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Prayer - The First Step Toward Spiritual Fitness
A Sermon Preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va.
Jan. 16, 2005
Scripture: Philippians 4:4-6
These days we are into fitness aren’t we? From schools to
retirement centers, rooms are set aside for physical fitness. Almost any paper
or magazine is apt to have something about keeping yourself physically strong
and healthy.
I’m in a sermon series about spiritual fitness. Am I just
being trendy, surfboarding some spiritual stuff into the current fitness craze?
No, no, no. You see, spiritual fitness addresses the tough, demonic reality of
modern life which is anxiety. Someone has said: Our Father’s and Mother’s feared
God and nothing else. We fear not God but everything else. Ed Friedman speaks
of anxiety being our national neurosis. He says we are stuck. Anxiety, he says,
confronts us everywhere we turn, any place we go, any thing we do.
The Apostle Paul also lived in an incredibly anxious age.
He says if we are going to begin to handle our anxiety we have to do something
different. If we do what we have always done, we are going to get what we’ve
always gotten. So, what does Paul want us to do for our anxiety? He wants us to
learn how to pray.
Listen to him: “Do not be anxious about anything but in
everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to
God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You say, that was your text last Sunday.
Yes. But I didn’t finish. Who knows, I might not finish this Sunday.
“Do not be anxious about anything but pray.”
You say to me, “I may believe in what you say, but prayer
is not my thing. If I had been raised in a praying home, I might be a pray-er.
But I wasn’t. I’m too old to learn how to pray.”
Well, you know, I read a fascinating account in The
Washington Post on Jan. 3. It is about some brain research being done at the
University of Wisconsin. They now have the equipment to measure the
high-frequency gamma waves of the brain. They have shown that prayer and
meditation can change the inner workings of the brain. They have compared some
Monks who are heavy into prayer and meditation and compared them to average
people. The monks measure a whole new level of brain activity. Scientists used
to believe that brain nerve cells were fixed early in life. But that assumption
has been disproved over the past decade with the help of advances in brain
imaging. Meditation and prayer change the inner workings and circuitry of the
brain.
You say, I’m not into scientists and their experiments.
Fine. Compare praying with breathing. In spiritual fitness it is prayer that is
like our lungs. Without air, without breathing, we die. Prayer is spiritual
breathing, spiritual oxygen, spiritual life. God’s presence is like the air we
breathe.
Do a little exercise with me. Breathe in. Now hold it. Now
exhale. Do it again, breathe in. Now hold it. Now exhale. Now, breathe in God.
Hold it. Now as you exhale, whisper “thank you Lord.” God is everywhere you are.
The question is whether you will breathe him into your spiritual lungs.
In The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren says, “You
are as close to God as you choose to be.” I am not sure that is the best way to
put it. The way he puts it, God’s presence is all about us. God is as close to
us when we pay attention as when we don’t pay attention. The question is not
whether God is close but whether we pay attention. We all have had someone walk
by us, look at us, and never see us. We were close but unnoticed, seen but
overlooked. That is the way we do God most of the time.
A Prayer Map
I grew up with a needlepoint motto my mother did and
framed. It hung in a place she would see it on the wall. It said, “Prayer
changes things.” It does. But the number one thing prayer does is change us.
How?
I call you to an experiment in prayer. I am going to give
you a very simple prayer map. You need a prayer map because your mind will
wander and you will need to find the way back home. I have learned that when I
need to pray most is when I don’t feel like it, and when my mind is “stewing”
over many things. For those of you who have heard me speak of prayer before will
anticipate four letters: A-C-T-S. But like the operator on the telephone: Pay
attention for the menu has changed.”
A – Acknowledge your total dependence upon God.
Begin by acknowledging you are totally dependent upon God.
If you think you can handle things by yourself, prayer is not your gig. Ignatius
of Loyola put our dependency in three beautiful phrases: we come from God; we
belong to God; we return to God.
- I come
from God. My physical birth came from my parents, Peter and Elsie. But my
spiritual birth came from God. Without my dependency upon God, there is no
spiritual dimension to my life. A man named Henry Hodgkin put it in terms of
host and guest. As long as we think we are the host and treat God as the
guest, we will never pray. It is God who has created everything, including us.
God is the host, and we are the guests.
- I belong
to God. Paul wrote in another place, “We are brought with a price.”
Redemption means we have been rescued by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
During the middle ages they painted many portraits of the crucifixion. One
portrayed Christ on the cross. But one arm was free reaching down to the
people at the foot of the cross. That includes you and me. I belong to God.
- I return
to God. The majestic 23rd Psalm begins with belonging to God, “the Lord is
my shepherd.” It ends with returning to God: “I will dwell in the house of the
Lord forever.” I love the triple refrain of Juliana of Norwich as she looked
at the life beyond, “but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all
manner of things shall be well.”
