Bring Your Requests To God Series

A. The story is told about a little boy who liked to ask the blessing before his family’s meals.

1. One day, he asked to say the prayer and was given permission to say it.

2. His dad and mom and siblings bowed their heads and closed their eyes.

3. The little boy started the prayer, but then hesitated and silence hung in the air for a moment.

4. Glancing toward his father, the boy implored, “Daddy, wake up and help me!”

B. So, what do you think of that little guy’s request? “Daddy, wake up and help me!”

1. It is a pretty good request – the boy needed help and he asked his father for it.

2. In today’s sermon, we are going to be learning about how to bring our requests to God, and as we explore the Psalms about this subject, we will discover prayers very similar to that little boy’s request.

3. For instance, Psalm 44:23 says: “Wake up, LORD! Why are you sleeping? Get up! Don’t reject us forever!”

C. So, as you likely know, we are in a sermon series that I have called “Good Grief: Expressing Grief, Finding Grace.”

1. The series is based on a book by Mark Vroegop titled “Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy.”

2. For several weeks we have been talking about the reality of grief and loss, and our need to learn to lament in the midst of our pain and suffering.

3. We have discussed the fact that lament has four parts and how Mark Vroegop has boiled them down to these four words: (1) turn, (2) complain, (3) ask, and (4) trust.

4. Two weeks ago, we focused on the process of turning to God in prayer, and how we need to keep turning to God.

a. If we refuse to talk with God by giving God the silent treatment, then we will be harmed rather than helped by that choice.

5. Last week, we focused on the process of bringing our complaints to God with humility and honesty.

a. We learned that God is okay with our honest description of what is happening to us and how it is making us feel.

b. And God is okay with the expression of our disappointments, even if our disappointment is with God because of God’s seeming disinterest or lack of assistance.

D. These first two steps in lament are designed to lead to the third and fourth steps – asking and trusting.

1. So today, we want to spend time exploring what it means to bring our requests to God and how to do it.

2. This may seem like the simplest and easiest of all of the steps, and it may be, but there are still some things we need to understand and we may need to grow in our ability to bring our requests to God.

E. Since we have been using Mark and Sarah Vroegop’s story as a backdrop or illustration of the need for lament and how to lament, let’s jump back into their story.

1. Mark titled his chapter on the third step of lament “Ask Boldly” and begins his chapter saying: “Thankfully, the prayer of complaint in the parking lot was not the end of our story. A few months later Sarah was pregnant again. Back in the dreaded ultrasound room, we could see the grainy flutter of a heartbeat and the clear formation of a little body. Life!

I wanted desperately to be relieved. I hoped to be happy. But I wasn’t. I was frightened.

After so much pain and disappointment, my heart was jaded. I was not only afraid of losing

another child, I was scared to hope again.

The months that followed brought a new set of challenges. Sarah and I battled fear nearly every day. Discouragement and anxiety seemed to lurk around every corner. Each doctor’s appointment brought terrible memories back as we waited to hear our unborn baby’s heartbeat. We made multiple emergency room trips, fearing that our baby hadn’t moved, only to learn that everything was fine. Our new normal was a brutal fight.”

2. I appreciate and employ Mark and Sarah’s story because it is so real and so raw.

a. And because they are people of faith, their story gives us a truthful and helpful example of how having faith makes all the difference, but it doesn’t make it easy when we suffer loss.

3. Mark goes on to tell that he was part of a group of ministers who met to pray for revival in their city.

a. As these ministers prayed together for revival in their city, they became friends and would also pray for each other.

4. During one of those group prayer times, Mark opened up to them, he began to lament his fears about Sarah’s pregnancy.