Poems, Prayers, and Promises from a Country Parson

    During the season of Lent we’ve been responding to what Bishop Rueben Job calls, “The Three Simple Questions.”  Do you all remember these timeless and universal questions?  They are: “Who is God?” “Who am I?” “Who are we together?”
    Over the past three weeks we have turned to scripture to see what answers the Bible offers to these three questions.  “Who is God?”  The Bible tells us that God is the creator of all that is seen and unseen and the one who holds all things together.  The Bible also tells us God became human in Jesus Christ. 
    “Who am I?”  The Bible tells us that when we call on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we become Children of God.
    “Who are we together?”  The Bible tells us that we are all in need of God’s grace.  The Bible also tells us that living in community is difficult.  The only way we can love others as God has called us to love is by God’s presence indwelling in us by the Holy Spirit.
    It’s one thing to know the answers to the three simple questions.  It is entirely another thing to pray and to live in the questions.  Bishop Job was right when he said the “Three Simple Questions help us know the God of hope, love, and purpose.”  Today I want to spend some time pondering what would it look like to pray the questions and next week what does it mean to live the questions.
    What is prayer?  When I think about the question several answers come to mind.  First of all, I think of communication.  Prayer is communication with God.  Secondly, it is something that I desperately need more in my life and ministry.  Yes I said it.  I desperately need more prayer in my life and ministry.  Your preacher needs to spend more time with God.
    I bet I am not the only one here who feels like they need to spend more time with God.  How is your prayer life?  Do you pray?  Other than our prayer time in this service, when was the last time you prayed?  Did the prayer go something like this...”Lord we thank you for this food.  Amen.” 
    Don’t get me wrong saying grace before we eat is important, but we need more prayer than just “Lord bless the chicken.”  We need the kind of prayers Jesus taught his disciples.  We need the kind of prayer that connects us with the God who answers the “Three Simple Questions.”
     We need the kind of prayer Jesus taught his disciples in Luke 11:1-4.  I invite you to turn to Luke 11 so we can look at this prayer together.
    I think it is important to set the scene in which Jesus gives this prayer for it tells us much about the prayer life of Jesus.  Luke tells us that Jesus had gone off to a “certain place.”  When I was in region Galilee our tour group visited the place where tradition tells us Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.  On the side of this steep hill there is this little cave.  It’s more like a nook instead of a cave.  Just a small little indention in the side of the hill.  There is an old legend that says this little nook was the “certain place” where Jesus liked to go and pray.
    Luke tells us that Jesus is in this certain place praying when one of the disciples is watching.  This goes to show us that people watch what we do.  Jesus’s prayer life must have stirred something within this disciple.  Do note that we don’t know which disciple asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.  That is not important.  What is important is that the disciple wanted and desired a deeper prayer life! 
    The next few verses should be very familiar to us.  They form what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.”  We usually pray this prayer or something similar to it in our Sunday morning order of worship.  I could preach a sermon series on the prayer itself, but this morning I just want to do a survey of what Jesus teaches us in this model prayer.
    Recently I’ve begun trying to write the pastoral prayer I share in our Sunday morning worship.  Sometimes I turn to a passage of scripture such as one of the Psalms and use the scriptures as an outline to help me write my prayer.
    The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer.  It isn’t the only way to pray.  With this prayer Jesus gives his disciples of long ago and his disciples today a pattern to follow.   
    Perhaps you could think of the Lord’s Prayer as a “paint by number” painting.  The Lord’s prayer gives us an outline of the painting and tells us where to put the different colors.  It is up to us to do the painting.  As we learn to pray we become more creative.  We know the basic shapes, pattern, and colors present in a beautiful prayer.  As we grow in prayer we discover we don’t need the little numbers to tell us where to put color.  After the a while we don’t even need the outline.  Before we know it we are praying beautiful, powerful, life changing prayers.
   