Begin your prayer by acknowledging your dependence upon
God. If you are praying to tell God what you want done, how, and when, go right
on ahead. But you are really talking to yourself. It is all about you. Prayer
really begins when you acknowledge your dependence upon God.
C – Confession
There is the sinner’s prayer: “Lord Jesus, forgive me a
sinner. Enter into my heart and life this day and begin your work within me.”
That is the prayer we pray when we begin our walk with the Lord. But how many
countless other times we will need to pray it.
- Lord, I have
strayed, have mercy;
- Lord, my
anger has conquered, forgive me and have mercy.
- Lord, I
believe one thing and do another. Have mercy on me a sinner.
- Lord, I have
betrayed the best in me and you. Forgive me.
Religion without confession is quickly judgmental and
self-righteous.
The Pharisees were people who prayed a lot but never
confessed much of anything. They were, in the words of Jesus, people who paid
attention to the outside of the cup but never cleaned the inside of the cup.
They were people who condemned the sins in other people they had no trouble
with, and overlooked the ones they committed frequently.
And don’t get caught in that superficial game-playing
prayer: “forgive all my sins.” That is like going into the registrars office at
the University and saying, “I want all the courses.” Nothing is real until it is
specific. The sinner’s prayer is always specific and honest: forgive my harsh
words, my impatience, my temper, my moods, my lust, my silence when I should
have spoken out. When you have truly prayed such a prayer, you are ready to
stand in the presence of God.
T – Thanksgiving
When I think of what I am most thankful for this day is
that prayer can become home. Robert Frost said, “Home is the place that
when you go there they have to take you in.” If prayer is our home, you can
bring whatever you choose into the house.
One day when our sons were like seven, eight, and nine, our
oldest son came in from the back yard with a snake around his neck. I jumped
back. I said, “Dee, what are you doing with that awful snake around your neck.”
He said, “Dad, I know you hate snakes. But this is a good snake. He does lots of
good things. I thought as a preacher you might like to bless him.” If prayer is
home, you can bring all the snakes in you want to. Like the Garden of Eden,
there is a snake in every garden.
Craig Barnes, who is Pastor of the National Presbyterian
Church in Washington D.C., told a story that moved me deeply. He sat quietly
during the memorial service for Linda. Greatly loved, full of life, mother of
two was gone. Two friends spoke appropriately in tribute. But the third speaker
no one was prepared for. It was her nine-year-old son. Like a brave little
soldier he read from the paper in his hands: “Thank you for being here today to
say good-bye to my mother who has gone to heaven. I want you to know a couple of
the things that my sister and I will miss about Mommy. We’ll miss the way she
always greeted us when we got home from school. She would be in the kitchen and
we would run into her arms, and it felt good to be home. I’m going to miss that.
At nighttime, when we had to go to bed, she would race us to our beds, then we’d
jump in them and have tickling contests. And she would read us a story. I’m
going to miss that too.” Then he folded up his piece of paper, stuffed it into
his pocket, and sat down. There was hardly a dry eye in the room. Dr. Barnes
could not speak for the longest time. Finally he had to say something. As he
said, I’m the Pastor; its my job to speak into the silence.
I have thought of that incident so often and have pictured
is as a parable of my Lord and my prayer life. It is like running into the arms
of God and feeling like home. Its like racing to bed and chuckling over the
experiences of the day before you go to sleep. It’s like God reading a story
that he is writing, a small paragraph of which I have a part in. It is like
coming home.
Oh, this day I am thankful that prayer is my home.
S – Sending
Finally there is the s. The believers from colonial times
used the s for supplication, which means asking, or petition, or intercession.
But I like the word sending for the image that it gives me.
Prayer is not informing God of what he already knows. It is
not bargaining with him to change his mind. Prayer is joining with God in
healing a hurting and lost world. Sending means faster-than-internet sending
your prayers across the world in behalf of others. When you pray, you send out
spiritual energy, loving compassion, to those who we are praying for. When you
pray for someone picture yourself sending out love, sending out grace, sending
out healing, sending out strength, sending out stamina for those who need it.
In Frederick Buechner’s novel Godric, Godric is the central
character who starts out a rogue and winds up being a saint. During his
difficult years one close to him prays a prayer in his behalf.
Oh thou who art the sparrows
friend . . . have mercy on this world
that knows not even when it sins. O holy dove,
descend and roost on
Godric here so that a heart may hatch in him at
last. Amen.
Perhaps my prayer is for all of us, that the Holy Dove,
the Holy Spirit, will roost on all of us so that a heart for prayer will hatch
in us at last.
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