20 Prayers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Father in heaven. Thank you so much for this beautiful weather for the rain and for the wetness and for the leaky roof. And, uh, just all the things that mud tracked on carpet. We thank you for all those things. We thank you for, um, the clouds and fireplaces and, um, feeling cold, which is not something we get to do very often. I thank you for all those things, father, Jesus, we declare this space tonight, your space and we declare you King, but we also acknowledge that we are all in different places in that declaration. Some of us are not even willing to make that some of us are just trying to figure out what it means to be in relationship with you. I'm trying to figure this thing out, but we come here, which is evidence that we want to figure it out. So we ask that you honor that Jesus, we ask the Holy spirit that you'd give us the power to believe what's true. And to cast out what is false, that you would give us courage, um, to, to listen carefully to one another and not hold against one another, how things are said, um, but really seek truth and push out the things that are false. We ask that in your Holy name. Jesus. Amen. Um, I said welcome. Um, tonight I would like to just start in a story. I probably a story that most of, you know, I'm an, it kind of starts like this. God created the world. And in particular, he created man in his image and he placed Adam and Eve in particular in the garden, you can find this story in Genesis at the beginning. Um, and in this garden, uh, Adam and Eve were given free reign, except they were told that there was this tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they weren't supposed to eat it, that they do eat of that. And what's interesting is in the beginning of Genesis, we find this interaction between God and Adam and Eve, and the thing that enters in because Adam and Eve disobey his fear, terror, this fear, and all of you as human beings know it, right? You know, this fear that Adam and Eve introduced to us. Um, but the consequences for that is that Adam and Eve, um, were banished from the garden. And I want to read that to you really quickly. It's it's in Genesis chapter three, believe verse 23, it says, so the Lord, God banished him. This is Adam from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken after he drove the man out, he placed at the East side of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way of the tree of life. Now, however you understand, Genesis, however you understand that narrative. The one thing that you can grab hold of in it is that you can't get back. You cannot get back. And what's interesting is, is that as humanity stepped out of the garden, what happens is there is this gigantic flood that you and I are part of, not that flood with Noah, a flood of evil, a flood of, of constant opposite running from God. In fact, what happened is, is that you and I Ave were created to be people who bore the image of God and whose very nature and very power was to point creation. And one another back to God that our whole job in bearing the image of God, of being God image bearers, was to continually point to God and say, it's about God. Look at God, look at what he's done. And yet what we did is we exchanged that. We gave that power away. We gave it to money and we gave it to people and we gave it to inanimate objects and we gave it to all of our passions and desires. And what's happened is there's this gigantic flood that none of us can stop. None of us can stop. And we feel it it's in our bones, this just pushing and pushing of evil. It's part of us. And yet a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated a birthday. We celebrated, as I said, in my last messes on advent, we celebrated a beginning of a revolution, right? The gospel of John tells us that the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, right? Jesus, the God-man God himself came and dwelt this little baby. And we read the story and what's really interesting around Jesus as a baby, is there are angels everywhere. There are angels showing up to Mary they're angels showing up to Zacharias their angels, showing up the shepherds. There are angels everywhere. And if you know anything about angels, have you studied it at all? It means that there's a war going on. If you see angel showing up in the Bible, there's some kind of conflict happening. And what happens is that at the fullness of time, God says no to the flood. And he puts in this first anchor himself as a baby, he starts the revolution. He puts a stone in the flood of evil of the kingdom of Satan, of, of all. That's just flowing in this direction that we cannot stop and feels overwhelming, right? But when Jesus starts his ministry, I'll just take you to Luke. So if you want to turn to Luke, you can turn to Luke in the new Testament, Matthew Mark, Luke, Luke tells a little story about Jesus right before he starts his ministry. Jesus decides to fast and go off into the desert. And so I'll start in chapter four of Luke, we'll start Jesus's story as an adult that says Jesus full of the Holy spirit returned from the Jordan. He's just been baptized and was led by the spirit in the desert where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days. And at the end of them, he was hungry. That seems obvious. The devil said to him, now this is key. I want to hear this. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered. It is written. Man does not live on bread alone. Then the devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant, all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, I will give you all the authority and the splendor for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered. It is written. We're sipped the Lord, your God and serve him. Only. The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the son of God, he said, throw yourself down from here for it is written. He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. Jesus answered. It says, do not put the Lord your God to the test. I want you to look at two phrases in here. The thing that Satan tempts Jesus with is if you are the son of God and his whole temptation is, is, guess what? You can have it now. And God, your father has it out for you. Just do this thing quickly, fix it, right? This is, if you go back to the Genesis story, it's the same wine. And so when Jesus starts his ministry, there's already this question, are you the son of God? Really? Why don't you just take care of this thing? Why don't you just fix it? Why don't you make this happen quickly? Well, if you jump to the end of Jesus's ministry, when you find Jesus on the cross in Luke chapter 23, first 35, Jesus is on the cross and people are standing around as the people stood watching and the rulers even sneered at him and they said he saved others. Let him save himself. If he is the Christ of God and Christ means King, King of God, the chosen one. So at the beginning you have state and think if you're the son of God, why don't you fix this at the end? When he's on the cross, the question becomes, well, if you're God, then why don't you do something about this? Why don't you do something about it? Or if you jumped to John right back to that scene, the gospel of John and chapter 19, and you look at verse 30, Jesus asks for a drink he's on the cross. Once he's received. It says once he had received the drink, Jesus said it is finished. And with that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Now, when I read that and when I've heard that, the thing that I usually think is, Oh, Jesus said, it's finished. I'm done. I'm going to die. Now. I'm going to die now. And yeah, maybe that's what he thinks, but he's also saying something else. He saying a project is finished. You see Jesus's birth with a stone in this, this wave of evil. It was the first Mark of the kingdom of God was the first point where God said, no, I'm going to change things. And then between that moment and the cross, what did Jesus do? He started talking to people and saying, you know what? Blessed are the merciful for? They will receive mercy, right? Blessed are those who mourn because they will be comforted. He begins to talk about this world. That doesn't seem to actually exist because people who have mourn, don't get comforted and people who are merciful, rarely get mercy. They just get taken advantage of. And you can go on and on Jesus demonstrates through his miracles and who he heals, who he eats with, who he fits with and the things he says, don't seem to line up with the flood with this wave. We know what Jesus was saying. When he's saying it is finished. He said, the foundations for the kingdom of God are finished. I'm done. I was born. I established it. And now I am dying. And I'm not going to come down off this cross because I'm dying for you. I'm not going to make this fast because it's not about me. It's about God. And I'm setting up a kingdom. Okay. It is finished. And what does he do? He rests. What did Jesus do? I mean, what did God do when he created the world on the last day he rested, what is Jesus doing? The grave he rests. He sleeps in the grave, right? This creative process is happening only to tell you two stories that are happening around this time. One is about Peter. And if you've listened to me talk before you've heard the story, these stories, but I think they're important. So the first story is about Peter. Now, Peter is one of Jesus's disciples and there's a particular theme in Peter's life. That's pretty transformative. You can find it in Luke chapter 22. But from what we know about Peter in the gospels, as he's a relatively impulsive man, right? He is on the 11 year old and a big man's body. He's impulsive. He says what he thinks and he does crazy things. Um, so when Jesus gets arrested, he follows Jesus. And he ends up in a courtyard with Jesus and they're sitting around the fire and Jesus is now been arrested and they're waiting for whatever's going to happen. And this servant says to Jesus, I mean to Peter you're with him, aren't you and Peter says, mm, I don't even know who he is. And she's like, no, no, you're a galleon. He's a, Galilean, Galilean hang out together. There's not a lot of you, right? Don't even know who he is. Three times Peter denies Jesus. And what you find when you read that story in Luke is that he denies Jesus and Jesus is sitting there. And Jesus had told them he was going to do that. But really what was Peter afraid of all this time? He'd been, spent his bending with Jesus. What was he afraid of to own him to own Jesus? Well, he was afraid of dying, but he wasn't just afraid of physical death. He was afraid and probably angry and frustrated because everything had already died. His hopes and dreams for this, this Messiah, this one in torque turned the kingdom upside down. So there was a different way. Like he's been arrested, he's going to die. It's over. What is Peter afraid? If he wants to run away, he's terrified that everything is falling apart. He has no meaning. Probably his fishing business has gone to pot because he's been spending his time with this crazy Messiah. Who's now going to be killed by the Romans, right? He's afraid not just of his own death, but of everything ending. He's scrambling. Like most of us now, a lot of us have these moments, right? We have them sometimes about our faith. Sometimes we just have them, like I did, you know, when I was a freshman in high school, um, I was on the freshman basketball team and I went to rent con, which if you don't know, this Rincon high school was also married with the university high. And when I was in university Heights for the smart people, and when I went to Rincon, um, I think university high was ranked number two in the nation for test scores in college, you know, acceptance and all that kind of stuff. So they were, you know, it was cool to be a UHS person, except they were all nerds. But anyway, the entire like basketball team was UHS people. And I was, there was like two of us from Lincoln. I don't know how that happened, how all the athletes turned out to be smart, but me. But anyway, there we are. And I remember this guy, his name was Syeda, mobile hanky locker. Ronnie. I remember his name because there was a moment in the locker room when he asked me, well, where do you go university higher Rincon. And you know, have a whole locker room just like seem to go silent. And I'm scrambling because I, I want to lie, but I know I can't because I go to school with them, I'll figure it