We're going to continue our series today called
Why?
This is number eight.
In everything, prayer.
We're going to survey some of the various
ways and forms that we pray in this
church and some of those contexts.
While liturgical prayer, what we're doing right now
for Sunday Eucharist, while that tends to be
primary for Sunday mornings, we pray in many
free-form ways, non-liturgical, non-scripted ways,
ranging from personal and corporate intercessions, spontaneous praise,
prayers of healing, etc., etc.
And so what is prayer?
Let's ask that question.
And that could be answered so many different
ways.
And that passage in First Thessalonians 5.18
just came to mind.
In everything, give thanks.
Right?
In everything, give thanks, for this is the
will of God.
Giving thanks is a form of prayer.
In everything, give thanks, for this is the
will of God.
You know what?
I think all of our lives need to
be immersed in prayer.
And so in everything, pray.
In everything, prayer.
That would be the title this morning.
In everything, prayer, because all of life is
lived in communion with God, in relationship with
God, or as C.S. Lewis calls it,
a dialogue between man and God.
Prayer is a dialogue, not a monologue, right?
It's a dialogue between man and God.
Thus, the ears of one's heart must be
attuned to this inaudible, yet perceptible dialogue.
It's an inaudible, yet a perceptible dialogue.
My sheep, says Jesus, know my voice.
And there's a difference between knowing and hearing,
right?
Knowing is a much deeper experience of that
word.
It can be inaudible, but you can know
his voice.
Amen.
All of life begins, then, in relationship.
All of life begins in relationship.
Our children, Ian and Julia, they're the product
of my relationship with Liz.
All life, all living things are birthed out
of relationship.
Therefore, the Christian faith is not propositional.
It's more prepositional.
What do I mean by that?
Prepositional phrases are describing relationships.
And so, the Christian faith is not necessarily
propositional as much as it's prepositional.
A faith rooted in relationships between God and
not just God.
A faith rooted in relationships with God and
others.
Others, right?
We can't say that we love God and
hate our brother.
It's all tied together, right?
It's all tied together.
Our prayers are not merely linked to God,
but to all the relationships of our lives.
Our prayers are linked to all of those
relationships, even though you're not thinking about them.
Even though you may not want to think
about them.
Again, C.S. Lewis observes, Nothing makes an
absent friend so present as a disagreement.
Nobody says it like that.
In letters to Malcolm, in the introduction, Nothing
makes an absent friend more present than a
disagreement.
So, this impetus to pray is the movement
of the heart back to its eternal origins.
This is where I want to communicate today.
That this impetus that we have to pray
is the very grace of God in us.
And we hear that primal cry drawing us
back to our eternal origins.
Right?
For the unbroken communion in God that was
once experienced with man and woman.
This prayer prompts us to keep on asking,
to keep on seeking, and to keep on
knocking.
To keep on keeping on, right?
That's what prayer is all about.
And so, when you look at that, you
know, anyone who asks, seeks, and knocks, It's
in the present tense.
It's in the continuous tense.
It's not a one-time thing, but it's
a perpetual asking and seeking and knocking.
Because we're knocking on the door of an
eternal God.
Who cannot be minimized in any kind of
one event or one prayer request.
He draws us to come, and come, and
come.
John Danilu says this, No person is a
stranger to the solicitations of grace.
No person is a stranger to the solicitations
of grace.
The first mention of prayer in the Bible
is commonly thought to be Genesis 4, 26.
To Seth also a son was born, and
he called his name Enosh.
At that time, people began to call upon
the Lord.
At that time, people began to call upon
the Lord.
But, perhaps this first calling upon the Lord
merely illustrates a returning to that, a longing
for that, a seeking for that original righteousness.
That echo of the way it used to
be dwelling inside of us.
When man and woman experience God naked and
without shame.
Genesis 3, 8 and following.
This relationship of purity calls us forth to
pray, to ask, to seek, to knock.
