Sermon # 1003
Luke 12:32-40
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Ready and Active”
It is really hard to be ready for something you have never done or experienced. No matter how much pre-marriage counseling you do, nothing really prepares you for marriage. No matter how many books you read on the subject, nothing prepares you for having a baby. No matter the preparation, the death of a loved one is never easy. Life’s event, experienced for the first time, can only be truly known when experienced.
Jesus says to be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. How does one prepare for the coming of the Lord? How do we even imagine what that day will be like? Is it just a matter of making sure we are saved? Is it selling all our possessions and giving away the money? Is it prizing only that which we receive from heaven and nothing of this world? What does it take to be ready?
This passage reveals a few ways to be ready and prepare:
First preparation: do not be afraid (or worry).
Luke 12:4-7 do not be afraid, even the hairs on your head are numbered. God cares for us, so much so that the hairs on our head are numbered! And the good news is, it doesn’t matter how many hairs are left up there! God is working in the details of our lives.
Luke 12:8-12 do not worry about what you will say in defense of the gospel. I know many people do worry about what they might say if anyone asks them about their faith. What if I say something wrong? Do I need to prepare something? Jesus says do not worry about that, the Holy Spirit will teach you. Can we trust in that? I hope so. It certainly helps when we know the scriptures and give the Holy Spirit more to work with, but Jesus says do not worry about what you will say. I trust in that promise every Sunday!
Luke 12:13-21 do not worry about what you will eat or wear. Oh, how we worry about what we will eat or wear. Everything we see in advertising seeks to cause us to worry about what we will eat or wear. Teens have been led to believe they have to wear the name brand clothes. Adults are not much better at this. We feel the pressure to wear the right clothes or eat at the best places.
First, do not be afraid, do not worry.
Second preparation: Jesus begins today’s reading with the command: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”. Receive the gift of the kingdom. This passage is filled with reassurance of God’s great provision and providence. God “our Father”, God’s “good pleasure”, giver of the kingdom, treasures in heaven, the return of the Son of Man. The kingdom is not just a pie in the sky heavenly realm, but a Lordship of Christ reign right now, in our lives. Imagine our lives within the kingdom of God. Is it a “pie in the sky” perspective to live in a thought process of the kingdom of God? -That we really can live in peace – that we can love, show kindness, live without fear and anxiety? So many times I hear people say living in God’s kingdom just isn’t our reality.
Jesus says it is God’s pleasure to give us the kingdom. When we talk like this, like Jesus, we are challenged to live in the real world – what is the real world? If there were any Presbyterians in the crowd when Jesus talked about the kingdom, I think they would have said or thought: Come on, Jesus, we live in the “real world”. Jesus is probably shaking his head saying: my kingdom is the real world. It is a kingdom where people are able to receive what God has given, where people can sell what they have and give alms, they make bags that do not wear out because they store in it the things of heaven. It is a strange kingdom because we are so wrapped up in the kingdoms of this world and we cannot imagine living anywhere else.
Second prep: receive the kingdom.
Third preparation: Be ready to receive the blessings of God. Receiving what Jesus gives us in Luke 12 requires that we change the way we think, it takes a conversion of thought. Perhaps the only way that can happen is by setting as a priority the next preparation.
Fourth preparation: the things of God take priority over all else. This is what gets us to a position to receive God’s kingdom and God’s blessings as the true reality. Treasure the things of heaven. Jesus says in Luke 12:31 strive for his kingdom and everything we need in this world will be given to us. Paul writes in Colossians 3: seek the things that are above…set your minds on things that are above, not on the things that are on earth (3:1-2). We are called to set our minds on the kingdom. Ways to do this: scripture study, prayer, worship, fellowship, and the like. It takes persistence and discipline to practice spiritual disciplines, but they serve to put us in a place, a condition of spirit and mind to receive the kingdom, to believe what Jesus says.
Sometimes I think about a basketball shooter who shoots a few times early in the game and misses. A good shooter does not let a few misses stop him from shooting. The theory is, if you are cold in your shooting, shoot ‘til you get hot! That is kind of the way I see our trust in what Jesus says to us. If we are having doubts, if we are having trouble believing that the kingdom of God is real, then we need to shoot ‘til we get hot – pray ‘til we do believe, study until we can trust, worship until we are convinced that life can be lived in the kingdom of God.
Fifth preparation: trust that the future is in God’s hands. We can be certain that Jesus will return, but as to the time, we do not know. What we do know is that Jesus says be ready. All this preparation: eliminating fear and anxiety, receiving the kingdom and blessings, focus on the things of God, all of this helps us trust that the future is in God’s hands, for the Son of Man is coming.
Luke 12 is primarily about fear and anxiety in the community of faith. Jesus may have been addressing our general state of fear and anxiety. We are afraid, because we have been conditioned to be afraid. If we were not afraid we would not buy half the stuff we own. If we were not afraid we would not believe half the stuff we are told from the world. We are worried because we do not trust God. It is just that simple. I did not grow up in a traditionally religious home. My father never attended any worship and my mother probably got us to worship 2 times that I can remember. But there was a sense of confidence in our home. There was a sense of trust that things would work out for us. My father built that kind of attitude that when we were struggling or could not immediately work things out as we had hoped, there was always the assurance that things would work out in the end. Yes, it was a vague pronouncement, but it was at least a trust that somehow, everything would work itself out. But it was a blind baseless trust, empty of substance.
