Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC, September 21, 1986
One young friend of mine, taking the Scripture quite seriously and quite literally, where it says, "Ask anything in my name, and I will do it" – taking that verse to the nth degree, reports that he is still waiting for the Lord to supply his request for a new Vette. That's a super sports car, for those who are not initiated to this kind of talk. A new Vette, and Lord, I need a sunroof, and racing stripes, and those snazzy wheels too. You talk about praying for things, when some people get down to it, they really do it up in a big way, don't they?
Now my young friend is really only half serious about this powerful petition of his; he does know that the Lord is not bound to answer self-indulgence. He is aware that God does not provide us with expensive toys just to help us along with the sin of pride. After all, most of us don't need any help with that at all. And my young friend is also quite clear that there are other dimensions of that Scripture verse – that in fact it says "whatever you ask in my name I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” And thus that his request, his prayer is not up to par because there isn't much if any room for the Father to get the glory. The glory is all going to the car and its driver. My friend is Christian enough to know all these things.
And yet he also recognizes that deep down inside there is a powerful urge to have this dream machine. He could scarcely want anything more than to have this four on the floor in his driveway. There are, after all, in the best of us, in the most Christian of us, some selfish urges. There are some things we want to have and some things we want to do, no matter what. That may not be spiritual, but it is real, it is the way we are. And so when it comes down to what we pray for and what the desires of our hearts really are, there is quite a mixture, isn't there? I want everybody in the world to have enough food, but, to tell the truth, I want all my dollars too and am reluctant to give them away. I want everybody to be saved and to be a Christian, but then I also want my privacy and I want to live and let live and I find witnessing hard. So there are conflicts. I pray for these things, I pray for those things – and they don't always go together, do they? And some of the things I might pray for, I might want, perhaps I really shouldn't have. So what do I pray for? What should I pray for? What are the right things to pray for?
Some 30 centuries ago a young man was facing that kind of choice. He sat facing a whole candy store full of possibilities; it really could have been, it might have been, that he reach out and gobble up all the goodies you could imagine. Wealth in tremendous quantities. Power beyond what most of us can even dream of. Recognition, respect, adulation: he could have had it all. And in fact it seemed, if you looked at one side of the ledger, that he was well on his way. Heir to the family fortune, named by his father as his successor, backed by some of the finest families of the nation, shoved ahead by an ambitious mother: about all he lacked, I guess was a degree from the Jerusalem School of Business and the endorsement of the Central Committee of the Israel Chamber of Commerce!
But that's only if you look at one side of the ledger, I say. There were also some problems, some serious problems coming his way. For all the glamour, all the good looks, all the right connections and the powerful families, there were serious flies in the ointment for Solomon. There was, for example, a half brother out there drumming up rebellion against him. There were old wounds left unhealed from his father's days, for David had not yet settled all the scores or finished all the battles. More than that, there were the defiant, the disobedient, the disenchanted. How was Solomon going to reign and reign effectively with all these elements swirling around his head? Life was not altogether a bowl of cherries for the young king, you see.
All the goodies in the world, right there for the taking. But at the same time, serious problems of management, of loyalty, of governing. Where to go and what to do? What to pray for? What do you ask for at a time like that? What do you say to the Lord? Is it, "Let's go for the Vette," or is it something like, "Destroy my enemies, put down those who are against me?" Or is it something else?
I think you know the story. Solomon opted for something else. Not riches and fame; not the crushing of the opposition. But something else -- wisdom. Solomon prayed first for wisdom, for understanding and for discernment. "Give thy servant an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil." Wisdom, the power to know what to do with your knowledge, your resources, your energies. Not more resources, not more energy or more time, but the wisdom to use what you have already.
What do we need to pray for? Among all the things we could pray for, we want to pray for, what is it to pray for the right things? Pray for wisdom.
I
Now one of the issues in praying for wisdom is that we like Solomon wait so late to do it. We wait until we have tried everything else with our own hands and we've blown it -- and then, virtually in desperation, we ask for the Lord’s gift of wisdom. Our sense of timing is all off, and so it was with Solomon.
