TOTAL LIFE WORSHIP, PART 6: PRAYER

Luke 18:1-8, Philippians 4:6 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
1 December, 2002
All Rights Reserved

I. “I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT”

Sam awoke in the middle of a cold Wisconsin night with an overwhelming sense of concern for people he had never met and knew little about. Can you really say you know anything about a couple you have only seen pictured on the covers of gossip rags in the grocery store? Do the staged television interviews the famous provide actually reveal anything about them or is it entirely acting? Sam did not remember dreaming about Mick and Christine Ragsdale, the virtual duke and duchess of British rock music, but their persons were now deeply pressed on his consciousness. His heart was struck with a sense of their spiritual need in a way he had only previously experienced with family members. Sam switched on the light on the bed stand, put on his slippers, and went down to the den. There would be no sleeping now.

Four thousand miles away, Mick Ragsdale hung crookedly on a bar stool in a no-name pub on a no-name back street of London. Mick had just finished a sold-out concert in a condition of total spiritual emptiness as if his heart had been replaced with the vacuum of space. He had brushed off the groupies and the usual after-concert parties. It was his life, but it all seemed strangely alien as if the little gray men with the huge almond eyes had abducted him to their space ship, replaced his brain with someone else’s, and dropped him back on a street corner in Eastcheap.

Mick hung his head as he drank on the dark end of the bar, making sure his long hair covered his face so he would not be bothered by any so-called fans. In the past Mick had found drinking to be very effective at obliterating sad thoughts and bad feelings--everything, actually, could be pushed to the outer limits of the solar system, out where the gray aliens lived. In fact, Mick often made a game of imagining his bad memories being pushed away by one planet orbit with each drink. By Saturn his mind was mostly cleansed, and by Pluto--his ninth drink--thinking was no longer possible. Let the aliens worry about his problems.

On this night the trick was a spectacular failure. The more Mick drank the more vivid his bad memories became and the more they hurt. Christine walking out on him--that ungrateful tart! Taking his Justin--his son! And the humiliation of Christine dressing him down in front of the whole band and crew! Mick burned with such a helpless shame as he had not felt since he was viciously taunted as a schoolboy with a bad complexion. He felt like he was having a heart attack, not of the body, but of the soul. At that moment he cared nothing for his wealth, nothing for his career, and, in fact, nothing for his life.

Across the deep ocean Sam sat in his recliner and began talking to God: “Father, I don’t know why this is happening, but I feel like I care about Mick and Christine Ragsdale like family. I don’t know what else to do, so I’m going to pray for them. Lord Jesus, you know Mick and Christine completely and I don’t know them at all. Famous people often struggle with looking happy on the outside but being desperate on the inside. They beat themselves up with drugs and bad living. Lord, I have no idea what is going on with this couple, but I sense that they really need you right now. Open their hearts to you. May they meet someone who can explain your good news to them...is it me, Lord? Doesn’t seem likely. At least remind them of truths from your word which they have heard. Lord, you are all that they need. May they see it this very night. In the name of Jesus, amen.” “What a strange thing!” Sam thought as he went back to the bedroom. “I can’t explain it.”

As Sam went back to bed Mick stumbled out the door of the Royal No-Name Pub of Nowhere. Almost too drunk to walk but wanting no assistance he tottered down the dark street. The street lamps threw a wan glow on his sagging face. He had cleverly stopped drinking at Neptune so he could navigate on his own.

And navigate he did to a seedy park where he sat down on a bench. Mick slid sideways till he lay like any bum--former king of the world, now at the bottom of the heap in his own heart and mind. As he lay in the cold his mind sharpened and he remembered a man who came to all his concerts wearing a sandwich board which read: John 3:16. Without telling anyone, Mick had looked it up in the Bible in his hotel room one night.

The words had meant little at the time, but they came floating back to him as solid objects through the mist of his mind: “For God so loved...that whoever believes in Him should not perish...” “That would be me perishing,” Mick mumbled. “God help me...no one else can.” Mick drifted off and at the same time, half-way around the world, Sam turned over and fell asleep.

II. THE BEAUTY AND IRKSOMENESS OF PRAYER

Total life worship is a life of constant prayer. Paul wrote: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). The ideal model is that our prayer is so powerful and steady that we can live in peace and thank God at all times no matter how bad things seem. We have the privilege of praying about literally everything and God will never reply: “That was too small, don’t bother me with that,” or “You’ve prayed about that too many times,” or “Who are you to ask me for anything in light of your frequent sins?” On the contrary, those who trust in Jesus Christ for eternal life receive privileged access to God like an “all access” pass to backstage at a concert or a top security clearance to the White House. We can just go right in to God and ask whatever we wish.