Believers, on the other hand, have the greatest promises ever given, and yet, we are afraid and anxious. Jesus knew this. The Bible knows this. The Bible is filled with God and angels and people saying, “do not be afraid” or some variation of that statement. Jesus says in the gospels, “do not worry about your life”, because he knew that we worry, we are fearful. But Luke 12 is really a positive hopeful encouraging passage. Most of the time the end times or the second coming is accompanied with judgment, but here we have a version with blessings, gifts, the kingdom given, and assurances that the good news of his return is indeed good news for our fears and anxieties.
Jesus calls is to live this way – kingdom living – kingdom thinking – kingdom expectations – and every thought Jesus gives us is counter to the way of the world. This is affirmed again in 1 John 2:15-17 where we read: Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever. We have a love relationship with the things in the world. We treasure the things of this world more than anything, but only because we have been unwilling to be ready and active in the things of God. All that loving the world has done is bring the very fear and anxiety that Jesus commands us to give up in order that God might give us the kingdom. []
1 John also reaffirms for us: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear (4:18). It is only by God’s love that we can rid ourselves of the fear and anxiety that so permeates our lives. It is only by observing the ways Jesus reveals to us that we can receive the thought process to live in God’s kingdom here and now. Becoming ready and active is not just about “getting saved” or “getting to heaven”, but being ready and active is about being a disciple of Jesus Christ, an apprentice of his life and teachings, his followers who are willing to risk the ways of the world for the ways of God. Readiness is actively following Jesus with all our being. That is our challenge – that is our joy – that is our true reality.
Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom…be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Sunday Sermon
Sermon # 1002
August 1, 2010
Deut. 30:11-14; Philippians 4:4-9
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Prayer Shaped Life”
As everyone was leaving the sanctuary last Sunday, I had a few comments on the sermon, not unusual. But there were a few who asked for a follow up on prayer, the “what and how” of prayer. I take it that we agreed that we struggle with prayer, but what I did not offer was a way through the struggle. So this morning we are going to look at scripture and some of the ways people have prayed in the church’s tradition.
There really is not much “instruction” for prayer in the Bible. Last Sunday we probably heard the most well know Bible teaching for prayer when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus gives them, and us, the words for a particular prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus does teach about prayer in the gospels. My paraphrase to another lesson on prayer is “don’t be a jerk!” From Luke 18… “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’”
One rule about prayer: be humble.
In Matthew 6 we have a little different lead into the Lord’s prayer: “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (5-8).
Other rules about prayer: in secret and be sincere.
Most of what we learn about prayer from the Bible is by the prayers of the Bible. One of my favorites is from Ephesians: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).
Imagine if we took that prayer and offered it with the names inserted of all the people on our prayer list. That that person could be strengthened in his or her inner being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts, that we might know the love of Christ. If we prayed this prayer for one another it would absolutely transform the church and the world.
The early church also sets an example for us on being the church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
The devotion of the church was to teaching, fellowship, communion together and praying. When I look at churches today, there seems to be a great divide between then and now.
For me, if we want to know the “what and how” of prayer, look to the Psalms. Prayers of confession like Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love…” Prayers of praise like Psalm 146: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!” Prayers of thanksgiving like Psalm 105: “O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples.” Prayers of lament like Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Prayers of confidence like Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Prayers of redemption like Psalm 32: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Prayers of deliverance like Psalm 59: “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me.”
I am not saying that there is a prayer in the Psalms for every circumstance we face, but there is language to express the human condition. There is the appropriate basics of address to God. And there are expressions of waiting, silent waiting like Psalm 62: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”
In the book Praying the Psalms, Dr. Walter Brueggemann takes our greatest collection of prayers and groups them in three basic categories: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Three conditions of the Psalms reflect the human condition. Some prayers, some Psalms are expressions of orientation, when everything in life is going rather well. All is in order and the only real concern is to keep up the obedience and love relationship with God. Psalm 1 is an example: You don’t hang out with the unrighteous, you meditate on the word of God, the good get good stuff and the wicked get bad stuff – just like it should be. But life does not always work out that great and sometimes the wicked get all the good stuff and the righteous get trampled on, like Psalm 88, one of the darkest Psalms of the collection. “my soul is full of trouble…like those who have no help…my eyes grow dim through sorrow.” And there is no resolution in Psalm 88; it ends with friends who shun me and companions who are in darkness. But other Psalms make it through the darkness and arrive at a greatly surprising reorientation, like Psalm 98: “Sing to the Lord a new song…” for God has done marvelous things.
These three categories reveal a larger theme for prayer…life, death, and resurrection. Life = orientation; death = disorientation; resurrection = reorientation. The movement of this prayer follows the movement of the great theme of the Bible. Life – death – resurrection. The Exodus theme: Free – Slaves – Delivered from bondage. It is the theme of the prodigal story…the brother was alive, then dead, and is alive again…kill the fatted calf for a party. Orientation – disorientation – reorientation. Basically this says that our prayers fit in a context. Sometimes we praise God when things are going well. Sometimes we lament over the trouble we see. Sometimes we petition, intercede, give thanks, confess, repent, bless, plead, and sometimes we do many of those things in one prayer. Sometimes we practice A-C-T-S, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. But sometimes we just praise, other times confess, and sometimes we might just sit and say to God: “I just want to be with you.”
How do we pray? There is no one way, no one answer to that question. We can enter into prayer while driving down the road or my laying prostrate in the sanctuary. One might not seem as sacred as the other but both seek to enter into God’s presence. We will be praying today, in the form of hymns, singing prayers; in the form of liturgy, reciting the Lord’s Prayer; in the form of listening, as we open worship to prepare our hearts; in reading scripture we are praying. We learn to pray mostly by praying. We start where we are, with whatever means and understanding we have because that is all we can do. There is no magic formula, no prayer more sacred than another. Some may be more moving to us, more eloquent, more passionate, but God hears them all.
