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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Matthew 6: 9-13 "Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done"

The Lord’s Prayer. The prayer we pray together every Sunday, one that has become so familiar to some of us that it has lost its power. For others of us we have simply recited the words but never thought about their meaning. This week we return to our sermon series about the Lord’s Prayer and the rich meaning of the prayer when it comes from our heart.
In our first week of this series we reflected together on the words, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” We discussed how God is our Daddy, whom loves us dearly. Who is the creator of the universe, yet as close as our breath. Who is holy, yet calls us to simply sit in his presence. This week we will be looking at the next phrase in the prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
Think back to prayers that you have recently prayed. After you addressed God what is the first thing that you prayed for? For many of us it was probably asking something for ourselves or something for someone we love dearly. For healing. For protection. For a new job. For better pay. To solve a problem we are having. There is nothing wrong with these petitions, in fact God wants us to bring all of our joys and concerns before him. But Jesus tells us to pray for something different first, for something bolder. That God’s kingdom comes. 
One of the books I read recently was called The Circle Maker  - the premise is that we need to pray big bold prayers, but all too often we are willing to pray for less. Willing to not believe that God answers prayer. But Jesus is inviting us to pray the boldest of all prayers, that God’s Kingdom Come. We are asking God’s reign to be evident in our lives. In the world around us. We are asking God to be present in our hearts and in our world. We are handing everything over to God, recognizing that he is in control. Asking him to come into even the darkest corners of our lives, our relationships, our world. 
That is a scary prayer to pray. Maybe you don’t want God to actually occupy all of your life. Maybe you want to hang on to control. So you don’t think about the boldness in the request “Thy Kingdom Come”. You avoid praying it in your own prayers, yet alone praying it first and foremost and instead settle for smaller requests. Personal wants and desires. 
Pastor Max Lucado reflects on the words “Thy Kingdom Come” in connection to the story of Queen Esther. Esther was not always Queen of Persia, but instead won the position in a beauty competition of sorts. But it ends up that God was aligning Esther into the position in order to help save the people of Israel from Hamen, the right hand man of the King of Persia who wanted to kill all of the Jews. Now Esther herself was a Jew, as was her cousin who had raised her Mordecai. Mordecai urged Esther to speak to the King before all of her people were killed. But she hesitated at first, because it seemed like too big of a request, too dangerous of a situation. For even the Queen must be summoned to the King before she could speak. 
How many of us feel like Esther. That praying the words “Thy Kingdom Come” is just too bold of a request? Not feasible? To scary? So we hesitate. Or think it isn’t our right, or perhaps not our job as a follower of Christ to pray these words. Yet, Jesus asks us to be bold in our prayers before the throne of God. 
Finally Esther is convinced that she needs to speak to the King on the behalf of her people. So she devises a plan to have him invite her to speak to him. When she wins the Kings favor and he asks her what she desires, she not only states her requests, but it is granted.
Friends, what is God grants our heartfelt prayer to have the Kingdom of God come? What would that mean in our lives? In our town? In our nation? In our world? Our God invites us to make this request. Our Lord instructs us to pray in this way, that the Kingdom of God come and be known among us! Praise be to God! Do we believe our request will be granted? Do we pray as if it is coming? Or do we simply recite the words, not seeing and believing the power behind them?
Jesus tells us not only to pray that the Kingdom of God come, but that God’s will be done. But once again, do we realize the power behind what we are praying? Time and time again in scripture we see the disciples just not getting it. They expect Jesus to come and overthrow the Roman government, even though Jesus came to overthrow the power of sin and death. They expect him to be a conquering King, not a humble Messiah. The walked with Christ for three years and still didn’t get what the will of God was.
Many of us know the verse from Jeremiah that states, I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper and not harm you. But we don’t know what those plans are. We don’t understand the will of God in our own lives, let alone the will of God for our world. How can we discover what the will of God is and pray together in hope and certainty “Thy Will be Done”?
First, we need to worship together. To study together. Because God can speak through the body of Christ. How many of you have ever had a word of clarity come from another believer being a vessel of God? How many of you have been used as this type of vessel? God can give a human voice to a divine word, leading us the direction we are to go. 
Second, God speaks through Scripture. But to God to speak to us through scripture we have to be in the word, both individually and together in small groups. The more that we are in the Word, the more it sinks into us and it can come to mind when we are seeking the will of God. 