Consider what had happened already and what King Solomon had done about it. Go home this afternoon and read the first two chapters of I Kings, though maybe it would be better if you didn't eat lunch first! Read these chapters and you will see how like Solomon we are; we will try everything to manage our own problems, even desperate measures, before we get down enough and strung out enough to ask for wisdom and guidance.
Here in a nutshell is what you will read in the first chapters of the First Book of Kings: having put up rebellion from his half brother Adonijah, having endured attempts to set himself up as king, then Solomon turned and lost his cool when Adonijah asked for a particular young woman to be given him as a wife. And for that Solomon exacted the price of Adonijah's life.
Next there was the priest Abiathar: unfaithful, venal, corrupt, yes ; but Solomon has him killed. After that King David's old lieutenant, strong-headed, crusty old Joab also dispatched by order of the new king. Shimei, an old enemy of David's, slaughtered by order of David's son. On and on, a terrible chapter; even Solomon's hurried marriage to the daughter of the Egyptian king, an attempt to manage his problems, build alliances, do them before they do you -- not a pretty picture, is it?
And when all is said and done, the bottom line is a young king who is still desperate, still unhappy, still insecure. He has done everything humanly possible to do to secure his kingdom, but he is not yet happy and not yet secure. Royal machismo just isn't getting it done. Now he turns to the prayer for wisdom. Now, after all this heartache and this bloodshed, the prayer for wisdom.
Listen to Solomon's cry of desperation, "I am but a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in." Lord, I’ve tried all I know to do, and the people still aren't behind me, this thing is not coming together; all my hard work and all my political maneuvers and all my struggling: it won't do. I have to have your wisdom.
Well, as someone said about what you feel when you are about to be hanged for your crimes, "Hanging focuses the mind wonderfully.” The trouble he was in focused Solomon's mind wonderfully. Isn't it too bad he didn't get there earlier!
But how true to human nature it is. How much I would rather pretend to be in charge, how much I would prefer to bulldoze ahead, how much we are like the woman in the TV commercial of a few years ago, "Mother please, I'd rather do it myself!” But take a cue from Solomon's dilemma: praying for wisdom, praying for the right things need not come after we have gotten things into such a rotten mess that only the Lord could straighten them out anyway!
II
But now I also want you to notice that when Solomon did pray for wisdom, his prayer was not just a prayer for relief from all his troubles. No, his prayer was a responsible prayer, his prayer asked for wisdom to help him deal responsibly with his work. "Give me an understanding mind to govern and to discern." To govern and to discern: you and I might well be tempted to pray, “Lord, just take it all away; who needs this kingdom business? What a headache! Take it all away.”
But Solomon's prayer is responsible prayer. I've said that he must have come to a point of desperation after trying and trying to manage his kingdom, and nothing was working as well as it ought; but now I think I'd say he exercises creative desperation. He prays for wisdom aware that he cannot expect God to lift the burden entirely, but that he can expect help and guidance and insight and discernment.
I hope you are following this, I hope you are seeing the distinction between where Solomon was earlier and where he is now. Earlier he was managing, doing, running the show, even shedding blood if necessary to bludgeon and to bully people into submission; and he came to the place where he· recognized, "I cannot do it all, so I turn it over to you Lord." But now he has come a step further; he has moved along another notch into spiritual maturity. Now his prayer is, "Give me what I need in order to keep on doing what I must do.” Give me help; but I do not shirk my responsibility, I do not abdicate, but I pray for wisdom. Do you catch the difference? It's important.
Once one of the young grandsons of old Queen Victoria asked her for some money. He was in debt and he needed to be bailed out. Instead of giving him the money the Queen wrote a letter and urged him to work, to show some initiative, to save his money and to find a way earn what he needed. Well, he did; he sold the queen's letter for 25 pounds! When you ask God for something, be prepared not for instant solutions, but for the means, the wisdom to act responsibly, so that you and God together become partners in dealing with your needs.