We hear of people who say they heard God or God spoke to me, and we wonder: why don’t I hear God? How do we hear God in prayer? Let me suggest ways to listen for God.
Lectio Divina – spiritual reading, prayerful reading of the Bible…not looking for more information, not looking to teach or preach or gain data, but to enter the word for the purpose of engaging and being engaged by the word of God. The purpose is to read slowly, several times, for the sake of dwelling in the word and letting the word dwell in you. This is not the time to go into detail on how to do this, but there are lots of resources available. Come talk to me!
Journaling – recording our thoughts and hopes and dreams and what not in the form of prayer. Writing God a letter.
Silence – there is a way to quiet our self…let your thoughts run their course, do not try to stop them, but focus on the whisper, the still small voice.
Centering Prayer – focuses the mind on a single word or simple phrase. We sang the Hymn this morning: Holy, Holy, Holy. Centering prayer focuses on a single word or short phrase. Like silent prayer we let our thoughts run through our minds until we can come to a place in our prayer when we are focused on God alone. Sometimes we say quick prayers: “Lord, help me!” Centering prayer is a long exercise, 20 minutes to an hour or longer. It takes discipline and commitment.
Scripture Study – different from spiritual reading, study is to hone the mind, memorize, gather the data, get informed in text after text, one text at a time. If there is one discipline more elevated toward hearing God, this is it! The more texts we know the better we hear. The best spiritual hearing aide is knowing scripture.
Talk it over with someone who listens well, not just in listening to you, but who listens to God. A spiritual friend, someone you admire in the faith.
These are just a few of the ways we seek to hear God in prayer. Let me pause for a word of caution! We also need to take care in listening for God, because not everything is from God that we might think. We have seen much evil done by those who thought they had a word from God and led others to trust in that word only to lead them to destruction. Paul gives warning for instance in 2 Corinthians: “The devil can appear as an angel of light (11:14). We can have very strong feelings that something is from God, but as 1 John reminds us, we need to test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Does what we hear contradict scripture? Does what we hear resonant with other believers, with the community of faith, including the tradition, the best thinkers in the faith? It is true that hindsight is 20/20. Many times what we believe God has spoken to us will be revealed later.
Singer and song writer Keith Green begins one song with these words: “Make my life a prayer to you…” Perhaps we can take those words to grow in prayer. Lord, make my life a prayer to you. Is this how we might pray without ceasing? Prayer is a life long journey of address to God, listening to God, seeking God, and response to God seeking us. Prayer is being patient when we feel like all we are doing is talking to the walls. Prayer is devotion to God, obedience to God, words and actions and outbursts and fits of praise, expressions of thanksgiving, and sometimes prayer is being at a loss for words. Prayer is a God-consciousness wherein we think of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit at those moments when we are not thinking of something else. “Lord, make my life a prayer to you.”
My word to you today is to pray. Pray where you are in your understanding of prayer. My word to you today is to seek out teachings on prayer. Learn lectio divina, spiritual reading; learn the prayer of examen where we look back on our day and see where God was in it. Learn as much as you can about the practice of prayer. My word for you today is to pray the scriptures and learn the scriptures so that your prayer life might be greatly enriched. My final word to you today is: do not loose heart, the Holy Spirit is praying for you. Hear this word from the book of Romans:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27).
That’s us! The saints. The Spirit is praying on our behalf.
There is much to learn about prayer and prayer will indeed shape our lives if we take the time to pray and devote our lives to prayer. Let us thank God in prayer for the gift of prayer. Amen.
August 1, 2010
Deut. 30:11-14; Philippians 4:4-9
Dr. Ed Pettus
“The Prayer Shaped Life”
As everyone was leaving the sanctuary last Sunday, I had a few comments on the sermon, not unusual. But there were a few who asked for a follow up on prayer, the “what and how” of prayer. I take it that we agreed that we struggle with prayer, but what I did not offer was a way through the struggle. So this morning we are going to look at scripture and some of the ways people have prayed in the church’s tradition.
There really is not much “instruction” for prayer in the Bible. Last Sunday we probably heard the most well know Bible teaching for prayer when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus gives them, and us, the words for a particular prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus does teach about prayer in the gospels. My paraphrase to another lesson on prayer is “don’t be a jerk!” From Luke 18… “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’”
One rule about prayer: be humble.
In Matthew 6 we have a little different lead into the Lord’s prayer: “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (5-8).
Other rules about prayer: in secret and be sincere.
Most of what we learn about prayer from the Bible is by the prayers of the Bible. One of my favorites is from Ephesians: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).
Imagine if we took that prayer and offered it with the names inserted of all the people on our prayer list. That that person could be strengthened in his or her inner being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts, that we might know the love of Christ. If we prayed this prayer for one another it would absolutely transform the church and the world.
The early church also sets an example for us on being the church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
The devotion of the church was to teaching, fellowship, communion together and praying. When I look at churches today, there seems to be a great divide between then and now.
For me, if we want to know the “what and how” of prayer, look to the Psalms. Prayers of confession like Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love…” Prayers of praise like Psalm 146: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!” Prayers of thanksgiving like Psalm 105: “O give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples.” Prayers of lament like Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Prayers of confidence like Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.” Prayers of redemption like Psalm 32: “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” Prayers of deliverance like Psalm 59: “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me.”