God also speaks through our individual time with Him. In Bible study this last week at the college we called this our time to dwell with Him. Our time to simply be in the presence of God and grow in our relationship with him. For if we do not have a relationship with God, how can we trust his will, let alone seek it out? It is in our relationship with God that we recognize the fire and leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we seek the will of God. Its here that we learn who God truly is, and what is the desire of God’s heart. So we follow not our own desires, but God’s. 

There are other ways to get to know the will of God. These are simply three places to start. But once again I ask you, are you willing to pray this bold prayer knowing that it may mean that you don’t get what you want? Do you mean it when you pray, “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be Done?” or are they simply ritualistic words? How would it impact your prayer life and your relationship with God if these were the first requests you made each and every time you prayed? If you don’t feel comfortable with that, I would encourage you to ask yourself why. To pray about it. To have a conversation with God about what makes you uneasy about the bigness, the boldness of these requests. If you believe that this is what you are lead to start praying, try it. For a week. For two weeks. For the duration of this series. Invite God to be the first priority in your prayer life and see what comes - for it may just mean the Kingdom of God taking root among us, and seeing the will of God with a new heart. Amen. 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Matthew 6: 9-13 “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name”


For the next few weeks we are going to be having a different type of sermon series. We are going to be reading the same scripture passage week after week, with the exception of next week, and  working our way through it in order to grow in our prayer life by discussing the Lord’s Prayer. Its a prayer that some of us learned as children and that we pray corporately every week, but how many of us have slowly and consider what exactly we are praying as we join with the saints through the ages praying this prayer of the first disciples?
For some of you it may seem to go too slow, dragging on week after week. In this fast paced world where information can travel, seemingly at an instantaneous speed, it can be hard to concentrate on one topic. I invite you to let go and sink into the holy word of God. Soaking in this prayer. Letting God know if you are feeling frustrated by intentionally slowing down. For others of you, this will give you the pace that you have been craving. The ability to just be in the word of God. Claim and relish that. Lean into the word of God and see how you it effects your prayer life and our life together.
This sermon series is based off a book by Pastor Max Lucado entitled The Great House of God. Lucado has the premise that the Lord’s Prayer should be seen as a house. A Home for your heart. A place to dwell and grow with God. This may seem like an odd way to think of prayer, but for a moment think about your home. Perhaps its the house your grew up in. Maybe it was your first home when you left your parents. Maybe its the house you are living in now. Think about a house that special to you. A house that you consider your home. There is truly a difference between a house - something that provides us shelter, but perhaps not safety and comfort, and a home - that place where we can be fully ourselves, fully alive. 
Just as we have a place that we consider to be our physical home, so do we have a spiritual home. St Theresa of Avila, a spiritual writer, describes this home as the interior castle. The place that is built upon the foundation of our spiritual lives and where we dwell with God. Where we can just be ourselves, filled by the Holy Spirit and fully alive in the presence of God. But a house doesn’t become a home overnight. And it needs to be tended to with extra care because it is home to your soul.
Some of you know that every year a group of people from the church are needed to walk through the parsonage and look things over. To make lists of things that need to be immediately taken care of. Things that will need to be taken care of in the next year, the next five years, and maybe even a wish list of things to add to the living space for the pastor and his or her family. You probably have had such lists for your own home. Upkeep lists. Dream lists. Things that you need to take care of so the house can be maintained instead of falling apart. So does our spiritual home need maintenance, yet far too few of us think of caring for our spiritual lives in such a way. This is especially important because we are not only invited to dwell with God in this spiritual home, but to dwell in God. What a radical thought expressed by the Apostle Paul when he says, “in God we live and move and have our being”. (Acts 17:28)
Do you know God with this level of familiarity? What amazes you about it? What concerns you? God is our home where we can find comfort, peace, refreshment, solitude, guidance. Maybe this idea of being that intimate with God excites you, energizes you, rejuvenates you. Maybe you need time to consider it because it is so new. You’ve only heard God discussed as a distant deity instead of a loving parent, a home. Maybe you don’t want to be that close to God because you are afraid that God won’t love you, won’t want you. Whatever you may be feeling and thinking friends, let us dive into exploring this spiritual house together. Live into it. Taking time to use the Lord’s prayer to examine ourselves the next several weeks and continuing the build upon that foundation for our spiritual home. 
