Worship-03A-PlayByPlayPrayer

WANDERING SOUL, LONELY HEART &
THE SIDE-TRACKED CHURCH

With Quotes from First- and Second-Century Christians

PLAY-BY-PLAY PRAYER

Famous Theologians

About 1536, JOHN CALVIN - REFORMED CHURCHES:� "All may observe the legitimate order appointed by the church for the hearing of the word...and public prayer....Lest the public prayers of the Church should be held in contempt, the Lord called the temple the 'house of prayer' (Isaiah 66:7).� For by this expression he both showed that the duty of prayer is a principal part of his worship....As God in his word enjoins common prayer, so public temples are the places destined for the performance of them...the command of the Lord (Matthew 18:20)" (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, 8:34; Book III, 20:29 and 20:30).

About 1721, MATTHEW HENRY - PRESBYTERIAN:� "Our weeping for other people's sins may perhaps set those a weeping for themselves who otherwise would continue senseless and remorseless...this drew tears from every eye; men, women, and children wept very sore when he wept thus" (Commentary, Volume II, Ezra 9).

1861, 1862, 1868, CHARLES SPURGEON - BAPTIST:� "I think I see the Church as I fear she is now.� There she is upon her knees with hands clasped; she mutters a few words; her head droops, for she is weary...she is a sleepy Church in prayer....We stand up sometimes on the public platform and we charge the church of God with growing cold....Have we by our prayers added to her heat?...Are we ever without the sick and poor?� Are we ever without the afflicted and wavering?� Are we ever without those who are seeking the conversion of their relatives, the reclaiming of backsliders, or the salvation of the depraved....there should be frequent prayer meetings....They say that God does not bless the word.� They say, 'Our conversions are not so numerous as they were.' " (Sermons in the Metropolitan Pulpit, London, 1861 pg. 52, 1862 pg. 260, 1868 pg. 129).

�� "Ten minutes!� The guy took ten minutes!� Broke his own record.� Covered everybody in the county, like God needed his list.� Then went on to preach to God.� My knees were about to buckle.� Quit calling on that guy to lead prayer.� He's nuts!"

�� It is said that Benjamin Franklin, when a child, found the long prayers of his father both before and after meals very tedious.� One day, after he and his father had stored all the food necessary for the following winter, Benjamin suggested that his father pray over the whole supply, "once for all.� It would be a vast saving of time."

�� Like it or not, a lot of people feel this way about public prayers.� And perhaps they are right.� Something must be very wrong for so many people to feel so uncomfortable with public prayer.��

�� The book WHAT AMERICANS BELIEVE:� AN ANNUAL SURVEY OF VALUES AND RELIGIOUS VIEWS IN THE UNITED STATES, revealed that 73% of the American population strongly believes there is a God who watches over them and answers their prayers. [1]� So what's going on?

�� The same survey discovered that half the population believes each person has the power to determine their own destiny.� We seem to be involved in some serious ambivalence. [2]

�� Modern society has become a very controlling society, even in the realm of religion.� We have how-to books on every possible area of life.� We long for perfection, and somehow believe it is within our grasp.� Books abound in how to have the perfect body, how to have perfect health, how to raise genius children, how to become millionaires, how to have the dream vacation, how to build one's own house, how to have shining hair, how to find the perfect mate.�

�� Religion is no exception.� We see books on how to pray, how to know the mind of God, how to testify to unbelievers, how to demand Satan leave someone, how to conquer sin, how to memorize the Bible, how to preach sermons no one forgets, how to take a neighborhood or even a city for Christ and on, and on, and on.�

�� Have we made ourselves gods, and therefore only play lip-service to God?� Are we ashamed to admit we need outside help until there's nothing left we can do?� Do we approach God on things we've tried and failed because now "we can do nothing but pray"?�

�� If so, why?� Perhaps it is our deep-down sometimes-unspoken disillusionment with prayer.�

�� God, you know I pray sometimes.� But I don't want you to think I'm a wimp.� So I only pray when I'm in a jam I can't handle.� Besides, if you don't answer it, I know I'll get frustrated and decide you don't really care about me.� I don't want that to happen.

Problems With Prayer

�� Besides hypocrites, possibly the biggest reason people quit even believing in God is that God did not answer a critical prayer, a prayer that we knew was good.� After all, did not Jesus say, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find" (Matthew 7:7)?� Indeed, he did.� [3] But look what he's been talking about.