I am not saying that there is a prayer in the Psalms for every circumstance we face, but there is language to express the human condition. There is the appropriate basics of address to God. And there are expressions of waiting, silent waiting like Psalm 62: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”
In the book Praying the Psalms, Dr. Walter Brueggemann takes our greatest collection of prayers and groups them in three basic categories: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Three conditions of the Psalms reflect the human condition. Some prayers, some Psalms are expressions of orientation, when everything in life is going rather well. All is in order and the only real concern is to keep up the obedience and love relationship with God. Psalm 1 is an example: You don’t hang out with the unrighteous, you meditate on the word of God, the good get good stuff and the wicked get bad stuff – just like it should be. But life does not always work out that great and sometimes the wicked get all the good stuff and the righteous get trampled on, like Psalm 88, one of the darkest Psalms of the collection. “my soul is full of trouble…like those who have no help…my eyes grow dim through sorrow.” And there is no resolution in Psalm 88; it ends with friends who shun me and companions who are in darkness. But other Psalms make it through the darkness and arrive at a greatly surprising reorientation, like Psalm 98: “Sing to the Lord a new song…” for God has done marvelous things.
These three categories reveal a larger theme for prayer…life, death, and resurrection. Life = orientation; death = disorientation; resurrection = reorientation. The movement of this prayer follows the movement of the great theme of the Bible. Life – death – resurrection. The Exodus theme: Free – Slaves – Delivered from bondage. It is the theme of the prodigal story…the brother was alive, then dead, and is alive again…kill the fatted calf for a party. Orientation – disorientation – reorientation. Basically this says that our prayers fit in a context. Sometimes we praise God when things are going well. Sometimes we lament over the trouble we see. Sometimes we petition, intercede, give thanks, confess, repent, bless, plead, and sometimes we do many of those things in one prayer. Sometimes we practice A-C-T-S, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. But sometimes we just praise, other times confess, and sometimes we might just sit and say to God: “I just want to be with you.”
How do we pray? There is no one way, no one answer to that question. We can enter into prayer while driving down the road or my laying prostrate in the sanctuary. One might not seem as sacred as the other but both seek to enter into God’s presence. We will be praying today, in the form of hymns, singing prayers; in the form of liturgy, reciting the Lord’s Prayer; in the form of listening, as we open worship to prepare our hearts; in reading scripture we are praying. We learn to pray mostly by praying. We start where we are, with whatever means and understanding we have because that is all we can do. There is no magic formula, no prayer more sacred than another. Some may be more moving to us, more eloquent, more passionate, but God hears them all.
We hear of people who say they heard God or God spoke to me, and we wonder: why don’t I hear God? How do we hear God in prayer? Let me suggest ways to listen for God.
Lectio Divina – spiritual reading, prayerful reading of the Bible…not looking for more information, not looking to teach or preach or gain data, but to enter the word for the purpose of engaging and being engaged by the word of God. The purpose is to read slowly, several times, for the sake of dwelling in the word and letting the word dwell in you. This is not the time to go into detail on how to do this, but there are lots of resources available. Come talk to me!
Journaling – recording our thoughts and hopes and dreams and what not in the form of prayer. Writing God a letter.
Silence – there is a way to quiet our self…let your thoughts run their course, do not try to stop them, but focus on the whisper, the still small voice.
Centering Prayer – focuses the mind on a single word or simple phrase. We sang the Hymn this morning: Holy, Holy, Holy. Centering prayer focuses on a single word or short phrase. Like silent prayer we let our thoughts run through our minds until we can come to a place in our prayer when we are focused on God alone. Sometimes we say quick prayers: “Lord, help me!” Centering prayer is a long exercise, 20 minutes to an hour or longer. It takes discipline and commitment.
Scripture Study – different from spiritual reading, study is to hone the mind, memorize, gather the data, get informed in text after text, one text at a time. If there is one discipline more elevated toward hearing God, this is it! The more texts we know the better we hear. The best spiritual hearing aide is knowing scripture.
Talk it over with someone who listens well, not just in listening to you, but who listens to God. A spiritual friend, someone you admire in the faith.
These are just a few of the ways we seek to hear God in prayer. Let me pause for a word of caution! We also need to take care in listening for God, because not everything is from God that we might think. We have seen much evil done by those who thought they had a word from God and led others to trust in that word only to lead them to destruction. Paul gives warning for instance in 2 Corinthians: “The devil can appear as an angel of light (11:14). We can have very strong feelings that something is from God, but as 1 John reminds us, we need to test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Does what we hear contradict scripture? Does what we hear resonant with other believers, with the community of faith, including the tradition, the best thinkers in the faith? It is true that hindsight is 20/20. Many times what we believe God has spoken to us will be revealed later.
Singer and song writer Keith Green begins one song with these words: “Make my life a prayer to you…” Perhaps we can take those words to grow in prayer. Lord, make my life a prayer to you. Is this how we might pray without ceasing? Prayer is a life long journey of address to God, listening to God, seeking God, and response to God seeking us. Prayer is being patient when we feel like all we are doing is talking to the walls. Prayer is devotion to God, obedience to God, words and actions and outbursts and fits of praise, expressions of thanksgiving, and sometimes prayer is being at a loss for words. Prayer is a God-consciousness wherein we think of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit at those moments when we are not thinking of something else. “Lord, make my life a prayer to you.”
My word to you today is to pray. Pray where you are in your understanding of prayer. My word to you today is to seek out teachings on prayer. Learn lectio divina, spiritual reading; learn the prayer of examen where we look back on our day and see where God was in it. Learn as much as you can about the practice of prayer. My word for you today is to pray the scriptures and learn the scriptures so that your prayer life might be greatly enriched. My final word to you today is: do not loose heart, the Holy Spirit is praying for you. Hear this word from the book of Romans:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27).