Prayer thus is the heart's longing to be
with God in the cool of the day,
as we live out in the middle of
the two advents of Christ.
Therefore, prayer is not only a longing for
original righteousness, but is likewise a reaching now
in Christ, a reaching forward.
Not just a reaching into the depths of
the subconscious, what would be buried there from
long ago, where we're rooted in our human
nature.
But it's also a reaching forward now to
the final wedding feast of the Lamb.
You see, the Bible begins with a marriage
and the Bible ends with a marriage.
And we're in between going like, oh, I
long to be married.
I long for that day that tell us
that end in Jesus Christ.
The second advent, which we're going to be
talking about pretty soon.
Prayer penetrates the whole of our lives.
It saturates the whole of our lives.
This dialogue involves unceasing awareness, listening, waiting, repenting,
tasting and seeing.
That's what that dialogue evokes.
This seeing out of an eternal communion with
God.
Such immersion is how we take every thought
captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ.
This kind of immersion allows us to cast
down every thought that pushes back against the
knowledge of God.
That pushes back against the way and the
truth and the life.
And I hope you feel that push back.
This unceasing prayer becomes a weapon.
Therefore, it becomes a weapon against the unseen
war within this unruly head of mine.
This unruly mind using Paul's image.
To put on the helmet of salvation is
to affirm the very mind of Jesus Christ
over my autonomic thoughts.
Over that stream of consciousness that seems to
come out of nowhere and run wild and
cause me to feel filthy.
Really, the stream of consciousness that is autonomic
in this shoots through your mind.
It's not voluntary thoughts and it's not meditation.
But it's that consciousness that comes and that's
where the unseen warfare is.
And this is why we must pray without
ceasing.
We must pray without ceasing.
How do we do that?
Herein lies the central battleground right here.
The central battleground of dialogue to align with
the enemy, because there's a dialogue going on
there, too.
We can have a dialogue with the enemy
in that stream of consciousness and we can
come into alignment and believe things about ourselves
that are not true.
That are not true at all.
But we align ourselves with those thoughts.
We align ourselves with those messages from within
and from without.
This is the unseen warfare.
Or we can align ourselves with the mind
of Christ, the word implanted, a mind immersed
in the scriptures.
It's really all of the scriptures is the
prayer book of the Bible, not just the
Psalms.
But use all of the scriptures as the
prayer book that it's just right there.
It's just open it up and begin to
go.
Oh, wow.
And just pray it into your heart.
By word, I have hidden my heart that
I might not sin against thee.
Because we are sons and daughters, because we're
his children.
God has sent forth the spirit of his
son into our hearts, praying.
Crying.
The father.
This eternal cry.
And that's what that is.
That's an eternal cry.
Never ceases to draw us into the father's
eternal embrace.
You see, we have this deposit in us
that pushes us towards the love of the
father.
We have this deposit in us.
If we would only hear that primal, oh,
that eternal cry of a father, we would
affirm our adoption each time we hear we
are sons.
We are daughters of God.
We must know this to be giving time
in prayer.
And so the mindset on the spirit, Paul
says in Romans eight, is life and peace.
You need more life.
You need more peace.
The mindset on the spirit.
And the beginning of that is other father,
the spirit, what the spirit is saying of
a father.
Before the first Pentecost, the coming of the
spirit, the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, teach us
to pray.
Teach us to pray.
Many years later, Paul would write, we don't
know how to pray.
You feel like that?
Yeah.
And we've perhaps heard a lot of sermons
on prayer.
We've probably done a lot of prayer.
I know you have.
I know many of you.
And yet we can relate with that basic
word.
We don't know how to pray.
It's something that we never fully master, right?
Because it's relationship.
It's not something that we learn a bunch
of propositions and then we memorize that and
then we can take the exam and make
a hundred.
Therefore, we know how to pray.
Jesus didn't give them a seminar on how
to pray.
