wpc
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Bradenton, Florida
Sermons
Teach Us To Pray: PrayerMasters
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“Teach Us to Pray: PrayerMasters”
Psalm 80: 1-2; 8-19
The Reverend Chris Adams
August 15, 2010
So we are still talking about prayer this morning. Just one more week on this, and then we will move on to something else.
You know we are a full-service church here at Westminster. We want to provide for all your spiritual needs, no matter how great or small those might be. That’s just all part of the service we offer here to our members and friends.
So in line with that purpose here, I have carefully selected the following infomercial just in case you still need just a little help in the prayer department. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. But alas... If the Lord’s Prayer didn’t do it for you, and if trust and hope aren’t enough to get you into the power of prayer, then there is only one thing left to do.
Do you need to know how to pray like a prayer master? Watch this...
PrayerMasters (Click Link)
Now you are all going to go straight home and call the number on your screen for PrayerMasters. Right? Please don’t call, because there is no such thing.
You don’t need that stuff anyway. Everybody here can be a prayer master. In fact, you don’t even need a sermon series on prayer. I wonder sometimes if we don’t make things just too complicated.
When we pray we are a part of a community as disciples of Jesus, that’s the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray we trust, that’s true. When we pray we hope, that’s also true. All those things are very theological, Presbyterian things to think about.
But to make it just plain and simple, when we pray we pray for salvation. We pray for good news. We pray the story that is in our hearts and on our lips. That’s what prayer is really all about.
When we believe this story of God’s love for us, as highlighted in our opening scripture of John 3:16, prayer just spills out. When we live the story, and love others through the story, we can’t help but pray because we want to make God aware that we love Him and want to continue to be with Him.
That’s what’s always been the case with God’s people. From the beginning of time, when God is in your heart, when His salvation is what you are about, then prayer is on your lips. Maybe it doesn’t have to be fancy worded prayers. Prayer from your heart is just what happens.
Look at our scripture lesson for this morning. Sometimes people forget that many of our Psalms are prayers of God’s people. They are songs, you know that, but remember they are also prayers.
People read the Psalms, like Psalm 80 for example, and because the wording is so beautiful and poetic, they forget that this is just a very simple prayer. It is just a simple prayer of salvation.
It doesn’t sound simple, because we get caught up in the language of vineyards and fruit. Most of us don’t know very much about vines, vineyards, ancient cedars for shade and all the rest. But for the people that first heard this Psalm, this was in their language so they could relate.
Psalm 80 acknowledges that Almighty God is creator of all things. He has given each of us life, and carefully watches over us like a shepherd watches over his sheep.
He has planted each of us in this world to love and to serve him, like a farmer plants a vineyard so that it might bear fruit for the kingdom. But we turn away from God, and it seems as if the wall protecting the vineyard has been broken down. We are exposed to all sorts of things, it seperates us from God and we call that sin.
But through Jesus, and we as disciples have to read this part into the story. This story whispers His name. Through Jesus, God has turned again toward us and has not rejected us and left us to be burned with fire. Instead we have been given life, and restored to the beauty of what God created.
So now we pray. We pray like verse 19 calls us to pray. O Lord of Hosts, let your light shine on us so that we might be saved. You see, prayer is just what comes out at the end of such an amazing salvation story as ours.
The words don’t have to be fancy or poetic. You don’t have to supplement the word “Father” to keep from saying “um.” You don’t have to be in a certain prayer position, or whatever else you see PrayerMasters sometimes doing.
All you have to do is put this story in your heart, believe it to be true, and prayer will just overflow from your lips. You won’t be able to help it. It will just flow like a river of joy and peace from your hearts at what God is doing in your world and the world of others.
It’s simple really! Prayer is just the outward sign of our inward salvation. When you pray that salvation be done for the world we live in and the people around us, you are just demonstrating the power of God to save.
I believe God gave us prayer as a way to show that salvation to others. Not in a preachy, in-your-face way, but in a genuine offering of our hearts.
I didn’t plan to do this when I first planned this sermon series. I had no idea just four weeks ago that such a special example of salvation and prayer was going to happen here.
Most of you know, this week, here on our campus we lived the salvation story in a way that we have not done before. Most of you know we hosted J316 Ministries here for a soccer camp.
Coach Butch Morley and his team of coaches were here, they had everything organized and planned out perfectly. They were so encouraging of the kids that were here, and everyone was filled with energy and enthusiasm.
