Being Holy (1 Peter 1.3-25)

Introduction

I have with me here a jigsaw puzzle of 1000 pieces. I completed it a few years ago though I’m not a great jigsaw enthusiast. It’s of the history of this country from the Stone Age to the present day and I did the puzzle because I was useless at history at school and I thought this might be a good way to learn it.

I completed the puzzle as far as I could without looking at the image on the box. Well, I finished it and I now know a little bit more about British history than I did. 

If you often do puzzles, you’ll know what it feels like when you tip the pieces out of the box onto the table. Hundreds of assorted shapes with different colours – your heart sinks. If you haven’t studied the completed picture on the lid of the box, it’s impossible to imagine what the individual pieces will look like when they’re assembled but you might guess the basic theme just by looking at the jumbled pieces.

Bits and Pieces of Jesus

The pieces on the table are similar to the picture the Old Testament prophets had of Jesus when they spoke about the Messiah. The letter to the Hebrews says “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

Like a jigsaw, it was in bits and pieces at the start but as the picture slowly emerges when you join the pieces together, with Jesus we see perfectly clearly what God is like.

Our reading this morning speaks about this: “the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, [who] searched intently and with the greatest care, [tried] to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.” 

The prophets saw dozens of glimpses of Jesus. One said he would be conceived by a virgin. Another said that he would be born in Bethlehem. Another said he would be in David’s line. Another said he would speak in parables. Another said he would have his hands and feet pierced. Another said he be buried in a rich man’s tomb. Still another said he would rise again from death.

Peter Stoner, former Professor of Mathematics at Pasadena City College, did some sums and calculated that the probability of just 8 such predictions being fulfilled in one person is one chance in one hundred million billion (which is many times more than the total number of people who’ve ever lived). 

But only when all these prophecies come together do we see the full picture. And when we hold the box lid of Jesus’ life against it we see a perfect match.

Set Apart

When you step back and look at the completed picture, you see one like no one else.

He only had to say “Follow me” and fishermen dropped their nets at once.

People would travel for miles and press into crowded buildings to get anywhere near him.

Yet he would stop everything to give his undivided attention to one poor soul.

No one in all history has a personality anything like his. As John Stott said “It would be hopelessly incongruous to refer to him as ‘Jesus the Great,’ comparable to Alexander the Great, Charles the Great, or Napoleon the Great. Jesus is not ‘the Great,’ he is the Only. He has no peers, no rivals and no successors.”

Jesus stands head and shoulders above the rest. He is set apart from the crowd. And that is what the word “holy” means; different, set apart from the rest.

Some people don’t like the word “holy.” We sometimes associate it with weirdness. Religious oddballs are called “Holy Joes” People who look down their noses are called “holier than thou.”

But Jesus wasn’t sanctimonious. He was just unlike anyone who ever breathed before or since.

Today’s theme is “being holy” and this is what it means; to be like Jesus, to be set apart. When we live holy lives like Jesus people will see him in us. That’s why the letter to the Hebrews says “Without holiness no one will see the Lord.”

There’s a subtle temptation most Christians face from time to time – to want to fit in, to prove that we’re just like everyone else. But we’re not. Verse 15 of our passage says: “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

The former slave trader turned preacher John Newton once said to the hymn writer William Cowper “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But, thank God, I am not what I used to be.”

How do you get on the path of holiness? You do what John Newton did. Firstly, he gave up running his life and turned to Christ in faith. He wrote about his conversion to Christ in the hymn “Amazing Grace” that we still sing today. Secondly, he repented of his former life - he stopped working in the slave trade and he did all he could to abolish it. He committed his life to becoming more like Jesus.

Our passage talks about some of the ways we live holy lives. These are the things that God expects of you and me. I’m just going to finish very quickly with four of them.

First, it talks in v13 about “minds that are alert and fully sober.” Think straight. Don’t get intoxicated with latest ideas and crazes. Our mass media relentlessly and subtly promotes godless standards and values. Holy people don’t get sucked into that. Holy people think differently.

Secondly, in v14 it talks about obedience. “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” It’s saying don’t make the same mistakes you once did when you had no thought of God or relationship with Christ.

Thirdly, in v17 it says “live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.” Fear God. That doesn’t mean you live constantly in dread of going to hell. Quite the reverse; Jesus delivers us from that. It means something else altogether. Think about how you’d feel if you upset someone you care for deeply. It is a healthy thing to fear hurting someone you love. That’s what it means to fear God. And if you really fear God, you’ll never fear anything else.

Fourthly, in v18-19 it says “Be grateful.” Having an attitude of gratitude moves your focus away from what you lack onto the abundance you already have. Psychological research shows that gratitude is good for you. And look what we have to be thankful for; “you were redeemed from your empty way of life.” Look at the price tag; “not with… silver or gold (money gets devalued with every economic crisis) … but with the precious blood of Christ.”

