In the eleventh century, King Henry III of Bavaria grew tired of court life and the pressures of being a monarch. He made application to Prior Richard at a local monastery, asking to be accepted as a contemplative and spend the rest of his life in the monastery. "Your Majesty," said Prior Richard, "do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience? That will be hard because you have been a king."
"I understand," said Henry. "The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you."
Today we are looking at the story of the calling of Paul and Barnabas to do God’s work in spreading the good news about Jesus around the world. Specifically we are looking at the role of Prayer in their calling. And as we’ve been doing each week we are going to look at prayer in this story as a pattern for prayer in our own lives.
The central lesson I think is simply this: In prayer we make ourselves accessible and available to the Lord for His use.
Transition: As we look at the prayer in this story I’d like to concentrate on how prayer makes us available to God. In the first mention of prayer in the passage I think it’s pretty clear that prayer fosters.
Communication (with God)
v. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."
Now while this verse doesn’t specifically mention prayer, the very next verse does link prayer and fasting, as does the following chapter. I think it’s a good guess that prayer was a central feature of the worship that led to this direct message from God.
It only makes sense that Prayer, along with Scripture as our only means of communication with God, is one of the primary ways that God can break through the background noise of our lives to communicate His call to us
I believe that God still speaks to us and that He speaks to our specific, individual need. In 1924, Dr. Leila McConnell, having just received a degree from Asbury College, felt God’s call to start a work for God in Eastern Kentucky. Fearing the reputation of "Bloody Breathitt" County, and having no means of support, she sought long and hard, praying for answers. Finally, her promise came, sure and true from God’s Word, "The mountain shall be yours" (Joshua 17:18).
With that promise, she founded Mt. Carmel High School, followed six years later by the founding of Kentucky Mountain Bible College. God provided all she needed for her work, and has continued to bless the work there after eighty years have passed. Today Kentucky Mountain Bible College graduates are reaching out all over the world, touching over 50 countries and crisscrossing the United States. They serve in inner-city missions, denominational leadership, Native American outreach and international ministry, making a worldwide difference.
This is not an isolated case of one special individual hearing from God simply because He wants to do a special work. God’s call is for each of our lives--He has a plan for you. For you to be obedient to his call you need to hear it, to hear it you need to make yourself available to communicate with Him; you do that in prayer.
Next, I believe that Prayer makes us available to God through...
Consecration
v. 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
Consecration means being set apart for a special purpose. In the OT the tools that were used in the worship at the temple were consecrated. You couldn’t take those bowls home and use them.
I used to like to listen to a guy on the radio named Jerry Baker, he had a show called "On the Garden Line." It was kind of like Dr. Laura but instead of people it was plants that had the problems. People called in with their garden questions. I remember he often talked about setting apart a Garden sprayer to use with weed killer and marking it with a big red X so you knew never to use that sprayer on your garden. He was talking about consecrating a garden sprayer.
In this passage, through prayer and fasting, Paul and Barnabas were marked with a big Red X they were set apart for God’s use.
Paul later wrote to the church at Rome that we should "present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God which is our reasonable act of worship." He’s saying we should set ourselves apart for serving the Lord.
Implied here is certainly an expectation that we keep ourselves morally clean, in addition to being available for God’s service whenever and wherever He might call. Both of these, the positive and the negative, what we should do and what we shouldn’t do to make ourselves available to God, I think are founded upon a life of prayer. It is in prayer that we offer ourselves as sacrifices and it is in prayer that we gain the spiritual strength to live it out. Which bring us to the final point. Prayer makes us available to God through...
Commitment
In Chapter 14 we see that Paul & Barnabas have followed God’s call, have spread the good news and seen many trust in Jesus for salvation. As churches are established in each of the towns that the missionaries visit we see how prayer continues to have an active role in God’s calling of the new leadership for these new churches and this time the prayer has to do with...
14:23 Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.
Here Paul and Barnabas, having established the fledgling churches, select leadership and again with prayer and fasting they place these new leaders into the Lord’s hands. Clearly there’s a message to us here about our need to commit others into the Lord’s hands, trusting in the Lord’s faithfulness. But I’d like to stretch this a bit further to suggest that Paul and Barnabas’ commitment of these new leaders probably reflects the fact that these leaders have also committed themselves to the Lord’s plan for their lives. Certainly we can see that Paul and Barnabas led by example with lives of commitment--in spite of hardships, imprisonment, danger, fatigue, they remained committed to the cause that they had been set apart for. So when they "committed" these others, they were expecting no more from them than they had demonstrated in their own lives: no less than total surrender to God’s will and God’s way.
Adoniram Judson sweated out Burma’s heat for 18 years without a furlough, six years without a convert. Enduring torture and imprisonment, he admitted that he never saw a ship sail without wanting to jump on board and go home. When his wife’s health broke and he put her on a homebound vessel in the knowledge he would not see her for two full years, he confided to his diary: "If we could find some quiet resting place on earth where we could spend the rest of our days in peace. . ." But he steadied himself with this remarkable postscript: "Life is short. Millions of Burmese are perishing. I am almost the only person on earth who has learned enough of their language to communicate the good news of salvation. . ."
Commitment. Uncompromising loyalty to God’s plan. Consecration is offering yourself to the Lord. Commitment, I think, is living it.
Consecration is singing "I’ll Go Where you want me to go dear Lord" and truly meaning it. Commitment is when God answers, "Fine I need you in India" and you go. Consecration is promising to be a witness to the friends you had before you trusted in Jesus, commitment is when you do it.
Time spent in prayer in the secret place with God fills us with the spiritual strength to step out into the public square with God.
CONCLUSION:
Prayer makes us available to hear God’s call, and to follow through.
I began with a story about a king who sought a contemplative life to better serve God. You remember that the head monk said to him:
"Your Majesty, do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience? That will be hard because you have been a king."
"I understand," said Henry. "The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you."
"Then I will tell you what to do," said Prior Richard. "Go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you." When King Henry died, a statement was written: "The King learned to rule by being obedient."
In prayer we make ourselves available to God, when we give ourselves to the Lord for whatever purpose he chooses then we experience abundance of life. It may be that he will simply call you to bloom in the place He has already planted you--to be a good accountant or teacher or mother or father, or perhaps he will call you to youth ministry or to serve a world from here. The question is, "are you available?"
William Booth, Founder of the salvation army, when asked the reason for his success in ministry replied, "I said to the Lord, ’You can have all there is of William Booth’"
