Westhill Community Church

Sunday 30^th September 2018

Prayer is Yielding

Reading: Romans 12: 1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For the month of September we have been considering the topic of prayer.

You may have noticed that the initial letters of these words form the acronym PRAY. As you would expect, this acronym was planned deliberately, as an aid to help us remember as we meditate further on this essential topic. This is not to say that these four words cover all that is meant by prayer. On the contrary, there are many other aspects of prayer that are hardly touched on by these themes – worship, confession, spiritual warfare, to name but a few. So, we would encourage you to continue in your own personal devotions, and in talking with one another, to seek to understand further and deeper what prayer is all about, and to deliberately and actively develop your own prayer life before God. Brothers and sisters, to put is quite simply and yet forcibly, prayer is the means by which we are able to move the hand that moves the world. By the power of prayer battles are won, regimes are changed, the hungry are fed, prison gates are opened, the dead are raised, miracles are performed. By the power of prayer people are strengthened to endure oppression and torture for the name of Christ, go without food and water, clothing and shelter, and surrender their bodies even to death in the certain knowledge that a better and brighter resurrection awaits them.

I will never forget the astonishing lesson I was taught in the summer of 1967, as a nineteen year old on my first trip outside the UK, camping in a disused factory in Belgium. The factory premises were being used as a location for an Operation Mobilisation training conference, prior to the sending out of literature evangelism teams into various parts of Europe. OM’s leader, George Verwer, addressed the assembled company. “We have a vision,” he said, “and we invite you to join with us in praying this vision into a reality. Our vision is for a ship to carry gospel literature and evangelism teams to every part of the world. An ocean-going vessel that will bring good news and the message of salvation into places that are currently closed to the gospel. We believe this is what God wants us to do, and we invite you to join us in praying it into being. Of course,” he added, “the big issue is not praying for a ship. God will easily supply a ship. The big issue is praying for the crew. For the crew we need trained and qualified individuals who are prepared to give up lucrative employment in order to serve God in the cause of the gospel. That is far more difficult to accomplish.”

This was before the days of Logos, Doulos, Logos II and Logos Hope – successive OM ships with which you may be familiar. And it was before the days of Mercy Ships UK, another faith-based ships ministry. And it was completely outside my Christian experience up to that time. In my church upbringing we prayed for God’s word to be preached with power, and for people’s hearts to be changed. We prayed for people to be comforted and sustained during illness or bereavement. We prayed for the work of missionaries to be blessed. Indeed we were very good at praying for showers of blessing, but much more hesitant when it came to identifying those blessings specifically. From time to time missionaries came back to report of times when they prayed for money or food and how God miraculously provided, but if I remember correctly such things were not regularly part of our day-to-day church experience. And now here was the leader of OM boldly encouraging us to pray for an ocean-going ship and the crew to operate it. Three years later OM’s first ship, Logos, was a reality, undergoing the necessary preparations before undertaking her maiden voyage to India in 1971.

From what I have said you might be tempted to conclude that the radical focus of Operation Mobilisation was essentially to do with achieving great things for God through prayer. That was part of their ministry, of course, but it wasn’t the main focus of their teaching. Their main focus can be summarised quite briefly in two words:  true discipleship. What George Verwer liked to refer to as “reality.” Living fully in accordance with what you say you believe. Mark’s gospel tells us of the call of Jesus to Peter and Andrew. “Come follow me,” Jesus said. And Mark records, “at once they left their nets and followed him.” (Mark 1: 18). Submission, yielding, giving up your own agenda, your own rights, your own decisions in order to follow the master, to follow Jesus. Leaving the nets behind. The nets can be quite different for each one of us. But nets have one thing in common: they entrap, they entangle and they hold you back. To truly follow Jesus, to be real about our discipleship, we need to leave our nets behind.

And this is why today’s prayer theme is “prayer is yielding.” Prayer is essentially for disciples, those who submit unreservedly to their master’s wishes and commands. Oh, of course, God hears the prayers of others, particularly those who cry out to him in need, for he is the Father of Mercies. But effective prayer, powerful prayer, prayer that moves mountains, overcoming prayer, prayer that defeats evil, that kind of prayer is prayed by disciples.