Conclusion

As I close, I want to do an experiment. This is something I came across this week. 

Close your eyes and imagine with me that you have a lemon in your hand. Feel how cold it is since you just took it out of the refrigerator. Feel the shape of it. Now take a knife and cut the lemon into quarters. Careful! Don’t cut yourself. Look at the juice run down over the sides on to your fingers. 

Now, put three of the quarters down and just hold one quarter of the lemon. Now, look at it. Lean down and smell it. Get a good, full sense of the lemon fresh scent of it. OK, now take a big bite out of this freshly cut, tart, yellow lemon. Imagine that lemon juice on your lips, your tongue and your gums. You just bit into this very bitter, juicy lemon.

Right, who feels like they have more saliva in their mouth than they did a minute a go? How can that be? It was only pretend! The reason is because you always react to what your mind thinks about.

So as we fill our minds and soul with the full and glorious picture of Jesus – the most attractive personality, the most compelling individual, the most inspirational figure in human history, let’s be grateful that we have had the privilege of meeting him and let’s commit ourselves afresh to be like him, living holy lives.

Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 9th February 2014

Raised with Christ (1 Corinthians 15.51-57)

In Memory of Doris Ward (3rd May 1915 - 16th December 2013)

The lead singer of the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, now aged 70, was interviewed on a TV chat show a few years ago and was talking about how he keeps going as a youthful rocker. Jagger described the prominent creases on his face as “laugh lines.” The interviewer just smiled and said, “Oh come on, nothing’s that funny”!

The truth is our bodies are getting older, tireder, greyer, wrinklier, achier and for some of us balder every day. Warning, this talk is intended to depress everyone!

Or maybe not, because even if we are all getting older on the outside, the Bible says that those who receive the grace of God are actually getting younger - on the inside. The Bible says “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

Christians are a new creation; new men, new women. In Christ, you get younger every day. Isn’t that good news?

These days, most people have - at best - only a sketchy idea of what the Bible says about life after death. Ask someone on the street what they think about life after death and you’ll probably get one of three answers.

Some will say, a bit like the Corinthians our reading was addressed to, that our disembodied souls kind of float around for eternity. That comes from Greek philosophy. It’s Plato - and is not what the Bible teaches at all.

Secondly, some will say that we reappear in a different form at some future point on this earth. Reincarnation in other words. That’s Hindu or New-Age thinking and is not what the Bible teaches either.

Thirdly, others will say that there is absolutely nothing at all after death. Atheists believe that when you die, that’s it. For the committed sceptic it is silly to engrave the words “Rest in peace” on headstones. Dead people do not rest, they say. Bodies decompose and that’s all there is to say.

But the Christian vision of what happens to us after death is different to all these tree beliefs. And our reading is one of the places in the Bible where the Christian view is explained.

It says “The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”

Our fragile bodies eventually go downhill, die, then decay. Our personality, the real me, the real you, our thoughts, our beliefs stay very much alive. Doris is conscious at this very moment and but is without a body and she is enjoying God’s presence in heaven. One day, when the Lord returns, she will rise with a new, immortal body that will never grow old or tired. In the age to come, all the indignities of our present bodies will be history; the dishonour of our aged, wrinkly frames will be replaced, with something quite glorious.

We have a few illustrations from nature to teach us about these eternal realities. Let me share two of them with you.

The first is the seed and the plant. The genetic make-up of an acorn, its DNA, is identical to the oak tree it becomes. The tree is unrecognisable from the seed it grows from, which may be hundreds of times smaller, and completely different in shape. In the same way, the Bible says that we will be transformed beyond anything we could imagine, completely different. And yet, it’s totally the same thing. The acorn falls into the ground and dies only to become something more glorious. As our reading says, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

Jesus, after he was raised, was the same Jesus - but different. People knew it was him and yet, curiously, there was something about him, so that people hesitated to go near him and, in fact, didn’t always recognise him at first.

Which brings me to the second illustration from nature; the caterpillar and the butterfly. At just the right time in its life, the caterpillar goes grey and hangs upside down on a branch and weaves a cocoon. It looks like it is creating its own coffin. But inside, it is undergoing transformation. It uses the same atoms it had as a caterpillar, rearranges them, recycles them, in order to emerge, rise, if you like, as a majestic butterfly, no longer crawling but flying! Its environment is no longer limited to the earth. It can now travel in the heavens.

The same is true of us when we die. Our bodies will be recreated, using the same raw materials, but this time equipped to exist on a different level.

I look forward to meeting up with Doris again one day. We’ll both have new bodies with no aches and pains. We’ll be different but certainly recognisable.

If the resurrection is just a fairy story, Jesus’ bones are lying in a tomb somewhere in the Middle East, our faith is futile, Christianity is untrue and Doris Ward wasted a large part of her life believing a lie.