�� He's just spent the previous half hour or more saying we should be the salt and light of the world, we should not commit various sins, we should give to the needy, and we should "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these [necessary material] things will be given to you as well"(Matthew 6:33).�

�� Then he says we should pray about these things.� We should ask God to help us become the salt and light of the world, help us overcome our sins, help us give to the needy, help us seek first the kingdom of God.� Why?� He goes on to say how narrow the gate is into heaven.

�� Do we view prayer as a blank check that God gives us?� Do we demand an answer to our prayers even if it creates major problems for other people?

�� Let us try to view answers to prayer from the other side of eternity, from the top side of heaven.� God provided a way for us to do that; all we have to do is go to his Word, the Bible.

�� When we say our prayers are not answered, we do not stop to realize that God often has to do a lot of rearranging in people's lives to get that prayer answered.� For instance, someone praying to be able to marry just the right mate might involve what?� S/he may be living at the opposite end of the country.� Someone would have to move.� That probably means someone's boss has to see a need to either lay them off or transfer them.� That's just the beginning, but it gets the idea across.� How amazing God is to juggle all of us so he can answer our prayers at all!

�� Several years ago a study was made of people who did believe in prayer and did not believe in prayer.� What each person wanted to achieve was recorded.� A year later, people were identified who either had or had not attained their goals.� The entire process was explained in the book PRAYER CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

�� "At the University of Redlands we conducted the first controlled experiment satisfying academic conditions in prayer as a specific therapy or healing agent." [4]� They used the Rorschach Test, the Szondi Test, the Thematic Apperception Test, Sentence Completion Test, Word Association Test to set the "before" status of each person.� Religion was never discussed. [5]

�� There were three control groups, each relying exclusively on (1) psychotherapy, (2) random prayer, (3) prayer therapy.� At the end of the experiment, the psychotherapy group made 65% noticeable improvement in both tests and symptoms.� The random prayer group made no improvement.� The prayer therapy group had 72% improvement. [6]� Descriptions of participants and how their lives did or did not change make this book come alive.

�� Well, yes, God, I believe you answer prayers.� But it seems like you answer other people's prayers more, like maybe they have more faith than I do.

Unanswered Prayer Answered

�� Look at Abraham.� God promised him a land for his many descendants who would some day make up an entire nation.� What an illusive dream that was!� Starting in Ur Abraham dragged Sarah and the rest of his family all over the place trying to take hold of his promise:

To Haran�� 600 miles�� age 60� 15 years

To Shechem�� 450 miles�� age 75� 2 years

To Bethel�� 20 miles�� age 77� 1 year

To Negev�� 100 miles�� age 78� 2 years

To Egypt�� 250 miles�� age 80� 2 years

To Negev�� 250 miles�� age 82� 1 year

To Bethel�� 75 miles�� age 83� 3 years

To Hebron�� 30 miles�� age 86� 3 years

To Gerar�� 50 miles�� age 89� 1 year

To Negev�� 25 miles�� age 90� 15 years

To Beersheba�� 25 miles�� age 105� 15 years

To Hebron�� 25 miles�� age 120� 17 years

�� Not only that, but the first city Abraham moved to, Haran, was in the wrong country.� When he finally got to Shechem in the right country, there was a famine in his land of milk and honey (Genesis 12:4-7).� He kept moving farther south, hoping things would be better, but they never were.� Finally he had no choice but to abandon his promised land, which had been a bleak disappointment so far anyway, and go to Egypt.�

�� He was kicked out of Egypt for lying (Genesis 12:10-20), so reluctantly headed back to his promised land.� In Gerar he was kicked out also, again for lying (Genesis 20:1-14).

�� All those years Abraham prayed for the son God had promised him.� Didn't his name ~ Abraham ~ mean father of nations?� How people must have laughed at him.� It wasn't until he had moved eleven times that Abraham finally got his first son, Isaac.�

�� All those years he could have been bitter.� He could have quit praying to God at all.� He could have even quit believing in God.� But he didn't.� Why did God make Abraham wait so long to answer his prayer?� God provided the answer so Abraham didn't have to guess.

��"In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure" (Genesis 15:16).�

�� God was planning to use Abraham's descendants to punish the people who lived in Canaan at that time for their idolatry with terrible gods that demanded human sacrifices, religious prostitutes - both men and women - and were destructive.� Later God would tell Abraham's descendants who did conquer the land that if they became like the Amorites, God would cast them out of the land too (Leviticus 18:28).�

�� Sometimes God delays giving us our good answer because some other involved party is not yet ready.

�� Then there were Isaac and Rebecca.� They'd married when Isaac was about 40 (Genesis 25:20), but remained childless for twenty years.� Twenty long years of praying for a son.� Isn't that too long?� But their wait was worth it, for they had twin boys (25:24-26).

