Community Church Sermons

Trinity Sunday, Year C – June 10, 2001

"Everyone Was Amazed! – Part Two”

John 16:12-15; Acts 2:43-47

Today, I want to return to where we left off last Sunday – with the disciples of Jesus about two months after Easter. Jesus has returned to heaven. The disciples are alone. Now it is time for them to become Jesus’ living representatives on earth – something we call the Church.

And looking back on it now, we can see that the turning point for these disciples – the moment before which they struggled just to make it through the day, and after which they went out to powerfully love the whole world – was the day of Pentecost.

The day the Holy Spirit – the third person of the Trinity – came to them as Jesus had promised. The very same spiritual power that brought the world into being at the command of God, now resided in the lives of the disciples. And it was very noticeable! As we read last week in Acts 2:43:

“Everyone was amazed because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.

On one side of Pentecost, they were locked up in a room, paralyzed by fear. And on the other side, they were launched out into the community, powerfully proclaiming the Good News and demonstrating the kingdom to everyone. And their lives were filled with wonders and signs of God’s love – miracles and answered prayers - just like Jesus performed wonders and signs during his ministry.

Now, to be honest with you, I think that many of us Christians today live on the pre-Pentecost side of our faith. We’ve been taught through our scientifically rationalistic culture that things like answered prayer, and miraculous blessings, and personal encounters with God are basically uncool experiences. Surely they are just the product of overactive imaginations. Or a sign of intellectual depravity.

And yet, hardly a week goes by when one of us does not encounter someone who tells about his or her own personal experience with the power of God. And it makes us wonder.

He was praying to find a way to reconcile with his brother with whom he had not spoken in nearly thirty years. Three days later, the telephone rang. It was the brother calling him! The brother said, “Bob, we need to get beyond this problem, and become brothers again. If it needs to start with me saying ‘I’m sorry’, then ‘I’m sorry!’” And that was the beginning of a miracle of reconciliation between two estranged brothers.

She was at the end of her rope. On the surface, a happily-married mother of three beautiful children, with all the comforts of the upper-middle class. But underneath, she was as unhappy and lost as a person can be. She thought about just running away. So one day, she packed up her bags, dropped her kids off at her mother’s house, and drove off into the distance. Hours later, she stopped for gas and went into a little restaurant for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the look of emptiness on her face. Maybe something else. But when the waitress brought over her order, the waitress stopped for a moment and said, “Honey, from the looks of you, you need someone to tell you that God loves you. So I’ll say it, ‘God loves you!’ Is there anything I can do to help?”

Those words hit her like a ton of bricks. She began to weep. The waitress sat down in the booth. They began to talk, and they talked for a good long while. And somehow the talking helped. Then she got up and went to the car, and drove home as fast as she could. Today, she says that waitress had to be an angel in disguise. She’s even gone back to the restaurant to try to find her and thank her, but so far, she’s had no luck locating the woman. In any event, that conversation with a loving waitress – or was it an angel? - was the beginning of a long journey to what has become a beautiful process of healing for this woman and her family.

The stories are all around us. Wonders and signs! Answers to prayer! Visits by angels! The Spirit is still moving in peoples’ lives today – despite what the scientific rationalists say!

So how can you and I open our lives to the power of the Holy Spirit?

The book of Acts tells us that Jesus instructed his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the power of the Spirit came upon them. Now, the word wait in the Bible means so much more than to just sit back and let time fly. To wait on God means to become fully attentive to God. The word wait is often associated with praying. And, indeed, in Acts 1:14, we learn that, when the disciples returned to Jerusalem, they waited by devoting themselves to prayer.

A short while ago, Sandy and I were planting some trees at our house. Bad idea! Man, it’s not easy to dig holes in this East Tennessee soil of ours! That red clay is hard! Of course, many of us have learned now from experience that the best way to plant stuff around here is to hire a landscaper to do it for you! But, if you must do it yourself, wait until after it rains awhile.

Rain softens the soil.

And in a similar way, prayer softens the soul!

We task-oriented, convenience-loving Americans sometimes miss the point on prayer. We think of prayer almost as if it’s like calling Domino’s Pizza to ask for home delivery. Ah, God? I’d like to make an order. Ah, for home delivery. It’s – ah – 306 Oonoga Circle. O-o-n-o-g-a Circle. Yes, that’s over here in the Village. No, I don’t understand the names of the streets either. I’d like to order a large, thick crust financial blessing, two healings, my test at the doctor’s this week to turn out okay, a two-liter bottle of joy, a big basket of patience – yeah, that’s for my wife, and – a good job for my kid who’s just graduating from college. Right. And hold the pepperoni.

