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May 25,
2003 LECTIONARY
READINGS Acts 10:44-48 “When
Prayer Comes Alive” On the evening of December 17, 1981, U.S. Army Brigadier General James L. Dozier, senior American official at a NATO headquarters in Verona, Italy, was abducted by Red Brigades terrorists. After he was freed from his captors, he affirmed his gratitude for the power of prayer on several occasions. “Believe me,” he said, “when you’re in a situation like that you can feel the power of prayer.” All of you have no doubt seen Enstrom’s famous painting entitled, “Grace” which shows an older man sitting at table, head bowed and hands folded. There is a loaf of bread before him. As you look at the picture you can sense that somehow this man is touched by a great power as he prays. In our many churches there has been a resurgence and a rediscovery of the power of prayer to actually affect our lives. One member of a church prayer group said to me…”In all the years I have been a part of the church, prayer has never been as real for me as it is now…thank God for people who teach us how to pray.” Nevertheless, there are scores of people for whom prayer has never really come alive. As one young man put it, “I believe in it and all that, but for some reason prayer has never really made any sense for me.” Indeed for all of us there have probably been times when prayer has dried up like a desert. There have been times of pain and trial when we wanted to reach out and touch the hand of God and could not feel His presence at all. I want to promise you today that no matter how it has been for you…prayer can come alive! If you are honestly desirous of conscious contact with God and are willing to make a commitment to open your life to Him…you can have the experience of prayer coming alive in your life. AND it will amaze you just how rich it can be! Now this can happen for you if you are willing to make a commitment, so please follow closely today! There are several key principles of prayer that have been a part of the way prayer has come alive for me…often in the context of tremendous pain. 1) I have found it to be almost universally true that prayer comes alive for people when Scripture comes alive! Let me explain it this way. You have undoubtedly had times in your life when you felt as though you just could not get a handle on your spiritual life. Especially in times of personal trial. Now…God has the same problem. I mean, it is so very clear in the Bible that God’s deepest desire is for an entrance, or if you will, a handle on your life. God’s question is almost like yours…”How do I get into this person’s life. In Jesus Christ God has reached out to you seeking to gain entry to your life and two central ways of God’s being able to do that is through Prayer and Scripture. I can recall when Scripture first came alive for me. It was exciting. Jesus moved from “out there” somewhere, to a living reality. I responded to Him with a prayer that went something like…”Jesus Christ…please be real and alive for me…enter my life and take the controls of my living.” Now when I was reading the bible, I was reading a story instead of a historical document…the story was about this Jesus who came for me. I discovered that prayer came alive when Scripture came alive and Scripture comes alive when you invite the One who is the center of its story to actually enter your life. 2) Prayers come alive when you develop the ability of mental imaging. Some time ago, I began to take the simple, but powerful stories of Jesus touching the lives of people and bringing hope, healing and health to them…and I would visualize the story in meditation, Then I would imagine myself to be in the story - first I am the one who is reaching out to touch the hem of His garment - then I am the one who feels fractured into a thousand pieces…Legion, The stories would live as I felt the events and reviewed them as though I were right there. Sometimes words just don’t seem to be adequate and then I found that mental imaging provided a richer dimension to my life of prayer. I wouldn’t have to use any words at all…just the images would bring conscious contact with Christ. Later I began to visualize others in his presence and my prayers on behalf of others included visualizing them in the presence of Christ where they would find hope and healing. I began to teach a kind of meditation based on the hymn, “I Come To The Garden Alone,” wherein people would create within their imagination a garden of prayer. They would come to this garden and meet Christ there and talk with him. I would urge you to spend some time in taking today’s Scripture passage…saturate yourself with it and visualize the whole drama. There is a drama in the Garden of Gethsemane that can cause you to tremble. Here in a time of heartbreaking and soul searching pain, Jesus wrestles and struggles in prayer. He is filled with anguish and dismay as He became fully conscious of the burden He is carrying as the bearer of mankind’s sin. As you visualize this struggle you will see the next key. 3) Prayer comes alive as we come to God with the most devastating experiences of our lives. In other words we come to Him when we perhaps least feel like it. We bring our heartbreak, grief, pain and yes - we ask that the burden be lifted from us - we come to the garden and there seek at least a lightening of the burden that we struggle with, Jesus asks that the cup - Isaiah’s “cup of fury of the Lord” - be removed from Him if there is any other possible way that the salvation of mankind can be wrought. The key, however, is that Jesus came to God when it hurt! There have been times in my life when there were so very few words…I simply came to God with such need that all I could do was to pour out my soul in grief…but then I am so very glad for the experience of the Master in the garden, because I knew that God could understand what I was feeling. As I was reflecting on the experience of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane one evening, it occurred to me that His heartbreak was about my heartbreak and about all that separates people from the hope and the love of God for us. His heart was broken for you...for me. THAT is what He had to bear. 4) Prayer comes alive as we share our deepest needs and burdens with brothers and sisters in the faith. Can you imagine how it must have been for Peter, James and John when Jesus took them with Him into the deepest recesses of His pain? “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death…stay here and watch with me.” Somehow, that strikes me to the core. If God’s own Son could acknowledge His own deep and troubled sorrow - His need for someone close to “watch” with Him - then how much more so do we need that kind of spiritual bonding with others? In those kinds of experiences, a bonding of the spirit takes place that happens in no other way. A fellowship of faith is built that is beyond anything the natural mind can conceive! 5) Finally, prayer comes alive when we are able to accept that which we can not understand and trust God for that which we can not know! The final key to the whole understanding of living prayer is this one word of Jesus: “NEVERTHELESS” “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me…NEVERTHELESS…not my will but Thine be done.” The heart of our relationship with God is born of our surrender to Him of every claim…we finally acknowledge that we are not in control…it is His wisdom that we will lean on and not our own…His strength…His grace and love. “Oh, my Lord I do not understand this pain…but I will trust You for the fact that You can care for me…” NOW Jesus could face Calvary. Calvary’s battle was won at Gethsemane. The burden He carried was settled there before He ever picked up the cross. He could face Calvary only in light of His total surrender to God in Gethsemane. Now we too can face life as we surrender the heart of who and what we are to the One who won the battle for us in Gethsemane! May prayer come alive for you! |