�� Trouble again.� When the twins were about age 40 (Genesis 26:34), they had a terrible argument and Esau threatened to kill Jacob, his twin brother.� Rebecca told Jacob to live with her brother a thousand miles away in a foreign country and "When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I'll send word for you to come back from there" (Genesis 27:45).

�� She never sent that word.� Oh, how the parents of these twins must have prayed for their family to be reunited and for the twins to get along again.� But it just didn't happen.� Jacob stayed gone twenty long years (Genesis 31:38).� Finally he went back to make up with Esau on his own.� When he did, (Genesis 33:4), Esau took him to see their father Isaac (Genesis 35:27), but not their mother.

�� Rebecca had probably died believing that God had refused to answer her prayer for her sons.� But he did answer her prayer.� It just wasn't in her lifetime.� The same is true with some of our own prayers.� They're answered after we die.

�� Joseph was Abraham's great grandson and Jacob's son.� When Joseph was 17 years old (Genesis 37:2) he was sold by his brothers to a caravan headed for Egypt.� There this teenager was sold again to be a forever slave in a foreign country with strange people, strange language, strange customs.� What kind of sadistic trick was God playing on him?

�� He was bought by the captain of Pharaoh's guard.� He kept a good attitude and his owner was so impressed that he gave him a lot of responsibility.� But things went from tolerable to terrible.� His owner's wife falsely accused him of trying to rape her, so he was imprisoned.� There his feet were put in shackles and his neck was put in irons (Psalm 105:17-22).

�� Did he become bitter and turn against God?� No.� He made the best of an extremely bad situation.� Eventually he was trusted so much that the jailor let Joseph, the prisoner, run things for him (Genesis 39:22).� When Joseph was 28 years old (Genesis 40:1 - 40:1) it looked liked a personal servant of Pharaoh would be able to get him out of prison, but the servant forgot all about Joseph.� How could God allow that to happen?

�� Finally, when Joseph was 30 years old (Genesis 41:46), Pharaoh personally released him from prison and made him prime minister of the entire land (Genesis 41:41).� Ten years later when Joseph was about 40 years old (Genesis 41:53-54; 42:3, 8), his brothers came to Egypt and appeared before him, not recognizing him.� Some time after that when Joseph was 42 (Genesis 45:6) they returned a second time, and that time he revealed himself to his brothers and actually forgave them (Genesis 45:1).

�� Instead of being bitter, and complaining God never answered his prayers, Joseph said he'd gone through being separated from his family and enduring slavery and imprisonment "because it was to save lives" (Genesis 45:6).

�� Sometimes God says no to us because he has much bigger plans for us that require us to stay in what we consider a bad situation.

�� Let us look at the Israelites who were enslaved in Egypt for some four centuries (Genesis 15:13-16).� Do you think the Israelites prayed to God to release them?� You bet they did (Exodus 3:7).� But one after another of them died believing God did not answer their prayers.

�� God did answer their prayers.� But not in the lifetime of most of them.� God saw the big picture that they did not see.� When Joseph's family first went to Egypt there were only 70 of them (Genesis 46:27).� They were the grandson and great grandchildren of Abraham.� They were not nearly numerous enough to begin that nation God said would come from Abraham.� Nor were they strong enough.

�� Four centuries later, when Moses led them out of Egypt, there were probably three million of them (Exodus 12:37).� Now they were large enough.� But they had the minds of slaves, all of them having been born into slavery to parents and grandparents of slavery.� They had to have time to develop self-determining, mature minds.

�� So, God gave them the Ten Commandments and about 600 other commandments also called the Law of Moses.� But they still needed time to get used to obeying God which they were in the habit of not doing.� In fact, they were such cowards that when God told them to take their promised land from the Amorites who by now had reached the height of their evil, they wouldn't do it (Numbers 13:31-33).

�� For forty more years, until a new generation was born and grown, the Israelites wandered, people with no country (Numbers 14:33-34).� It wasn't until then that God answered their prayers and gave them their country, more as punishment to the bad inhabitants than a reward for how good they were (Deuteronomy 9:5).� But at least they were strong enough now to develop their own nation.

�� Did they complain all those years?� Yes, they did.� In fact, over and over they said God just took them to the desert to kill them, and that God didn't care anything about them.� They became bitter.� But, even though they no longer believed God would answer their prayer, and long after they quit hoping, God did answer it.

�� About five hundred years after finally settling in their Promised Land, a great man was born of this nation.� His name was David and he became their king.� And from David's descendants came Jesus, the Son of God who came to us in the form of a human to save all of mankind from our sins (Matthew 1).