But no. Her work in the Lord’s service, her praying, her encouragement of fellow believers, her stand against evil, her love for others, her giving, the faith she shared, were not in vain.

While her soul rejoices in the glorious presence of God in heaven, he is preparing for her a body able to enjoy him forever in the eternity to come.

It’s common to become overly preoccupied with our health, particularly as we grow older. Doris certainly had no fear of death. In fact, she was ready to go and rather wished it could have been sooner.

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus opened heaven’s doors for all who repent of their sins and turn to him in faith. Because of Christ, we don’t need to fear death any longer. He has decisively nullified the sting of death.

When we know Christ, we know that one day we will be with Him forever and that makes all the difference.

Thank God for Jesus’ promise: “Because I live,” he said, “you also will live.” 

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 8th February 2014

Pray Earnestly (2 Kings 19.9-19)

Introduction

I am told that some years ago, there was a series of posters in London, advertising the Tube network and featuring famous characters from British history. One poster had Henry VIII on it, with the caption, “A day return for the Tower of London please.” And someone had got a marker pen and scribbled underneath one of the posters with the words, “Oh, and just a single for the wife!”

* In fact, the anecdote is not quite true as I discovered after giving this talk - and as this picture shows. Transport for London came up with the whole caption, not a cheeky graffiti artist.

Of course we all know about the six wives of Henry VIII from school. But I suspect that most of us feel a bit lost when it comes to history and, if we’re honest, biblical history is even sketchier for some of us. So I’m going to spend a few minutes explaining the background to the story we had read from 2 Kings. I’ll try to be brief.

Background

We’re in the 7th Century BC and the dominant world power at that time is Assyria, to the north east of Israel and Syria is a mighty military machine at that time; they terrorise neighbouring nations and sweep all before them.

They were not only formidable; they were famous for their cruelty and gratuitous violence. They were absolutely ruthless towards anyone who dared step out of line.

You can go to the British Museum today and see the most edifying engravings of Assyrian soldiers flaying alive their conquered enemies, impaling anyone who refused to pay them tribute and throwing in boiling oil anyone who had the temerity to defy them. Women and children too - there were no exceptions. So they struck terror in the hearts of anyone who happened to be in their way.

The Assyrian Empire 7th Century BC

In 745 BC the extent of their empire is represented by the area marked in purple on the map – that’s a surface smaller than Scotland. In 722 BC, having expanded in all directions, they swept south through Syria and conquered it. They continued down through the northern kingdom of Israel (the area marked in yellow) and devastated it. 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel were obliterated, apart from 200,000 people who were deported from Samaria to Assyria in chains, never to see home again.

Ten years later, their king, Sennacherib, pushed further south into the southern kingdom of Judah (the area marked in brown) and he reduced 46 fortified cities to rubble. By this time their empire had grown to a size somewhat larger than the whole of the UK.

But Sennacherib decided not to take Jerusalem. He was keen to head further south into Egypt and invade that, giving him total supremacy of the entire Middle-East. What he did do though was demand a heavy tribute from Jerusalem – protection money – in return for leaving them alone. So King Hezekiah of Judah scraped together all the gold he could find, stripping the temple bare, and he paid Sennacherib his tribute.

But 30 miles south west of Jerusalem, as he laid siege to the heavily fortified city of Lachish, Sennacherib had a change of heart. He decided that he shouldn’t have let Jerusalem off so he made a U-turn and headed back north to attack Jerusalem too.

The Crisis

This is where our reading picks up the story. Sennacherib sends messengers on ahead. They ridicule the living God. They say that Hezekiah is deluded if he thinks his God is going to stand in the way of the irresistible force of the approaching Assyrian military just 15 miles away. “There’s not a single city, nation or deity that has been a match for us. How do you think that little Jerusalem will be the first?”

It must have been absolutely terrifying. But have you noticed how the devil uses the same basic narrative against God’s people today? “Look how feeble and ineffective you are! Nobody takes you seriously anymore. Do you think poor old God is going to help you? You’re finished.”

I was listening to a radio interview with the comedian Frank Skinner this week. He was doing a tour in Scandinavia with Eddie Izzard a few years ago and Izzard, who is a transvestite, was saying “I wonder if I mention it, if the audience will accept me.” And they both agreed that it would be no problem.

Frank Skinner then said that he is a practicing Catholic. And he said “I wonder if I mention it, if the audience will accept me?” And they both agreed that the audience would be far more accommodating of Izzard’s transvestism than they would of Skinner’s Catholicism.

Now, who am I to judge? Eddie Izzard does not profess to be a Christian as far as I know. But has it really come to this that people would think that it’s not OK for a man to follow Christ but that everything is perfectly normal if a man walks around in women’s underwear and high heels?

