When We Lose Our Spiritual Connections

Journey Through the Bible Series
Preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming,
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va.
June 1, 2003

 A new Jim Carey movie is called “Bruce Almighty”.  I have not seen it.  The reviews reveal that it is a comedy in which Carey’s Bruce Nolan receives God’s powers.  The comedy has been outrageously successful.  It grossed $85 million the first week.  That’s even more than they pay athletes who are right out of high school these days. 

In the movie, God is played by Morgan Freeman.  An interesting episode is when God pages Bruce and leaves his phone number.  People who saw the film, it is reported, left the movie and using their own area code, dialed that number.  In one area code it turned out to be a church and the phone was ringing off the wall.  Isn’t it interesting that even in our world, our kind of world, our busy world, our tempest-ridden world, people seem to want to connect with God.

The good news of the gospel is this: God is trying to connect with us.  Even though we may find ourselves very stressful and hardly have time for God or anything else, God is trying to connect with us.  During heavy times of grief we may be overcome, but the connection is trying to be made.  There are times when doubt and temptation leave us feeling like embattled veterans, but we can be sure of this, the connection is very actively sought by the Lord God through the Holy Spirit. 

Now the early Christians understood very well that this is what the gospel was all about and they were eager recipients to find out how to participate in this connecting.  And they understood better than some of us do that there is always a way, a channel, some kind of vehicle to get the answer to where the problem is.  For example, you’ve been probably visiting someone in the hospital or you may have been there and you will know that the solution that’s in that plastic bag is needing to get into where the problem is.  But in order for the solution, which is the answer, to get to where the problem is there has to be a way, there has to be a vehicle, there has to be a channel, there has to be a tube and a needle.

 In every area of life, between the answer and the answer and the problem there’s a channel.  You want an education?   You can get one.  But you have to go through a certain channel.  You want to take a trip?  You’re going to need a vehicle of some sort and you’re going to need a map. 

One of the wise ones who is who is writing these days about spiritual formation says we need to discover the patterns.  He’s talking about the same thing.  The patterns in which God works and the early Christians understood this very well.  They received from the Lord through the Holy Spirit certain vehicles, certain channels, certain “tubes” of spiritual blessing.

Turn in your Bible, Acts 2, 42^nd verse.  You’ve heard me read this passage many times.  As I was reading it this last week I became aware once again how relevant this kind of word can be for our world.  For example, there is a church beginning down in Shockoe Bottom.  The name of the church is 2:42.  Now isn’t that an interesting name for a church.  We know Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian.  2:42?  It’s referring to Acts 2:42 because they have discovered that this is the pattern they want to follow in following the Lord Jesus.  Says “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  And everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miracles were done by the apostles and all the believers were together and had things in common.  They gave to everyone as they had need and every day they continued to meet together.  They broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts.  They praised God and enjoyed the favor of all of the people and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

  Now I’ve read this passage many times but it wasn’t until this week when I was preparing for this message that all of a sudden it came to me how that every one of these channels answers a need in our lives.  For example, “they gave themselves to the teaching of the apostles.”  That speaks to the need for information and inspiration.  “The breaking of bread.”  We are often moved by symbol, imagery, pictures. “To the fellowship.”  How much we need the togetherness of one another.  “And to prayer.”  That’s the togetherness of the divine, of the Spirit, of the spiritual. “To service” - to meet other’s needs stepping outside of loving yourself by loving others who need your help.  So don’t miss this Holy Spirit Pattern.  They were inspired by what they learned, they were empowered by fellowship and prayer.  They were uplifted and emotionally energized by praise and they were transformed by serving someone other than themselves.

Now I’m going to mention three of these but before I do I need to warn you of something.  You know that sign “Parking Lots - Don’t even think of parking here.” Well, here’s a warning.  In God’s “good ship of grace,” there are no passengers.  Only crew members.  So if you want to get on board.  You’d better get ready to participate.  Or to put the analogy in a different way, in God’s game plan, there aren’t any spectators.  Only participants.  So get ready to participate.