That’s us! The saints. The Spirit is praying on our behalf.
There is much to learn about prayer and prayer will indeed shape our lives if we take the time to pray and devote our lives to prayer. Let us thank God in prayer for the gift of prayer. Amen.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday Sermon
Our church website is non-existent at the moment so I am going to post sermons here until we get a new website for church!
Here is today's offering...
Sermon # 1001
Luke 11:1-13
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Prayer”
One of my rules for preaching is to stick close to the text. That is, I seek each week to be true to a particular passage in scripture, to preach one text at a time and not wonder off into stories that have nothing to do with Luke 11 or Psalm 85 or whatever the text is for the day.
I plan to bend that rule a little bit today, still hanging in there with Luke 11, but focusing more on a topic than the particular text for the day. Prayer. Prayer is the topic of the day. Jesus prayed! Moses prayed! The Psalmist prayed! The Bible is filled with people of prayer. Prayer is a basic fundamental practice of the Christian faithful. But we also struggle with our basic fundamental practices. Prayer is sometimes simple, sometimes complicated, sometime embraced and sometimes ignored. We question how to pray, what to pray, when and where. We feel bad about not praying and sometimes later we might even feel bad about feeling good about prayer.
Today I want to focus on prayer struggles. I assume the disciples struggled with prayer or they would not have requested Jesus to teach them. When I think about struggling to pray, I think of the metaphor of Jacob wrestling with the man or the angel – or was it God? Prayer is something like wrestling (Genesis 32). When I played high school football one of our offseason drills was to wrestle one another to get into shape and build toughness. I hated it! Painful, exhausting exercise, and too often I would get paired up with a football player who was also on the wrestling team. He would tie me up in a knot. Prayer can be like that sometimes. We avoid it for some reason, maybe it seems to hard, maybe we feel inadequate or perhaps the feeling is unworthiness. People ask me from time to time to help them with a prayer they will have to offer at a meeting or a social gathering where a meal will be served. We don’t know what to pray and we feel like it can be a chore. Prayer seems too hard so we avoid it.
Other times prayer is frustrating. We have no answers; we have no words. We don’t know how to listen for God. We seldom take the time to listen, but we don’t take the time because we don’t think we will hear anything. I know this because I experience it in my own life of prayer. I have had people ask me about prayer or share something about their prayer life and they will often ask: “Am I the only one who feels this way?” Another rule I trust is that if something is true for one of us, it is probably true for most of us. Prayer can isolate us because we don’t really talk about prayer, not really. We talk about prayer requests, but not the deepest desires of our prayers, if we even know what those are. We don’t talk about prayer because we think we should all know all about prayer. We assume we each know something about prayer and so we are afraid to ask or to open ourselves up to one another, let alone opening ourselves up to God.
I imagine it took a lot of courage for the disciples to say to Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” The request reveals their ignorance about prayer. They have seen Jesus praying and it is different from what they know or think they know.
I have been reading a book about prayer by Abraham Heschel, Jewish scholar, who writes that “prayer is our attachment to the utmost. Without God in sight, we are like the scattered rungs of a broken ladder” (Man’s Quest for God, p. 7). The Psalms, our great prayers to God, speak of the connection we have with God. Psalm 16:8 “I keep the Lord always before me.” Psalm 42:1 “As a deer longs for flowing streams so my soul longs for you, O God.” Psalm 62:1 “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” The prayers of the Psalms express our deepest desire for being attached to the utmost, to God, to our Lord and Creator.
Today’s gospel lesson begins with the scene of Jesus at prayer. The disciples probably observed Jesus at prayer many times and this time they ask him to teach them to pray. When I imagine this scene, one question that comes to mind is what the disciples may have seen when Jesus prayed? What was it about his prayer that led them to request teaching? Was it something they saw? Was it something they heard? Was it a sense of attachment or longing, patience or depth? Was it just that they struggled with prayer?
We often understand prayer as the words we say, the requests we make, a one-way conversation wherein we address God. But if Heschel is correct, and I believe he is, then prayer is so much more than the words we might say. Prayer is our attachment to God. But this troubles us in some way. Heschel also says: “We dwell on the edge of mystery and ignore it, wasting our souls, risking our stake in God” (p.4). Why do we do this? Why do we ignore the mystery that is God, wasting our souls? Is it too difficult to comprehend? Are we fearful of what we might find? Is it that we are so seduced by the ways of the world that we dare not enter into the mystery of God’s grace and mercy and presence? Yes, it is all that! Prayer is counter to the world, for it is unmeasurable, unseen, without substantive proof. The world likes what is seen, provable, and measurable. It is a struggle for us to practice something counter to the very world in which we live.
The request of the disciples indicates that they see something in Jesus that they did not have in their prayer life. Something was missing. We have all felt inadequate in prayer. I sense that all the time especially in a public setting when it is time to ask a blessing or offer some other kind of prayer in public…we feel like we need to ask the “professional” to pray. Where is the minister? But it is not just a public unwillingness or something lacking in our prayer, for it runs much deeper in our soul. We know that the scripture rings true when it says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). I think we pull that text out of context. The context of that verse is punishment for sin – that is when fear comes into play. Prayer brings us into the hands of the living God, but as an act of prayer it is not the same as that text in Hebrews 10. The context of prayer brings us closer to the living God and his great love for us. There is no need for fear in that context. And yet, deep down we fear getting that close to God. Prayer opens us to God – to risk ourselves before God. We fear opening ourselves up to God and so we think we can hide in plain sight.
We know that kind of fear. It is the fear we had the first time we dared to say to girlfriend or boyfriend: “I love you.” The fear of rejection, the fear of being vulnerable – the fear of opening ourselves up to another and in the case of prayer…opening ourselves up to God himself.