But this beautiful pattern of prayer is a major challenge for all of us. There are times when our emotions become a strong motivation to pray, such as when we or someone we know has a grave and immediate need. Or sometimes we are bubbling over with joy and the praise just shoots out of us like a fountain. But most of the time, to be honest, prayer is hard to do. It is irksome, as C. S. Lewis wrote in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer: “ Well, let’s now at any rate come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us. And we know that we are not alone in this” (p. 113-114). There, I said it--or rather, Lewis did. And we all know he’s right. We need some strong medicine to apply to ourselves every day lest we give up on prayer.

III. FAITH-BASED PRAYER

Fortunately, our Lord Jesus has given us just the medicine we need: a hefty dose of spiritual reality. In a parable on prayer Jesus paints a sharp picture of the nature of God the Father by describing an unjust judge. Unlike most parables, virtually everything in this parable is backwards, and Jesus does not give us a detailed interpretation. So the challenge in listening to this story is to avoid making a mistaken comparison. As you hear it, try to reverse everything: “Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, ‘There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God, and did not respect man. And there was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ And for a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, lest by continually coming she wear me out.’ And the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now shall not God bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them speedily. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?’” (Luke 18:1-8).

The concern of Jesus about prayer is that we are in danger of losing heart about his long delay in coming for believers at his Second Coming. He’s concerned that we will give up. There is a whole raft of problems affecting our prayer lives such as our propensity to sin and then run away from God, the wrong kind of fear of God, and the problem of continuing to talk to an invisible being! But by the end of the parable Jesus reveals what he considers to be the key problem: the loss of faith. The original Greek text actually says “the faith.” Jesus is not saying that he fears that there will be no believers left when he comes back because the picture of the Second Coming found in prophecy always includes a remnant. In context, the faith is the kind of faith which does not lose heart and quit praying. So he is asking: “Will there be any believers praying by faith instead of giving up because their feelings went down?”

You see, prayer that does not give up is faith-based, not feeling-based. Feeling-based prayer always quits eventually because feelings always go down. That’s why there is so little prayer life in the church today. The current era has elevated emotions to the point of idolatry and that spirit has seeped into the church. Here is a mind-blowing thought--nothing in this parable is about you and I getting the answers to our specific prayers. The “vindication” or “avenging” or “justice” we receive as the answer to our prayers is at the end of the age. This underscores Jesus’ main point, and there is really only one point: emotion-based prayer always grinds to a halt, and faith-based prayer endures even to the end of the age. Prayer focused upon us and our problems always screeches to a stop, and prayer focused upon Father, Son and Holy Spirit carries on until the return of Christ.

Faith is an act of the will to trust God in light of truths which he reveals to us, and this parable is chock full of them, but they can only be seen by reversing everything. Let’s gather the precious data upon which our faith-based prayers rely. The unjust judge could not care less about God or what is good for people. He was the worst kind of judge, selfish and capricious. You never knew what he was going to do. By contrast, our God is perfectly righteous and has a great love for mankind in general: “For God so loved the world...” He wants what is best for all of us. So when we pray, he only gives good things in response. We can’t lose!

The woman who came with her request was not known to the unjust judge, but God knows us all intimately. He is called the “knower of hearts,” (Acts 1:24) so that when everyone else misunderstands us He understands. The unjust judge could not have cared less about this woman with her request, but God has set his love upon his children: “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God!...” (1 John 3:1a). When we bring our requests, we bring them to a God who knows us better than anyone and who lavishes love upon us. Finally, there is no relationship between the woman and the unjust judge, but if you are a genuine believer in Christ today, you are among the precious chosen. If this unknown woman would persist in bringing her requests to the worst earthly judge, how much more should we continually bring our requests to a loving heavenly Father who will do wonders in response!

CONCLUSION

Sometimes God supernaturally spurs us to pray for people right at the time of need. That’s what happened to Sam from Wisconsin. It has happened to me. But most praying is done simply by our choosing to believe the facts which God has revealed about himself. The previous episode in this story revealed that Mick and his wife Christine were the subjects of regular prayer by their own little boy and his nanny. What reason did these average people have to think that that their prayers would be answered by the most high God, or that they could pray change into the lives of fully-formed adults with self-destructive habits? They had no reason on earth, so they hitched their prayers to the truth of God by faith. It is that God who said: “‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’” (Jeremiah 33:3 -- para.). Because a nanny and a little boy believed God and prayed, a desperate woman began to open her heart to the gentle breeze of Jesus, and the empty heart of a wandering father and husband began to admit the life-changing good news of eternal life through faith in Christ.

Is prayer irksome, tedious, and difficult for you? You are not alone. I invite you to hitch your prayer life not to your feelings, but to the unshakable revealed facts of God in Christ: you are precious to him, you are loved, you are chosen, and you will be heard. He will only do that which is perfect in response. Don’t quit! Don’t lose heart! Pray by faith and don’t let your emotions shut you down! Lewis wrote: “I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling” (LTMCOP, p. 117). “Now [Jesus] was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart...”