He answered that question by pray like this.
Pray like I do.
But yeah, it's this is how to do
it.
It's not reading a book on it, even
though that can be helpful.
But you have to do it.
You can read a book on swimming, but
you have to get wet, right?
Let's get wet.
Yeah, it's good.
That's where the fun is.
Splashing in the water.
Yeah, we don't know how to pray, but
here it is.
The spirit intercedes in here with groanings too
deep for words.
So in a sense, we don't need to
know how to pray.
Because the spirit is groaning too deep for
words.
Now, we need to know the basics of
prayer and how to pray in the name
of Jesus Christ and in the name of
the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.
But it comes in doing.
It comes in connecting.
It comes in relating.
It comes in giving time.
That's what it comes in.
And many, many, many years later, someone would
ask the Trappist monk Thomas Merton how to
improve their prayer life.
And Merton replied with three words.
Take the time.
That's it.
And you can imagine that person just waiting
on the pearls to come forth in the
presence of the master, and he just says,
take the time.
That's so powerful because how relevant that is.
Take the time.
What?
I don't have time.
Take the time because we live in a
nanosecond culture of boredom.
We're so easily bored now and we're never
satisfied.
Never, never.
I mean, it just keeps we just keep
going down and deeper and deeper into boredom
because everything's excessive and it doesn't fill that
hole that doesn't find that rest in him.
We must take the time or the time
will take us.
One of today's scriptures acts to the coming
of the spirit.
You see the difference the Holy Spirit makes
when the spirit lands and just rocks Jerusalem
for the first time.
You had thousands of people in from all
over the place.
And after they received the Holy Spirit and
were baptized and they heard this amazing apostolic
preaching from Peter, it said the result is
that they devoted themselves.
They devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching to
the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and
the prayers, plural, the liturgical prayers, the hours
of prayer that you will find them still
keeping throughout the book of Acts.
Peter and John were on their way to
the hour of prayer.
Right.
It will use phrases like that that will
let you know or it'll use specific times
like it was nine o'clock in the
morning or it was three o'clock in
the afternoon.
And that's when that hour of prayer where
the whole Jewish community would stop and just
begin to pray.
They kept it going.
And then day by day, attending the temple
together and breaking bread in their homes, they
receive their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the
people.
And the Lord added to their number day
by day.
Those who were being say see mission is
connected to the life of the church.
They valued community, they valued being catechized, they
valued the Eucharist and they valued the prayers.
And it was day by day and hallelujah.
You know, six days a week we gather
now day by day.
I mean, I never think I'd be in
a church where we could say day by
day.
But we're doing it seven o'clock in
the morning.
We're doing morning prayer and then taking the
Eucharist and then hanging out and having amazing,
crazy conversations, sometimes theological and sometimes crazy.
Yeah, it's fun.
Unplanned conversations.
And sometimes it's gone for an hour or
two for those who can hang out, but
you can come and go at your leisure
and you can come and go according to
your work schedule.
But it's day by day.
Know this, that good things are coming from
those gatherings.
Amen.
And that speaks of the corporate nature of
our life in Christ, of our life in
prayer.
This is all corporate stuff that we're looking
at in that passage of Acts in morning
prayer.
That's that's never to take the place of
personal prayer.
Right.
Just because I went to morning prayer for
30 minutes, you're going to need more than
that.
Alone with God.
Where that love relationship begins to develop and
you don't need liturgy, you need the word,
you need the Psalms, you need.
Oh, God, pray Psalm 27.
If you don't know how to pray, pray
through the Psalms and say, God, let this
be my voice today.
This is the way I feel.
Right.
That's what it's there for.
And so we're aware that we pray liturgically.
The whole liturgy is corporate prayer, though.
This is corporate prayer.
This doesn't take the place of my alone
time, Jesus.
This is corporate adoration.
And it is so important because some people
don't do this and they only have alone
time, you know, trying to hold fast to
the head, but not holding fast to the
body.