Many of us think of prayer as a technique for getting the real Domino to deliver good stuff to our door. But the real essence of prayer is not to obtain, but rather to prepare. Prayer softens the soul, and opens the inner windows and doors, and makes ready the human heart for the power of the Holy Spirit to do his thing in us and through us. Whenever you encounter a person in whose life the Holy Spirit seems to be constantly and vibrantly alive, you’ll discover a person who is devoted to prayer.

But probably not the kind of prayer most of us use. Let me briefly share with you in our time remaining this morning three types of prayer that can open your life to the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you were to ask the disciples how they prayed as they waited in Jerusalem for the Spirit to come, they would tell you they prayed the Psalms.

The book of Psalms in our Old Testament was the hymnal – better yet, the prayer book – of the ancient Temple. It is a collection of some of the greatest prayers of all time, prayed by the likes of David and others in whose lives the Spirit moved. And the beautiful prayers recorded in the Psalms cover all manner of human situations – prayers for when you are going through hard times, prayers for when your heart is full of joy and you want to tell God how happy you are, or for when it seems like God is far away, or for when you have people in your life who don’t like you, or for when you’ve sinned and need forgiveness, even for when you’re facing death. There are one hundred and fifty psalms. Prayers that cover the gamut of life.

Many people are surprised to learn that when Jesus, on the cross, cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabbachthani…” which means “My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me…?” he was not making a simple observation about feeling separated from God as he took the sin of the world upon himself. No, what Jesus was doing there in the grips of death, was singing a song! He was praying a psalm. And when all those gathered before the cross heard it, they surely began to recite it themselves. And when he could not continue the prayer, surely they finished it for him! It was Psalm 22. It is the cry of a person who is down for the count – a person who is all alone, with no more chances, and no more hope. And then, in the face of the abyss, this psalm sings of God hearing that cry, and riding to the rescue, and converting what appears to be a tragedy into a life-giving miracle for both the person, and the world. And then the psalm ends with the triumphant chorus, “GOD HAS DONE IT!”

That was the song Jesus sang on the cross. And that was the song Jesus’ mother was probably singing through her tears as she went home that day after the death of her son.

Praying the psalms. You can do it every day – at morning, and at night. Some Bibles have a page in the back that tells you what psalms match up with what human experiences. Some people just start at Psalm 1, and keep on going, one at a time. When you pray the psalms, you should take them one verse at a time. Pause and ponder the verse. Repeat it several times. Connect it with your own experience. If nothing connects, just move on. The point is not to learn the psalms, but to encounter God in the human experience.

Praying the psalms softens the soul, and prepares it for the Holy Spirit.

Another very simple form of prayer is conversational prayer.

I learned to pray conversationally when I was just a kid. Our youth choir was singing at a big conference in New York City. There was a lot of sharing that weekend by people whose lives were full of the Spirit’s work and power. As I listened to the testimonies of God’s grace touching the lives of ordinary people, I found myself deeply moved. God seemed to draw very close to me.

That night, there in the hotel, I just couldn’t get to sleep. I was excited about the feeling of God I had inside. I was full of thoughts about God and questions about how God fit into my life. It was in the wee hours of the morning when I got up and sat by the window, looking out over the lights of the Big Apple. And I started talking to God – very quietly because my roommates were snoring away.

“Lord, I want this feeling to last forever,” I whispered. “Your love has become so real to me. I can even see your majesty in the lights of the city, the tall buildings, the people. What a big city! It’s two AM and people are still going about! Is it true you know them all by name? There must be a lot of heartache here. I can see that hospital over across the way, and hear the sirens. You must be over there with them, too, even while you’re over here with me. How wonderful you are!” And on and on the conversation went.

Conversational prayer is just that. A conversation between two friends. It’s not necessarily asking for things, although that’s okay, too. It’s more a matter of sharing thoughts and feelings like you would with a very close friend. It can be spoken aloud, or whispered, or just thought about. It’s the kind of prayer you can offer at home, or in the car, or walking in the woods, or even on the golf course! I use it all the time on the 15^th tee of the Toqua Golf Course. As I take out my 3-wood and step up to the ball, I silently say, “Lord, please, please, please don’t let me hit this in Jim Bush’s yard again!”