Christ our Lord and Savior invites us into this house of God by telling his disciples to pray saying, “Our Father”. For some of us the image of Father brings up problems. It drags up painful memories of our own Father’s who may have hurt us physically or emotionally. Or abandoned us. For others it is a beautiful reflection of our own Father’s love for us. But how many of us when we hear the words “Our Father” think first to the story Jesus tells of the prodigal son. The son who disowned his father, squandered his inheritance, and then returned thinking he would work for his father as a hired hand, only to find out that he celebrated, love, reinstated. We were once far from our Heavenly Father, separated by sin. But now we are welcomed into the Kingdom in loving arms. This is the Father we pray to. The one who loves us unconditional, with an eternal forgiveness. The one who reminds us that while we may want to stop being God’s child, disowning Him, he will never stop being our Father.
The word used in scripture is even more intimate. Abba. Our Daddy. The one that we run to as children when we have a scraped knee, a bruised heart, or have accomplished something wonderful during the day. A family relationship that we are welcomed in to through the blood of Jesus Christ. 
In Bible Study this past Monday we were discussing one of the Biblical billboards in the area that in King James verse instructs people to fear the Lord. The fear that is being illustrated in more akin to respect. The respect that you have for a parent who loves you. Who discipline you. Who has hopes and dreams for you. This is our Daddy. The one to whom we pray. The one who wants a relationship with us. 
Many of us have a difficult time with this concept of God as our daddy, not because of how we view our earthly father, but because of the next line in the prayer - who is in Heaven. We think of God as someone who is remotely out there instead of intimately with us. But we dismiss what that powerful statement is actually communicating. We have a Heavenly Parent who is. Not who was. Not who will be. But is, The God who is strong. Who is powerful. Who is compassionate. Who is loving. Who is more then we can ever imagine. The God who is. 
Our God is Lord of Heaven and Earth. Our Daddy rules the universe. Sometimes its easy to forget this, but our God in Heaven is not stated to make us think that distant but to remind us how ever present and ever close God really is. What God created. That God is the master of all. That God is higher then us.
Our God’s name is Hallowed. Holy. To be worshiped. Sacred. Revered. But this Holy God, creator and master of all, is still our loving Father. Who tells us that we don’t need to pray a certain way or have the exact words, but simply invites us to come. To come and sit with him. To be still and silent and listen for his loving voice. 
One of my favorite praise songs isn’t sung very often. Maybe because its not upbeat. Maybe because it just isn’t known very well. But its entitled ‘If I Could Just Sit With You Awhile’. “If I could just sit with you a while. If you could just hold me. Nothing could touch me though I’m wounded, though I die. If I could just sit you a while, I need you to hold me, moment by moment until forever passes by.” Friends, we have a holy, loving, Father who invites us to just come and sit with him in prayer. To cry. To be silent. To express our heart’s joy. To tell Him about our day. And to be loved. When is the last time you have ran to be with this God? When is the last time you just sat in God’s presence, listening for the voice of holy love instead of talking? When is the last time who praised our God who is the rock of our faith and the cornerstone of our spiritual home? And how can looking to God our Father, who is in heaven, and proclaiming that his name is hallowed effect your prayer life this week? Amen. 

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Expectations - John 16: 16-22


This is the final week of our sermon series on marks of living a Christ like life. We spent the first week talking about our need for stillness and solitude in order to humbly respond to God’s voice that requires us to put our own interest aside for others. We’ve talked about Christ like care that invites people to be part of their own healing. The type of authentic care that suffers with a person instead of telling them what they need and to move on. This week we see that Christ lived a life of hopeful expectation, even in the face of sorrow.
Today’s scripture passage is part of Jesus’s farewell discourse. He knows that before him lies betrayal, abandonment, the cross, and death. He is trying to prepare his disciples by telling them that in a short while, shorter then they could ever anticipate, they would not see him any longer. Like small children unable to grasp the concept of death, the disciples do not understand what Jesus is trying to communicate with them. They do not understand why he is leaving them, where he is going, or why he is talking about coming again. They have spent the last three years with him every step of the journey, why would he leave them now? Where would he go that they cannot go with him?