One, by doing something for someone other than yourself, it is the service connection and it’s amazing how this works.  I don’t always understand it at all.  All I know is it works.  When somebody finds themselves meeting a need of someone else, it it is it is like an echo.  They send out service and love, and lo and behold, it comes right back to them. 

Gary Smalley and John Trent tell of a couple in Dallas who were very wealthy.   They lived in the Highland Park area there.  That’s the high browest of the high browest of the high brows.  Their kids had everything.  They went to school, a kind of a school where the gossip was whether or not you had a BMW or a Porsche.  And if it was one year old, hmmm! 

One day in November the father announced that the family was going to do something different this Thanksgiving.  Oh?  Everybody listened as he said they were going to go down to the mission of their church and they were going to serve Thanksgiving Dinner to the poor.  The teenagers frowned and said, “You’ve got to be kidding!  Thanksgiving.  Come on, Dad, tell us you’re kidding?” 

But he wasn’t.  And they didn’t have any choice.  He said, “If you don’t go, I take your keys.” 

Nobody would have predicted what happened that day.  But the family later realized they had never been together quite as well as they were that noon day.  They were cutting pie, and serving turkey and dressing, and scurrying around the kitchen pouring cups of coffee again and again.  The teenagers were playing with children and having a great time.  Later they listened to some of the older folks as they reminisced about Thanksgivings past.  The father was absolutely floored by the response.  But he was even doubly floored when they said to him about a week later, “Dad, could we go serve at the mission for Christmas dinner as well?” 

And they did.  And they decided they would do this periodically through the year and they scheduled it and what happened was that the teenagers and the parents began to know people and they begin to realize when they walked in, faces lighted up and they were helping somebody that was so far below their means, they could not have imagined ever doing it.  But the magic of God’s grace returning was there and one of the interesting things that happened is what happened to the family.  Marked change.  The kids didn’t seem to be taking so much for granted any more.  And their parents found them less self-preoccupied and more other-preoccupied.  They stopped complaining so much.  And when they went to church they seemed to get into worship and they even started reading the Bible and praying.

 Listen to me: connecting with God is not simply dialing a number to God.  Connecting with God may be dialing the number of somebody who needs you.  And you may be the only person on the face of the earth who can meet that need.  Whether it’s an office or a schoolroom or a playground or a neighborhood.  Don’t forget.  The pattern is that when we serve and love others who are less fortunate than we are, in the serving something happens to us.

The second of these is prayer.  Now prayer is communication with God.  It’s connecting.  That’s what it is.  Everybody knows that prayer is what the church does.  Do we?  Or is it simply a religious way of starting meetings and stopping meetings.  I mean, we had a prayer as we began worship today, didn’t we?  We we’ll have one at the end, we’ll sing it.  Think about all of the committee meetings you may have been in where somebody said, “Well, it’s time to start.  Let’s have a prayer, John lead us.  Mumble mumble, Amen.” And you get on with it.  And at the end instead of saying I move the meeting be adjourned, somebody says, “Well, it’s time to pray before we go.”  Mumble, mumble.” 

Is the main time you pray at home when you eat?    “Good bread, good meat, good Lord, let’s eat.” 

Now I have a real burden.  I have a real concern that we have we have often misplaced the fact that prayer is the heartbeat.  It’s the heartbeat of a church.  It’s the heart of a church and it’s the heart of the spiritual life of a person very much like the heart is where everything begins inside of you.  You see if your heart should suddenly quit functioning, it wouldn’t matter what your hands could do, because they wouldn’t do it any more.  That’s where the energy comes from when that heart pumps the energy out.  If your heart fails to beat, you can’t see, you can’t hear, you can’t think, you can’t even feel.  The heart is where everything begins and prayer is the heart of a congregation.  Prayer is the heart of a spiritual life.  Prayer is the heart of family relationship.

If I were the devil, I would try to get churches and people to get too busy to pray.  And if he does, he’s won the battle.

