Prayer Not Instant

Summary:

The text delves into Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, urging believers to follow the narrow path he outlined. It emphasizes prayer as a crucial practice for internalizing these teachings and transforming into Jesus' image with the Holy Spirit's help. By drawing parallels between gardening and spiritual growth, the narrative highlights prayer's role in fostering a deep connection with God. Believers are challenged to reflect God's image and engage positively with the world, in harmony with scripture. The text critiques modern culture's emphasis on convenience, advocating for a shift from consumerism to enduring grace. Jesus' teachings call for a deep, interior life focused on love, contrasting with superficial "fast food spirituality." Evelyn Underhill's insights encourage engagement with the Sermon on the Mount, personal growth, and slow transformation for a lasting impact on the world.

Transcript:

We are wrapping up today our series on the Sermon on the Mount. It is hard for me to believe, but we have spent three months now in the Sermon on the Mount. One of the things that we have suggested is that this is the most important and comprehensive set of teachings offered by Jesus, but for us to live according to the ways of Jesus. That this is a very important passage of scripture for us.

Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7. Jesus invited us to live according to his ways, the ways of the kingdom, and he called it a narrow path. The narrow path, if you will recall, is not a separation of people who are Christians versus non-Christians, but a separation of people who are following in the way of Jesus, allowing him to lead and guide their lives and those who are living according to different patterns or some sort of blurring of the lines between the two. In this section of scripture, Jesus called us to some really difficult things. Things that are very hard for us to do. Things that more than likely, not more than likely, things that we will not be able to do without the Holy Spirit. And so Jesus invited us in this sermon to pray in a way that invites the Holy Spirit to capture our attention, to lead us, to shape and form us into the image of Jesus.

We read the introductory paragraph into this prayer, and now I want to read for us, beginning in verse 9 of Matthew 6, how Jesus taught us to pray. He says this, this then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive other people, Jesus continues, when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. The temptation for us when we read through any of the Bible, this teaching, other teachings that shape and form our lives, we sort of rely on our experience that we have had with Jesus at some point in our lives. We read through the words and we say, I agree and just sort of check the box and move on. If we approach the sermon on the mount in this way, then we have really misunderstood what Jesus is leading us to in this moment. Jesus is not asking us to agree that if these things of loving our enemy, paying attention to the words that we use, not letting anger or greed get the best of us, if Jesus is... The objective of this sermon is not just to say we agree, but that we would subject ourselves to be formed by the Holy Spirit into the image of Jesus. And the bar for us to know if how our formation in the image of Jesus is going, then is all of these items that Jesus addresses in the sermon on the mount.

Now, there is no way that you and I can pray one prayer and then just wake up and all of a sudden we are deeply formed into the image of Jesus. It is something that has to be formed in us by Jesus's Spirit. So when he teaches us how to pray, and the reason why we're ending this series with prayer is because prayer is the way in which we take all that we have learned, all that Jesus has taught, and through prayer, it gets deep down into our bones. It is the way in which God forms and shapes us. And so if we only pray one way, if we only, when we pray, give a list of things, of requests to God, then that's not going to be prayer that is very formative for us, right? We have to learn to pray as Jesus taught us, and learn to pray in ways that shape and form our lives. So when Jesus taught us to pray, he says, first of all, you say, are in heaven.

So not some grumpy dictator or judgmental figure, but our Father in heaven. Holy is your name.

God, you are holy. Your kingdom come, your will be done. So what's going on in heaven is becoming reality in our lives today. Give us our daily bread. God, we need sustenance to live this life that you have called us to live, and that can only be given from you. So give us today our daily bread, and then forgive us in the moments when we are wrong, and lead us out of temptation, delivering us from the evil one. You can hear and see that this is not just a one-time thing, but a way in which we are formed and shaped into the image of God through a daily availability to the Holy Spirit, and a faithful following and trust in the Spirit.

As we consider how these teachings affect our lives, we have to understand that what goes on beneath the surface is what is the best, the highest influence of what goes on above the surface. Now, where are my green thumbs at? Those of you who can just look at a plant and it flourishes and grows and is beautiful. We want to know who you are so we can envy you and maybe get some advice from you. I have a love and hate relationship with gardening and with plants. I want to be a person who can nourish plants, but it's just not a part of my skill set. I have kept some plants a few plants alive for a good time now, but it's just sheer luck.

It's not anything that I have really done. One of the things I think that people who have green thumbs understand is this sort of innate understanding that what happens in the soil beneath the topsoil is what produces the fruit that grows above the surface. The nourishment of the roots, the proper hydration of the roots, and the frequent attention to what is going on in the places that are unseen is what is the greatest influence of what happens above the surface. Now, there are always external factors, right? And we know this. We live in Texas and the weather is extreme. It's extremely hot, or it can be extremely cold.