The end of our prayer journey does not come to fear, but to thanksgiving. Gratitude is the result of a life of prayer. That’s how the Psalms end. If we were to consider the Psalms as a pattern for a prayer filled life, the Psalms begin with the desire for obedience and end with Psalms of gratitude and praise.
Jesus was praying in a certain place. It may be comforting to us to know that Jesus was praying. We do not have details to his prayer, but we can be certain that Jesus was as close as anyone could possibly get to God. All of this got me to thinking about Jesus teaching the disciples to pray. His first lesson was simply in his praying. He was praying. He set the example and they knew that when they could not find Jesus it usually meant he was off somewhere in prayer. One thing we hear from Jesus us this familiar triad of ask, seek, and knock. We probably reduce prayer to asking. Seeking is more time consuming for our busy schedules. Knocking is more active than we want to get.
We have the asking part down pat! Perhaps we would ask Jesus more about seeking and knocking. Maybe that is something akin to what Bill Long says: “Prayer is, finally, a process of working the earth of the heart, as the ancient monastic writers might say. In her book The Closter Walk, Protestant author Kathleen Norris writes about the ways that the Catholic monastic tradition provides a rhythm and depth for spirituality that many Protestants have never explored. When she says that the life of prayer works "the earth of the heart," she means that prayer is like the act of cultivation. In order to work the soil, one must break up the hardened dirt clods, water the ground, free it from weeds and then plant a crop. Prayer is the way to "loosen up" the heart. During the natural course of our lives the "earth of our hearts" becomes parched, weed-infested and hard as flint. Unless we take care to break it up to run our fingers again through the rich soil that we know is there, our lives become as destitute and as desiccated as a desert.
Prayer is the means Jesus used to open himself to God, to anchor himself to his Father and to work the earth of his heart. Jesus prayed often and taught his disciples to pray. Prayer was as necessary to him as the air he breathed. I believe it was prayer that gave Jesus his powerful sense of awareness and insight into people and the world. It connected him to God, the source of life, and he began to see things so much from the divine perspective that he had no doubt that his work was God's work” (http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryII/Lk11113.html).
This cultivation is seeking and knocking – the action of prayer. Prayer is not just about talking to God. Prayer is a way of living. Praying is asking AND seeking AND knocking. Prayer is asking OR seeking OR knocking. Prayer is in the living of our lives, in the action of our faithfulness. Prayer is the word and the deed that moves us to find and open and receive. Prayer involves our voices and our feet, our head and heart.
Maybe this is one lesson from Luke 11 – prayer is more than talk, but prayer is also in the way we walk, or wrestle, or struggle, or cry, or laugh, or listen, or hope, or dream.
Prayer cannot be reduced to a list of requests of God as if God were simply a dispenser of goods and services. Prayer is relational, not an office memo we send to God. Prayer is revelatory, that is it reveals us to God and God to us. Prayer is revolutionary because it goes against what the world values.
Jesus was praying and Jesus is still teaching. If you are struggling with your life of prayer, believe it or not, this is a good thing – because the struggle means we are in a life of prayer – actively involved in the journey. Let us let Jesus teach us...through praying, through scripture, through opening ourselves to one another in the journey. I’ll conclude this sermon with the three words I normally use at the end of sermons…let us pray.
Here is today's offering...
Sermon # 1001
Luke 11:1-13
Dr. Ed Pettus
“Prayer”
One of my rules for preaching is to stick close to the text. That is, I seek each week to be true to a particular passage in scripture, to preach one text at a time and not wonder off into stories that have nothing to do with Luke 11 or Psalm 85 or whatever the text is for the day.
I plan to bend that rule a little bit today, still hanging in there with Luke 11, but focusing more on a topic than the particular text for the day. Prayer. Prayer is the topic of the day. Jesus prayed! Moses prayed! The Psalmist prayed! The Bible is filled with people of prayer. Prayer is a basic fundamental practice of the Christian faithful. But we also struggle with our basic fundamental practices. Prayer is sometimes simple, sometimes complicated, sometime embraced and sometimes ignored. We question how to pray, what to pray, when and where. We feel bad about not praying and sometimes later we might even feel bad about feeling good about prayer.
Today I want to focus on prayer struggles. I assume the disciples struggled with prayer or they would not have requested Jesus to teach them. When I think about struggling to pray, I think of the metaphor of Jacob wrestling with the man or the angel – or was it God? Prayer is something like wrestling (Genesis 32). When I played high school football one of our offseason drills was to wrestle one another to get into shape and build toughness. I hated it! Painful, exhausting exercise, and too often I would get paired up with a football player who was also on the wrestling team. He would tie me up in a knot. Prayer can be like that sometimes. We avoid it for some reason, maybe it seems to hard, maybe we feel inadequate or perhaps the feeling is unworthiness. People ask me from time to time to help them with a prayer they will have to offer at a meeting or a social gathering where a meal will be served. We don’t know what to pray and we feel like it can be a chore. Prayer seems too hard so we avoid it.
Other times prayer is frustrating. We have no answers; we have no words. We don’t know how to listen for God. We seldom take the time to listen, but we don’t take the time because we don’t think we will hear anything. I know this because I experience it in my own life of prayer. I have had people ask me about prayer or share something about their prayer life and they will often ask: “Am I the only one who feels this way?” Another rule I trust is that if something is true for one of us, it is probably true for most of us. Prayer can isolate us because we don’t really talk about prayer, not really. We talk about prayer requests, but not the deepest desires of our prayers, if we even know what those are. We don’t talk about prayer because we think we should all know all about prayer. We assume we each know something about prayer and so we are afraid to ask or to open ourselves up to one another, let alone opening ourselves up to God.