Just like Hezekiah, we can feel bewildered by the contempt that is poured on us for the sake of Christ. Maybe I’m just a bit oversensitive, but it does feel sometimes like Christians are constantly misrepresented, that the Bible is endlessly belittled and that the church is - at best - ignored in our culture.

This particular story is written down three times in the Bible; in 2 Chronicles, in Isaiah and here in 2 Kings. So it is very important.

In Isaiah’s version of this event, you find a comment from Hezekiah that isn’t recorded in either Kings or Chronicles. When he hears this news, as he is soon to be surrounded on every side, Hezekiah says, “I feel like a woman in labour who hasn’t got the strength to give birth.” I’m no expert but I bet that any midwife would tell you that that’s a most perilous situation for both mother and baby.

What does Hezekiah mean? He means “In this crisis, I just can’t express the inner faith I should have in God.” Do you ever feel like you’ve got faith inside you somewhere, but you just can’t bring it out? Fear can be quite paralysing. That’s where Hezekiah was, that’s where we are sometimes and the prayers we pray at times like that are earnest prayers.

Jesus prayed earnestly we’re told as he contemplated the horrific agonies that he would face in his imminent passion and death.

When you’re desperate, you pray like never before. What better time to pray to the God of the impossible than when things are completely without hope?

Isaiah had warned Hezekiah prophetically about Assyria before and he had ignored it. He probably felt guilty, that it was all his fault.

Do you ever say to yourself “if I had just lived in obedience to God’s word, I wouldn’t be in the mess I am now.” It’s a bit rich for me to go running off to God now and ask him to bail me out.”

But that’s exactly what Hezekiah does. And that’s what we can do as well. Listen, there is no sin so serious, no crime so heinous, no mistake so bad and no decision so stupid that God cannot sort it out, put it in the past and bring to birth something new.

In v14 Hezekiah spreads the letter from Sennacherib before the Lord. That’s not a bad idea. When you are anxious, bring your fears into God’s presence. When you get a bill you can’t pay spread it out before you as you come to God in prayer. When you’ve got a work schedule you feel overwhelmed by, hold it up before God – it’ll feel much smaller.

In v15 he extols God’s greatness and majesty. He speaks out that the Lord is above everything. He alone permits an empire to rise or fall. He determines the flow of history and the destiny of peoples. However fearsome and revered a king Sennacherib might be, the Lord is the King of kings and Lord of lords.

That’s a wonderful place to begin. If you’re going to pray effectively, it helps to get a big picture. This is what we mean when we say we magnify the Lord. We get perspective. We enlarge our vision of his greatness and might. When we pray, we come before the throne of heaven from whence all authority flows.

In v17-18 he presents the problem to God. He tells God what is happening as he sees it. He doesn’t dress it up in spiritual language; he talks to God about these Assyrians and how they have demolished everything in their path. Can I just encourage you, be real when you pray. Tell God how it is - in plain English.

In v19 he makes his appeal. And it’s quite telling what he prays for. Given the situation, we might expect him to pray “Deliver us from his hand so that we will all be safe.” Or “Deliver us from his hand so that we will know that you answer prayer.” But he asks this: “Deliver us from his hand so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone Lord, are God.”

This year when we commit ourselves to grow in prayer and pray specifically for growth, our prayer is not just that people will grow in faith and come to Christ. It’s not just that our community will be touched by God. It’s that everyone will know without a doubt how wonderful the Lord is.

Some years ago, Nicky Gumbel, the man behind the Alpha Course, got a telephone call from a man called James who asked to see him. They met and had lunch together. James had been an actor and was at that time a TV director. He had married a very beautiful woman called Anna. They had everything, in a way; success, fame, good looks, money, all they needed - except happiness. After three years of marriage, Anna suddenly left him. 

James said, “I don’t know how to forgive for what’s happened.” And Nicky explained to him that it’s very hard to forgive unless you know that you yourself have been forgiven. And so, after a bit more explanation, James said sorry to God for the past, turned from everything he knew was wrong in his life, thanked Jesus for dying for him and invited the Holy Spirit to come and live within him.

James began to experience a relationship with God. Almost immediately, what he wanted more than anything else was to be in contact again with Anna. The Holy Spirit was showing him that not only did he need to forgive Anna for leaving him, but he needed her forgiveness as well for the mistakes he had made in the marriage.

But by this stage she had met someone else, she had moved into another house, and was beginning proceedings for divorce. He could only contact her through her solicitor and she wouldn’t see him.

So, with James’ agreement, Nicky wrote to her on his behalf asking if he could meet her instead. James prayed earnestly that when Nicky wrote to her asking if she would come and meet him she would. And she did. Nicky and his wife Pippa spent some time talking with Anna and they asked her if she would see James just for half an hour, explaining that he was a different person now.

