Intercessory Prayer - Exercise in Persistence

 7^th Sunday after Pentecost

July 24, 2022

Fr. Phil Eberhart

 

 

Intercessory Prayer – Exercise in Persistence

 

 

Is there anyone else here that suffers from guilt over not praying enough?  There are a pile of should’s and oughts that get added onto our spiritual lives, and this is one of the most common.  We know that we should pray – that we ought to pray about things – first or at all.  But we just get so busy going, going going and doing, doing, doing, that we just forget.  We forget God!

 

And that is a pickle when we get there.

I was talking to a friend the other day about a program that is on going in our diocese, and he admitted that he was frustrated with banging his head against a stone wall – lots of energy, lots of effort, lots of time and talent and treasure expended --- no results!!

Then it dawned on him he should pray about the program.  Whoa!!

All of a sudden, when he turned the program over to God, stuff started working!  Help came out of the woodwork!

 

This week I was personally convicted by Stacey and Jerry as they talked about their “secret place” time with God.

PRAY ~  LISTEN  ~  OBEY

 

This morning our scriptures point us in a very specific direction!  We see the story of the Intercession of Abraham for Sodom & Gomorrah.

We hear Jesus teach the disciples how to pray as He does.

And Paul gives us the context for such a life of prayer – a life of alignment with God’s purpose and lived in His power.

Get you pencil or pen out because I will give you some ways to mark up your bulletin this morning.  We are going to be reading with a highlighter, underlining and circling some words and thoughts.

 

Let me preface this by saying that as we enter into prayer we are entering into Jesus’ present ministry!  Scripture tells us that Jesus “ever lives to make intercession for us.” 

We readily admit that God has a plan for our lives and that it is good, but we rarely get still enough, especially in our culture of distraction here in the West – in the US of A – to actually hear what God is saying.

A few weeks ago we read the calling of Samuel as a young boy, as a pre-prophet!  It says in those days “the Word of the Lord was rare!”

So Samuel had to learn as a young man to recognize the voice of the Lord God when God was speaking to him.  Several times he mistook the voice in the night for Eli’s.  Finally Eli got it, and told Samuel to respond to the voice:  “Speak Lord for your servant is listening.”

 

Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.   Not a bad place to start, eh?

In our OT lesson Abraham was doing the speaking.  Over and over and over, with God apparently nodding His head and agreeing along the way!  We get a pretty good picture of what Jesus talks about in the Gospel reading when He says: 

[Luk 11:8 ESV] I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.

 

Interestingly, God isn’t put off by Abraham as He pleads for the righteous in the city.  And each request is readily granted to Abraham.  I’ve always been struck by this passage and the persistence – the impudence – of Abraham in approaching God in this way; but God seems perfectly OK with it.

 

When Jesus took up the request of His disciples to “teach us to pray” He gives them some pointers – a model prayer – and then immediately launches into a story of someone who goes across the street to get bread at midnight from a neighbor who is in bed.  The picture is one of a rare kind of persistence – the word that is used here in the Greek only occurs in this verse in the whole Bible!!  It can be translated “without shame” or “shameless.”  It is shameless impudence that is being highlighted by Jesus! What does that mean?

 

Our stance and approach toward God is not to be one of meekness, of embarrassment, of asking timidly or weakly for His mercy and grace, for His direction and empowerment.  We are to “Come boldly before the throne of grace.”

 

[Heb 4:14-16 ESV]  Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

 

The position of intercession is one which we are to take up with boldness.  Abraham stood in God’s way as He was about to destroy the cities – he was the in-between one – the “intercessor” who was standing “in the gap” between God and Man.  Prayer is often not a comfortable place.  It requires us to know our station, and yet to approach God with boldness. 

 

And what is our station here?  Turn in your bulletin to the reading from Colossians – or to your Bible if you have one with you.

Get your pen out and I want you to circle or underline the instances of the words IN HIM or WITH HIM in these few verses.  Take just a minute to do that.

 

 

 

Second Reading:    Colossians 2:6-15

⁶ Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. ⁹ For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰ and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. ¹¹ In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

9 times in 9 verses.  The same is true of several other passages by the way, as Paul is clear that all that we are and do in the Kingdom and for the King is done “IN HIM”  and  “WITH HIM.”  Take a look at Ephesians 1 some time! 

We are all familiar with John 15:5 right?  “Apart from me, you can do nothing!”

