Today we’re continuing our series Prayer: Opening Your Heart to God. And if you didn’t know it before now, let me tell you - there are many different kinds of prayer.
- Take mealtime prayers, for instance. We all know what these are like… they tend to be short and sweet because everyone is hungry and the food is getting cold.
- Then there are bedtime prayers often starting with the words “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” and then end with a list of God blesses… y’know – God bless mommy, God bless daddy, God bless my pet frog.
- There are also church prayers. These focus on praising God and lifting up people and needs in the congregation and community and world.
- Private prayers are prayers we pray by ourselves. Occasionally resulting in conversational prayer where we sense God speaking to us in a still, small voice, giving us direction and a clear sense of God’s presence.
- We can’t forget crisis prayers. These prayers can get messy as they occur in the midst of a crisis when we honestly pour out our deepest hurts and needs to God.
All of us have had some kind of experience with prayer. For some of us prayer came naturally… and for others of us prayer is frustrating and difficult. I remember when I first became a Christian… I was 17 and a senior in high school. I was not raised in a Christian home so I didn’t have the opportunity to learn to pray by watching my parents, grandparents, or church family pray. I had to learn how to pray on my own. I read books on prayer. I talked with my campus minister about prayer. I learned the ACTS formula for prayer that we’ve talked about here – adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Over time praying became easier and more natural simply because I was praying. But I continued to explore more and different ways to pray – searching out a variety of ways to talk with God and to hear God. I soon explored the prayers of the bible – but I found praying the prayers of the bible could be dangerous. When we enter the realm of dangerous prayers, we find ourselves asking God to work a transformation with us. The focus of our prayers move from what we want to God’s presence in our lives.
Our scripture for this morning takes us into the realm of dangerous prayers. In this one beautiful, earnest psalm we encounter four dangerous prayers. Before we get into that hear the words of Psalm 139.1-12, 23-24:
1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
In this psalm David praises God for being present everywhere. “Wherever I go on this planet I am never alone because you are there,” declares David. David recognizes that God knows everything and made everything, so he also declares God’s greatness. “You are a powerful God. You made everything and I will give thanks to you,” he proclaims. Then a thought strikes David. He realizes that God thinks about David’s personal life all day long. David says in verses 17 and 18, “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. If I were to count your thoughts about me they would outnumber the grains of sand on the seashores.” David is caught up in the wonder of it all, the wonder of God.
David realizes that God can see him through and through. David is intensely aware that God knows his thoughts before he thinks them, his words before he speaks them. God knows his plans, his errands, his comings and goings, his strengths, his weaknesses, even his secret sins -- literally everything about him. There is no hiding from God. But David still takes a risk in asking God to shine the burning light of God’s holiness on the darkest corners of David’s heart. David wants nothing hidden from God. He is entering the level of dangerous prayer.
Sometimes when we are praying we are forced to do the same thing as David. We realize there are pockets of resistance and rebellion within us and we have to decide if we will pray a dangerous prayer. Dare we pray, “Search me, O God. Know my heart. Turn on the spotlight. Expose any rebellion inside of me.”
When was the last time you really prayed a “search me” prayer, if ever? It is like the saying in business: Don’t ask the question of you don’t want the answer. Don’t pray this kind of prayer unless you are daring enough and humble enough to receive God’s answer. Don’t ask God to search you and know you if you don’t want God to really do it. Because God will answer your prayer and something will get exposed and then you’ll have to deal with it.
When we dare pray the dangerous prayer of “Search me and know me, O God” we will have revealed to us those things in our lives that need special attention. Ecclesiastes 3.3 says there is a time to tear down and a time to build up. There are times in our lives when we need to pile up bricks, but there are also times when we need to get out a sledge hammer and to break the bricks apart. When you’ve prayed the Search Me prayer and have had God show you those areas of your life that needs to be changed, you need to ask God to help you. You need God to break down those things in your life that are not pleasing to God. You’ll need to pray the dangerous prayer, “Break me, O God”
As we grow as followers of Jesus we encounter things in our lives that don’t necessarily need to be broken, but just stretched a little bit. We become discontent with the spiritual rut we find ourselves in. God created us to be dynamic and growing, but sometimes our own humanity gets us stuck. And we need God’s help to grow beyond where we are to where God desires us to be.
In John chapter three, Nicodemus daringly came to Jesus during the night with a dangerous request – to have his spiritual understanding stretched. Jesus taught him that obeying religious laws wouldn’t get him to heaven, but instead stretched Nicodemus’ understanding to realize that he needed to repent of his sin and receive God’s free gift of grace for salvation.
Sometimes it feels really good to be stretched. First thing in the morning I love nothing more than a big stretch – it really wakes my muscles up and gets the blood flowing.
But other times it hurts a bit to stretch. After an injury or surgery sometimes the most important part of our recovery is the stretching we have to do during physical therapy. We have undergone the essential work to fix whatever was broken or damaged in our life and now to optimize the results we need to do the hard work of stretching. In the painful process of being stretched we often wonder if it is worth it, but ultimately when it is all over we are thankful we did it.
Stretching is also part of the process of spiritual growth. When a time of spiritual stretching is over, we often will look back and thank God for bringing us through such a growth process. It truly takes courage and daring to actually pray the dangerous prayer of “Stretch me, O God.” But it is always a life-changing experience.
Hearing others tell stories of how God has been working in their lives is inspiring. It reminds us that God is still in the business of caring and directing the lives of God’s people. Testimonies of God’s leading can challenge us – dare us to pray another dangerous prayer, “Lead me, O God.” But let me warn you if you dare pray, “God lead me. I take my life, gifts, talents, resources, energy, and future and put it all in your hands, O Lord” … if you are a daring Christian praying such a dangerous prayer be forewarned you just might find yourself enrolling in seminary… that’s what got me here.
I don’t know if I was being a daring Christian or something else! But I do know I did a dangerous thing when I responded to my pastor’s altar call, when I went forward, kneeled, and prayed, “God you know me and what is best for me. I’m tired of running from you and avoiding you. Break that self-determined spirit of mine that tells me I know what is best. I desire to be wholly devoted to you and working for your church to bring about the Kingdom. Stretch my comfort zones. Stretch me in my ministry. Lead me to where you would want me to go from here.” A dangerous prayer for sure… within two years for financial reasons I lost my job at the church, was hired to manage a woman’s clothing store, got transferred from southern Indiana to central Ohio and was starting my Master of Divinity studies at MTSO.
Dangerous prayers like search me, break me, stretch me, lead me, O Lord require humility, vulnerability, and a bit of daring. If you are more of a reluctant Christian than a daring Christian when it comes to dangerous prayers be assured, as was David, God will not abandon you, nor forsake you; God’s hand will hold you fast; God has hemmed you in.
Are you ready to pray a dangerous prayer? I double dog dare ya.
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