Praying in Times of Crisis
This sermon is re-edited from Timothy Peck’s sermon about 9-11-01 to the Space shuttle Columbia explosion on 2-1-03. It has meaning to any tragedy.
TEXT: Matthew 6:11 - 5 "And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.[2] 7And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8"Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11Give us this day our daily bread.
12And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
14"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” NKJV
Our lives are still numb from the events of yesterday, as the Space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the plains of Texas. We’ve experienced a national tragedy. Our hearts are broken for the innocent lives that have been lost. We’re struggling to understand how this happened. But we’re also hopeful, knowing our resolve to continue in the exploration of the Heavens. We are a people of resiliency.
I’d like to make a few suggestions for how you and your family can honor Jesus as you walk through this time of pain and grief. These ideas apply for any time we face trials and grief.
I. – PRAY –
We gather here at the church to humble ourselves and seek the face of God. We’ve prayed together as a family. We continue to intercede for President Bush and his advisors, we need to pray for NASA, the emergency service personnel who are working, and for the astronauts families, and friends.
II. - TALK -
In the times of grief in our lives we need to tell others about what were experiencing. We don’t deal with grief of any magnitude and tragedy by bottling it up, but we need to express it. We need to talk about our anger and frustration, our pain and grief, our hope and resolve. We need to talk about it with our spouse and our friends, with our coworkers and our neighbors. Perhaps most of all, we need to talk with our kids, listening to their fears and anger, assuring them as best we can.
III. - SHARE –
Share our faith in Jesus with those around us. This is no time for timidity or fear because we have hope to share. We need to proceed with gentleness and love, but we need to explain how our faith in Jesus is helping us get through this. We need to explain how according to the Bible every human being will give an account before God of their actions.
IV. - RESTRAIN –
In times of trial / tragedy / turmoil - we look to blame. It is a natural reaction. We desire to maybe call on police, lawyers, or others to help us resolve our pain. We need to restrain ourselves and encourage those around us to restrain themselves. We’re angry because we’ve been victims of terrible events. But since we can’t see the object of our anger, we’ll be tempted to let our anger spill out onto other people.
V. - PERSEVERE –
We are united in a single cause, that of glorifying God in who we are. We must press forward, even in the midst of brokenness, believing that maintaining a sense of routine and normalcy will help us and our families through any time of pain. We need to demonstrate to the others that we can endure the toughest of circumstances. As followers of Jesus we persevere, knowing that the Bible is true when it promises ultimate vindication on the other side of perseverance. But we must pray, talk about it, share our faith, restrain ourselves, and persevere if we are to get through this unprecedented time of suffering together.
As we read the word of Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps providentially today we come to that part where we bring our needs to God. We come to that phrase, “Give us this today our daily bread” Mt. 6:11.
In that prayer we’re asking for our daily allotment of food, and by implication, our daily allotment of all the resources we need in life. When we pray for our daily bread, we’re asking God to meet all our basic needs. We’re not just asking for food and water, but we’re seeking God to meet whatever we need at that moment. All of our needs, trivial and enormous, are brought before our Father in heaven. So praying for our daily bread is asking God to meet our needs.
There’s an overwhelming array of needs facing us today in the wake of so many events around us these days. We want comfort today. We want answers. We need resolution, as we need someone to give answers for what we’ve seen and felt this weekend. We still face all the ordinary needs that confront us daily with details of life. We hear of rumors of War. We see disaster in the skies above. We wonder why our nation goes through these trials. By instructing us to pray for our daily bread, Jesus invites us to bring our needs before our Father. He invites us to lay our needs at the feet of our God, to bring the big ones and the little ones, the crushing ones and the irritating ones. Thank God that we can talk to him, tell him the way we feel and come to him just as we are. We can cast all our cares upon him, all of our cares, not just the great and ideal concerns but also the small ones.
Now I want to give you three reasons to bring all your needs to your Heavenly Father today.
I. – WE ARE NOT SELF SUFFICENT -
Our world is characterized by an obsession to chase after their needs. People in our world devote their entire lives to making, building, investments, buying. They yearn for security, yet the more money they make and the more possessions they accumulate, the more vulnerable they become. We’re reminded here that our Father knows what we need. He knows what we need, even before we ask him to meet our needs. When we bring our needs to God in prayer, we admit we are not self-sufficient. We want to believe we’re self-sufficient, autonomous and self-reliant people who have life by the throat. We meticulously build around us an illusion of security; lulling us into the delusion our lives are untouchable. We plan months and even years in advance, believing that we are the captains of our own fate, the masters of our own destiny. We enjoy our life of illusion because it makes us feel safe and secure. Prayer continually reminds us of that. When we bring our needs to God in prayer we’re admitting that we can’t handle things all by ourselves. Prayer becomes a way of breaking through our denial and giving us a reality check, as we admit before an infinite God that we can’t take care of ourselves. We bring our needs to our Father because we can’t meet them in our own strength.
Now through the years, generations of Christians have learned how to pray by reading the Bible’s book of Psalms. Whereas the rest of the Bible gives us God inspired communication to us from God, in the Psalms we find God inspired prayers and songs addressed from people to God. We experience the depths of real prayer in the Psalms. Let me quote to you Psalm 55:1-2: "Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea; hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught" (NIV). The psalmist cries out to God in distress, pleading with God to respond to his request. He asks God not to ignore his plea, not because there’s any possibility that God might ignore it, but because he feels desperation. The psalmist’s heart is deeply restless in light of the terrible needs he’s experiencing. I can well imagine our president praying these very words as he tries to figure out how to best respond.
II. – WE OPEN OUR HEARTS TO GOD –
From this inspired prayer we find another reason to bring our needs to God. Our tendency is to build walls between what we’re feeling and God. We figure God would be horrified to know what we’re thinking, the thoughts of vengeance and anger. When we feel desperate we fear our impure thoughts would shock God, driving God further away from us in our time of need. So we build walls, pretending to do the right thing, when inside we’re seething with resentment, bitterness, even hatred.
Prayer opens all of that up to God, the anger and the rage, the doubts and the fears.
Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Anxiety isn’t the answer when we face desperate needs. Anxiety only paralyzes us in fear, as we think about all the “what ifs” that might happen. Those “what ifs” can drive a person absolutely crazy.
III. - WE EXPERIENCE GOD’S PEACE –
The third reason we bring our needs to God is that we want experience God’s Peace. Recurrent anxiety is usually a symptom that we’re not bringing our needs to God in prayer. It’s an indicator, like a warning light on a car, which we’re holding on, that we’re trying to guard our own hearts. Anxious thoughts should trigger us to automatically bring our needs to God in prayer, to seek God’s intervention in our needs, no matter how big or how small they may seem.
CONCLUSION -
- We bring our needs to God in a desire for God to meet our needs in a variety of ways.
- We bring our needs to God in prayer;
- We admit that we’re not self-sufficient.
- We open our hearts to God.
- We experience God’s peace.
- We look for God to meet our needs in unexpected ways.
- We ask the Almighty to, “Give us today our daily bread.”
