Bibliography: Craig Miller, Postmoderns; Bill Hybels, Too Busy Not To Pray; Louise Perrotta, All You Really Need To Know About Prayer You Can Learn From The Poor; Pierre Wolff, Questions On How To Pray
In her book (I believe) The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank, Erma Bombeck talked about what happen to the suburban housewife. If not careful, without finding meaning outside of housework, being a wife and raising children, a woman could possibly fade into the background of her family’s life losing all semblance of existence.
She writes, “Before long, you become like another part of the house - like the electric blender. Your children come home from school, look you straight in the eye, and ask you if anyone is home.”
I believe the same is true with our relationship with God, particularly in the society we live in today.
Life is so busy. And its not only busy, its fast. We work long hours and find ourselves having to hurry up to do it. There never seems to be enough hours in the day and everything and everyone is so demanding of our time.
Craig Miller notes that the fast pace we live in began to pick up speed in the 1980’s with the invention of the personal computer. Coupled with the internet, the pace of life in our world is going exponentially faster.
What does that mean?
Joey came from school a couple of weeks ago wanting to make a deal with me. He wanted me to change his allowance. He wanted me to begin by paying him 1 penny today and to agree to double his allowance everyday for the next 30 days.
Now, if you’ve heard this math puzzle, then you know that within 30 days that penny doubles to 10 million dollars.
Craig Miller says that what is happening in our world technologically is occurring that the very same rate. He calls it exponential growth.
Only, it doesn’t just effect the technological aspects of our life. Technology in turn affects everything about us - the way we work, the way we play, expectations on our response and our productivity. Therefore, our relationships are affected. What we do with one another and how we value those relationships has become governed by two factors in our life - our economics and our time.
Is it any wonder that we have difficulty finding time talking to God? Is it any wonder that any time spent contemplatively, reflectively, listening to God makes us feel guilty? We have so much to do, so much that HAS to be done.
And so, God often gets pushed to the back of our life.
Our Bible lesson this evening comes from Luke’s story of Jesus life. We are only in the 5th chapter, but already so much has happened. The first few chapters are taken up with telling about the birth of Jesus, and even about his childhood. His teaching and healing ministry really doesn’t begin until the middle of the 4th chapter. And here we are just about a chapter later - the middle of the 5th chapter.
Already, the word has spread about Jesus’ ministry. Often crowds pursue him and gather around him. They come to hear his words of hope. Luke tells us they come to be cured and healed from illness and disease.
But something is there about Jesus Luke doesn’t want us to miss. It is something specific to Jesus that is very important to Luke, something he feels is very important to us as well.
Jesus always found time to withdraw from the world and to pray, to talk with God.
Don’t miss that aspect of Jesus life. When we ask what it means to be a Christian, when we seek to find how to be the person God wants us to be,
when we search to discover how to be Christ-like in our life and faith,
we cannot over look the fact that Jesus took time to pray.
These weren’t fleeting prayers. Jesus devoted a chunk of time to prayer, sometimes praying all night. And though we can relate to idea of visiting with God all night when we are in crisis and weighed down with our heart, I have a hunch that it wasn’t only crisis moments that led Jesus to spend such large amounts of time with God.
Bill Hybels talks about this aspect of spending time alone with God and the value of time. He says:
If we are involved in the marketplace at all, we are trained to believe that time is money. That’s why we talk about managing time, using it efficiently and profitably.
Cram more in. Start earlier. Work later. Take work home. Use a laptop on the commuter train. Phone clients while you drive. Check your email while you fly. Schedule breakfasts, lunches and dinners for profit. Performance, performance, performance -it’s the key to promotion, to compensation increase, to power.
I would add we are convinced - and sometimes it is so, we are trapped - in speed in performance for mere survival.
Bill Hybles continues:
Getting caught up in that intense pace can be rewarding! It’s exciting when the adrenaline starts to flow and you get on a roll, when you start racing faster and faster. But it leaves precious little time for quiet moments with God.
I see people operating at this relentless pace. Never a dull moment; never a reflective moment either. Frightened, I ask myself, “Where doe the still, small voice of God fit into our hectic lives? When do we allow God to lead and guide, correct and affirm? And if this seldom or never happens, how can we lead truly authentic Christian lives?
Rev. Luther Gibbs is a pastor in Kingston, Jamacia. He talks about the importance of time alone with God in prayer and living the life of a Christian by telling a story.
Once there were two streams standing at the foot of a mountain. On top of the mountain was a great lake and in front of it, a great desert.