�� God, remember the old joke, "You'd better watch out what you pray for; you just might get it"?� Well, that's me.� I'm sometimes afraid you won't answer a prayer, and sometimes afraid you will.

Prayers We Wish Hadn't Been Answered

�� Sometimes God does not give us what we want because it would bring us heartache.� We may not see it, and the bad effects may not even occur during our lifetime.� But God knows.�

�� A couple was childless, for the wife had been sterile for a long time.� They prayed and prayed for a son.� Finally God answered their prayer and they named their baby Samson.� He grew up to become a kind of supreme court judge for the Israelites before they had kings.� That was an honor (Judges 13).

�� But Samson brought heart ache after heart ache to them.� First he demanded that his parents arrange a marriage to an atheist (Judges 14:2).� But when he was taken advantage of at his wedding reception, he divorced her (Judges 14:20).� Then he started going to prostitutes (Judges 16:1).�

�� Finally he fell in love with another atheist (Judges 16:4).� She in turn betrayed him, and he was imprisoned by the enemy and his eyes gouged out (Judges 16:21).� He finally died by suicide (Judges 16:30).� They got their desired baby, and also great heartache.

�� Another such instance was when the Israelites decided they wanted to be like the other nations around them and have a king rule over them rather than a supreme court judge (1 Samuel 8:6-9).

�� They got their way.� But it led to disaster. �At first, the worst the king would do is take their children to be soldiers and servants, and tax them heavily (1 Samuel 8:11-20).

�� But it only took three generations for their kings to lead them into idol worship (1 Kings 11:9-10), and one more generation for the country to have a civil war and end up with two separate governments - one in the north and one in the south (1 Kings 11:43 - 12:1).

�� After that they went from bad to worse.� Eventually the northern kingdom, made up of ten-twelfths of them, was taken captive by the king of Assyria and never released (2 Kings 17:1-23).

�� The southern king did not learn his lesson, however.� And some time later the small remnant of the Israelites were taken captive by the king of Babylon.� At that time Jerusalem and the great temple were burned to the ground (2 Kings 25:1-21).

�� They had prayed for a king, and God gave them what they thought they wanted.� It led to their ruin.

�� King Hezekiah was one of the last kings of the southern kingdom.� He became ill and was about to die, but turned his face to the wall and wept bitterly, praying to God to let him live.� He was given fifteen more years (2 Kings 20:1-11).�

�� But what happened during those fifteen years?� He made peace with the king of Babylon and showed his emissaries all the treasures of his palace.� As a result, even though Hezekiah died before it happened, the next king of Babylon returned and conquered Jerusalem, and Hezekiah's sons were castrated and exiled to Babylon to become servants until their deaths (2 Kings 20:12-18).

�� Hezekiah had prayed not to die, and God gave him what he asked for.� But it spelled disaster for his own family and for his nation.� When we pray, we must be careful to tell God that we are willing to accept his will and not our own.

�� Remember the other joke about prayer, God?� You know, the one about being careful we don't pray for patience?� That's me.� Sometimes I'm not sure I'm willing to pay the price to end up getting what I say I want.

Bad to Good People

�� Another frustration people have in condemning God are the unanswered prayers that did not ever lead to anything good.� Take for example all the innocent Israelite babies God allowed to be killed by the Egyptians (Exodus 1:22) and by King Herod fifteen centuries later in Bethlehem when Jesus was born (Matthew 2:16).

�� But we are nearsighted.� Oh, yes, it brought unbearable grief to the families left behind.� But what about the babies?�

�� Jesus said, people who "become like little children" will enter the kingdom of heaven....their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven" (Matthew 18:3 & 10).� A little while later he said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (Matthew 18:14).

�� When those babies passed from this world, they immediately were taken by their angels to the arms of God.� King David, whose own baby boy died, said in 2 Samuel 12:23, "Can I bring him back again?� I will go to him, but he will not return to me."� What a reunion that must have been when all those broken-hearted parents reached heaven and were able to hold their baby, this time forever.

�� Well, what about Moses?� The Bible said that Moses was the meekest man in the world (Numbers 12:3) and the greatest prophet to ever live, "whom the Lord knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10).� In fact, when God considered destroying the entire Israelite nation, Moses prayed that God would send him to hell in their place (Exodus 32:33).� What greatness!

�� Yet, after spending 40 years of his life leading the ungrateful and rebellious Israelites, God would not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land.� Why?� Because Moses struck a rock to get water from it instead of speaking to it, and then took the credit for it (Numbers 20:8-12).� How could God just use Moses for so long like that and then discard him?

