J.K. Johnson tells a tale about a small town that had
historically been "dry," but then a local businessman decided to
build a tavern. A group of Christians from a local church were concerned and
planned an all-night prayer meeting to ask God to intervene. It just so
happened that shortly thereafter lightning struck the bar and it burned to the
ground. The owner of the bar sued the church, claiming that the prayers of the
congregation were responsible, but the church hired a lawyer to argue in court
that they were not responsible. The presiding judge, after his initial review
of the case, stated that "no matter how this case comes out, one thing is
clear. The tavern owner believes in prayer and the Christians do not."
Ouch. Oh yes, we all struggle with prayer, don’t we? We
struggle with prayer. We have a hard time carrying on a meaningful conversation
with a God we can’t see. Do you ever feel like when you’re praying, like maybe
you’re crazy? You know? If God isn’t really there, you’re just talking to
yourself. You’re schizophrenic. Right? You have to have some strong faith to
talk to a God that you can’t experience with any of the five senses.
But at the same time, you have to pray to increase your
faith. It’s one of those catch-22 things. It’s hard to increase your faith
without prayer, but it’s hard to pray if you have weak faith. Over the next
three weeks, I want to focus on increasing your faith and increasing your
prayer life. We’re going to be talking about prayer, starting today with “What
is prayer,” not “what to pray” like your bulletin says. That’s a typo, and I
can’t blame it on the secretary this week, because I made the bulletin. Today
we’re going to talk about what is prayer.
Now, if I were to ask you what prayer is, what would
you say? What would you say prayer is? I suspect many of you would say that
prayer is talking to God, right? Or maybe conversation with God? Something
along those lines. Those are good answers, but I want to give you a bit of a
different definition of prayer today. The definition of prayer that I want to
work with today and over the next couple of weeks is this: prayer is practicing
the presence of God. I’ll say it again: prayer is practicing the presence of
God. It’s more than just talking to God. It’s more than just conversation with
God. It is practicing the presence of God. A couple of things you might notice
about that definition. First, God is present. In other words, prayer is not a
long distance phone call. In prayer, God is here and God is present. It’s not
up in the clouds somewhere straining to hear what you are saying. God is
present.
The second thing you might notice about that
definition: prayer practicing the presence of God, is the activeness of it.
It’s not something we passively do. We PRACTICE the presence of God. It
involves action on our part. And what we are going to talk about today is what
that action looks like. We are going to talk about what it truly means to
practice the presence of God. And I believe that the scripture that was read
for us today clearly shows the three main principles for practicing the
presence of God.
If you look back on James chapter 4, we see three main
things that the writer tells us we should do as Christians to practice the
presence of God. The first thing we find is in verse 7: Resist the devil, and
he will flee from you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Now I don’t
know about the rest of you, but when it comes to my prayer time, I have a lot
of temptation come my way. And I think the reason for that is that the last
thing that Satan wants is for us to practice the presence of God. For me, my
prayer time temptation comes in the form of distraction. Does anyone else
experience this? You start praying, and your mind wanders. “Dear God, I just
want to thank you for everything. You’ve been so good to me. You’ve given me
food to eat. I thank you for the wonderful meal that I had today. The steak was
especially good. Which reminds me, I’m out of steak sauce, I’d better go write
it on the grocery list. I can’t believe Holly took the last of it without even
asking if I wanted any. Oh…wait…where was I…uh…amen.” Gee whiz, what a
heartfelt prayer. I feel so uplifted now.
We get distracted. We lose focus. We’re praying and a
song we like comes on the radio, and the next thing we know, we’ve stopped
praying and started singing along. Now maybe the rest of you are more
disciplined than I am, but I get distracted really easy when I’m praying. So
what do you do? You resist the devil and he will flee from you.
See, I know my weaknesses. I know that I get easily
distracted when I pray, so I’ve got to make sure that there will be no
distractions. I lock the door to my office. I turn off the phone and the radio.
Shut down the computer. Sometimes I even make a list before I start of the
things I want to pray about, and I check them off as I go. There’s nothing
unspiritual about that. It’s good common sense, and it’s a tool I can use to
keep from being distracted, and therefore resist the devil.
So that’s the first thing you must do to practice the
presence of God: resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The second thing
that James tells us we must do in chapter 4 is found in verse 10: humble yourself
before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Humble yourself.
Anybody have trouble being humble when you pray? I
think we do sometimes. We go to God with our agenda and we say, alright God,
here’s how it’s gonna be. Listen up. We talk to God when we feel like it. We
talk to God on our terms. God, I’m not praying right now, I’m too busy to talk
to you. If you’ll have a seat in the waiting room, I’ll get to you as soon as
I’m available. And then when we finally decide we are ready to talk to God, we
demand a response instantly. And we get all upset if he says that we’ll have to
just wait for an answer to our prayers. It’s like we say to God, “Don’t you
realize who you are talking to? Don’t you know who I am? My Bible says that you
will answer the prayers of the righteous, and I’m righteous, so give me an
answer NOW!”