Anna said, “I’ll think about it.” Two days later, she wrote saying, “I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided that I don’t want to see him again. I want to press ahead with the divorce.” But - note this - James carried on praying earnestly. Friends kept praying too.  

As it happened, Billy Graham was doing a mission at Wembley and at that time. James had reached the point where he had said to God, “Lord, I would love this relationship to get back together. But I am more concerned about Anna, that she should come to know what it is to have a relationship with you.” 

So, he sent two tickets for her and the man that she was living with to go to hear Billy Graham. They returned the tickets, saying they couldn’t go. That would seem to be that.

Except that Billy Graham decided to stay on for one extra night so James thought, “I’ll have one last go.” He sent two tickets again. The next morning he got a phone call from Anna. She probably thought she was safe because at that stage the decree nisi had already gone through. She said, “I think I would like to come and hear Billy Graham. The man I live with can’t come, so can I go with you?”

So they went to Wembley and at the end of the talk, Billy Graham, as he usually does, invited people who wanted to give their lives to Christ to come forward. Anna got up out of her seat and went forward. The counsellor at the foot of the stage asked her if she had come with someone else. Anna said, “Yes, I have.” So the counsellor said, “Well, is the person that you’ve come with a Christian?” And she said, “Yes.” So the counsellor said, “Oh, great, well why don’t you go and get him?” And she said, “But it’s my husband.” So the counsellor said, “Well, that’s even better!”  But she said, “No, you don’t understand. I have not been with him for two and a half years!”

The following morning, James and Anna walked into church having spent the first night together in years. They had to go to court to get the decree nisi set aside and when they told their story to the judge, and how Jesus had saved their marriage, he was delighted! He’d never heard anything like it. The court usher was in tears. James and Anna went on to have children, become leaders in the church and as far as I know are still together.

But the thing is this: Nicky Gumbel, when he tells the story, says how he went back through his prayer diary reading dozens of prayers he wrote down that the relationship would be restored - and God answered every one. 

Ending

If you don’t know the end of the story of Hezekiah and Sennacherib I’ll sum it up quickly. But do read the rest when you get home.

Isaiah had prophesied that Jerusalem would be delivered without the Assyrians even firing a bow. How totally unlikely was that? But Hezekiah’s earnest prayer that God’s word would come to pass was answered in every detail.

There is evidence from secular history (both Egyptian and Greek) that a sudden epidemic of rodents ate the bowstrings and shield straps of the Assyrian troops at night and decimated the army with bubonic plague. It swept through the camp.

Just like people still remember the Charge of the Light Brigade 160 years on, people wrote about this event 300 years after it happened, because there had never been a military collapse like it before or since.

The Bible says that the Angel of the Lord struck down Sennacherib’s army and archaeologists have uncovered a site full of hastily buried bones believed to be their remains.

Sennacherib broke camp and returned home to Nineveh. He recorded that he had kept Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage but, unsurprisingly, he didn’t mention his military humiliation.

But he never went back to Judah again and popular feeling against him grew. People began to plot against him, even within his own family, and in the end he was assassinated.

Let me conclude: Oswald Chambers once said “We do not pray at all until we are at our wits’ end.” I think that is slightly exaggerated.

But there is something unique about prayer when you are absolutely desperate. If you do feel at your wits’ end this morning there’s a reason why you’re here. When you’ve done all that is humanly possible and you’ve still got an insurmountable problem there’s only one place to go. Our God is able.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 26th January 2014

Playing Scrabble without the Vowels

I was chatting with friends recently and we wondered what being a Christian would be like without a community of believers to belong to. 

I found myself saying, “Being a Christian without a church is like playing Scrabble without the vowels.”

In just the same way that our hearts sink when our seven allocated letters are all vowels, perhaps we take church for granted sometimes. But try playing without them! So here are five advantages of being committed to your church – beginning with a, e, i, o and u.

A is for accountability. Being an active member of a church keeps us accountable to God and to our fellow believers. Every time I take Communion I am saying with all my brothers and sisters “Lord, we need more grace from you.” The New Testament is full of “one anothers” – love one another, encourage one another and accept one another but also admonish one another and forgive one another. We can’t do that alone. We need each other for true spiritual accountability.

E is for encounter. The Lord has pledged his presence when two or more gather in his name. Though we can of course meet with God on our own, Jesus never made a promise about it. Psalm 22.3 says that the Lord inhabits the praises of his people. We can meet with God when we worship together in a way that we can’t when we are alone.

I is for inspiration. Gathering to sing praise, to hear the word of God expounded with passion and to share spiritual gifts to build one another up is inspiring. OK, some Sundays are a bit more inspirational than others – such is life. But God has designed the church so we can learn, grow, be stretched and be challenged. Expect to be inspired!

