Thursday, May 7, 2009

2. Talk with God? Are You Serious?

An atheist was touring the Grand Canyon. As he looked out at the scene before him, he was so awed by the beauty of nature that he was not paying attention to where he walked. He lost his footing and tumbled over the edge of a cliff. On his way down, he managed to grab a branch sticking out from the side of the cliff. He screamed for help, but no one answered.
Out of desperation, he cried out to God, “God! Help me, please! What am I supposed to do now?!”
Knowing that the man was only a few feet above a nice sized ledge, God responded, “Let go of the branch.”
The atheist cried out, “Is there anybody else up there?”1
The concept of talking with God seems pretty far out. “I have conversations with the Almighty. He talks to me.” Can’t you end up in a straight jacket for saying things like that?
It is pretty far out to propose that finite human beings of flesh and blood can talk with the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer of the universe. You can’t see him. You can’t touch him. Most people can’t hear him with their ears. Sometimes people even pray with out talking out loud. It’s like there’s some kind of Star Trek thing going on between them and God. I know the idea that we – you and I – can talk with God sounds a little crazy, but that is exactly what Christians believe.
Our topic for today is talking with God or, in more traditional language, prayer. The benefits of prayer have been widely proven in the field of medicine. Many contemporary songs talk about praying for a friend or bringing some request to God. I guess before we go too far we should work out a basic definition of prayer from the Christian perspective.
Prayer is conversation with God. Most of the characteristics of communication between two humans are the same for communication between us and God. Prayer is our talking with or listening to God.
One component of this definition is essential from the Christian perspective. Prayer is our conversation with God. Prayer is not thinking about somebody or wishing somebody well. Prayer is not sending vibes out into the air that mysteriously transmit across the atmosphere and impact someone’s life. Prayer is talking with God. God hears us, and God responds.

But there is one objection that we still need to answer. Do we even have a right to pray? Does God care? Why should someone that big give a rip about what people as small as us have to say?
When I first went to college, I was glad to be out on my own. I relished my freedom. I said goodbye to my Dad when he dropped me off at the beginning of the semester, and I didn’t even think about calling home. I was out until two or three or five in the morning, and I was having a great time.
A few weeks went by, and my mom called me. She left a message on my answering machine, and I ignored it. Who wants to talk to your mom when you’re in college?
She called again and left another message, “I’m just wondering if you’re still alive!” She sounded a little worried. I thought, “I should probably call her back, just to let her know I’m OK.” I didn’t.
A few more days went by. Then, my mom called at 5 a.m. We had one of those answering machines that will let you keep talking as long as you want. “Josh, I know you’re there. Pick up! JO-O-O-O-O-OSH. Pick up the phone. Josh, wake up and get the phone, sweetheart.” I thought that if I ignored her, she’d hang up.
Finally, my roommate said, “Josh, you’re mom’s calling for you. Get the phone!” That became the pattern until I learned to return her messages. She loved me so much that she was going to keep at it until she got to talk with me.
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life.” God is not the cosmic watchmaker that the Deists imagine. God did not set the world in motion and then leave us to ourselves. He loves us. He cares about us. He wants to talk with us, and he’s going to keep at it until we talk back.
In Jeremiah 29:12-3 God says, “In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me.” Yes, we have the right to pray. Yes, God cares if we talk to him. In fact, he loves it.