So it takes both.
It takes both soaking in the scriptures, prayers
of the people, repentance, thanksgiving in the Eucharist,
the sending equals the Sunday celebration of the
cross, resurrection and return of Christ.
Let me make mention of Dylan, who is
helping his father move today.
His father's moving up to Pittsburgh to carry
on with an Anglican seminary experience that he's
been doing online.
He's actually moving to the campus.
He's going to finish up Dylan's father.
Isn't that great?
It's really beautiful.
And so they're moving from Texas up to
Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
But just let me mention Dylan's name is
one who is overseeing morning prayer and making
that all happen.
And then Dylan has a group of leaders
who take a day each.
And it's just a beautiful thing.
It's a beautiful thing.
And then there's personal prayer, which I've spoke
of, and this is what Jesus is trying
to get at in Matthew six, six.
When you pray, go into your room and
shut the door and pray to your father
who is in secret.
There it is.
And your father who sees in secret will
reward you.
You see, the closet enriches the corporate gathering.
The more time we spend in the closet,
the richer our corporate gatherings will be.
Yeah, because we'll come with the glory, the
glow, the sense of having been touched by
the Lord and going deeper and being rooted
and grounded in him.
And that has an effect on all of
us.
Your spiritual growth has an impact on all
the rest.
Yeah, we are connected in the spirit.
And so your spiritual growth is an encouragement
to all the rest.
Amen.
Very good.
And we need to recognize that because we
don't know if we're growing or not.
It's not for us to recognize that we
can't really.
We need others to say, man, when you
said that or when you prayed that or
when you did this.
That's so blessed to affirm the other in
what you see in them, because that's an
outgrowth of their relationship with God.
Right.
And you see people taking risks to say
something that's encouraging.
Affirm it, because it's hard sometimes just to
be positive in such a negative culture.
And it's not being positive.
It's speaking truth.
There's a difference.
OK, note the relationship of prayer to mission
in today's reading in Colossians four continues steadfastly
in prayer.
Be watchful.
Be watchful in it with Thanksgiving.
Probably.
I don't know.
He could be referring to it.
Be watchful and take the Eucharist.
It's the same word.
I don't know, but that's what we did.
And at the same time, pray also for
us.
Here's a here's an intercessor intercessory prayer request.
Pray also for us that God may open
to us a door for the word to
declare the mystery of Christ, on account of
which I am in prison, that I may
make it clear, which is how I ought
to speak.
So if you want to know how to
pray for Father Michael, there it is.
Just pull that out and pray that over
me.
Yeah, that I may make it clear.
See, because you will benefit from walking wisdom
towards outsiders.
See, see the juxtaposition there of prayer and
pray for me and outsiders making the best
use of your time.
It has to be saturated your time with
outsiders.
Your time in the world has to be
saturated in prayer.
Let your speech always be gracious.
Oh, mercy.
You have to spend time in prayer to
do that.
Right.
I mean, you just find it so normal
and natural to be gracious with your speech,
right?
All the time.
No, this drives us back to the source
of life where we can spill out on
other people because we've spent time with the
one who wants to spill out over the
whole earth.
The glory of the Lord covering the earth
as the waters cover the sea.
Amen.
In the days of his flesh, in Hebrews
five, seven, it says of Jesus, he offered
up prayers and supplications with loud cries and
tears.
That means I know he wasn't an Anglican.
Sorry, Anglicanism came after this and we're getting
ready to go back to that.
Right.
We need to go back to this.
Anglicans need to read this.
Right.
No, I need to read this in the
days of his flesh.
Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud
cries and tears to him who was able
to save him from death.
And he was heard because of his reverence
of mission.
Amen.
And so we have this precious spiritual mother
in our church.
Her name is Anne Smart.
She had a beautiful blurb this week in
our MailChimp mail out.
And I just want to draw your attention
to that.
But this is kind.