I imagine it took a lot of courage for the disciples to say to Jesus: “Teach us to pray.” The request reveals their ignorance about prayer. They have seen Jesus praying and it is different from what they know or think they know.
I have been reading a book about prayer by Abraham Heschel, Jewish scholar, who writes that “prayer is our attachment to the utmost. Without God in sight, we are like the scattered rungs of a broken ladder” (Man’s Quest for God, p. 7). The Psalms, our great prayers to God, speak of the connection we have with God. Psalm 16:8 “I keep the Lord always before me.” Psalm 42:1 “As a deer longs for flowing streams so my soul longs for you, O God.” Psalm 62:1 “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” The prayers of the Psalms express our deepest desire for being attached to the utmost, to God, to our Lord and Creator.
Today’s gospel lesson begins with the scene of Jesus at prayer. The disciples probably observed Jesus at prayer many times and this time they ask him to teach them to pray. When I imagine this scene, one question that comes to mind is what the disciples may have seen when Jesus prayed? What was it about his prayer that led them to request teaching? Was it something they saw? Was it something they heard? Was it a sense of attachment or longing, patience or depth? Was it just that they struggled with prayer?
We often understand prayer as the words we say, the requests we make, a one-way conversation wherein we address God. But if Heschel is correct, and I believe he is, then prayer is so much more than the words we might say. Prayer is our attachment to God. But this troubles us in some way. Heschel also says: “We dwell on the edge of mystery and ignore it, wasting our souls, risking our stake in God” (p.4). Why do we do this? Why do we ignore the mystery that is God, wasting our souls? Is it too difficult to comprehend? Are we fearful of what we might find? Is it that we are so seduced by the ways of the world that we dare not enter into the mystery of God’s grace and mercy and presence? Yes, it is all that! Prayer is counter to the world, for it is unmeasurable, unseen, without substantive proof. The world likes what is seen, provable, and measurable. It is a struggle for us to practice something counter to the very world in which we live.
The request of the disciples indicates that they see something in Jesus that they did not have in their prayer life. Something was missing. We have all felt inadequate in prayer. I sense that all the time especially in a public setting when it is time to ask a blessing or offer some other kind of prayer in public…we feel like we need to ask the “professional” to pray. Where is the minister? But it is not just a public unwillingness or something lacking in our prayer, for it runs much deeper in our soul. We know that the scripture rings true when it says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). I think we pull that text out of context. The context of that verse is punishment for sin – that is when fear comes into play. Prayer brings us into the hands of the living God, but as an act of prayer it is not the same as that text in Hebrews 10. The context of prayer brings us closer to the living God and his great love for us. There is no need for fear in that context. And yet, deep down we fear getting that close to God. Prayer opens us to God – to risk ourselves before God. We fear opening ourselves up to God and so we think we can hide in plain sight.
We know that kind of fear. It is the fear we had the first time we dared to say to girlfriend or boyfriend: “I love you.” The fear of rejection, the fear of being vulnerable – the fear of opening ourselves up to another and in the case of prayer…opening ourselves up to God himself.
The end of our prayer journey does not come to fear, but to thanksgiving. Gratitude is the result of a life of prayer. That’s how the Psalms end. If we were to consider the Psalms as a pattern for a prayer filled life, the Psalms begin with the desire for obedience and end with Psalms of gratitude and praise.
Jesus was praying in a certain place. It may be comforting to us to know that Jesus was praying. We do not have details to his prayer, but we can be certain that Jesus was as close as anyone could possibly get to God. All of this got me to thinking about Jesus teaching the disciples to pray. His first lesson was simply in his praying. He was praying. He set the example and they knew that when they could not find Jesus it usually meant he was off somewhere in prayer. One thing we hear from Jesus us this familiar triad of ask, seek, and knock. We probably reduce prayer to asking. Seeking is more time consuming for our busy schedules. Knocking is more active than we want to get.
We have the asking part down pat! Perhaps we would ask Jesus more about seeking and knocking. Maybe that is something akin to what Bill Long says: “Prayer is, finally, a process of working the earth of the heart, as the ancient monastic writers might say. In her book The Closter Walk, Protestant author Kathleen Norris writes about the ways that the Catholic monastic tradition provides a rhythm and depth for spirituality that many Protestants have never explored. When she says that the life of prayer works "the earth of the heart," she means that prayer is like the act of cultivation. In order to work the soil, one must break up the hardened dirt clods, water the ground, free it from weeds and then plant a crop. Prayer is the way to "loosen up" the heart. During the natural course of our lives the "earth of our hearts" becomes parched, weed-infested and hard as flint. Unless we take care to break it up to run our fingers again through the rich soil that we know is there, our lives become as destitute and as desiccated as a desert.
Prayer is the means Jesus used to open himself to God, to anchor himself to his Father and to work the earth of his heart. Jesus prayed often and taught his disciples to pray. Prayer was as necessary to him as the air he breathed. I believe it was prayer that gave Jesus his powerful sense of awareness and insight into people and the world. It connected him to God, the source of life, and he began to see things so much from the divine perspective that he had no doubt that his work was God's work” (http://www.drbilllong.com/LectionaryII/Lk11113.html).
This cultivation is seeking and knocking – the action of prayer. Prayer is not just about talking to God. Prayer is a way of living. Praying is asking AND seeking AND knocking. Prayer is asking OR seeking OR knocking. Prayer is in the living of our lives, in the action of our faithfulness. Prayer is the word and the deed that moves us to find and open and receive. Prayer involves our voices and our feet, our head and heart.
