Prayer is our theme for today.
Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give to you. and Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Our Old Testament Reading has Israelites sin in their grumbling and lack of trust and the Lord’s discipline of them and their repentance of their sin, and then God’s Word says,
So Moses prayed for the people. [And the Lord sent healing in the form of the bronze serpent]
Our Introit of the Day from Psalm 66 says Blessed be God, because He has not rejected my prayer or removed His steadfast love from me.
And I think in James we have an interesting application. He calls us to be doers of the word, not hearers only. And then gives this picture that if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who look intently at his natural face in a mirror, but when he goes away at once he forgets what he is like.
And our application is this: today and all the time in the Lord’s Word, you hear that you are to pray. And in hearing, you are to do, as well. Breathe in the Lord’s Word, breathe out prayer. Listen to Him in faith and speak to Him in faith. Trust His Word and trust that He wants to hear you. Don’t be one who forgets such an invitation and encouragement and command, but lets God’s invitation and encouragement and command draw you closer to Him in prayer.
Boldness and confidence.
Those are two words that are deeply connected to prayer.
Luther in the Small Catechism says that the Words “Our Father, who art in heaven,” are given to us from God so that we know that God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him….
Luther’s simply quoting Ephesians 3:12, that in Christ we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.
I was thinking about these words this week when the news of Bill Gates divorce with his wife came out.
So, we’ll pray for him and his family.
But these two words, boldness and confidence teach us about God’s power and our relationship with him.
You see, if I were to have get into a lot of trouble and owe a bunch of money to someone or something, a bunch of money, I could be pretty bold in asking Bill Gates to help me out. Cause he’s got a bunch of money. He could totally help. He’s got the resources to help me out. With resources like that, I could be bold and not ask him for $5 or $10, but I could ask him for a bunch of money.
Boldness is connected is some ways to the ability to help.
But then, there’s confidence. I have absolutely no confidence that Bill Gates would help me out. He doesn’t know me. I don’t know him. I know of him and I’m sure he knows of me, after all I’m the pastor of the famous Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Kannapolis, but still, I have no confidence that he really cares about me, my needs or problems.
When our Lord gives us the call to ask Him, to pray. When He gives us these promises that we can have boldness and confidence, He’s putting us in a relationship with Him in which not only we trust that He can help, but that He loves us, too.
That He cares about everything about us. And everything that we’d have to tell Him.
You have the Father’s ear, because He’s your Father.
If you are a mother, then you can begin to understand the resilient love that is the love of God for His children.
Resilient love. Isn’t that a beautiful phrase. I heard that last week and it’s stuck with me.
Love that is able to withstand and recover quickly from difficulties.
Love that springs back when it’s been bent or stretched or pushed down.
Boy, do we test the Father’s love!
And yet, His love is not based on what we say, think, and do. It’s based on His own goodness. It’s based on Christ’s love for Him that took Him all the way to suffer and die for us to please His Father. It’s based on the promises of God that we are children of God through the Son. Many sons and many daughters through the One Son who teaches us to pray and prays with us, “Our Father…”
It is the resilient love that invites you to believe that you can ask Him for things, in boldness that He can help and in confidence that He loves you and that you are to trust Him in all things.
We don’t pray as we should, because we don’t believe as we should.
We only pray when He creates and when He strengthens us to believe.
We aren’t doers of prayer until we are hearers of His Word, but in hearing His Word, the Spirit creates and strengthens us to be doers, people of prayer, people of love, people of faith, no matter what is happening, people who have boldness and access with confidence to the greatest gifts that God wants to give us.
For the next few minutes, I want to consider again one of the greatest gifts God has given us, and that is the Lord’s Prayers, and give you 3 reasons why you and I should pray it several times a day.
1.) Because the Lord’s Prayer is also God’s Word to us. Prayer is fed by God’s Word and when you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are both praying and being fed with the promises that God wants to give you those things.
2.) Don’t listen to anyone who says you’re not supposed to pray something memorized or written down because prayer from the heart is more spiritual. Jesus does warn about vain repetition, but there’s nothing vain about the Lord’s Prayer. It is filling and beautiful and changes us. Sure we can pray it without paying attention but you can also brush your teeth without paying attention. Your teeth still benefit. If some of us had to wait to brush our teeth until we felt like it, perhaps some of us would have teeth falling out. Just brush your teeth. Just pray the Lord’s Prayer. Yah, pay attention and believe, too, but just listen that Jesus says, “When you pray, say, “Father….”
3.) When Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father…” the “our” reminds us that we are never alone. We have each other praying with us and for us. We have the whole Christian Church on earth praying with us. And most importantly, we have Jesus praying with us. What boldness and confidence should we have if we have Jesus praying with us. I remember as a kid that if I had my best friend Tony Gillund with me, We could do almost anything. Being together made braver and more courageous, and yah, more stupid, too, sometimes, but praying with Jesus doesn’t make you more stupid, He makes you wise. He’s your brother and Savior. He’s taken us to be His Our in the family of God.
Blessed be God because He has not rejected our prayer. He hasn’t because He hasn’t rejected us. His Son suffered that rejection from both man and His Father for us, so that we might have acceptance. And with acceptance with God, we have boldness and access with confidence.
And so we ask and we trust.