O is for outreach. More outreach is done through the local church than through any other agency in the world. Messy Church and the Lunch Club (at All Saints’ Preston on Tees) and Godzone and the Community Lunch (at Saint Mary’s Long Newton) are just four of many opportunities that enable people in the churches I lead to meet with hundreds of people each month who don’t yet know Christ personally.

U is for unity. God loves unity; he is three persons but one God. We know that unity is important in any organisation; political parties that are divided are unelectable and football teams with a divided dressing room usually struggle. But when churches seek and find unity in the Holy Spirit there is nowhere better on earth to be. In fact, Psalm 133 tells us that God commands blessing on his people when they live and work in unity together.

When you’ve got all that, who needs ‘muzjiks’* on a triple word score?

* Muzjiks (meaning Russian peasants) at 79 is the highest scoring word in Scrabble apparently.

Pray Unfailingly (Daniel 6.1-16 and Ephesians 6.18-20)

Introduction

A journalist got wind of a story about an old Jewish man who had been going to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to pray, twice a day, every day, for a very long time. So she went to check it out.

She watched him at prayer and after about 20 minutes, when he turned to leave, she approached him for an interview.

“Excuse me sir,” she said, “I'm from CNN. How long have you been coming to the Western Wall to pray?”

He said, “For about 60 years.”

“60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?”

“I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up as responsible adults and to love their neighbour. I pray that politicians will tell us the truth.”

“Wow,” she said. “And how do you feel after doing this for 60 years?”

“Like I'm talking to a brick wall.”

Is that how you feel when you pray? You might be surprised to hear this, especially if you think that all clergy enjoy blissful and effortless prayer lives – but I feel that way sometimes.

Quite honestly, my experience is that prayer is hard work. I’m easily distracted, frequently discouraged and I pray less than I think I should.

So I don’t speak with smug self-congratulation this morning when I say that over the next six weeks we’re going to be looking at prayer in these morning services. My guess is that we all have something to learn in the school of prayer and I certainly include myself.

Preparing the Ground for Growth

Let me tell you how this series on prayer came about. One Saturday last November, four of us from All Saints’ participated in a consultation arranged by the diocese about preparing our churches for growth.

It is a stated aim of our diocese that our churches should grow in numbers as people come to faith in Christ or come back to the Lord after a time away from him.

It is a stated aim of the diocese that our people should grow in grow in faith, believing God for greater things and grow in character so that we’re more loving and joyful.

So we were asked to examine six specific areas of church life which might need some attention if we are to grow. Those from All Saints’ who went along all agreed that one of the areas of particular need of reinforcement for us is prayer.

We were asked to score between one and ten for the following statement; “As a church we believe that prayer makes a difference and we take prayer seriously.” One means we completely disagree and ten means we strongly agree. What score would you give? “As a church we believe that prayer makes a difference and we take prayer seriously.”

I know, it’s a subjective exercise but it does help us get a feel for where we think we are. We put our score at about half way – because we felt that we do genuinely believe that prayer makes a difference, but we also felt that we probably don’t take prayer as seriously as we could.

Let me give you a quick and recent example of why we thought that. Last month, we organised a Christmas party. I think it was great that about 80 of us turned out on a dark, cold and wet night to celebrate and mix socially.

Rejoicing and making merry is a good and proper thing for Christians to do especially at Christmas time. If anything, I think we should do more of it than we do.

But I know that in my time here, five and a half years now, we’ve never once had even a third of that number for any prayer meeting – and in fact the numbers are usually below 10.

All Saints’ has a reputation of being a flourishing church, and in many ways we are. But if prayerfulness is a key measure of the spiritual health of a church, how alive are we really?

The Director of Mission for our diocese, Judy Hurst, said something that really struck me at the consultation. She said that when she first came to the North East a few years ago, she did some research into all the growing churches in the diocese.

And guess what she found? She discovered that the one common denominator for all the growing churches in our region is that they are all specifically praying that they will grow.

It sounds so simple – and it is. We need to start doing that. We need to pray together, specifically and persistently for growth.

As it happens, I had been feeling for several months prior to that consultation that we needed to raise the temperature of prayer at All Saints’.

It bothered me that attendance at our prayer meetings is generally low.

It bothered me that relatively little seems to change on the Prayer Points bulletin and that I often find them left behind in the pews rather than taken away and used. Lots of things about prayer bothered me.

By pure coincidence, or maybe God-incidence, a week or so before the consultation, I had asked Mark Harrison if he would consider helping us raise the profile of prayer at All Saints’.

That includes things like arranging training for leading intercessory prayers and prayer ministry, building up the fourth Sunday of the month evening service specifically for prayer.

It includes suggesting a more focused approach in Prayer Points, and supporting Sola with growing the Prayer Breakfast - and much more.