I like the words of the poet Browning, who said once that God answers sharp and sudden prayers, and thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, a gauntlet with a gift in it. I like that: a gauntlet with a gift in it, a challenge: you do it, you do what you are supposed to do, but there will be a gift in it. Pray for wisdom, for that’s responsible prayer.
They tell the story about those two old warhorses of the swing music era, Benny Goodman and Jimmy Dorsey. During the lean years, when there wasn't much work, they roomed together and they had an agreement that whenever the phone rang, whoever got there first and answered it would get the job if someone was calling to book a musician. But one day both of them got there at exactly the same time and both of them grabbed the phone and put their heads up to the receiver. Well, Benny's mouth was at the mouthpiece and he agreed to take the job, but Jimmy's ear was at the earpiece and only he knew when and where it was! Responsibility, wisdom, means cooperation; you and I have to agree to do the job, but God knows how and when and where. Pray for wisdom, responsible wisdom!
III
Finally, I wouldn't want us to forget that the glory of it all is that when we pray for wisdom, we get that and more, we get better than we asked for. When we pray responsibly, even when it seems rather late in the day, our God is pleased and gives us not only that wisdom but a good deal more as well.
The Scripture says that, "It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, 'Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold I now do according to your word. Behold I give you a wise and discerning mind. I also give you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, and length of days.’"
When we pray for wisdom, God grants that prayer and more, much more. Our Lord taught us that if we will seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all the other things we need and we seek will be added to us as well. And the apostle Paul in the Ephesian letter sings in doxology to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. From one end of the Scriptures to the other is this glorious truth: that God is more gracious than we can even imagine when our own perspectives are right, when we pray for the right things – in short, when we pray for wisdom.
May I take a couple of moments to tell you what is in my own heart today? Let me share with you how this thing of praying for wisdom shapes up for me.
There is in me as I have now spent almost two months as your pastor some of the elements of Solomon at the outset of his tenure in Israel. Now I hasten to add that nobody has been slaughtered; this is not the Texas Chainsaw pastor! But I can identify with some elements of Solomon's minds.
I have prayed for energy, that I might be able to work longer and harder to make things here turn around.
I have prayed we would build the staff quickly so that some things which are being neglected could be handled.
My prayer has suggested to the Lord that it's time for us to be getting some new members so that there would be evidence of growth, that it is time for inactive members to get back to church, that it is time for unhappy members to get past their hurts.
Would you believe I have even prayed there be some time without distraction and disturbance so that I could get to everyone and everything that somebody wants me to do?
And I know that it will come as no surprise that I might find a notch in my prayers for more lay leaders to emerge and for more dollars to make their way into the plates so that all those things that need to be done could be done, without delay.
I suspect I have been a bit like the fellow who prayed, “Lord, give me the gift of patience, and give it to me right now! “
But when I hear the Scriptures, when I see myself as I really am, when I discern what needs at the heart of it all to happen here, what I am driven to pray for is wisdom. Wisdom and compassion and discernment and caring, so that I may be and do what you need. Not what my ambition would like to see, but what you need. And I have an idea that other things will fall into peace, in their own time, in God's good time.
Do not this morning hear me saying that my prayer for myself as your pastor is a prayer for life on Easy Street. Not at all. If I know myself, I know that I like to be stressed, I need creative stress, I need that creative desperation. I mentioned a while ago. No, that's not my prayer. But I am praying for perspective and discernment so that I will do the right things, the best things. And I am hoping you will join me in prayer for collective wisdom so that in our relationship together, however long it may be, we will stay in tune with God's timing, and we will be open to receive all the gifts, all the gifts he has for us.
Pray for wisdom if you would pray for the right things, and then expect God's gifts in abundance.
An unknown, unnamed soldier during the terrible days of the American Civil war left behind most eloquent testimony to this truth. May I share his legacy with you?
I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy; I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life; I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I had asked for, but everything that I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered; I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