There are three ways in particular that yielding or submission is to be at the heart of our prayer life, and these are exemplified in the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. Firstly our prayers should seek to advance God’s reputation, not ours – “hallowed be thy name.” Secondly our prayers should seek to widen God’s sphere of influence, not ours – “thy kingdom come.” Thirdly our prayers should advance God’s agenda, not ours – “thy will be done.”

As I list these you may say to yourself, these are almost self-evident. Surely any Christian in his or her prayers will be seeking God’s purposes and not their own. But this is not necessarily or always the case. Remember how the apostle Paul prayed three times that a particular “thorn in the flesh” would be removed. But the Lord’s response was, “my grace is sufficient for you.” The implication of Paul’s testimony in this case is that he stopped praying for the removal of the thorn once it became clear that it was the Lord’s will for it to remain. Remember too how Jesus prayed in Gethsemane: “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but yours be done.” Sometimes the line between God’s agenda and our agenda is very thin, and there is a risk that we might stray to the wrong side.

Now, firstly, “hallowed be thy name;” advancing God’s reputation, not ours. How easy it is to be more concerned about what people think of us, or our ministry, or our church, rather than what they think of God. It is most damaging when it relates to misdemeanours – actions that might give rise to scandal. None of us want wrong-doers to be exposed to public gaze, particularly if those concerned are genuinely repentant. And so our immediate response is to keep quiet about actions that might harm the reputation of God’s work. But how many Christian churches or institutions have been snared by this way of thinking? And what has been the damage to God’s name of the subsequent revelation of both misdemeanours and cover-up? So when we come before God in prayer, particularly for guidance for the way forward in difficult situations, let us seek that which enhances God’s reputation, not ours or that of our ministry or of our church.

Secondly, “thy kingdom come;” widening God’s sphere of influence, not ours. When Paul wrote to the church at Corinth he had to rebuke them for competing jealously with one another. “For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” (1 Cor 3: 4-7). When we become possessive of our particular area of ministry we are in danger of becoming kingdom-builders – not God’s kingdom but ours. Sometimes the most difficult word we can hear from God is that the foundation we have laid is going to be built on by someone else. So in our praying we need to repeatedly yield ourselves to this principle: it is not my ministry, or my gifting, or my organisation that is anything, but only God who makes things grow.

Thirdly, “thy will be done;” advancing God’s agenda, not ours. I have a feeling that if someone were able to listen in to all of our prayer lives, they might perhaps conclude that prayer is all about the things we want to happen. Lord, please touch so-and-so, please give this person a safe journey, please help this one find a job, please make the sun shine on Saturday, etc, etc.  Now the fact that we ask God for things does not in itself imply that we are seeking our will instead of his. After all, in his word God encourages us to ask him for what we need. But the lesson I learn from this is as follows. If I don’t know whether a request is God’s will, then I must be honest before God (and others) about this. Part of that honesty is maybe to change my prayer request to one that asks to understand God’s will about the issue rather than a prayer that insists on an outcome that comes from my personal preference. I think that with regard to this church building we did this. We sought God individually and together as to whether a building on this site was part of his plan and purpose. We shared together what each of us believed God was showing us, and we concluded that yes, indeed, God’s will was for a church building to be erected. So we prayed for that outcome and the funding to achieve it. God graciously heard and answered our prayer.

Our reading today speaks of our understanding God’s good and perfect will.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12: 1-2).

There are two potential barriers to correctly understanding God’s will. One is our natural desires and inclinations when they function independently of God’s guidance and control. That is why Paul encourages us to yield our body to God – to treat it indeed as if it were dead, and only alive in so much that it serves God’s pleasure and purpose. The second potential barrier is our mind, particularly if it is occupied with the thoughts and aspirations of the world around us which has no desire or concern to know God’s ways. That is why Paul encourages us to yield our minds to God, to allow him by his word and his Spirit to renew it and transform it. When our bodies and minds are yielded to God in this way we will be enabled to clearly understand what is or is not God’s will. And this in turn will enable us to pray effectively and powerfully for God’s will to be accomplished in those places he calls us to serve him.

Steve Townsend

Copyright © 2018 S P Townsend