Acting on Faith

Luke 11: 1-13
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples."
2He said to them, "When you pray, say:
" 'Father,[a]
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.[b]
3Give us each day our daily bread.
4Forgive us our sins,
for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.[c]
And lead us not into temptation.[d]' "

5Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, 6because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'

7"Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness[e] he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

9"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

11"Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Jesus never does anything in half measures. When the disciples would ask him how to do something or to explain a parable to them, Jesus would always give them more than they had bargained for with their question. They asked Jesus, “Teach us how to pray” and not only did he tell them how, he also told them what will happen when they do it.

Two weeks ago I told you that the Lord should hold the reigns of this church. That His will be done and that requires something from us. It does not mean we remain passive, but instead we must act. But how do we know how to act? How do we know what is the Lord’s will?

When Jesus tells the disciples how to pray, he tells them how prayer is a powerful tool. It is a link between you and the Father. It is the way we communicate with God. We’re lucky because Jesus mediates our prayer which means even before we begin to pray, Jesus is praying for us. And as we pray, Jesus continues to pray for us, mediating what we need and desire and what we are feeling to God the Father. And then Jesus brings the Father’s response to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That means prayer helps us to become better mothers and fathers, better brothers and sisters and better friends – in general we become better people. Prayer opens our eyes to the spiritual life, to what before our eyes could not see. It is all done through Jesus Christ. When he became a man who is also God, he created a means for God the Father to understand our humanity in a whole new way – because now God the Father experiences exactly what it means to be human through Jesus Christ. As Jesus prays for you because you lost your job, he also prays that your belly will always have food and that your children will have clean clothes because Jesus knows what it is to hunger and to be dirty. And now God the Father knows too.

When Jesus mediates our prayer, it means that not only does the Father get to experience humanity, but we get to experience the Lord because the Holy Spirit is inside each of us. That is what it means to be a Christian – the Lord has set up shop in each of our hearts. And he’s in for the long-haul.

The more we pray, the more we strengthen that relationship, and the more we affirm the bonds that Jesus created two millennia ago. Let’s look and see how that happens by turning back to Luke.

According to Jesus’ outline, a prayer should always begin with praise and thanksgiving. This is where we show our appreciation for all the things God has given to us in our lives. And on the days when we feel as if nothing is good, then we thank him for our very breath that we breathe and that we can come to him like we can with no one else in our lives.

Then Jesus tells us to ask for what we need. The Lord does not expect us to be able to always know the answers to life’s questions and he understand that sometimes the things we need are very basic – like bread to fill our stomachs and clean water to drink. We get to ask for what we need even before we ask for forgiveness for all the things we’ve done wrong.

Jesus puts asking for forgiveness as the very last thing in a prayer, but being Jesus he also adds a little addendum. “As we forgive those who sin against us”. We say the words glibly these days, but Jesus was pointing out that if we want to be forgiven then we must be willing to forgive ourselves. That was essential to so many of his parables, that we do for others what we ask for in return. We shouldn’t ask God to save our house if we are unwilling to let a friend sleep in our bed when he needs a place to stay.

As I said before, prayer strengthens our relationship with the Father, a unique bond that was created by Jesus Christ. The reason the bond is unique is because before Jesus the Israelites had a relationship with God, but it was different from what we have today.

In 2 Chronicles 33:1-13 Manasseh was a bad person. We could make excuses for him and say he had a lot of responsibility thrust upon him at a very young age – not many 12 year olds are ready to run a country. However, Manasseh was lacking something more than age, he was lacking knowledge of God. All of these Jewish laws he broke went directly against the Lord. He desecrated what God had made sacred by putting up shrines to idols in the holy temples of the Lord. He was blaspheming in ways that the people God kicked out of Israel had not even done!

But when Manasseh ended up with his back against a wall, a hook in his nose and shackles on his feet, he had nowhere to turn except the one God he had never paid attention to. He had been so busy searching elsewhere for the answers that he never saw the truth that was staring him in the face. So finally, Manasseh turned to the God he had ignored, blasphemed against and began to pray. He prayed not just with his head, but with his heart and soul. He humbled himself for the first time and the Lord was MOVED by his entreaty and LISTENED to his plea and he ANSWERED Manasseh’s prayer.

The Lord showed Manasseh forgiveness and it was only then, through an answered prayer that Manasseh learned that the Lord is God. This is something we already know, this is a gift we have been given by Jesus Christ. We know that the Lord is God because Jesus has chosen to reveal the Father to us just as he promised in Matthew that none but the Son knows the Father and all those he chooses to reveal Him too.

We do not need to search among false idols or to look anywhere but to the Lord for what we need. We know that our Lord, Jesus Christ, is God. Manasseh committed a lot of evil before he learned this truth and began to follow God’s will. What is our excuse?

Psalm 24 told us that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it and all who live here are also the Lord’s because he created the earth. The Lord, therefore, is more powerful than anything we can imagine and he has proven it to us all in different ways. When we pray to the Lord, when we give him heartfelt prayers and act according to His Word – we receive the blessing of His Holy Spirit. The Lord has promised to give us everything we need.

The problem for humanity in general and for Christians in particular is that believing this promise takes a lot of trust. It takes a lot of faith on our part. We have to humble ourselves as Manasseh did and not let our pride and wayward thoughts to take us from the path of Jesus Christ. When we pray the prayer Jesus has given to us we do so because Jesus is the center of this church. He is the shepherd that guides his flock and any shepherd worth his salt will make sure all of his sheep are well fed and have a place to rest.

Even though we know this, sometimes it seems impossible to believe that a prayer can change so much in our lives. Perhaps it is because we cannot see the Lord. We all believe he is present here today in this church and yet if you look around, his physical body does not seem to be here. It’s hard to constantly believe in someone that we cannot touch or see. That is where our faith comes in.

In Hebrews we are told that faith is being sure of what we hope for and we are certain of what we do not see. Just as the Lord made the earth out of nothing but words spoken, our faith is a belief in what we cannot always see with our physical eyes. This is what Manasseh learned about faith, but it took almost being destroyed before we could learn to depend on the Lord, to know that the Lord is God. He learned that without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that God rewards those who earnestly seek him.

We know that prayer is our connection to the Lord God. We know that our relationship with the Father is being mediated through His Son and that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. All of us here have been given an immeasurable gift because when we pray, we can be certain that we are heard. Your voice lifted in prayer means something. Your faith in God’s response also means something.

If you want to know how to act according to God’s will, if you want to know that you’re listening to God – then you need to believe that God is listening to you. You need to open your spiritual eyes to new truths, ones that may not be obvious at first. The Lord is speaking to you. The Lord is never done working. It is time to take a moment and make sure that you are still speaking to the Lord in the way He taught us to pray. It is time to take a moment and make sure you have not given up because I promise you, the Lord has not given up on you.

Amen.