And you know what happens. I could aim out at the lake, and that darn ball would still veer off into Bush’s yard. And so there I go, walking down the fairway toward his house, knowing I’ve got to pay Jim another pastoral visit. And I’ll say to the Lord, “Lord, why does that always happen to me? Is it my grip? My equipment? Some flaw in my swing?” And God never really answers that question, but sometimes I swear I can hear laughter in heaven – as if God says to the angels, “Try ‘lack of ability!’” Oh, they have a heavenly hoot over me, I’m sure!

Now my point is this: in conversational prayer, God is just your best friend in the whole world who you can say anything to, ask anything of, and who you can share anything with. Even silly things.

After nearly forty years of practicing conversational prayer, I’ve learned that the most important thing it does is brings me into an awareness of God’s presence with me throughout the day every day. And it brings me to experiences I’m sure I would otherwise miss. For instance, a while ago, I was up at the hospital, sitting with a family in the ICU waiting room. A few seats away sat a woman who was all alone. She seemed to have fear written across her face. You could tell that tears were not far from the surface. She seemed extremely anxious, almost jumping every time the door to the waiting room was opened.

Seeing her, it was the most natural thing in the world, in that moment, for me to pray within myself, “Lord, that woman looks so sad and worried. I wonder who she’s worried about? Would you please guide the hands of the doctors as they work with her loved one? Would you give her your peace to calm her troubled soul. Lord, send an angel to sit with her, and bring her comfort.”

A short while later, a doctor came in and led the woman out to the unit, probably to see her loved one. I have no idea how it all worked out. But I’m glad I had a chance to pray for her. I don’t think I would have even thought to pray for her, except for the fact that conversational prayer has made me more sensitive to picking up on people who need prayer. I think I would have wrestled with finding the words to pray, except for the fact that conversational prayer has made prayer-language second nature, so I don’t even have to think about it anymore.

Conversational prayer softens the soul. It is a beautiful way to let God’s Spirit find entry points into your life.

Finally today, there is something called patterned prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is a patterned prayer. It has three parts. The first is praise of God – “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name!” The second part is praying for God’s mission to be fulfilled in the world – “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The last part, is a request that God will give us the strength this very day to help make the second part come true – “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

I praise you, God, and love you, acknowledging that you alone are Holy. I pray that the poor will be lifted, the hungry fed, the lost found, the last become first, that true justice and peace will be established on earth, according to your will. So give me the bread I need, the forgiveness I need, the ability to forgive, and protection from evil as I join you this very day in your righteous cause.

Jesus said, “When you pray, pray LIKE this…” To pray every day for these three things – God’s praise, God’s kingdom to be accomplished here and now, and your ability to be for God today what he needs you to be to make it happen – is such a simple, but powerful form of prayer.

Another patterned prayer that people are praying a lot these days is the prayer of Jabez. I know some of you are praying it. Popularized in a book by Bruce Wilkerson, the Jabez prayer is an obscure little prayer found in the fourth chapter of the book of First Chronicles. We prayed the Jabez prayer in our call to prayer this morning.

“Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!”

I’ll leave you to go and buy the book for a detailed explanation, but here’s the pattern: first, to pray that God will make good on his promises to you – which are substantial and wonderful!; second that God will increase your territory – your God-given responsibilities toward others – that God will use you more than ever before; third, that God will be present with you daily; and fourth, that God will protect you from evil, and keep you from inflicting pain on others. Boy, all of us could use a healthy dose of that last part, couldn’t we?

Some people tape this prayer to their mirror where they can see it and pray it at the start of every day. Others memorize it and simply pray it from time to time during the day. And many people testify to signs and wonders that seem to occur as they pray according to the pattern seen in the prayer of Jabez.

Now this is not a mantra – intended to be recited like a magic formula. Rather, it is a pattern of prayer that lifts us above merely praying to obtain things to another level altogether – praying to prepare ourselves for the Holy Spirit’s daily engagement with our lives.

Prayer softens and prepares the soul for the power of the Holy Spirit!

You have come here today because somehow you know that God is the key to your life. And as you face the unique personal challenges you do, there is something deep in your heart that cries out for God’s power to help you, and others through you.

And no one wants this for you more than God!

So God invites you and me to wait – to pray – for the Holy Spirit.

Prayer softens the soul, and prepares the heart for God’s power.

Let it soften your soul. And may the Spirit come – to you!