    What outline does the Lord’s prayer offer us?
    It begins by directing our attention and our hearts to God.  The prayer begins by drawing us to the first of the three simple questions “Who is God?”  The Lord’s prayer reminds us that God is our heavenly father.  It continues by reminding us what God is doing in the world--ushering forth God’s heavenly Kingdom and will.
    The Lord’s prayer then transitions us into the second question “Who am I?”  The Lord’s prayer helps us recognize our daily dependence upon God.  When the early church prayed the Lord’s prayer, they saw the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread” as a two fold request.  When early Christians raised this petition to God they were asking God to provide for their spiritual and earthly needs. 
    The Lord’s prayer then leads us into the third question “Who are we together?” When we pray “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us, and lead us not into temptation,” we recognize that life together is difficult.  The Lord’s prayer teaches us each time that we pray it, “We need forgiveness and we need to be people who give forgiveness to others.”
    You see the Lord’s Prayer connects us right into the Three Simple Questions.  This is the type of prayer we need.  I am not saying that we should simply pray the Lord’s Prayer every time we pray, but we need prayers that connect us with the God of all creation, reminds us who we really are, and what we need to do to love and live well with others. 
    Think again about the prayers you’ve been praying lately.  Do they connect you with the God of hope, love and purpose?  Do your prayers help you live out the answers to the questions “Who is God?” “Who am I?” “Who are we together?”
    At the beginning of this sermon, I mentioned how I earnestly need a deeper prayer life.  When I do an inventory of my spiritual conditions and needs, the need for more prayer is top on the list.  I don’t know about you all, but this passage of scripture has convicted and inspired me to spend more time in prayer.  To be honest with you, I really don’t know what this will look like in my life.
    If have a good friend who leads a contemporary worship service for young people.  She has introduced me to prayer stations.  The worship service she leads utilizes them.  A few months ago I went on a Pastor’s retreat where she set up some different prayer stations for us to use. 
    One station had little pieces of clay.  You were invited to take the clay and mold it and shape it in your hand while you prayed the Bible verse “You are the potter I am the clay.”  We were supposed to focus on what shape God wanted us to be.
    One station had pieces of paper.  You spent some time in prayer and then you wrote down sins that needed forgiveness, struggles, or needs in your life on this paper.  Then you took the paper and burned it with a candle.
    There was a prayer station at the alter where you could just kneel and pray. 
    I mention this because there is really no one right way to pray.  I don’t want you to think that spending more time in prayer means you got to spend more time kneeling at the alter or sitting in a chair.  However, if we aren’t kneeling at the alter in prayer it very well might be a good thing for us to start doing!
    In our book club, we are learning about different ways to pray.  Bishop Job has written an excellent book entitled, “Becoming a Praying Congregation.”  In our book club, we are looking at some of the different ways of praying that Bishop Job explains in that book.  We’ve learned about the prayer of silent listening.  That is where you simply sit in silence with a piece of paper and focus your thoughts on God.  You might repeat the verse “Speak for the servant is listening” or “Be still and know that I am the Lord your God.”  As you sit in silence you write down or draw what you feel God is saying to you.
    We’ve learned about the prayer of imagination.  In this way of praying you read scripture over and over and try to put yourself into the story.  What do you see?  What do you hear?  What do you smell?  And again you write down what you feel God is saying to you.
    There are many ways to pray.  I have another friend that is teaching her church to use prayer beads.  You simply hold the beads in your hand and focus on a different need as you touch each bead. 
    Yes there are many ways to pray and we should use a variety of these ways to connect with God.  But no matter how we pray I believe there are five things we need to remember.  These four things are not original to me, but come from William Barclay’s little book about the Lords Prayer.  Barclay says these four things should be part of every prayer:
Remember God is your Father and King.
Don’t hesitate to tell God your daily needs.
Don’t shrink from telling God our mistakes and failures.
Never forget to place the unknown future into God’s hands.
I would like to add one more thing
 Don’t forget to tell God thank you!

    Can you just imagine what a difference would happen in our lives, in our church, and in our community if we began praying like this?   What would happen if we started groups that met throughout the week for no other purpose but prayer?  Do you think we could change the world?
    You might not believe this, but there was a church that began a prayer meeting.  This wasn’t a special church.  It was just an ordinary church.  It had its share of strife, bickering, and backsliding.  One day the church’s leader, Count Zinzendorf, said “Let’s have a prayer meeting.”  48 people responded to his call.  24 men and 24 women. 
    These 48 people committed to praying one hour a day.  So in this church there was always a man and a woman praying.  They could have been praying at home, at the church, or at work, or even on vacation.  These people committed to praying 1 hour a day.
    Anybody want to guess how long this prayer meeting lasted? 
    It began in 1727 and lasted over 100 years.  I think it lasted 127 years.  After 65 years of 24 hour prayer this church had sent out 300 missionaries to share the gospel across the world. 
    It just so happened that an Anglican priest headed on a missionary trip to Georgia ran into a group of these Moravian missionaries.  Do you know what they were doing when they met?  They were praying because their ship was getting ready to sink in the North Atlantic ocean.  The Anglican priest they met was a man by the name of John Wesley.  
    After seeing the witness of the Moravians in prayer, John Wesley began trying to answer the three simple questions-”Who is God?” “Who am I?” and “Who are we together?”  The witness of the Moravians helped John Wesley meet the God of love, hope and purpose.
    John Wesley, empowered and inspired by his Holy Spirit encounter at a Bible study at Aldersgate street in England, began a missionary movement that helped change the world.  We are here to today as United Methodist because of that movement.  A movement born out a a group of bickering, upset, and backsliding Christians that decided to pray.
    The Lord only knows what can happen if we decide to pray.

Pastoral Prayer

Gracious God we are humbled by your invitation to “Come and pray.”
We also apologize for all the times we have not responded to your gracious invitation to commune with you in prayer.
Forgive us for being selective in our response. 
God have mercy on us for all the times we have failed to pray simply because it did not fit into our so-called “busy schedules.”
God have mercy on us for all the times we have approached you in prayer, not as God, but as a wish granting genie.
God have mercy on us for all the times we’ve been so wrapped up in our own world that we’ve neglected to see the world outside of us and failed to pray for others. 
God have mercy on us for all the times we told our family, our friends, our church, and even the stranger that we would pray for them, but didn’t.
God have mercy on us for not being the students of prayer you have tried to teach us to be.
Lord in your mercy hear our prayer.  Please teach us and help us to be better students of prayer.
Lord teach us and help us to pray without ceasing.  Let our lives be living prayers.
Lord teach us and help us to approach you in awe and reverence of your holiness.
Lord teach us and help us to look outside of ourselves.  Help us to see the needs of others and to feel compassion for the needs of others.  Help us be faithful to our promises to pray for the needs of others.
Yes Lord help us to be true to our promises as you are faithful and true to the promises you’ve made to us.
Lord, again, our prayer is to be better disciples, better students of prayer, and better practitioners of this gracious gift.
We thank you for this gracious gift and thank you for teaching us to pray...
Our Father who art in heaven....

Amen.