out. So I had to say Rincon, but, but we all have those, those moments where everything seems to go that right. Well, that was Peter's moment. And Peter was terrified. Is he fearing death? That's, they're all connected. We're terrified of the unknown and of losing our life. Right? So there's Peter. Now there's another guy named John and John. He shows up in the gospel of John and he's got a lot of hooks that he never uses his own name. All he says is he's the disciple that Jesus loved. I'm never going to make that claim. Hi, I'm Eric. The disciple that Jesus loves someone to write a book about myself and Jesus, but he's sitting, he's standing at the cross. And the most of it from what we can figure out, most of the disciples did not follow Jesus to the cross. They scattered, but John and all the women did show up at the cross. Um, and what I get from reading Jimmy, John's probably the youngest, but when you read the gospel, I kind of get the sense of, John's probably a relatively passive person. He's younger, he's invisible. People don't really see him that much. Jesus has kind of taken him under his wing, but he's somewhat of a passive kind of guy. And there he is standing at the cross and Jesus says something very profound to him, but probably very terrifying. He says, John, there's my mother. Now she's your mother. Right? Take care of her. He gives his mother to John. I think John at that moment is probably thinking, man, I wish I hadn't come to the cross. This is nine. Now I've got mom, right? I got two of them. Right. But I think John was kind of a passive guy. I'm making a guest there. We know that Peter was impulsive. So here they are. Here's Peter terrified of dying. Probably John terrified of the implications of having to take care of Jesus's mom and care for her. We're going to jump forward into their story in the acts chapter three, because I want you to note something that happens to these men acts chapter three, Jesus has died. He Rose from the dead and he's ascended to heaven. There's one day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate, called beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him and said, John, as did John. Then Peter said, look at us. So the man gave them his attention expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said silver or gold. I do not have, but what I have, I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk, taking him by the right hand, he helped him up and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to be used to sit begging at the temple gate called beautiful. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. So before we just talk about Peter and his transformation, I do want you to just note a few things. Um, and I I've told you these before, what I've preached on this path is, but I want you to note something. I want you to look at the way Peter inter and John interacts with this guy, because what was established by Jesus in that the birth and the death, what happened in between is what Peter and John are practicing and what you and I are called to and what we were supposed to do in the beginning. And that is to offer blessing, to offer blessing. And there's a way that you do that. If you note, the first thing that happens in the story is that Peter and John don't just walk by this guy. They actually see him and in their interaction, they require him to look at them. There there's a moment when nothing else that they're doing matters, not going through the temple, going through the things that they want to do, teaching the teachings they want to teach. Now, this man in this moment matters. And if you want to be a person of blessing, the first thing you have to do is actually see people. You have to see people that is part of being. That is what it means to be part of the kingdom of God is to be people who see people who actually see them. And we can get from this story that they actually knew his story at some level, or I found it out. And the second part of blessing we've talked about, this is knowing people's story. And I want to remind you of this because when we listen to somebody's story and it's part of the way we bless people, it's actually allow people to tell their story without us imposing our story on them, allowing people to share who they are and their struggles. If we recognize people. And if we call out their story, if we listen to their story, that's part of blessing because we live in a culture that doesn't really care about your story. And most of the time we don't see one another. We're not going to take the time to sit and to bless now, what do they do? They look at what's going on with this guy. They see him there and then they actually bring Jesus to bear on it. They speak Jesus, his name, they offer what they have. And part of blessing, people in the kingdom of God is realizing that the thing you have is not your cars, your money, your clothes, all the other things. It's Jesus, you have Jesus. That's what you have to offer. You have Jesus and the miraculous of Jesus. You have the opportunity to pray over people and to call people into something greater, to see people, to know people and to call them out. This is what Peter practice, but how did Peter get here? How did Peter and John, I mean, how did Peter go from a person who would not be willing to acknowledge that Jesus was even knew him, that they were even connected, that they may be even lived in the same town or hung out together at some point to a point where he's speaking to people and saying, no, you need to stand up in the name of the King in public. How did he get there? How does he get to that place? Well, in acts chapter four, we get a little bit more clue. The priest and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John, while they were speaking to people, they were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus, the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John. And because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed. And the number of men grew to about 5,000. The next day, the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. And as the high priest was there. And so it was Caiaphas, John Alexander and the other men of the high priests family. They had Peter and John brought before them. And