Both streams wanted to water the desert, and one day they began to deliberate about how to go about it. “I think that to be successful, we must find a way to climb the mountain and get attached to the lake,” said one stream.”
“What a waste of time!” the other stream retorted. “You’ll never make it. And besides, look at all this parched land just crying out for water. I’m going on.”
So the second stream flowed out into the desert. As the sun got hotter and hotter and the land dryer and dryer, the stream got smaller and smaller. Eventually it faded because it had no resources.
In the meantime, the first stream was struggling up the mountain. It was a long, arduous climb, but finally the stream joined the lake and asked, “Will you help me to go out water the desert?” “I will,” was the answer. So together lake and stream flowed down the mountain and into the desert, making the dry land rich and fertile.
“Prayer helps me to do what the stream did,” explains Rev. Gibbs, “to make myself one with the resource of the lake. With prayer, my life and ministry are constantly watered. Without it I’m all dried up.”
In school I can remember learning in science the simple concepts of completing an electrical circuit. With wires and batteries, receptacles and light bulbs we experimented trying to complete series of circuits. It was obvious when we had demonstrated understanding of the way electrical circuits worked.
The light bulbs lit up.
Spending time alone with God is like completing the circuit. Our light can’t shine, there is no transfer of power until we complete the circuit. Its making ourselves one with the resource, as Rev. Gibbs noted.
Lets look at prayer from a relationship perspective.
Pierre Wolff tells the story of one couple. His story is in response when someone remarked they were too busy to pray.
This couple had 4 children who were busy in the usual extracurricular activities - dance and baseball, music lessons and scouting. She was a housemaker and volunteered at the school and the hospital. He was a civil engineer and the head of the department at work. He also belonged to the Jaycees and they both entertained frequently at home.
They were both very busy people who led very busy lives.
But they had a way of showing their love for one another. Their conversations throughout the week may be fleeting and quick,
but once a week, one evening, always the same evening (and I like the way Wolff describes it) - one evening a week is sacred to them.
They never miss and nothing interferes. They might go out to a restaurant, they might go to a movie or play. Sometimes they went for a walk, sometimes they sat quietly at home together or cooked together.
But they never missed.
Their time together was sacred.
It was key for their relationship and is a wonderful way to keep a relationship alive and healthy.
Now if it makes sense that spending sacred time together is good for a marriage, how much more important is sacred time spent in prayer and communion with our Lord.
You have a prayer card in front of you. Tonight you are asked to make a commitment in your prayer life. Our question tonight is how committed are we to follow the example Jesus set before us, always spending significant time with God, no matter how busy his ministry had become?
I looked at many ways we could begin this fulfill our commitments. I looked for ways we could pursue a life of prayer for each of us wherever we might be on our journey.
There were examples of fleeting prayers. One book I read called them smiles and glances. They are the quick prayers we pray when something catches our heart.
Maybe its someone we see we don’t know. Or maybe its more personal in nature.
But they are prayers of smiles and glances - quick prayers of thanksgiving and petition.
Our prayer life cannot stay on this step forever, however. Someday to have a fulfilling and healthy prayer life we will need to climb another step.
Some sources talked about reading the Bible in a quiet and meditative way. Some talked about spending time reading the psalms in particular.
Others talked about reading hymns or listening to music.
Still others talked about repetitive and ritualized prayers that we can memorize and have meaning for us that we can recite like the Lord’s Prayer or the 23rd Psalm.
Bill Hybles has a prayer pattern and some sources talked about utilizing prayer calendars.
I searched these sources looking for answers - answers to share with you the discoveries these individuals have discovered in their prayer life. And I searched for the magic key in unlocking their communion with God.
I wondered if I might find what it was in their prayer life, what manner or method helped them to plug in and make that divine connection.
What I discovered is that there is no particular way to pray, no one particular method or pattern, no magic key to a successful prayer life.
Rather, there is diligence, and a recognition of importance and priority to prayer in the midst of a busy world.
Each resource, each individual has a commitment to a committed prayer life - a commitment to sacred time with God.
Tonight the invitation is before us. Will we make the same sacred commitment to spend time alone with God?
Will we grow one step in our prayer life this year?
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, great and wonderful are our ways of talking with us.
Often we feel discombobulated and disheveled. Our lives are chaotic, in disarray, and often speeding quickly out of our control. We must confess that our first priority has not always been our relationship with you.
Keep our lives from controlling us. Help us to keep our relationship with you a priority.
Don’t give up on us. Don’t stop tapping us on the shoulder. Don’t stop trying to get our attention.
Lord, help us in making these commitments and in remaining faithful to them.
In Jesus name we pray, amen.