Mark kindly agreed and so I am pleased to announce this morning that Mark is our Prayer Coordinator.

The South African devotional writer Andrew Murray once said this: “The person who mobilizes the Christian church to pray will make the greatest contribution to world evangelization in history.” No pressure there then, Mark!

The group of us who went to the consultation also felt that our verse for the year should focus on prayer and we felt led to Ephesians 6.18 which says: “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

I’ll be saying a bit more about this verse at the end.

If you go into a Christian bookstore you’ll find lots of resources on prayer. Depending on what type of shop it is, you’ll be able to find books of prayers, prayer stools, prayer candles, prayer diaries, prayer stones, prayer beads, prayer guides, prayer icons, mugs that say “Keep Calm and Pray” – you name it.

But have you ever noticed that there’s nothing in Scripture about prayer techniques? The Bible’s approach is different. Instead, it shows us how prayer works in peoples’ experience.

It shows us people praying when they’re joyful, when they’re sick, when they’re lost, when they’re grateful, when they doubt, and even when they just want to curl up and die.

It shows us people praying in times of crisis or danger and tells us what happened next.

It shows us people praying about difficult decisions they have to make and what turns out to be the best option and why.

It shows us people praying that something will happen and it tells us what they do next when nothing does happen.

These are the kinds of stories we’re going to look at over the next six weeks; ones that show us in people’s actual experience how to pray tenaciously, discerningly, earnestly, authoritatively, honestly and today, unfailingly.

How Do You Pray Unfailingly?

How do you pray unfailingly? That’s what the reading from Daniel is all about. You probably know the story; it’s one of the best known in the Old Testament.

Daniel, a man of God, is the victim of a coordinated campaign to present a complaint against him at work because of his faith.

I’ve just finished reading a book called Christians in the Firing Line which describes a dozen or so disciplinary actions or legal cases against Christians because of a visible or verbal expression of their faith.

Some of these cases have attracted media coverage and you will have heard of them. What you are less likely to be aware of is how stressful and financially costly litigation has been for the defendants, and how disproportionate the sanctions can be given the nature of the alleged offence.

Well, this is what happened to Daniel. Those with an agenda against him engineered a change in the law which led to a clear conflict of conscience for him.

But the thing about Daniel is this; prayer was a settled priority in his life. It was an immoveable feature of his day. No matter what the tasks of the day involved, or what the law said, or what his colleagues thought, or what he felt like, Daniel prayed – unfailingly.

He didn’t make a big display of it. Nor did he go around singing his own praises. (Jesus warned against both).

He didn’t bang on about his rights or protest either. We have the legal right to freedom of religion in our country but prayer is not a right, it’s a responsibility.

And Daniel took his seriously. He went to an upstairs room so he wasn’t making an exhibition of himself to everyone going about their business at street level. But he didn’t shamefully hide his faith away either; he kept the windows open – which would be common sense in a hot place like Babylon. And he prayed – unfailingly.

There’s a book out by a man called Paul Miller called A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World. It very nuts-and-bolts is refreshingly real, understanding where most people are rather than where they would like to be. It doesn’t pour on the guilt or say how wonderfully liberating he finds it to pray and fast for weeks on end.

It’s an American book, so it may not exactly mirror the situation in the UK but it quotes recent studies that show that 90% of people in our churches do not really have a praying life and most people feel guilt, confusion and frustration. 90%. “This kind of Christianity” Miller says, “cannot withstand the onslaught of a postmodern world.”

But, you see, Daniel was able to withstand the very worst spiritual assault of his day precisely because he prayed unfailingly – in fact “three times a day” we’re told.

Daniel knew the truth about the old saying “Those who kneel the most stand the best.”

We’re not told how long he spent in prayer and I presume that’s because it’s not important. Some people get hung up about how long they should spend in prayer.

Books on prayer often talk about it. The Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond said “Ten minutes spent in the presence of Christ every day, aye two minutes, will make the whole day different.” That sounds manageable doesn’t it?

But at the other end of the scale, the reformer Martin Luther is reported to have said; “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business; I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.”  

I don’t know about you, but I usually feel quite defeated by testimonies about being so overwhelmed, and life being so impossibly hectic, that it’s impossible to get through the day without spending most of the morning praying! I suspect we might admire that kind of statement but most of us, if not all of us, just can’t relate to it.

If that’s the Premier League of Prayer, then I must be in the 4^th Division of the Retired Postmen’s League - on the bench, for the reserves!

I’m an early riser and I do try to spend the first hour of most days with a cup of tea and my Bible; and I usually pray over the events in my diary that day and for people on my heart. I’m not one for solitude and I usually find it hard to focus. But I do find it goes well with me when I do that.

It might be different for you. Some people pray best in the car after listening to the Bible on CD (if this is the way you like to pray, learn to pray with your eyes open)! For others, the best moment is at the end of the day on the sofa with a cup of cocoa.