Third thing is praise.  Praise is emotion.  Praise is movement.  Praise is exultation.  Praise is energy.  We most often praise I suspect in worship like we are this morning.  It comes through singing.  Comes through praying.  Comes through the scripture.  Comes through responding.  And there are four ways in the scripture in which we are taught to respond, one of which is verbally and you do this so well and I thank you and I affirm you.  I mean you sing.  You sing well.  That’s verbal praise, choral praise.  You read together.  You read well.  You read the scripture together.  That’s verbal praise.  And of course, Amen.  You know that’s wonderful if you’re up here.  Oh my, I love to preach at African American churches because they’re not afraid to say, you know, “Come on preacher, get with it get with it.”  Of course, as I said to you some weeks ago, when a lady in the back says “Help him Jesus, Help him.”  You know you’re in trouble. 

Amen is the way in which people often respond.  It is an Old Testament practice.  And often in the Old Testament it will be said, “And all the people said, Amen.” 

There is another way and that is the way of hmm the way of clapping.  “Clap your hands, oh ye people, clap your hands” says the Psalms.  Now I’ll give you a little warning.  In our congregation there are those who will say to me, “Pastor, the only way I can really get into praising is clapping.  It’s part of me, it’s part of my culture.”  I would say to you be sure you’re clapping to God and not like you would clap at a theater for an entertainer.  But that’s Biblical.

Another way of praising God is to be still but I cast a warning here.   That doesn’t mean sleep. You see the Hebrew word...  By the way it’s always been interesting to me that it’s permissible to sleep in church but not to be expressive in church.   Does that mean we’d rather be dead than alive?  Hmm. I don’t know.  All I know is that “to be still and know that I am God,” that’s Psalm 46 does not mean passive.  Tell you what that word means.  It means to let something go.  The word translated “be still” means release something.  It means I have walked in with a burden, I’m going to leave it here.  In the backpack of my life I have walked in with more troubles than I want to and to be still means you’re going you’re going to pause and let God help you get rid of them.  That’s what being still really means.

Praise has some other ingredients that that I hope you’ll look at on occasion.  But I want you to understand something.  If the only praise we do is in this room or another one in a church house, you’ve missed the point.  Praise is not a church business, nor a religious practice.

It is a life practice. It is something you do through the day, through the life.  

Matthew Henry was a really significant Bible scholar in another day.  He was robbed, mugged we’d say today.  And it was interesting that in his journal that night, this is what he wrote.  “Let me be thankful first because I was never robbed before.  Second because although they took my wallet they did not take my life.  Third, because they took everything I had, it really wasn’t very much.  And fourth, let me very thankful that I was the one robbed and not the one who did the robbing.” 

Now what did he do? He took a very difficult situation and he turned it around until in God’s great light, it was the good thing that happened.  That’s what praise does, it transforms situations. 

Louie Evans, Jr., a Presbyterian minister, when I was going up, he was an all star athlete, high school and college.  He decided to be a minister like his father who was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood.  Married a Hollywood starlet by the name of Coline Townsend.  Made the headlines even in California.  Was fabulously successful everywhere he went.  His success became a problem demanding every day every bit of energy that he had.  Migraine headaches set in.  He was having a Bible study in his home when all of a sudden a migraine hit.  He had to go back to the bedroom and just stretch out.  In the midst of his pain he reported later, he heard the words “Just praise me.”  And he looked up to see who might be there and nobody was there.  Racked with pain his head went on the pillow again and he heard it another time, “Just praise me.”  And he discerned that it was the voice of the Lord, saying to him, “You’ve forgotten how to praise.  Just praise me.”  And even in his pain, he began to think of everything he could to be thankful for and to praise for and to make a very long story short, little by little as he made praise a practice of his life, those migraines went away. 

Praise and you need to walk out of this place together today.  Don’t leave your plays your praise in this room.  During our communion here’s something to work on.  If the Lord came to you and said, “Just praise me.”  What would he want you to be praising about?