It is safe when things don’t change, right? To be
obedient, we know that, “hey, things might have to change. I might be
pushed out of my comfort zone. I might be asked to do things that I
don’t want to necessarily do, or I’m not sure I can do.” So the result
is we back away and we pray safe prayers. We pray prayers that are not
reliant on God.
I think another thing
that happens here is, I think we’ve hit on it, the notion of
impatience. Does anyone know the standard theme for Burger King? “Have
it your way,” right? Yeah. I think that is our cultural theme as
well. We have to have it our way. To have it our way means that if it
goes beyond longer than we expect, or it doesn’t happen the way we want
it; then forget it. I don’t want to be apart of it. Think about the
last time a child was delayed getting out of school when you went to
pick him up? What was your reaction? Or maybe you missed a connecting
flight because you got out of the originating airport a little late? I
think with this notion of impatience there is wrapped up in that this
deluded notion that of our own self importance. That I am really
important and the world revolves around me. If it doesn’t happen the
way I want it and when I want then I tend to devalue whatever it is. So
when we come to God and we pray prayers that maybe take a little while
to be answered, we go, pffff, I don’t have time for this. So we devalue
the request and we probably also devalue God, I think, in that process
as well.
I think the other thing
that happens is we have a poor view of God. We kind of talked a little
bit about that already. But I think a lot of us have this idea that God
is like this Zeus character standing on the clouds with a handful of
lightning bolts and as soon as we take one step out of the way, He is
firing lightning bolts at us. Or maybe we have this idea; maybe this is
another way to think about the same thing, He’s our assistant principal
in middle school. You know, if you’re sent to the assistant principal
you know you’re in trouble. You get sent to the principal, it’s like,
O.K., we’ll see.
So I think the result
is that we come to God and we think we have to somehow pry God’s hand
open to get some little token out of Him. I think for a lot of us
prayer and God really, honestly is a nice add-on to our lives. You know
if we get an answered prayer here or there, it’s just a nice little
benie to a pretty already comfortable life. I think the result is it
distances us from God and we tend to ask too little. And maybe that’s
what we’ve talked about. I think that’s exactly what happens.
O.K. if that’s the
case, then how do we get over these barriers? How do we knock them
down?
Response: Pray.
Buck: Pray. O.K.
Response: Repentance.
Buck: Repentance.
Yeah. We talked a little bit about that.
Response: Raise our
deserve level.
Buck: Yeah. Yeah.
Raise our deserve level. I like that. Yeah.
Let me give you a
couple here. I think there is this notion that we need to become more
dependent on God. It gets at this notion you were talking about, this
idea that God really does have our best interest at heart. God really
does want to talk to you and me. He values us that much. So it’s like
saying “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.” You’ve
heard that saying. It’s taking that attitude into our prayer life
because it does get our eyes off ourselves. It says God really wants to
build me up into the image of His Son. That’s His desire. That’s why
He wants to give us good things. So it starts with this dependence on
God; and, maybe it requires confession, too, and repentance. But also
as a part of that, there is this listening component; that we need to
listen because God, in fact, does want to say something to you. He has
your good at heart. He wants to build you up not tear you down. But in
building you up, let’s be honest, sometimes we need a little tearing
down first, don’t we? But He wants to build us up; so we need to
listen. As we listen, we start beginning to ask for what is on our
hearts. If there is an honesty that comes in the listening and the
asking, so when you ask for something, you go, “Lord, what I am asking
for really scares the bejebbers out of me. I might have to do some
things I’m not comfortable doing if you answer this. And I just have to
tell you that God.” It is that kind of honesty that God desires from
His people. It is asking and saying, “If it is of me great Lord, remove
it, don’t answer it. Don’t make it about me. It’s about you, Lord.
Show me the difference.” Then a part of that, I think, is also asking
God to show He answers the prayers. Because as God answers prayer, all
of a sudden a little light bulb goes on in our head, we go, “He just
answered it.” And asking Him to show you how He’s answering it, because
as we begin to see answers, there is a growing dependency that comes out
of that. Growing dependency breeds better listening, bolder asking, and
bigger answered prayer. So that’s the idea of repeat; it’s a cyclical
thing.
So what I want to do is
I want to close with looking at another clip from the same movie. When
we become people of prevailing prayer, the sky’s the limit. God can do
amazing things. Christ is calling us to pray prevailing prayers. So I
invite you to enter in to this knowing that God can do miraculous
things.
Video dialogue:
Teacher: Grant, are
you not aware of what’s going on outside in the field?
Coach: What?
Teacher: You might want
to come check this out.
Teacher: Mitch decided
to bring his bible class outside today. After he started teaching, Matt
Prater stood up and accepted Christ as his Lord. It was awesome. He
started confessing stuff from his life. He started asking his friends
for forgiveness. Next thing we know, Bob Duke stands up and does the
same thing. Kids start breaking up into groups. They begin to pray for
each other. They begin to ask for forgiveness for sins that they
committed. This has been going on for three hours, how did you not know
what was going on?
(Song)
[You never give up on
me. No you never give up on me. Though I’m weak, you are strong. You
told me I still belong. No you never, never give up on me.]
Mr. Bridges: (praying
softly) In the most special way Lord, I ask that you lift them up to
you.
[You never give up on
me.]
Mr. Bridges: (praying
softly) I ask you to bring up a generation that has a heart for you
Lord, too.
[Though I’m weak, you
are strong. You told me I still belong. No, you never….]
Student: Coach.
Coach: I’m proud of
you, man.
Student: I need to
call my dad. I’d like to go see him.
Coach: I’ll take you
right now.
Power of prevailing
prayer has the ability to change the world. That’s what Christ is
calling us to, to be people of prevailing prayer. Why, because, we are
children of the Father. Because we are children of the Father, ask
away. Ask big, bold prayers, knowing that’s what God wants to give us.
Let’s Pray.
Mighty and holy God, we
want to be people of prevailing prayers who pray prevailing prayers.
Lord, help us to break down the barriers that hold us back from that.
Help us to be changed, to be changed agents for your kingdom in this
world. For Lord, you never give up on us. That is demonstrated because
of your commitment to the cross. You never give up on us, that we might
be children of yours. Thank you Lord God. In your name. Amen.
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