I’m going to start this morning in what might seem to be a slightly odd place, which is by addressing something that I now think that I missed in what I said last Sunday morning. You see, last week we were thinking about what it means to be expectant to meet with God, as part of our sermon series on Loving God. I talked mostly about how our expectancy to meet with God is an expression of our love for God. And it’s not that I think that this is wrong, but through the week I have come to think that that it is incomplete. It is incomplete because our expectancy to meet with God is not only an expression of our love of God it is also one of the ways that we deepen and strengthen our love for God. Do you see the difference?
It seems to me that there are two fundamental questions that arise when we talk about valuing loving God. The first of these is, “How do I show my love for God?” The second is, “How do I grow my love for God?” This difference struck me this week as I was thinking about our theme for this morning, prayerfulness, but as I looked back at what I’d said last week, I realised that I had been focussing more on the “show” and less on the “grow”. As I reflected on this I realised that all the things we’ve been thinking about in this series – having hearts for Jesus, being rooted in the Bible, being expectant to meet with God, doing our best for God, and prayerfulness all have this double edge to them. They are all ways in which we can both show our love and grow our love for God.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise, in fact, you might all be sat there thinking that this is all blindingly obvious, but just in case there are any other slow coaches like me out there, I’d like to dwell on it just a little longer. When we think about our human relationships, the things we do to show our love – spending time with people, listening to them, giving gifts, touch, doing things for people, all these ways of showing love also grow our love – they are two sides of the same coin.
Why am I banging on about this? Well, it strikes me that the command to love is a really odd one. If we stop and think about it for a moment, it is one that goes against a whole load of things that our human nature and the culture of romantic love have discipled us to believe is true. Just stop and think about it for a moment. In the depths of who you are, how do you react to the idea that you you can be commanded to love someone? This is what God does. God commands us to love God, to love each other, and to love our neighbours. As we a church we’ve decided that these commands are things that we value and want to obey. But when we don’t feel love, when God doesn’t seem to be there, when people are mean to us, when we just can’t get on with each other, these are really difficult commands to obey. At these times we might not feel like showing love, and we really need a way to grow our love.
At other times, we do feel this love, we’re excited by our passion for God, our fellowship with our Christians, and our compassion for our neighbours. We need an outlet for this love, a way to express it, to demonstrate it, to live it out. We really feel likes showing love, and as we do we find, to our amazement that our love grows even further.
So, with that slightly lengthy introduction, what about the thing I’m meant to be focussing on this week, prayerfulness.
I wonder what comes to mind when you hear the word prayerful? Maybe a monk of some kind kneeling still and quietly for a long time. Eyes shut, hands together, head bowed. There is some merit to this simple formula – closing our eyes can help us to shut out distractions, putting our hands together can help us to still our bodies and our minds, bowing our heads is a physical expression of the respect and reverence we have for God. Having said that, I’m not sure that these things are really at the heart of being prayerful. It can be equally valid to keep our eyes open, especially when we’re praying for someone, so that we can see what is happening. We often read in the Bible of people raising their hands in prayer, and even waving. We read of Jesus lifting his eyes to heaven as he prayed – that’s difficult to do with a bowed head. So, if what we’re doing with our bodies doesn’t define prayerfulness, what does?
It might sound a little cheesy, but I’d like to suggest that true prayerfulness is prayer full ness. It is about having hearts, minds, lives full of prayer. How often do we read in the gospels of Jesus disappearing off for the night to pray. How often does Paul in his letters write of praying continuously, of praying always. In Acts we read about how the early Christians devoted themselves to prayer. All the way through the Bible we meet prayerful people whose lives were full of prayer. We’ve read about a few of them this morning.
When the youngsters were still in with us we heard a shortened version of the whole story of Daniel and the Lions, and Gabriel read some of the detail from the middle of the story for us. By the way, how old do you think Daniel was when this happened? Despite all the depictions in art through the ages and the illustrations in many children’s Bibles, if you read the book of Daniel and add up the years that passed between the various events, it’s likely he was about eighty when these events took place. Apart from this being a little hobby horse of mine, it seems to me that it is important for us to realise as we think about what it means to have a prayer full life. We know that Daniel’s day to day live was full of prayer – he had this rhythm, that was so regular that it was even known to his enemies, that interrupted and was woven through his day. He made space and time to pray in a focussed way three times a day. So each day was prayer full. But more than that, this pattern was one that he had kept for decades, ever since he had been shipped to Babylon from Jerusalem as a young man. Each prayer full day made for a prayer full life.
And what happened when a crisis came, when he heard that his enemies were after him, had set a trap for him? The pattern of prayer that he had built carried him and gave him strength in the crisis. He didn’t just suddenly turn to prayer when things went pear shaped – he brought the crisis to God in prayer, he asked for help, and he trusted God to deliver him, and God did.
From Luke’s account of the good news of Jesus’ life, we read a couple of parables that Jesus told, one about persistence in prayer, and one about humility in prayer.
Now we have to be a little bit careful here, especially with the first parable. Jesus is not saying that God is an unjust judge. That’s fairly obvious, I would hope. Nor, it seems to me, is Jesus saying that God needs to be persuaded to administer justice or nagged into doing what we are asking for. There is a tension here. In the first verse we’re told that “Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” In the last verse Jesus says, “I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”
To me this prompts the question, “If God always acts quickly, then why would we need to be shown that we should persist in prayer?” The only answer I have is that given by Peter in one of his letters to the early church. Peter would have been there when Jesus told this parable. He was taught to pray persistently by Jesus himself. He probably would have expected Jesus to have returned to bring justice to the whole world fairly shortly after he’d returned to heaven. Peter had wrestled with the tension in this parable for most of his adult life, and this is the conclusion that he reached.
“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
A prayer full life is one of persistence, trust, and faith, even when the answer seems long in coming.
The second parable that we read brings out the humility of prayer. It also presents a wider challenge. The religious man’s life was, in some ways, prayerful and even full of prayer. He talked to God a lot, but God didn’t listen to his prayers because they were self-centered, proud and arrogant. His prayers didn’t show love or grow love because they were full of self-love. In contrast, the tax collectors prayer was short, simple, and humble. “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” This heart felt plea was acceptable and welcomed by God.
So, as we seek to show our love for God, and grow in our love for God, let’s have prayer full lives. Let’s develop patterns and rhythms of prayer that carry us through the days and years, through the good times and the dark times. Let’s be persistent, faithful, and humble. Let’s not think we have to be experts to do this stuff, the tax collector only needed seven words to say what was in his heart. We don’t even need words – our groans, tears, and laughter are all heard by God when we share them with Him. And, of course, though I haven’t had much time to talk about this today, let’s remember that all communication is two way, and let’s listen to what God is saying to us, as much as we tell God about what’s on our hearts.
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