PRAY Like Jesus: Yield

This is week 4 of the “PRAY Like Jesus” series at St. Peter Lutheran Church, and this week we’re talking about the “Y” in PRAY, for “Yield.” Our texts are Proverbs 3:1-8, Psalm 85, and John 15:1-8. This is also the first Sunday in Lent.

Thank you to Dawn and her Prairie Pebbles ministry for the prayer pebbles mentioned at the end of the sermon. The discussion on meditation vs. prayer draws on this article from Amy Julia Becker in Christianity Today.

If you’ve missed the previous weeks, here are the links to my sermons on Praise, Repent, and Ask. Once again, no video this week as the weather was decent (well, that’s debatable, but decent enough to have worship), so here’s the sermon:

How many of you have been in a Sunday School Christmas pageant?

Anyone remember what part you played? [The most common response at all three services was “angel”] I grew up going to Sunday School just about every week, so I was in a lot of Christmas pageants. I was never assigned to be an angel, but I did play a donkey a couple of times, for whatever that’s worth. I was Joseph once, and I remember being the narrator.

My very first time being in the Christmas program was as a preschooler, and apparently it started with something about watching for signs of the Messiah’s coming. So, in my first Christmas program, I played a yield sign. Sorry, I couldn’t find the picture to show you.

I bring that up because the last letter of the P-R-A-Y acronym for prayer is “Y” for yield. In the last 3 weeks, we’ve talked about praising God, which is saying thank you and acknowledging God as our source of life.

Then we talked about repenting, saying “Sorry” to God for all the things we’ve done wrong, turning around when we’re going the wrong way and asking for God’s forgiveness.

Last week we talked about asking, because Jesus invites us to bring all our cares and concerns to God.

Today, we’re talking about yielding our will to God’s.

Martin Luther explains the lines “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” by pointing out that God’s kingdom and God’s good and gracious will come “without our prayers, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and through us.” (Small Catechism)

God is not going to stop working in this world because we stop praying. We don’t have that kind of power. But when we pray, we’re asking to be a part of God’s work, asking God to come in and change our lives.

Prayer is all about recognizing that the relationship between us and God is not equal. Praising means paying attention to the marvelous things God does; repenting means admitting we are captives to sin in need of a Savior, and asking God for help means recognizing we’re not God. For me to pray, I have to acknowledge I’m not in control, and I like to be in control.

Sometimes I think people are reluctant to pray because it feels like it might be a waste of time. What if no one’s listening? What if I’m just talking to myself? There’s no way to scientifically prove anyone’s listening when you pray, so there’s an element of trust and faith involved. It’s a valid objection for some people.

For me, though, I think questioning if God is listening is often just as much a way to disguise that if I were to pray, it would mean accepting that God’s answer might not be what I want. Actually taking my concerns to the Lord in prayer means I have to let go of them.

I looked it up, and when you’re driving, a yield sign indicates you must prepare to stop if necessary. When God answers no to a prayer, yielding means I need to accept that, to be prepared to stop if that’s not God’s will.

Praying for thy will to be done means accepting my will might not be done. We’re praying for God’s kingdom to come, not our kingdom, and God’s kingdom might not look exactly like my kingdom. In fact, I hope and trust it doesn’t! God’s priorities are not the same as our priorities—and we’re the ones who are supposed to change.

We’re praying not just for earth to become more like heaven, but for God to prepare our hearts for heaven, for the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus.

Proverbs 3 tells us to trust in the Lord with all your heart, rather than relying on our own insight and understanding. Trusting in God sounds good, but I’m rather fond of my own insights.

God’s perspective can be awfully challenging. Going against our own instincts of self-preservation to help our neighbors? Giving up money I’ve worked hard to earn to give it to someone else when I don’t know if they really need it? Praying for people who attack me instead of attacking them back?

Defending people when the gossip turns against them instead of going along with the crowd? It’s a lot easier to rely on our own insight, to follow our own paths. Being wise in our own eyes is easy; turning away from evil is hard.

Yet God calls us to yield and follow in all our ways, to write our loyalty to God on the tablet of our hearts.

So I wonder, what do you need to let go of to yield to God? Which of your priorities is God calling you to change? What path are you on that you need to prepare to stop and check in with God to make sure you’re going the right way? Lent is a great time to consider these questions.




We end the Lord’s Prayer with, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

There’s debate over whether Jesus actually said that part because the oldest copies of the gospel don’t have it, but it’s been a part of the prayer for centuries. It’s one final reminder that praying is all about God. Everything belongs to God. Everything we have, everything we are, our hope for the future, all belongs to God. The kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to God, not to us.

That focus on God is one of the differences between prayer and meditation. In meditation, you’re trying to center yourself, to clear your mind, to simply be in the present moment. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not prayer.

Meditation is about turning inward; prayer is about turning outward. Prayer is not just about silencing your inner thoughts by letting them go; prayer is giving your praises, needs, concerns and whatever else is on your mind over to God.

Meditation is about attending to yourself; prayer is about attending to God and God’s relationship with you. Meditation techniques can be wonderful for praying, but prayer always focuses on talking with God.

When you pray, you’re focusing on God’s relationship with you, on God’s love for you. Jesus says he is the vine, and we are the branches.

For our lives to bear good fruit, for our lives to have purpose and meaning and make a real difference in this world, Jesus says we need to abide in him. If a branch gets cut off from the vine, it withers and dies. Apart from me, Jesus says, you can do nothing.

As we enter this season of Lent, I invite you to focus on Jesus’ instructions to abide in him as he abides in you. As a physical reminder, the ushers are going to come hand you a prayer pebble.

There’s one for everyone if you want it. You can set it somewhere at home, or in your car, or carry it in your pocket, somewhere you’ll see it as a reminder to pray.

On the pebble, you’ll see a person kneeling at the foot of the cross. The cross represents God’s love for the world, Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Kneeling, of course, represents prayer, but it also represents humbling ourselves before God, yielding our will to God’s will, praying for God’s kingdom to come rather than ours. We bring our prayers to the foot of the cross as we submit our wills to God.

Next week as we wrap up this series on prayer, we’ll be talking about the other half of prayer: Listening to God.

We’re also having a “PRAY Day” next weekend on Sunday morning between services and after Saturday service, where we’ll be exploring some different, creative ways of praying with interactive prayer stations. so I strongly encourage you to be here next weekend. This “Pray Day” is for the whole congregation, including youth and Sunday School, but it’s especially for all of you who have been here in worship as we’ve explored different elements of prayer. I’m really excited about it.

We continue with our hymn of the day, #406 Take My Life that I May Be.

You can read the final sermon in this “PRAY Like Jesus” series here.