Today’s sermon is part three of my series, “PRAY Like Jesus” and today’s theme is asking. Asking is a tricky subject, because God is not a vending machine. Just because we ask for something doesn’t mean God will give us everything we want. At the same time, Jesus tells us God delights in giving gifts to God’s children, and God invites us to bring all our cares and concerns in prayer.
Today’s Scripture readings are Philippians 4:4-7, Psalm 86:1-10, and Luke 11:1-13. This sermon is adapted from my message on March 3, 2019. In preparing that original sermon, I found essays on Luke 11:1-13 from Michelle Voss Roberts and Lewis F. Galloway in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, Volume 1 (Amazon link) particularly helpful.
Here’s the livestream from Christ the King and the sermon podcast audio.
Powered by RedCircle
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Before I get into today’s sermon, I need to warn you: This will be the least satisfying sermon in this series on prayer.
If this is your first week of this series, go watch the videos or listen to the podcasts from the first two weeks on our church website; I’m on much more solid ground talking about Praise and Repent.
Today, we get to the A in pray: Ask, and at least for me, asking is the hardest part of praying. Not because I don’t like asking, but because I so rarely see clear evidence of God answering.
As a kid, I heard the verse where Jesus says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” and I remember one day walking through the woods and looking at a fallen over tree and wondering, “What would happen if I prayed for this tree to move?”
I believed Jesus’ promise, but I was pretty sure the tree wouldn’t actually move, so I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t pray for that to happen, because if the tree stayed right where it was, what would that say about my faith?
Asking in prayer is dangerous, because what if God doesn’t say yes? Maybe you’ve had the same concern. You’re not alone. In fact, notice that of all the parts of the Lord’s Prayer, it’s the asking Jesus expands on with his disciples.
He gives them some examples of a parent’s eagerness to give good gifts to their children, and then Jesus says, if you then, who are evil—remember, we’re all sinful people, we all need to repent—If you self-centered, wayward sinners know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give to those who ask.
He also tells a story about a guy who answers a request late at night for some bread, because the one asking is persistent.
That word “persistence” can also be translated as shamelessness, or even audacity. It’s not so much about negotiating until God gets tired and gives in to your prayers (although that happens sometimes in the Bible too); it’s about our willingness to audaciously approach God, shamelessly ask when we need help.
When we ask in prayer, we’re putting our needs in God’s hands. God may give us what we want, or God may not, but by asking God, we’re admitting our own powerlessness.
We’re glorifying God. We’re letting God set us free from our burdens. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” We’re not meant to carry everything ourselves. Take it to the Lord in prayer.
That’s why we share our prayer requests on the church prayer wall & prayer chain, why we lift up concerns in worship. We pray for others in times of need because often, there’s nothing else we can do, but we know someone who can do more, who knows far more than we do about what’s needed.
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus mentions asking God for daily bread. Daily bread means life from God, receiving Jesus himself, the bread of life. It’s an expression of hope, looking forward to the great banquet of heaven, but it’s also about asking God for what we need here and now on earth.
Martin Luther says “daily bread” is “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, farm, fields, livestock, money property…peace, health, decency…and the like.” (Small Catechism)
When you pray, it’s ok to be more specific. It’s ok to pray for specific needs, or for specific people. It’s even ok to pray for ourselves, including asking God to deliver us from evil and help us avoid temptation.
The Bible’s full of examples of asking God for help, like the Psalm we read.
Bill Hybels puts it like this: “Nothing is too big for God to handle or too small for him to be interested in. Still, I sometimes wonder if my requests are legitimate. So, I’m honest with God. I say, ‘Lord, I don’t know if I have the right to ask for this. I don’t know how I should pray about it. But I lift it to you and if you’ll tell me how to pray, I’ll pray your way.” (Too Busy Not to Pray)
God promises the Holy Spirit works in the gaps of our prayers, nudging us to pray.
We don’t have to go through some elaborate formula to ask God. If you want to write all your prayers in the form of a haiku, that’s great, but God doesn’t give you extra credit points for rhyming or using more syllables. God listens even if you don’t end with “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”
God’s not a vending machine where once you’ve inserted correct change, you can punch in the right code to get what you want.
That’s both good and bad news. It’s bad news, because it’d be kind of nice to have a sky fairy to grant all my wishes. I have all kinds of things I’d ask for if I knew that by just saying the right formula or believing the right thing, I’d get what I wanted.
But it’s also good news, because God not being a vending machine means we can’t manipulate God. That’s tremendously comforting when you’re facing the reality that God’s answer is not always yes.
If there were a precise formula where if you pray right, then God is guaranteed to grant your request, then it’s my fault my aunt never woke up from her month-long coma. It’d mean I didn’t have enough faith, or I didn’t use the right words. Somehow I didn’t pray well enough and therefore my aunt died.
But there’s no code to manipulate God. The answer to prayer is not always yes.
Sometimes, we can look back later and see why. A couple days ago Jonah was enthusiastically reaching for the handle of a hot pan on the stove. He wanted my help to grab it. And precisely because I’m a loving parent, I told him no, even though he was sure that’s what he wanted.
Sometimes we as God’s children need protecting from ourselves, and even though we can’t understand it, God knows far better what we need than we do.
Looking back, I assume God would have answered my prayer to move a tree with a “no” because what I was asking didn’t line up with God’s will, and God knew better.
Other times, there’s no explanation this side of heaven why God doesn’t answer yes to a prayer. I remember sitting in a hospital room with a family praying that a loved one would somehow, miraculously wake up without brain damage, praying for him to live. He didn’t wake up.
We’ve prayed for cancer to go into remission, and then found out it was still spreading. I know heart attacks and brain aneurysms are not part of God’s plan, but I can’t understand why sometimes God doesn’t do a miracle.
Yet I believe Jesus when he says God is more loving than any good parent.
Sometimes, what keeps me believing and praying is knowing that this broken world God loves, that God created and called good, is still in the process of redemption and restoration. God’s kingdom is coming and is among us and yet is not fully realized. Tragedies still happen.
Miracles do happen, but death happens too. Sometimes are prayers aren’t answered on this side of eternity. I told you this sermon wouldn’t be very satisfying!
Ultimately, we keep coming to God in prayer and asking because Jesus tells us to. God wants to hear from us. Even if the answer is no, even if the healing doesn’t come, even if there’s no way we can understand what’s going on or see God at work, we are still called to come to God with our needs, with our hopes, with our dreams and requests.
Our prayers are not going to surprise or manipulate God, but the results of our praying may surprise and change us. We don’t ask for daily bread because God forgets we need to eat.
Luther says, “In fact, God gives daily bread without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving.” (Small Catechism)
Listen again to Paul: “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Next week, we’ll get to the line about God’s will being done and not ours, and we’ll talk about what it means to yield our will to God’s in prayer. The answers are up to God, but our command is clear: Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Finally, look at what Jesus does promise as God’s answer to prayer.
It’s the last verse of the Gospel reading: “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!” Maybe God’s response includes the specific thing you asked for, or maybe it doesn’t.
But when we pray, God always promises to give us the Holy Spirit. God gives Godself to us, which is more than we deserve, or ask for, or even comprehend. God promises to be with us.
Ultimately, praying leads us into a deeper relationship with God, the one who gives us the gift of life, sometimes here in this world, and always forever in God’s kingdom.
And as Paul concludes, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Amen
Continue to part four in this series, PRAY Like Jesus: Yield.