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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, April 17, 2016

“Praying Big Prayers” Numbers 11:4-23, 31-32

The story of the Circle Maker goes something like this. The people had been without rain for far too long. Not a drop. The drought threatened to wipe them all out. Then along came Honi, with his six foot staff and confidence in God, who came among the people and drew a circle with his staff. He stood in that circle and declared he was going to stay there until the waters came. And they did - small little drops. The people rejoiced, but Honi stayed in the circle and prayed again - not for this sort of rain, God did I pray. The thunder claps and heavens broke open and rain drenched the earth, which frightened the people. But Honi stayed the circle and prayed again - not for such rain did I pray. And finally the waters fell at the perfect pace for the ground to quench its thirst, causing the people to dance in the rainfall.
When is the last time you prayed a bold prayer like Honi did that day? I think sometime we are afraid of offending God with our prayers. So we pray these anemic prayers that don’t speak to the heart of God - that aren’t Kingdom sized prayers.
Pastor Mark Batterson wrote a wonderful book on prayer entitled The Circle Maker. One of the first quotes that jumped out to me from the pages was “bold prayers honor God.” That gave me pause to examine my own prayer life - do I pray bold prayers? A few months ago we took the journey markers survey together, helping us see where we were as individuals and as a congregation on our journey of faith together, almost everyone checked that they pray daily. Let’s take a moment to rejoice in that! We are a people of prayer! My hope and prayer is that we will be a people who prayer bold prayers.
Sometime I think our prayers look more like those of the Israelites than Moses in today’s scripture lesson. The Israelites have been wondering in the dessert in the while and they have a complaint for God - they don’t like the food they are being provided. They are craving meat, not the bread like substance called mana that was falling from heaven each day. They were starting to grow restless and were talking about what they once had back in Egypt - fish. They didn’t think they had been provided for; they didn’t think they had enough. Have we ever prayed prayers where we have told God, directly or indirectly, that we do not have enough? 
But Moses overhear the Israelites complaining and he gets upset. God was becoming angry as well that the people didn’t recognize what they had been given. So Moses starts to ask God why him? Why was all this trouble upon him? Where can I get what the meat they are asking for? Have we ever cried out to God in prayer about our frustrations?
What amazes me about this particular piece of scripture is that God responds to all of their cries about not having enough and all of Moses frustrations in a big way. First, he has seventy of the elders of Israel consecrated to help Moses lead. They received a portion of the Spirit that had fallen upon Moses so that he didn’t have to struggle with the people alone or feel like he was the only one carrying their burden. 
Then God gave the people quail. In fact, God gave the people so much quail that they were told they would become sick of it. The first day enough fell from heaven that each person could have ten. Moses said he had 600,000 soldiers, even if this was just ten for each of them, it would equal 6,000,000 birds. God provided in a dramatic fashion.
Sometimes I think we don’t open up our eyes to see how God is answering our prayers in dramatic ways. Or we pray such vague prayers that we would never even notice that they have been answered.
What I also find striking about this passage of scripture is the intimacy Moses had with God. He could take his frustrations to God the way he did because of how he walked with God. In a way, even Moses’s prayers of frustration were responded to in such a profound way because of the deep roots of his relationship with God. Perhaps at times we don’t feel as close to God in prayer or are hesitant to pray big, bold prayers because we don’t have a daily rhythm with God we have a weekly rhythm. 
Moses’s prayer was also desperate. He was facing a big demand from the people, and you can’t help but pray big prayers when you are facing big circumstances. The truth is, if we aren’t desperate sometimes we won’t pray like everything depends on God. We try to do things on our own, by our own power. And when we try to go by our own power alone, it is as if we are invariantly making the statement that God is not powerful enough. Sometimes we need desperate situations in our lives to remind us who God is. We need to be in situations that are far beyond our control, to remember who God is. Sometimes we need to lose our job to see that God is offering us our dream one. Or sometimes we need to step away from a ministry, to see what new opportunities God is giving us. Or sometimes we need to wait a long time for something to be reminded that God alone is the one that provides, not us - we need to be in situations where we can say, but by God’s hand alone 
Lastly, Moses’s prayer was one of praying through. Big situations don’t go away over-night. We need to remember that big situations demand big prayers and big prayer are not prayers we simply pray for a time or two, big prayers are ones that bring us to our knees time and time again. And when we ware on our knees we need to not just be praying for things to happen but praying though them. We need to pray for God to do something unpredictable and uncontrollable. We need to pray that whatever we are going through is planting seeds for the faith of others. We need to pray. 
Brothers and sisters, only you can know what your prayer life is like with God. Only you can know if you pray bold prayers like Honi or Moses, or prayers like the Israelites, that ask for what you need at the moment. There is a whole range of ways to pray. The first step is to pray, but what we are looking towards growing into through our relationship with God is to be people who pray bold Kingdom sized prayers.

Will you pray with me….

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