I said earlier that prayer is conversation, but what does that mean? We converse with other people every day, but transferring that concept to prayer may be a little difficult. Let’s take a minute and unpack the word “conversation.”
One mode of conversation is when one person talks for a long time. When I was in college, Darci Miller and I occasionally went for long walks together talking about our guy or girl problems. Usually one of us had a burning issue and talked most of the time. Mostly, we just needed to get it off our chests. This is the way most of us pray. God is our listening ear, and he almost never interrupts, and truth be known, we don’t really want him to interrupt anyway. But that’s OK. God is glad to let us vent to him. You can be sure he’s not going to tell anyone else.
The most common form of conversation is dialogue. People interact back and forth. Both people talk, and both people listen. This is an option for prayer that most people don’t consider. God can and does talk to us if we’re willing to listen. I most often pray like this when I’m reading the Bible. Sometimes, though, to hear God we have to just sit and listen for a while.
Another way dialogue happens is spattered in the midst of an activity. When two people are engaged in an activity together, they may not talk the whole time. Something comes to mind, and one person asks a question. When the activity gets more involved, their attention is focused on the activity, but when there is a low spot there is time to reflect or to dream. We are driving, and we talk with God at stoplights. We get a short break at work and throw up a prayer about a difficult coworker or assignment. “God help me with …” Things quiet down for a minute, and suddenly we hear God asking us a question or leading us to do something or to pray for a particular person.
Conversation happens through different means of communication. We have already been talking about verbal and oral communication. Communication can also be written. Just after we got engaged, Sarah went to Korea for a semester. We wrote each other almost every day. We have stacks of letters from that time. Prayer can be written, too. I find it hard to maintain my focus when I pray. I’ll start out praying about my aunt who is sick, and before I know it I’m thinking about the Chiefs’ game. So, often I write down my prayers in my journal. This way, if I get sidetracked, at least I know where I left off.
Occasionally, conversation happens without even saying words. My family likes to play a card game called Canasta. It’s always the women against the men. In this game if you knew what cards your partner has, you would have a distinct advantage, so table talk is strictly forbidden. Sometimes, though, when my Mom was trying to decide what card to play, she looked at April, my sister, and they would start making faces at each other, giving each other signals. I always said, “Hey, stop that! No table talk.” April would say, “I didn’t say a word.” Then, I would say something like, “You’re not using words, but you’re still talking.”
Sometimes, our communication with God is on a whole different plane. God may give us a gentle nudge to do something or to talk with someone. Sometimes, we may get he clear feeling that God is close or that God is protecting us. Every once in a while, my roommate in college, Jay, would give God one of those looks of frustration. I think God knew what he meant.
Finally, conversation covers wide ranges of content and emotions. We talk to people when we’re happy, sad, angry, confused, and bored. We talk about business, sports, love, clothes, money, family, and the news. In the same way, we can talk with God when we’re experiencing any of the variety of emotions of life about anything that life includes or even the afterlife.

Now let’s look at some different types of prayer. Before we go any farther, I want to acknowledge that some of you may be having a difficult time with this talk so far. You may not believe in God, or you may not be sure he really listens. There is one type of prayer that is just right for you.
It is called the Doubter’s Prayer. It goes something like this, “God, I’m not sure you even exist or care about me, but if you do, I would like to get to know you. If you’re real, please show yourself to me.” This prayer is at the bottom of the handout with different kinds of prayer.
I read a story about a Japanese man named Tomo who prayed like this. One time he prayed, “If You are here, I’m looking for the way to truth.” Another time, in a Christian church, he prayed, “God, if you exist, please reveal the way I can know for sure who you are.” Tomo did eventually find God, and now he is a pastor. Tomo’s story will be in the Flashlight handouts tonight.
Look at the handout we gave you. (See next post.) It lists types of prayer from the Bible and famous prayers from the Bible. I’m not going to go over all of these, but I do want to highlight a few that may be particularly useful.
We are going to look at examples from the book of Psalms. The Psalms are like the journal of the people of God. Throughout history people made their prayers into songs or poems, and many of them have been collected for us in this one section of the Bible.
Let’s start off by looking at prayer for guidance. Many people say, “How can I know what God wants me to do?”
A great example of a prayer for guidance is Psalm 25. In verses 4 and 5, David prays, “Show me the path where I should walk, O LORD; point out the right road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my trust in you.”
In the spring of 2002, Sarah and I were having car trouble with both of our cars, and we could not afford to buy even one new car. We were afraid to buy a cheap used car because there were no guarantees it would be any better than the ones we already had, so we prayed that God would guide us, that he would show us the path where we should walk. I had to work at it, but I put my trust in God.
In fact, we started praying that God would work a miracle. Some of our friends had gotten free or almost free cars recently, so we started praying that God would do the same thing for us. In April we found out that the church was going to give us a car that someone had donated to the church. We named him “Levi.” This has been a real blessing. It gets better gas mileage than our old car. We’ve had it for a year now, and we haven’t had to do any repairs.
Next, let’s look at prayers of anger or lament. A prayer of lament is a prayer of sorrow expressing how bad one’s life or situation is and asking God for help. Often, these prayers have an attitude of anger, too.
A few movies have shown someone praying this kind of prayer. Let’s watch.
(Play clip from Forrest Gump with Lieutenant Dan shouting at God during the storm and clip from Patch Adams with Patch shouting at God at the cliff.)
Insert text here.
One Biblical example of this kind of prayer is Psalm 13.
“O LORD, how long will you forget me? Forever?
How long will you look the other way?
How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
with sorrow in my heart every day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?
Turn and answer me, O LORD my God!
Restore the light to my eyes, or I will die.
Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!”
Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall” (vv 1-4).