Now we may not actually talk that way, but we feel that
way sometimes, don’t we? And our prayers are sometimes just full of arrogance. Questioning
God’s method of running the universe, asking for stuff he has neglected to give
us, and generally a complete lack of repentance for anything we have done
wrong. “God, I can’t believe Jim is spreading those nasty things around about
me. Like I’m a bad person! I didn’t mean to back into his Corvette! He
shouldn’t have parked so close. He’s just mean, and if he thinks he’s getting
an apology from me, he’s got another thing coming. Take care of him for me,
will ya? Amen.”
James tells us that when we are praying, practicing the
presence of God, we must humble ourselves. Look, folks, we’re talking to the
creator of the universe here. And not some long distance call to him, but we
are in his presence. So just as you would bow to a king, you have to humble
yourself before God when you come to him in prayer. Do you know why we bow our
heads in prayer? It’s not just tradition. It’s an act of humility. We are
essentially bowing before God. And that’s the way it should be. We should be
paying respect and honor to this God, this creator of the universe, who allows
us into his presence to boldly approach his throne.
I want you to imagine for a moment that you want to
have a conversation with George W. Bush. Mr. President. How would you go about
that conversation. Would you give him a call and say, “Alright, George, I’ll
let you know when I’m ready for you to come over. Uh, bring your checkbook,
because I’ve got some stuff I’m going to need you to get for me.” No way!
Should you get the privilege to talk with the president of the
So why isn’t it the same with God? It should be, and
more so. We should say, God when you want me to talk to you, I will. I’ll meet
with you when you want me to. I’ll clear my schedule and you will be my
priority. I’ll cancel my meeting with George W. He’ll understand. You are my
priority. And God, should I ask you of anything, it will be with the most humility
and respect and honor, because you deserve it more than any other, and any gift
you give me I will be so thankful for. In fact, I thank you just for the honor
of allowing me in your presence. That’s humility.
So first we resist the devil, second we humble
ourselves before God, and finally, we are told in verse 8 that we are to draw
near to God, and he will draw near to you. Draw near to God. We remove
temptation, we humble ourselves, and we can then draw near to God. If we have
done the first two steps, then we can do the third step with confidence,
knowing that God will draw near to us when we draw near to him if we have
resisted temptation and have humbled ourselves before him.
Isn’t that an awesome thought? It’s like, God is the
mightiest ruler who has ever been or ever will be, but he also loves us as if
we are his children. Isn’t that wild? You go into his presence with reverence
and awe, and he brings you close to him, and he holds you, and he says, my
child, what’s on your mind?
But we so often take that for granted, that we have a
God who promises to draw near to us. He’s not some lofty, on-high God who is
inaccessible. He is a God who dwells with his people. He’s a God who comes down
off his throne in the form of a man and gets down in the trenches with the
people he has created and loved.
You know, there’s one part of the Easter story that I
think a lot of us miss or just don’t understand. In the gospels it tells us
that when Christ was crucified, the curtain in the temple was torn in two. The
curtain used to separate the people from where the presence of God was in the
temple, in a place called the holy of holies. But when Christ was crucified,
God tore that curtain. What does that mean? It means that there was no longer
any separation from the presence of God. God is now accessible to all through
his son Jesus. You don’t have to be a priest or a pastor or some holy person to
talk to God. You just have to want to.
So James tells us to draw near to God, and he will draw
near to you. How do we draw near to God? Well, after you have resisted
temptation, and you have humbled yourself, you do what it takes to concentrate
and set your mind on God. Maybe you read a scripture. Maybe you come to this
sanctuary when its empty and quiet. Maybe you sing a song of praise. Maybe you
talk a walk in his beautiful creation. Or maybe, you are just silent for a
moment, and you think on the wonderful mercies of God. The blessings he has
given to you. And you just invite him into your presence, ready to give him your
undivided attention.
This is what prayer looks like, folks. Practicing the
presence of God. Resist the devil, humble yourself before God, and draw near to
God. And we have got to start doing this more. We have got to practice the
presence of God individually, practice the presence of God as a family, and as
a church. Because without prayer, without practicing the presence of God, what
are we? We’re just another club, another activity to fill your already busy
schedule. There’s a reason to want to be in a place like this. It’s because we
want to be surrounded by people who practice the presence of God and by the
presence of God himself. We desire to be closer to God. We can do that through
prayer.
There is another way to draw close to God and his
presence, and that is through a tradition that began 2000 years ago in an upper
room, where on the night before his death…
Van Buren United
Pastor Dan Metzger