Maybe this is one lesson from Luke 11 – prayer is more than talk, but prayer is also in the way we walk, or wrestle, or struggle, or cry, or laugh, or listen, or hope, or dream.
Prayer cannot be reduced to a list of requests of God as if God were simply a dispenser of goods and services. Prayer is relational, not an office memo we send to God. Prayer is revelatory, that is it reveals us to God and God to us. Prayer is revolutionary because it goes against what the world values.
Jesus was praying and Jesus is still teaching. If you are struggling with your life of prayer, believe it or not, this is a good thing – because the struggle means we are in a life of prayer – actively involved in the journey. Let us let Jesus teach us...through praying, through scripture, through opening ourselves to one another in the journey. I’ll conclude this sermon with the three words I normally use at the end of sermons…let us pray.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
I have discoverd that blogging is tough for introverts. We don't really have much to share online, for all the world to see. It goes against our nature to share stuff! I start a lot of blog posts but never publish them. Why is that? So, I'm just gonna post some of those "starts" in this random thoughts blog!
Zeke is starting to shed again. He does that in the summer and June has been unusually warm so far. The vegetable garden is underway, but constant storms have kept Zeke and I out of the garden too much!
Work is progressing on the project car with mostly interior work to complete.
Golf is fun.
I found out the other day that California is “seismically challenged”. I guess earthquake prone, or whatever the term used to be, is not politically correct. Do earthquakes have feelings that we can offend or ears that they would even know we call them something? I think that “politically correct” has become a foreign language to many of us.
Zeke likes to watch the Dog Whisperer. Zeke does not have a pack to run with but if he did I suspect he would be the pack leader. Some dogs follow, some dogs lead. Jesus was a pack leader. Still is! Even those who lead today have to follow Jesus. I lead Zeke on our walks. Sometimes he tries to take the lead and I have to tug him back to his “place” in our two guy pack.
Zeke loves Formula 1 racing. He loves the sounds, sights, and smells of most auto racing. We have not been to a F1 race but I have been to many sports car races and Zeke would like to go, of course. Zeke and I don’t care much for NASCAR. Zeke says going in circles reminds him too much of chasing his tail. Don’t get us wrong, we are glad NASCAR is so popular because it helps all forms of racing, but give us road racing any day!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Red BMW update
Zeke thought it was a good idea to link to some pics of the 1975 BMW 2002: http://picasaweb.google.com/114520610828599484553/EdS1975BMW2002#
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Update on 1975 BMW 2002…
Zeke wants to ride in the old car…but he sheds too much. Don’t need the dog hair in any cars! She is not running yet anyway. Several folks who keep up with these kinds of things have asked how the project is coming along. Taking things slow to make sure we don’t have to undo anything before all is done properly. The weather is colder so that slows down ideal temp for some steps (rust work and paint) but the mechanics can move on! Got the gas tank back in, working on trunk stuff. Moving battery to trunk, installed rear strut brace, repaired spare tire well (rusted out). Parts are coming in and will be installed in due time: cool new aluminum radiator, all new hoses and clamps, fuel lines and clamps, starter, fuel pump, water pump, alternator, fuel tank gaskets, engine gaskets of all sorts, thermostat, plugs, wires, belts, filters, new air dam, trim clips, driver door mirror, license tag lights, coil, and other various and asunder thing-a-ma-bobs. Just dropped her down from jack stands with sport springs, sport shocks, larger front disc brakes, converting rear drums to disc, and new tires. Wanted to see how she looked in her lower profile. Looks awesome! Pictures don’t do justice, but gotta post one anyway. Still to order: bushing for suspension, carpet, rear bumper and other yet to be seen needs and goodies. Bimmer magazine just had a brief article about the rising popularity of 02s. That’s cool.
Zeke wants to ride in the old car…but he sheds too much. Don’t need the dog hair in any cars! She is not running yet anyway. Several folks who keep up with these kinds of things have asked how the project is coming along. Taking things slow to make sure we don’t have to undo anything before all is done properly. The weather is colder so that slows down ideal temp for some steps (rust work and paint) but the mechanics can move on! Got the gas tank back in, working on trunk stuff. Moving battery to trunk, installed rear strut brace, repaired spare tire well (rusted out). Parts are coming in and will be installed in due time: cool new aluminum radiator, all new hoses and clamps, fuel lines and clamps, starter, fuel pump, water pump, alternator, fuel tank gaskets, engine gaskets of all sorts, thermostat, plugs, wires, belts, filters, new air dam, trim clips, driver door mirror, license tag lights, coil, and other various and asunder thing-a-ma-bobs. Just dropped her down from jack stands with sport springs, sport shocks, larger front disc brakes, converting rear drums to disc, and new tires. Wanted to see how she looked in her lower profile. Looks awesome! Pictures don’t do justice, but gotta post one anyway. Still to order: bushing for suspension, carpet, rear bumper and other yet to be seen needs and goodies. Bimmer magazine just had a brief article about the rising popularity of 02s. That’s cool.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta
Zeke did not get to go to Road Atlanta, but he is not really into sports car racing. I had a blast seeing the changes in the track and infield areas. I think the “new” turn 10 complex is the best place to watch the racing. It had been 19 years since I had been there, so everything was “new” to me! If you know very little about road racing you really should check it out: http://www.roadatlanta.com/ There is nothing like the sights and sounds of sports car racing. I posted a couple of videos on youtube - here’s one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncisv7iIa94 Unlike NASCAR, the sport’s car guys can go in the rain!
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