�� Yes, Moses died shortly after this event.� But where did he go after this?� He went to heaven.� He was old and got to rest.� How do we know for sure he went to heaven?� Because fifteen centuries later, Moses appeared from heaven to Jesus and talked to Jesus shortly before Jesus' own death (Matthew 17:3).� By the way, guess where he was when he appeared to Jesus?� In the Promised Land (Matthew 16:21).

�� What about Job's grown children?� They were all killed in an apparent cyclone (Job 1:18-19).� Their father was "blameless and upright" (Job 1:1), and even offered sacrifices on his children's behalf every morning (Job 1:5).

�� They lived some thousand years before Moses and his laws - probably about 2500 BC.� During that early period of mankind, the father of each household took responsibility for leading his family to follow God.� God had not yet established any kind of organized religion as such.

�� But Romans 1:19-20 and 2:14-15 explains that "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made....Indeed, when Gentiles [non-Jews], who do not have the law [of Moses], do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness."

�� So, although it caused great grief to Job, his children were now in heaven and probably having the time of their life in that heavenly place where there are no tears, no death, no mourning, no crying, and no pain (Revelation 21:4).

�� Well, what about the wife of the great prophet Ezekiel?� She died just so God could prove a point.� Isn't God a crass user, a bully?� Let us look at what happened.�

�� "[God said] 'with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes.� Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears.� Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead.� Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners.'� So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died.� The next morning I did as I had been commanded' " (Ezekiel 24:16-18).

�� But what else was going on at that time?� Ezekiel had been taken captive from the Promised Land by the Babylonians in today's Iraq, and was now in his 30th year of captivity.� God had said the Jews who had been taken to Babylon would be there 70 years, long enough for a new generation to be born and grow up who did not worship idols.�

�� It was Ezekiel's job to tell the people why they were being punished by this captivity.� He quoted God as telling the Jews, "You adulterous wife!� You prefer strangers [idols] to your own husband [the only true God]....Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the Lord!� This is what the Sovereign Lord says:� Because you poured out your wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity with your lovers, and because of all your detestable idols, and because you gave them your children's blood, therefore I am going to gather all your lovers [idolatrous nations], with whom you found pleasure, those you loved as well as those you hated.� I will gather them against you from all around and will strip you in front of them, and they will see all your nakedness"(Ezekiel 16:32-37).

�� God needed for Ezekiel to understand God's own pain of being forsaken by his chosen ones, the Israelites, so they could worship idols.� Further, God wanted Ezekiel to understand God's own pain of not showing remorse for their removal from their Promised Land (a kind of death).� Oh, God cried for his people when they were taken captives, but he cried in private.�

�� Now Ezekiel was able to feel what God was feeling for his "bride-wife," the Israelites.� How many times Ezekiel must have secretly gone to his wife's grave site to weep in private, and wish his wife could rise up out of that grave and return to him.� God was going through the same feelings.� He wanted to bring his "bride-wife" back from the living death they were existing in Babylon.�

�� In Ezekiel 37 God gave his prophet a vision whereby he saw just that happen.� Ezekiel saw a valley full of bones dried white by the sun.� The bones came back together, then tendons and flesh were added, and finally skin covered them.� Then God breathed into them his breath and they came back to life.�

�� Can you imagine Ezekiel rushing to the others in exile excitedly and saying, "God's not going to leave us here in this living death!� Some day he's going to take us back to our Promised Land.� We will live again!"

�� Also God did not leave Ezekiel hopeless concerning his wife either.� Ezekiel was a priest, which meant he belonged to the tribe of Levi (Ezekiel 1:3).� Revelation 7:7 tells us that all the saved from the tribe of Levi are in heaven.� That means Ezekiel's wife was now in heaven.� Did Ezekiel miss her?� Terribly.� Did he mourn for her?� Yes, in private.� Did he gain a new understanding of God and his deep love for his people who had betrayed him?� Indeed he did.� Did Ezekiel ever get to see his wife again?� Oh, yes.� For all the saved from the tribe of Levi are in heaven.� What a reunion theirs must have been.

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Endnotes for this Page

[1].� Barna, George, What Americans Believe, Regal Books, Calif., 1991, pg. 207

[2].� Barna, p. 213

[3]

[4].� Parker, Dr. William and Elaine St. Johns, Prayer Can Change Your Life, Prentice-Hall, N.J., 1968, pg. xv.

[5].� Parker, pg. 20-21

[6].� Parker, pg. 34

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