they began to question them by what power or what name did you do this? Then Peter filled with the Holy spirit said to them, rulers and elders of the people. If we are being called to account today for the act of kindness to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this you and all the people of Israel, it is by the name Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead that this man stands before you healed. He, speaking of Jesus is the cornerstone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found. And no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by what? By which we must be saved. Well, Peter has gone from this guy. Who's a crazy man saying, no, I'm not. I don't even know him to standing in front of all the rulers and saying, yeah, I know him and you, you know, I know Jesus, and you guys killed him because he was your conspiracy. And the reason he's healed is because of Jesus. And let me just go out on one more limb. None of you can find relationship with God or any kind of salvation, unless you go through Jesus. It's a complete three 60, it's a complete three 60. He's just changed. It's not the same person. Well, what was in there? Well, the resurrection, the birth, the death and the resurrection. He's not afraid anymore. He's not afraid to die. He's not afraid of losing his dreams because they're not his dreams anymore. He's not right. Not afraid of death anymore. Now th the Sadducees and the rulers are kind of confounded. So they try to figure out what's going on. And then verse 18, it says them may call them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied judge for yourself, whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God for, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. So here's the, here's the invitation that when you decide to be a follower of Jesus, what you're deciding to do is to join a revolution. It's an underground revolution. And that revolution has three anchors that the birth, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and there are three stones stuck in the water in this flood of evil. And the invitation you have is the hook, your grappling hook, and all three of those, and step into the flow and turn around and start walking towards Jesus and start acting out the kingdom of God. And the way you do it is exactly the way the shepherds did it. When the angels appeared to them. And we talked about this, an advent, what did they do? They talked about what they'd seen and what they'd heard. What did Peter say? He's like, I don't care what you tell me, because you are not going to stop me from talking about what I've seen and what I've heard the key to transformation is to understand how vital the birth to death and the resurrection of Jesus is, and begin the process of a conversation about what you've seen and what you've heard. And as you do that begin to practice this upside down kingdom that Jesus talked about. Now, I want to give you some practical ways of dealing with that tonight. And I, every, at the beginning of every year, we talk about this. And so I want to, but I want to take it a little bit out of what Peter and John did when they were released to give you a practical way of acting like Peter and John anchoring yourself into the death, the resurrection and the birth of Jesus, and then acting on what you've seen and heard and speaking it. So on their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that. The chief priests and elders had said to them, when they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God, sovereign Lord. They said, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy spirit, through the mouth of your servant, our father, David, this is Psalm two. They quote from why do the nations rage and the profits plot in vain, the Kings of the earth take their stand. And the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed one indeed Herod and Pontius pilot met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your Holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and your will had decided beforehand should happen. Now Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness, stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders the name of your Holy servant. Jesus. After they prayed the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were filled with the Holy spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. So let me first say that when you decide to begin to have a conversation about what you've seen and what you've heard, when you decide that the miraculous birth crazy as it is the death and the resurrection of Jesus, our transforming powers in your life, and you decide to step into that wave. You will get pushed back. Your life will be a life of pushback. You are walking upstream. You are not going in the same direction as the rest of the world. You are saying, no, no, the kingdom of God is completely different than everything. You're talking about. Everything. Power is completely different and the way it's exercise, you're going to meet resistance. And the way that you meet resistance is through prayer. And so when Peter and John and the community of God get together, what do they acknowledge? They acknowledge that God is sovereign, that he knows what he's doing. That he's powerful, that he's orchestrating things. And then they begin to ask for things and you know what they do not ask for really simple, easy things. They don't say, well, it'll be really nice. If my pillow is soft tomorrow, Jesus, could you do that? No. They ask for signs and wonders and miraculous and the impossible so much so that the building that they're in shapes, they want the two kingdoms to clash. They want the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil to meet. And they want the King of evil to fall back and they want God to act and they want him to do it. And they want to be part of that. So I'm going to give you one little way to do that. It's something I've been practicing for a very long time. So some of you already know about it, but every year I write 20 prayers there, 20 prayers. And it's very hard to just write 20 once you start writing, but there are 20 miraculous prayers that I pray all year. My family praise them. We try to go over them. Sometimes we forget