The High Calling
“I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity.” 1 Timothy 2:1-2
Intro: Today we pray and remember with gratitude
those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country.
It is because of the women and men who have served this country,
That we have the right and freedom to be here in this place today.
We have the right to live at peace in our own homes.
We have the right to pursue prosperity and happiness.
As we remember what these brave women and men did,
Let us honor the gift of freedom they have given us by saying thank you with our actions,
and choosing to love and honor others.
Let us say to all those who have sacrificed so much we appreciate you, love you, and pray for you.
Thank God for those who serve to make us free.
Remembering is important.
The words “remember”, “remembrance”, and “memorial” appear more than 230 times in the Bible.
God commands us to observe certain days as holy days of “remembrance”.
Jesus commands us to remember the bread and cup as his body and blood was given to make salvation by grace and cross the means of knowing forgiveness and having a relationship with God.
Prayer is “The High Calling” to a spiritual life.
What does it mean to pray?
Abraham Lincoln was seven years old
when his family was forced to leave Kentucky because they could not pay their bills.
At age nine his mother died.
At age twenty-one he was fired from his job as a store clerk.
The woman he dated for four years turned to scorn.
He lost more elections than he won.
He had a nervous breakdown.
His four year old son died.
At fifty-one he was elected president.
In his second term he was assassinated.
Lincoln said, “I often go to my knees (in prayer) because I have no place else to go.”
Even though God is all knowing and God is all powerful
God has chosen to let us help him change the world through our prayers.
Pray for all people
Pray for kings
Pray for people who are in authority.
Depending upon your circumstances, chaos, difficulties, the tyranny of the moment
or your spiritual discipline, level of faith and maturity.
We may experience a very wide range and many variations of our prayer life.
Deep prayer when you want your relationship with God to be closer.
Agonizing prayer when you like Jesus pray,
“Father let this cup pass from me, but not my will but thy will be done.”
Some of you are there today.
Praying for a strained relationship with your faith.
Or Praying for a difficulty you are going through.
Prayer will always bring you to God.
Prayer brings to life the resources that are available to you
I knew a man by the name of David.
He was brought up in a Godly home.
His father was a preacher.
He married when he was 16 years old.
He had a beautiful wife and four kids.
He had a great job making lots of money.
But David never practiced faith in church.
Until his wife left him.
He injured his back and lost his job.
One of his kids became very ill.
David went to talk to a preacher at a church nearby.
The preacher advised him to pray and invited him to attend the next church service.
That night David walked out into a wooded area near his house.
He got down on his knees and prayed,
“God if you are real just give me a sign, any sign, give me something that proves to me you are real.”
After several hours of praying and waiting David was finally convinced.
David was convinced that there was no God.
Disappointed, broken, hurting, angry, his life in crisis.
When he prayed nothing happened .
We have all met our share of Davids.
People who have turned away from God
and now they mock the church and are bitter toward people who talk about faith.
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Let’s think about what God is like.
God has a nature.
God has certain characteristics
God has certain qualities that the bible describe.
Psalm 147:5“Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”
God’s understanding of us has no limits.
God is not hiding from us.
God is not hard to find.
God does want us to seek him and God wants us to have a relationship with him.
Aren’t you thankful that your prayer life is strong enough
that you can speak to God in the middle of the storms of life.
Aren’t you glad that your faith is built up enough
Your relationship with Jesus is ongoing
And you don’t have to wait or have to pray before you can pray.
Would you have to spend some time getting to know God or getting reacquainted with God
Before you could really, truly get in touch with God and hear God speak?
Here is a truth worth learning: The desire to be in the presence of God pleases God.
Here is what I want you to join me in prayer for: Let us pray for an increasing presence of God.
First in our own life.
Second in the life of the church
Third in the life of the young Christians and the next generation of believers.
Let us pray for an increase in the desire and pursuit of God.
The desire to bring an authentic offering of the heart to God.
What are you really passionate about right now?
Where do you spend the most of your time?
How do you answer the high calling to pray and to serve God?
Clarice Hogan was the organ player at the my very first appointment.
The parsonage was just up the street from the church.
On more than one occasions Clarice would walk up the street after Sunday morning service.
The first couple of times I remember asking her if everything was alright?
Her two daughters and husband assuming she rode home with one or the other.
Half crying and half laughing, she said, "My family forgot me a church.”
While this is humorous the lesson is all to true.
Brothers and sisters, the worst forgetfulness of all is to forget people at church!
One of the biggest lessons that we need to learn is that God didn’t put us here for us!
God put us here for others!
God calls us to prayer for others
To intercede for others.
The Greek word here comes from several root meanings: to take on the mentality of another.
To put yourself in their situation.
To be in it together.
To walk in their shoes.
God calls us into His presence and then part of the higher calling is intercession.
That is when you enter into spiritually, and enter into emotionally into another person’s crisis.
You are doing more than praying for them.
You enter into their calamity.
You share their hurt, their brokenness, you become part of their struggle.
The highest calling a church can answer.
Is to pray for one another.
Is to intercede on another’s behalf.
How many of you took time to pray before the service this morning?
How many have taken time to put yourself in someone else’s place this week?
To feel the urgency of their need.
The pain of their sorrow.
The suffering of their hurt.
“A man once said, I never thanked God for my new shoes until I saw a man with no legs.”
Intercessory prayer lets us look through the eyes of someone else.
Most of all it lets us look through the eyes of Jesus.
And oh what how different things look when we look not through human eyes,
But we get to that place where we can see through the eyes of God.
That is not easy to do. Because we are so caught up in the world around us.
But oh what a refreshing place it is once we are able to get there.
It is there we find the refreshment and renewal for our soul.
It is there we find the depth and spiritual meaning we need.
It is there we find our longing fulfilled.
It is great to be able to soak in the presence of God.
Then give thanks and pray for kings and people in authority.
"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state" (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
Someone wrote, "Only in America."
1- we can get a pizza delivered to your house faster than an ambulance.
2- do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions,
while healthy people can buy cigarettes and liquor at the front.
3-people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET coke.
4- we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our junk in the garage.
5- Only in America do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
Sounds like we need to pray for people in authority.
Does it do any good to pray?
The devil wants to keep Christians from praying.
He fears nothing from prayerless bible studies,
prayerless worship services
and prayerless religion.
He laughs at us
And mocks at our seminary educations, but he trembles when we pray.
On this Memorial Day, we pause to reflect upon our blessings as a nation and the high cost of those blessings. We offer our prayers of thanks and intercession.
Thank you for the freedom we enjoy in this country,
Thank you for opportunities to flourish and be fruitful.
Thank you for those who have served this country with their lives for our liberty.
Thank you for a day set apart, not just for celebration,
but also for solemn remembrance as we consider the sacrifices of so many leaders.
We pray today for the families and friends of those who have given their lives in service to our nation.
May they be comforted in their sadness.
May they be reassured that the sacrifice of their loved ones contributes to a worthy cause.
I want to end with letter of condolence by President Lincoln delivered to Mrs. Bixby on the morning of November 25, 1864, the day after Thanksgiving, and was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department
a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts
that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine
which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.
But I cannot refrain from tendering you
the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost,
and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
Closing: God did on the cross through Jesus what I could not do for myself.
That is Jesus died to pay the penalty and price for my sin.
Because I believe and profess my faith in the forgiveness of the cross
If God never answers another prayer for me while I am here on earth I will still worship Him.
There is no higher calling than to thank pray for others, to intercede on the behave of others.
To pray for kings and people in authority.
And to give thanks to God
For I cannot otherwise repay Him for what he has done for me.