Have you ever felt like that? “Oh God, how long will you forget me? … How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul … every day?” It’s OK to feel like that. David, the author of this song, felt like that. Sometimes, life is really hard. The best thing to do is to take that pain to God and tell him about it.
Let’s look also at the last two verses of this Psalm.
“But I trust in your unfailing love.
I will rejoice because you have rescued me.
I will sing to the LORD
because he has been good to me” (vv 5-6).
This is the way it often works. David doesn’t stay in his sorrow. When he presents his requests to God and talks about his pain, the pain is out of the way enough to see the light. He starts to remember who God is. He remembers that God has been good to him, and he realizes that he will make it through even this tough time.
That is the way prayer often goes. When we keep the pain to ourselves, it weighs us down. When we give it to God, we open the way for God to give us peace.
But it doesn’t always work that fast. Psalm 137 was written when the Israelites had been taken captive and shipped off to Babylon. The writer is a musician, and when one of his captors asks him to play a song it triggers the deep bitterness within him.
“Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept
as we thought of Jerusalem…
But how can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land? …
O LORD, remember what the Edomites did
on the day the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem.
‘Destroy it!’ they yelled.
‘Level it to the ground.’
O Babylon, you will be destroyed.
Happy is the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who takes your babies
and smashes them against the rocks!”
Obviously, he has not quite dealt with his pain yet. You might say he is still in the grieving process. Many different writers wrote the Psalms over hundreds of years. The people of Israel collected the ones that they thought would be beneficial to people throughout all time. They chose this one to be included. Why?
I think they chose it because they wanted people to know it is OK to bring your pain to God. You don’t have to feel like everything has to be resolved. Sometimes, our prayers will have a happy ending like Psalm 13. Other times, we will still feel like bashing some heads after we pray. That is OK.
Just don’t stop talking. Take a break if you need to, but keep coming back to God. Keep telling him about your pain. Scream, shout, cry, be sarcastic. Say it however you need to say it. Just don’t give God the silent treatment. He is listening, and he cares. He can give you healing like no one else can.
Now some of you may be wondering, “What if God doesn’t answer my prayers?” or why God didn’t answer a particular prayer you prayed a while back. If you feel like your prayers aren’t being answered, there are a few things to thing about.
1.Is there anything standing between you and God? Do you have any unconfessed sin in your life? Are you actively doing something that you know is wrong?
2.What is your motivation? Are you asking with the right motives?
3.God’s answer might be “Yes,” “No,” or “Wait, not yet.” I think the Rolling Stones have a song that says, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, you might just get what you need.” Like a good parent, God often gives us what we need instead of what we want. The good news is that the more we get to know God the more likely we are to want what he wants us to have.

OK, we’ve talked about prayer for a long time now. The big question left is: “How can we learn to pray?” The real key to learning how to talk with God is: Start trying it! You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by listening to me talk about it. You have to get out there and push the pedals for yourself. You may feel awkward. You may not pray very long. You may even feel like your first few times didn’t go very well. That’s OK. I don’t know anyone who learned how to ride a bike on his first try.
I remember one of the first times I tried to pray by myself. I set what seemed like a small goal of praying for five minutes. Well, after I had prayed for my parents, my aunts and uncles, everyone else I could think of, the weather, and my day at school, I had prayed for about 30 seconds. I was pretty disappointed. It was kind of like talking to someone I don’t know very well, “It’s a nice day. … I’m glad it warmed up … Yeah, well nice talking with you.” That’s just part of the process. We just have to work through that stage.
You may be wondering why we’re talking about prayer this early in the Journey. We haven’t even talked about some of the more common objections to faith yet. Last week we talked about wrestling with God. You will get the most out of the next two months and your spiritual journey in general if you talk with God all along the way.
If you’re mad at him, tell him. If you have some serious doubts about the way he acts in the world, tell him. If you don’t believe in the Bible, tell him. If the church has treated you badly, tell him. Even if you don’t think he’s real, talk with him about that, too. He’ll get a kick out it. Seriously, bring your doubts and concerns to God. He can handle it. Just don’t give him the silent treatment. Keep talking.
Don’t stress over this whole prayer thing. We are just inviting you to try something that has been meaningful to millions of people for thousands of years. We hope it will be meaningful for you, too.

Journaling: Try praying in one of the ways on the list.

No comments:

Post a Comment