DRAWING CLOSE TO GOD

Sermon Summary (7/2/17) “Prayer: Drawing Close to God” (Phil 4:6-7; James 5:14-15)

We’re in a series “Connecting to Grace: How God Changes Us.”  Grace, God’s loving action through the ever-present Holy Spirit pervades our understanding of Christian life and faith.  Today “Prayer.”

“Prayer brings us into the deepest and highest work of the human spirit.  To pray is to change.  Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.” (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline)  Wow!

If you want to read a challenging Scripture, try Luke 14:25-33. You may remember “If one does not hate father, mother...even life itself...you cannot be my disciple.”  Another Wow!  We’ve talked often that Jesus used prophetic hyperbole, extreme exaggeration to make a point.  He doesn’t mean “hate,” but what he does mean that discipleship is our highest priority; discipleship is the main business of our lives.

To become disciples, we need prayer.  We need to prayer.  Prayer changes us, but prayer also brings into partnership with God.  Prayer changes God!  (Read Ex 32:11-14 and Jonah 3:9-10.  In both cases the Bible tells us that God changed his mind.)  God needs our prayer too!

In this series we are using the example of Jesus.  Jesus prayer the Scriptures.  Remember these verses? Ps 22:1 “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” Ps 31: 5 “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” Both prayed by Jesus from the cross.  Praying the Scripture is “pleading the promises of God.”  Healing is a big deal in our congregation right now.  We can rephrase James 5 to pray for healing: “Dear God, we have sick among us.  We are the elders gathers to place our hands upon them, to pray for them, to anoint.  We pray that you will save them, raise them up, forgive them their sins.  For we know that the prayers of faith are powerful and effective.  In the name of the great healer.  Amen.

Just as the Psalms were Jesus’ songbook, the hymnbook is ours. We can pray the hymns.  In fact, by praying the hymns outloud, it allows us to be physically part of the prayer in the way we cannot be praying silently.  If we were to pray these hymns as part of ACTS: Adoration (UMH#77, “How Great Thou Art”); Confession (UMH#357 “Just as I Am”); Thanksgiving (UMH#92 “For the Beauty of the Earth”); Supplication (UMH#140 “Great is Thy Faithfulness”).  And we can intersperse our prayer, our requests among them. Psalm and Song lifts us.

Simone Weil, mystic from the early twentieth century tells of experiences that as an agnostic brought her to her knees.  In one, reciting the poem “Love,” she says it took on all the virtues of a prayer, and “Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”  Prayer changes us!