last yesterday, we do this, we have this little ritual. We go to Bruegger's on Broadway and Wilma, and we own their back room and they have a big table and we sit down and we read all our prayers and we write them the new ones. And we talk about what God has done in the year and how he's acted miraculously. Um, so my invitation to you to join John and Peter is just this week, this year to write down 20 presents, I'm going to give you some instructions about how you can do that this week. What I want you to do is start with the first five. And while you want to write all 20 this week, but the first five, I want you to write them about you. I want you to ask God for the miraculous things. And I want you to ask God for miraculous things in the context of you being a kid and God being your father. And that is super important. That means that you can't ask God for a Porsche nine 11. That's pretty miraculous. I don't think any of you can afford a Porsche nine 11, right? You probably won't get it, but if you do, I would like to drive it. Okay. But, but what I, I mean, I use that kind of outrageous example for you to understand that you are a kid asking an almighty father for you, not for somebody else in the way they might experience you, but use some miraculous transformation. Things that you think are vital to you. And number two, I want you to write five prayers about your family, and they want you to ask for miraculous things for your family, for your wife, for your kids, you know, and it might be vacuous to just be like, Hey, I want my child to be potty trained this year, Eric. All right. That's a big for some people that's[inaudible], but I want you, I want you to ask for things that you seem impossible, the transformation in your kids and your wife and your parents, your cousin's life. Now you're going to have to limit to five. Now, some of you are really good at writing compound sentences. Others of you are good at run-ons. So we'll be good. You can have a really long, yeah, no, but take it, take that seriously. And then third, I want you to write five prayers for the village five miraculous prayers for the village. It could be, you know, one that I had for a very long time was that the building would get air conditioning. Yeah, it did get, we got a little bit air conditioning in this room anyway. Right. But it could be structurally. Sometimes I write surprise, surprise, very miraculous things into your guys's life. So I just pick four or five of you. And I just pray that same thing all year into your life. And then I write little notes about what God's doing, right? Pray, miraculous things into one another's lives. And then last, I want need to write five things, five prayers that you would have for your city, for your, for, for the United States and for the world. And that's just five and it's, you know, going to be difficult. So you can ask, you can kind of figure where God has your heart at this time. It could be for places overseas. It could be simply for the people that you work with. It could be for the fact that someday, maybe you think we need a freeway system and you're asking for divine intervention, I don't know, or you don't want, you know, whatever you can, you can ask her things that you think are going to didn't have the kingdom of God and let you, you know, so, but here's the thing. It's not much different than what they were asking for. I'm asking you to take, make intentionally, say, I am going to pray into the world this year, 20 things that are going to turn the tide and are going to go the other direction against evil, against the way that the world says things are, I'm going to join Jesus in the revolution that he started between birth and death, right? I'm inviting you into that because what the church is in this moment of, you know, if you look at the Bible as, as a way of being a play and it kind of we're in the fourth act, I think fourth or fifth act anyway, but it is an improv act. It's an act of improvisation. You don't know what's coming. We're here. We're just demonstrating the kingdom of God, waiting for Jesus to come back and finish it. And all we're doing is saying, Hey, the way it's supposed to be, let us quick show you. We'll we'll in our broken selves. We're going to give it a try. Now, here's the beautiful picture that you need to understand that you live in and that you're making you're praying in. And that is, is that Peter's story. Then the denying of Jesus, and then the victorious proclamation is your cycle of rife over and over again. As you get up every morning, Peter had this cycle, you have this cycle. It is a constant denial of Jesus and a restoration and a proclamation of Jesus and a denial of Jesus and a proclamation and the restoration of Jesus and the denial of Jesus, right? It's like peeling an onion. It was big. And you took off a layer and took off a layer and took off a layer. That's the process of walking against that stream. So my invitation tonight is that you take me up on this and you write down those 20 prayers. I have two minutes. If anybody has any questions or thoughts or back. Yes. Um, well I think you're in it. So you, I think you have as good an understanding of it as I do. Um, but I would say that if you read the Bible old and new Testament, there's a script that's happening. It's a very obvious script. There's this script of, of the fall. And then this process of running from God and redemption, um, and then this burdening of a new, a new kingdom that's kind of starting, but then it cuts off. We don't have any more texts, right? There's no one it's us. We're free for a minute. Now we're not following any script. I mean, we have this, the scripture that tells us, but now we have to deal with all where we're improving in that way. It's a way of thinking about it. Any other questions? Thoughts, nothing. Alright. Let's pray father in heaven. Thank you for this community. Um, I ask that as we step into this year as a community, that you would give us courage, um, to be bold and to look for your, uh, miraculous and to join you in it, help us to find those things in the simple places. God would give us courage to hold onto the anchors that you have given us in your birth and your death and your resurrection. Now that in your name, Jesus, amen.