The secret sauce here is abiding IN HIM and moving WITH HIM.  Abraham was not twisting God’s arm!  Abraham was interceding in ALIGNMENT with the will of God.  He took the place of intercession because God gave him a heart of compassion;  I’m certain that his love for his nephew, Lot and his family played a part in that.  But God allowed Abraham to enter into this place and granted each request without an argument.  Abraham was praying – he was interceding, according to the will of the Father.

 

So how do we enter into that place?

 

Do you remember that I’ve said many times, “when you see a need, you’re in the game!”  Stepping off the bench and onto the field, means you are stepping into Abraham’s place of intercession!

You are stepping into the place of Jesus, right along side Him in His intercessions!  He welcomes you there.  And the first thing you need to do is find our from Him what He is praying for!  What direction does God want to go here?

When God highlights someone to you; you see someone in need and feel that twinge from the Spirit of God, pray right then!  God what do you want me to do or say?  How can I be Your Presence in this situation?  How can I be a blessing?

That is what it means to ABIDE IN HIM!  Every moment, every circumstance, every person we meet!  We are “on mission” with Him.

We are the presence, the fragrance of Jesus, to those around us.

I want us to finish here this morning by re-reading the last part of the Gospel from Luke 11.  Will you turn to it and read with me?

Let’s begin at verse 9 and read to the end:

⁹ And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. ¹¹ What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; ¹² or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? ¹³ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

God is inviting us into His mission in the world and He is promising us that He will be with us,  IN US, as we go.  We’ve heard it over and over and over again:   Willingness … Availability … and Obedience.  Stacey told us that God is looking for those who are Faithful… Available… and Teachable!  And that obedience is the deal!  What God is asking us to do, we can’t do alone!  We can’t do anything apart from Him and we are called to do what we do TOGETHER WITH HIM because we are IN HIM. 

 

Let me say it again in the words of Paul:

⁹ For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, ¹⁰ and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

 

Jesus said, ALL AUTHORITY has been given to me in the whole world,

Therefore GO!

 

Father in Heaven,  We hallow Your Name.  Make your Name Holy and wholly renowned through us.  Jesus, we want to make You famous.  Let your Kingdom come – reign among us here on this earth, just like you do in heaven.  Let Your will be done in our lives.  We give them over to You fully this day.

Save us, Lord God, from the time of trial and the day of temptation. Put the world, our flesh and the Devil under our feet.

Give us what we need to live for you:  Our daily provision, like the Manna you provided day by day in the wilderness.

Apart from You, Lord, we can do nothing.  Be our sufficiency, our competence, and the one who brings fruit, more fruit and much fruit.

Let your glory be ours, as Jesus prayed, as we are One In Him and One with each other, that the whole world may know.

For the sake of the Kingdom of God and the Fame of Jesus Name, we pray.

Amen.

Our Independence - One Nation, Under God

Independence Weekend

July 3, 2022

Fr. Philip Eberhart

click here to watch video

 

 

Yesterday afternoon I listened to a reading of theDeclaration of Independence, and I commend it to you.  It takes about 10 minutes of your day and tomorrow would be a marvelous time for us to reflect again on the words that are therein!  Let me prime the pump a bit:

This is just the first section of the document, down to the listing of the “usurpations:”

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

 

And here begins the list of the overreach of the tyranny of King George in England through which the colonists had come in their founding years.  Actions which later informed our own Bill of Rights and Constitution, just as the Liberty and Justice did which the original pilgrims sought as they fled the religious persecutions of the Old World and came to the New.

 

How long has it been since you spent any time at all refreshing or even making a memory of these events; of the times in which our Founding Father’s lived, just 246 years ago; of the fates of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence; who put their names to the document swearing: 

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

 

I want to commend to you a Paul Harvey monologue on YouTube on The Founding Fathers.  Again about 10 minutes out of your life, but well worth the listen, as Paul Harvey draws our attention to the price of freedom for these 56 men and their families who pledged their Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor.  It is a sobering reminder that freedom is never free!

 

I want also this morning to commend to you an extraordinary resource that I picked up when we had a breakfast here at REZ this past spring, with the Truth and Liberty Coalition, and historian David Barton.  David is the historian who oversaw this Founder’s Bible and its contribution to the literature of our providential history in these United States.  I also commend the website he curates: https://wallbuilders.com

 

Over and over in public arenas we say a Pledge ourselves: we call it the Pledge of Allegiance:  “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands: One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, With liberty and Justice for all.”