This is a part of her heart.
This this prayers and supplications for all of
you with loud cries and tears.
I've seen her do this.
Well, I've seen the tears, but I know
you cry loudly when I'm not around.
But I've seen the tears, seen the tears.
No, really.
And and so and what is intercession anyway?
It's standing in the gap on behalf of
others.
It's standing in the gap.
It's minding the gap.
Right.
Standing in the gap on behalf of others.
And Anne has a confidential intercessory prayer team.
If you don't know about this, where if
you are going through anything, really, you can
call her and you can let her know
or you can fill out a card in
the back.
There's intercessory prayer request cards.
You can tear off that that contact me
in the back of your bulletin and write
it down.
It will get to us.
We we loaded her up.
We loaded up the team this week, man,
with so many things.
It was beautiful.
And then there's ministry team prayer that we
do here during the Eucharist, and that's I
would say ministry team prayer.
I mean, one way you could say that
is listening on behalf of others, whereas intercession
is standing in the gap on behalf of
others.
Ministry team prayer over here is listening prayer,
listening to the person's request and then listening
to the spirit, how to pray for that
request, listening prayer on behalf of others.
It's limited in scope because of the setting
and time that Sherry Bertram oversees that ministry,
Sherry and Ted.
She has a team of people, as you
know, that every week are assigned to pray
over here.
And that's that's a part of our pastoral
care to you in this space at this
time.
It doesn't cover everything and it doesn't try
to.
It covers in the moment.
This is what I need prayer for.
That's ministry team prayer.
And then Sherry Bertram also has a team
of people who does private forms of healing
prayer, such as soul healing or inner healing
or just I just need some counsel in
the presence of the Lord.
And then lastly, what I would call Antioch
missional prayer, Antioch missional prayer.
And that's the way this church was planted.
That would be Acts 13.
The church at Antioch had prophets and teachers
and a list of a bunch of them.
They're all from all over the place and
they were all together and they were ministering
to the Lord with prayer and fasting.
And the Holy Spirit said, oh, this group
of people in Antioch actually came together expecting
God to speak to them and guide them
and lead them.
Go figure.
Right.
And this is the way this church was
planted.
It began with four people and then it
began with then, you know, we probably had
eight and then we we grew to 12
core people in our house and then we
moved out of our house and went over
to Bell Street for a little over a
year and grew to 40 there and then
came here.
And here we are.
But it began in a prayer meeting.
This church began in a prayer meeting intentionally
so.
And so as long as I'm the rector,
here's the deal.
You can start anything virtually that's under the
realm of Christianity.
Right.
But it has to begin in prayer.
It has to be birthed in prayer.
Otherwise, you can say, oh, you know, I
can start this ministry and I've done this
for years and years and years and I
can handle it.
Right.
And so it has to be birthed in
prayer.
It has to be empowered by the Holy
Spirit.
And we have to learn how to get
out of the way so that the Lord
can have his way.
Right.
And so the Holy Spirit said in that
setting, separate for me Barnabas and Saul for
the work that I've called them to.
And so the whole missionary thrust and the
birth of the New Testament, as we know
it, with all of the Pauline corpus, it
was birthed out of that prayer meeting.
It was birthed out like separate.
Now is time for Paul and Silas to
get out of here and go.
Yeah.
And so they went out on mission and
they went out on mission, planted churches, came
back, reported, went out on mission again and
broke open Europe.
Right.
Going into Philippi.
Where did that start?
In a little bitty prayer meeting.
Don't despise the day of small beginnings.
It's not about size.
It's not about any of this.
It's not about jumbotrons behind me.
You know, those are icons, by the way,
they're just electronic.
And now we have a group in the
northeast doing the same thing.
There's a prayer meeting starting up there and
they've been eating together and getting to know
each other.
And they're still in that prayer phase.
But now they're beginning to go and they're
going to start doing some community service in
various places, getting their feet on the ground
and getting a sense of Holy Spirit.