Becky and Derek Sherman, who many of you know, brought this opportunity to us just a little over three weeks ago. I was so proud of our Session, who heard the opportunity, asked the right questions, and then enthusiastically endorsed the ministry as a perfect example of Loving our Neighbors.
We had hoped maybe 25 or 30 kids would show up. After all, we only had about three weeks to get the word out and invite participation.
When camp opened there were 104 children here, ages 4 years old up through the eighth grade. Another twenty or so High School students were on campus as coaches. It was just awesome to see our property filled with people of all ages...
Our property is beautifully suited for this, by the way, our fields, our garage to store equipment, our Activity Center as a meeting place. Just perfect...
But friends, as good as all that is, it’s not what put me on my knees in prayer this week. Numbers, facilities, organization, and all the rest are good things and they are to be celebrated to be sure.
But what was so awesome about this week was that the whole thing was centered around the story of salvation, the good news of Jesus Christ. Our salvation story was the centerpiece of this ministry.
You see, this ministry developed around the concept of a wordless gospel. Our salvation story is told by, or all things, the soccer ball itself. That story that leads us to pray, to overflow with joy and concern for others, is right here in my hands. Right here on this ball in all these colors.
The story starts right here with gold. Gold is pure, it is perfect and last forever. The Bible says when you picture heaven, picture gold. It’s the image of creation and God’s presence in creation. This is how God created you and I to be pure and perfect. This is how the story starts.
But then the next color is black. You see, sin comes into the world and into our hearts and we turn away from God. What was pure and beautiful in gold, is now turned dark as we disobey and deny the relationship with God we were created for.
But you see God never turns away from us, but instead comes to us. Even when we are turning away, God is turning towards us. Jesus came into the world. He lived and taught us about God’s way for us. He died on the cross, and shed His blood to be faithful when we were unfaithful. The next color is red to signify the blood of Jesus shed on our behalf.
You see that blood washes us clean again. So the next color is white. White is the color of purity and goodness. White is what color we become when we love Jesus and live for Him. White is the color of brightness and stands against the color black.
Then maybe the most important color of all for you and for me. The next color is green, and green stands for growing. Those of us called to live and love Jesus are called to grow. We study the Word, we worship God, we serve others in Jesus name, and we grow. Remember our mission statement calls us to grow. From Loving God, on to Loving Life, and finally to Loving our Neighbors, green is about growth.
And finally, we arrive back where we started at gold. We start with God and we end with God. Someday all of us will return to our creator. That’s the promise of salvation, that those of us that have accepted Jesus as savior and believe that He is the Son of God will return to God to live with Him forever in heaven. We end where we started, with gold.
You see, the salvation story. That’s it. It’s the same story as Psalm 80. It’s the same as John 3:16. It’s our story, the story that all this is about. You see, soccer camp was about learning soccer skills and teamwork. Children were encouraged and loved. They were affirmed as the children of God they are... but they also learned the story, the story of salvation.
On Friday, the last day, at the conclusion of camp Coach Butch asked those that wanted to learn more about Jesus and the story of salvation to gather in groups. Some had never heard the story before, and others had but wanted to know more. One young man did not have a Bible of his own, and now he does. His mom said she had been praying for that for years.
Now, here’s the question for you. What do you do at the end of a week like that? We thank each other. We celebrate with the kids. All that is good. But all that is not enough. What we really do is pray!
We get down on our knees and we thank God for all we have seen, for all we have experienced. You see in the end that’s what prayer is really all about. It is about community, it’s about trust and hope, but in the end prayer is really about God. It’s about what God is doing in our world, and that’s salvation.
And every one of us that comes in contact with that, every one of us that hears the good news, and sees the good news, whether it is vineyards and cedars or soccer balls and colors, are called to respond to God in prayer. That’s what prayer is all about, responding to what God is doing in us and in the world.
I want to close this series with what God is doing here at Westminster Presbyterian Church at least this week. One of the dads put together a video for us after the camp was over. I will put it up on the screen for you, and I invite you to join me.
As the pictures and the music go by, pray! As you imagine all God is doing here at our church and in the lives of those in our community, pray! As you reflect on God in your own life, offering you salvation through Jesus and calling you to tell others what you have seen, pray!
You have taught us to pray of God, and so... WE PRAY!
J316/WPC Soccer Camp 2010 (Click Link)
Amen!
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