Praying Continuously

But what about our verse for the year from Ephesians 6.18? “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds if prayers and requests.” I don’t think it really means carving out a time in the day to pray, good though that may be. It seems to be talking about living in an atmosphere of prayer.

When the Bible says “pray on all occasions” (or as other versions translate it “pray without ceasing”) does it mean “do nothing else at that moment?” It can’t do. Otherwise we would never eat, or sleep, or talk to anyone or look after the kids.

I think it must mean something like “keep coming back to it.” When people say they have an incessant cough we know they mean that the cough is actually intermittent, but that it keeps recurring.

When people say that they’re always on their mobile phone, we know that they are not always on their mobile phone. They still take showers, eat meals with the boss and drive their cars, and they are not on their phone at those times. It means that they frequently return to it.

That’s what it means I think to be constant in prayer. We keep coming back to it. I find it much easier, much less daunting, to see prayer as a quick reflex than as a solid block of hours on end.

Here’s an example of that: when asked how much time he spent in prayer, the German missionary and orphanage director George Müller replied, “I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk and when I lie down and when I arise. And the answers are always coming.”

This kind of living in an atmosphere of short, simple, under the breath prayers is what the New Testament means, I think.

So you get up in the morning and think “Thank you Lord for a new day.”

You turn the radio on and hear about parliament so you think “Lord, bless all those in authority with wisdom and show them that they are answerable to you.”

Or someone comes into your mind for no good reason – maybe it’s a prompt from the Holy Spirit – it probably is; so you think “Father, whatever this person’s need is today, meet it from the abundance of your riches in grace.”

And so on. “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds if prayers and requests.” I think this is what it means to pray unfailingly and once you’re in the habit of doing it, it’s second nature.

And I want to get better at doing that this year. I hope you do too.

You may find yourself coming back time and time again to the same short, simple prayer about something mundane you do every day. But that’s good!

Think of a stone cutter hammering away at a rock a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet on the 101st blow the rock splits in two.

Question: which blow split the rock? We know it wasn’t just the one last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Some of you I know have been praying for something for years now with nothing to show for it. But your prayers are like the hammering away at that rock, so you keep praying and don’t give up.

Ending

As I close, I’m not going to do this every week, but I do feel led to do it today. If you feel that the Lord is speaking to you about growing in prayerfulness - not yet but in a minute or so - I’m going to ask you to stand, right where you are.

Let me explain. I’m not going to ask you to come out to the front. I’m not going to ask you to say anything or do anything other than stand where you are, but I do want to pray for you as you stand, and specifically that God will pour out his Holy Spirit afresh on you to help you.

Romans 8.26 says “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (NRSV).

This is what it means to pray in the Spirit, we let him do the work.

And actually I think it’s important to physically get to our feet if God is speaking to us because, like Daniel, committing ourselves to want to grow in prayer is something for which we should be ready to stand up and be counted for.

So if you feel that the Lord is speaking to you about growing in prayerfulness this year, will you please stand, right where you are, and I’ll close in prayer.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 5th January 2014

Talking About Prayer

As we begin the year with an emphasis on prayer, here are some of my favourite quotes on prayer from Christians far and wide. Which ones connect most with you?

“When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart.” John Bunyan

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” John Chapman

“If a matter is not important enough to pray about, then it is not serious enough to worry about.” James Gibbons

“We can all sympathise with the desperate but doomed prayer of the schoolboy who was coming out of his exam and was heard to pray, ‘Oh, God, please make Paris the capital of Turkey!’  There are some things that even God can’t answer!” Nicky Gumbel

“Don’t worry about praying over small things; with God everything is small.” R.T. Kendall

 “If your day is hemmed with prayer it is less likely to unravel.” J. John

“When I work, I work. When I pray, God works.” Bill Hybels

"Anyone can pray in crisis. Show me someone who will earnestly pray without a crisis and I will show you someone who is ready if one comes." Bill Johnson

“God lives in the eternal present; therefore he has all eternity to answer the split second prayer of a driver who is about to crash.” Clifford Longley

“Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you.” Martin Luther

“We shall need eternity to thank God for all the prayers he didn’t answer.” Mark Oakley

“Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as all-sufficient.” John Piper

“I try to listen to the Lord as I walk and to hear what he is saying before I pray for people – that’s how it works.” Jackie Pullinger

“Prayer is the place where burdens change shoulders.” Source Unknown

“When I pray coincidences happen. And when I stop praying, the coincidences stop.” William Temple

Interviewer: “So what do you say to the good Lord when you pray?”

Mother Teresa: “Nothing. I listen to him.”

Interviewer: “I see. And what does he say to you then?”

Mother Teresa: “Nothing. He listens to me.”