Jesus tries to explain what he means further by comparing his leaving to the pain experienced during childbirth - only temporary and fading in comparison to the joy of holding a newborn child, full of hopes and possibilities. The pain they face will be temporary and will give away to the expectant joy of the kingdom of God. I mentioned before that many of my friends are in their child bearing years. Its remarkable to hear the stories of pain that some of my female friends went through. Labor for days on end. Pain that is unbearable. But the horror stories of the pain of birth fade as time goes on, and stories become about the joy that their children bring to their life. How it was all worth it to see this little life take root and blossom each day.
But the disciples probably didn’t understand what Jesus meant any better after this explanation. They may not have even understood it after his death and resurrection. That the pain they felt about Christ’s death was only temporary like labor pains, and great joy was to come. We too sometimes don’t understand the type of expectant hope that Jesus is talking about in this passage. Instead of patiently and expectantly looking towards the coming Kingdom, we expect other things, things that Christ never promised. We expect that God will give us exactly what we want. Or we expect that we won’t suffer. Or we expect that situations will be handled in our own timing, but this isn’t the type of hope that Jesus is talking about. The hope of our faith isn’t telling God what we want and immediately getting it in return. It is the hope that even in the face of sorrow things will be well in the Lord. It is the hope that recognizes that the Kingdom of God is bigger then we can imagine and is coming to dwell here on earth. It is the hope that Christ will one day return. It is the hope that points past the immediate to the day that will come. 
In our instant gratification society this type of hope is hard to grasp. We want what we want, often to have more good things and to not face any unpleasantries, and we want it now. This type of attitude reminds me of the movie Willy Wonka, when Veruca Salt, one of the children touring the factory, is told that she can’t have a Golden Goose. When she is told no, she starts to scream and sing that she wants it NOW! How often do we want the child without the pain of child birth? The hope of God without the extent waiting?
Part of waiting is patience. The root of the word patience means to suffer. Jesus tells his disciples about this type of suffering - that they will weep and mourn. But there is something on the other side of patience. A hope. A blessing that we are being prepared for. If we didn’t have to wait, would there still be as much joy in the receiving? If the couple did not wait so many months to meet their new child, would they love it as intensely? Brothers and sisters, we wait because we are being prepared for the great joy that Christ has for us. A joy that builds with expectation. Expectation in the hope that Christ can redeem even our saddest moments for the glory of God. Friends, this is why in the words of author Simone Weil, “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” 
But patiently waiting does not mean that forget what we are waiting for. Or that we passively wait. Instead it is like the active waiting we experience during the Advent season. As we prepare our homes, church, and lives for the celebration of Christ’s birth. This active waiting fills the moments with expectation of what is to come. This active waiting requires us to be fully present and makes the celebration Christmas Day even more meaningful, because we were prepared. To be patient is not to be unprepared. It means that we suffer with anticipation!
With patient expectant waiting, our sadness and joy often intermix. One of the hardest things that I had to do was drop friends off at train and bus stations or airports. As we would say goodbye, we are filled with deep sadness even though we know that we will see each other again.  Or when we hug someone we love dearly, but do not get to see often, we are filled with joy, but we know that sorrow will come with our departure. When we wave goodbye to a child leaving for college we are filled with sorrow, but we have joy at the possibilities their education will bring. And when a loved one dies, we are filled with grief, but we know that we have a hope to see them again in eternity.
We have a hope that our faith is built upon. A hope that allows us to live boldly in our present day. A hope that we remember as we gather around the communion table this morning. A hope that we remember is shared across the globe this world communion Sunday. For the hope of Christ is not ours alone. We are not the only ones waiting. We are living in this short time, this time when we cannot see Christ, holding hands with other Christians around the globe. We find strength in their stories. Grace and courage in their actions. Hope for tomorrow in how we greet today. 
When we gather around this communion table we are hopefully expectant of the coming Kingdom. We are working to make the Kingdom of God known on earth today. And on the days when it just seems to be too much we support each other and remind each other that this is not the end, a better day is to come. 
We eat and drink together as a reminder of the coming feast at Christ’s banquet table. We talk of Christ’s sorrows to be reminded of the hope we have in his suffering and resurrection. We talk of his death to remember the life we have to come.We remember that God was the one who came, and will come again. And we talk of the joy that no one can take away from us. The hope that cannot be squelched. Oh brothers and sisters, come rejoicing and full of expectation to this table, and taste and see that the one our heart’s hope is good! Amen.