 

ONE NATION:

In our prayer book there is a prayer for the Nation, which we will pray in a few moments this morning.  I try to use it in our morning prayers at least once each week.  There is a line in it that says: “Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues.”

Our national motto, in fact, E PLURIBUS UNUM – Out of Many, One! Speaks to the unity which undergirds our nation – a unity which we only find fully in the common life, the KOINONIA, of the Body of Christ, rightly understood and rightly lived out in society.  That is why the next phrase is so important to this nation:

UNDER GOD!

 Added to the Pledge by Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, the year of my birth, it was the result of a sermon one Sunday!  Here are just a few lines of that sermon by Rev. Docherty: [Feb 7, 1954; New York Ave Pres Chur]

"Early American history was caught up with a sense of destiny that was broader and deeper than simply personal ambitions and the desire to be a success.  The Puritans triumphed because they made success the by-product rather and the end of their lives.  Lincoln in his day, say this clearly.  Under God the nation would know a new birth of freedom. And by implication it could only be Under God that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

It is only as we live our lives UNDER GOD that we come into the freedom, the liberty, the justice for all, that we speak of.  There is no other place where it is available! 

I have said over and over that we have a choice to live our lives in two ways:   With a pen-knife or with a highlighter!  Our approach to our history – whether we read it in The Bible or in The Declaration of Independence and Constitution or Bill of Rights are subject to these mindsets of ours:  If we read with a pen-knife, poised to remove the sections that are uncomfortable or that we deem out-dated, we place ourselves “over” the Bible or the historical document that we are reading.  We are after all, as one Episcopal Church bishop was heard to say, “the Authors of the Bible; we can change the Bible!”  Today we have many who take this approach to history, to scripture, and to truth.

 

But what if we read it with a Highlighter?

What if we Hear, Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest the words of these documents, as if they matter… greatly… for our life and for our salvation!  What if we live in such a way that the Bible and dare I say, our foundational documents of Freedom, are “OVER” us, not US OVER THEM!  What if we allow them to speak into our lives, and motives, and our very being where we live?  What if what they said really mattered?

 

INDIVISIBLE

What does that word even mean?  How about UN _ DIVIDE-ABLE?

How do we even begin to live into that word, that concept, in today’s culture of division?  I noted in my mind, as I read the Declaration that the word united in the first sentence is not yet capitalized.  “United” was an adjectival descriptor, not a Proper Name!   Today it is a proper name: The United States of America.  But friends we are in the gravest danger we have been in since the Civil War, I believe.  The forces of division are afoot – in word and in deed, and we must be vigilant to both act and speak as ONE NATION - UNDER GOD.

Unity does not, indeed it cannot come from inside of us, it comes from a place where every knee has bowed and every tongue confessed – where we have ‘surrendered’ – yielded our selfish autonomy and prideful ways to the Lordship of the ONE WHOSE NAME IS ABOVE EVERY NAME THAT IS NAMED IN HEAVEN OR ON THE EARTH!  The KING of KINGS and the LORD OF LORDS, JESUS.

Apart from HIM, we can do … No thing!

 

WITH LIBERTY & JUSTICE FOR ALL!

He hath shown thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God”   Micah 6:8

One of our other Prayerbook prayers says it this way:

“…especially we pray for thy holy Church universal, that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life” 

[#40, For all sorts and conditions of men, BCP 2019, p. 658]

 

Dear friends,

On this eve of our celebration of Independence Day, I want to commend you to the resources I’ve mentioned.  You can access them on my REZPADRE Blogspot, and they are live links in the sermon there.  Just click to watch or to go to the resources.

Let us spend just a few minutes tonight or tomorrow considering the cost of our freedom and our independence and let us, as we watch the fireworks or eat the bounty of our land, let us give thanks to God, first of all, for our freedoms and liberties;  Let us give God thanks for the sacrifices made by our Founding Fathers, by our military and those who today protect our freedoms around the world!  Take this bulletin home and sing the songs again, paying attention to the words.

Paying Attention!  I think we can all benefit from Paying Attention!

God’s hand is evident in the calling, in the formation, in the history, the letters and documents of our nation.  My prayer in these final days is that the Lord not pass us by because we have so often passed Him by!  

Lord have mercy upon us!  

Christ have mercy upon us!  

Lord have mercy upon us.

Let us stand to confirm and affirm our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed and in our prayers this morning.  Please stand with me.

 

Father Philip D Eberhart

July 3, 2022