What you want us to do to be
a missional community.
Right.
Not just a prayer meeting now, but a
missional community where prayer and mission go together.
So now bathed in prayer, bathed in relationship
and bathed with Tuesday night tacos.
That's what it is.
Amen.
Get bathed in Tuesday night tacos.
We will begin to go out and explore.
We're just exploring and we'll see.
So pray for us that the Lord will
just lead us into that new phase of
having divine appointments and meeting people that are
amazing and want to, you know, it just
comes together because we don't know what we're
doing.
Right.
That's good.
Now, I can come up with a plan
and tell everybody what we're doing, but I've
done that a long time ago.
OK, and so this is an adventure that
we're on.
Right.
I love that word advent.
Sure.
All right.
And so we need to learn how to
just take the time.
That's all it takes.
Take the time.
You've never asked for prayer during ministry time.
Do so.
Say, I don't know how to do that.
Well, that's the way to learn how to
pray over others is being prayed for.
We wouldn't release people praying for you unless
they've already gone through the grind of being
prayed for.
That's a part of the training.
So be prayed for, especially if you see
yourself being a pastoral care prayer person.
Go over there and say, pray for me.
This is what I'm struggling with or this
is what I need.
Talk to Sherry.
Talk to Ted about that.
It's a beautiful thing.
Check out morning prayer.
One of those five days a week, if
you're able.
I understand not everyone is able to do
that.
So that's that's totally cool.
But if you are, you know, check out
morning prayer.
Talk with Ted and Sherry about the nurture
of healing prayer.
Like if you need extended prayer, soul healing,
if you need if you can just give
two hours to be loved on and listening
to God.
It would be a beautiful thing.
And then if you need assistance in your
private closet prayer, talk to us.
We have spiritual directors in this church.
We have people who can really help you
train spiritual directors.
But above all, what?
Take the time above all of this.
Take the time.
Why?
Because Jesus said now is the time to
worship the father in spirit and in truth.
Take the time because now is the time
to worship.
As long as you have breath, pray and
let that breath be prayer.
Because that breath, you can turn that breath
into prayer because that breath is a gift
from God.
Breathe it in and breathe it out.
And every time you breathe, thank God for
that breath.
That's prayer.
Every time you breathe, thank you, God, for
another day.
Every time you get up, say in the
name of the father and the son and
the Holy Spirit.
Where is the adventure today?
Right.
Where do you want to show up in
my life?
Empower my life because I'm pretty weak.
Right.
Yeah.
Empower my life because I'm pretty lame.
Empower my life because I'm not that smart.
Empower my life, even though I hate my
job that I'm going to.
All these things that we can like get
up and be just so like, oh, God,
another day I have to do this again.
Oh, man, just put on the mind of
Christ.
I know it's a grind.
It's hard.
Sometimes we find ourselves in seasons that we
want to get out of.
And you know what hastens that season is
to surrender to the season.
I mean, I'm speaking from experience.
And so no more grumbling, no more complaining
about the season you're in.
Right.
Unless you want to stay there.
I mean, that's just the way God does
it.
Right.
Because the season you're in is the part
of the training and catechesis that the spirit
is taking you through so that in your
relationship with him, you can learn to give
thanks in everything.
I don't thank God for everything.
I thank God in everything.
We don't have to thank him for disasters
in our lives.
We shouldn't.
That would be that would be a misunderstanding.
But we can thank him in those things.
Right.
Lord, help us surrender to you in this
beautiful relationship that you share with us between
the father and the son and the Holy
Spirit.
We pray that we would come into alignment
with the unity that's in the Holy Trinity
and that we would learn to love.
We would learn to love through our prayers.
We would learn to intercede.
We would learn to pray for the healing
of others and minister to others and prophesy
over others and bless others.
Having spent time with you.
Pour out upon us, Lord, in the name
of the father and the son.