It's extremely wet, or it can be extremely dry. And those changing conditions definitely affect what's going on above the surface. But in my understanding, for the most part, if what is going on beneath the surface is the way that it should be, then what is going on above the surface can withstand even some of the most difficult and harsh conditions. So, as we think about prayer, we understand the way in which prayer influences our rootedness and nurtures us deep down in the depths of our being. We cry out as did the psalmist in Psalm 51, create in me a pure heart. Notice it doesn't say, God, give me a checklist so that I can do all the right things and receive a pure heart. It doesn't say, God, I want to achieve a pure heart.

No, what the scriptures say to us is, create in me a pure heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. For the people of God, prayer has always been the most important activity for us to participate in. As followers of Jesus, it is our lifeline, so we have to learn how to pray. Now, I want to do a quick survey, and this is an internal survey. We don't need to have any sort of answers from you that all of us can see.

This is just for our thoughts, and this comes from talking with people throughout my time as a pastor and how people generally talk about prayer. So I want to ask just a couple of questions for us to consider. When it comes to prayer and your perspective on prayer, do you think that your prayer life is adequate? Do you consider yourself a person of prayer? And are you confident in your ability to pray? I don't know where you are with the answers to those questions, but I want you to consider that as we think about what Jesus is calling us to today. So I want to read a quote.

This comes from a theologian named Lewis Ively, and I want you to listen to it. It's quite a lengthy quote, but I want to read it all and then invite us to consider the truth of what he is trying to teach to us here, and we'll talk about how does that then connect with prayer and us living in obedience to the way of Jesus. Here is what he says. To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God. Christians believe in the end of the world. They expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others.

Atheists, in their turn, invent doctrines of salvation to try to give a meaning to life, work, and the future of humankind, and refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world. All ignore the true God, he who has so loved the world. But which is the more culpable ignorance? To love God is to love the world. To love God passionately is to love the world passionately. To hope in God is to hope for the salvation of the world. I often say to myself that in our religion, God must feel very much alone, for is there anyone besides God who believes in the salvation of the world?

God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough so that he could send them into the world to save it. So consider the juxtaposition here that our brother is offering to us. On one view, there are Christians who have developed this sort of theology that the world is a disposable place, that at some point in time it's going to go away and we are going to leave and never return. On the other hand is people who don't believe in God, and in an effort to create some sort of meaning or significance in the time that they have alive, the earth becomes the most important thing for them to cultivate and sustain and pass along to generations. And what we are invited to consider here is that both of these ideas are incomplete because what we know about what scripture teaches us is not that this world is going to cease to exist and go away, but that God is working to restore this world and that it is God who ultimately sustains and keeps this world in existence. So the idea that God must feel very lonely in his attentiveness and care for the world because his followers often want to escape it and those who have a positive influence in the world don't trust and follow him. And I wanted to bring that to our attention because for us as followers of Jesus, the work that God does in us is for the sake of our neighbors and for the sake of the world.

If we look back to the beginning story in the Bible, people are created and they live in harmony with God, with themselves, with one another, and with the world itself. And if you turn to the end of the story of the Bible, there's the same garden pictured and present where people are once again living in full harmony with God, themselves, one another, and the world. It's a story that ends in the way it began. It's God redeeming and restoring creation. And so we need to understand that as people, the work that God does in our lives is not just for us to hold on to for ourselves to receive some sort of desirable death benefit, but for our neighbors and for the world in which we live, that God, through the work that we are doing of loving our neighbor, will reveal himself to our neighbors as we live in responsive to his Holy Spirit, that the kingdom of heaven would come and reveal its way through our lives. Now, as we think about all of this, we think about the patterns of the world, there are two dynamics among many that define the way in which the gods of this age, as Paul says, keeps people in our grasp or in its grasp. Those ways are accessibility and convenience. Okay? Accessibility and convenience.

These are two pillars that run the economy of our world. The scriptures advise us that we should know the schemes of brokenness and we should understand the way in which they influence us and the ways in which they stand in the way of us following the Holy Spirit in order to form the ways of Jesus in us. We have to understand how the patterns of brokenness move us in ways that are contrary to the way of Jesus, and then how, in place of that, Jesus offers a different path. In the Sermon on the Mount, he calls it the narrow path, in order to help us to live into the realities of the kingdom of God above the realities of kingdom of the world around us. This, though, is a very slow way, and that is the problem that many of us face. There are no cheat codes to perfect the way of Jesus in our lives. There is no way to jump ahead to the next level.

We can't fast forward and all of a sudden, the ways of Jesus are alive and well in our lives. We have to be patient and settle in and allow the Holy Spirit to form and shape us at the pace that God desires. If we truly pay attention to these teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, there is no way that we can rush through them. The things that Jesus is calling us to are really difficult and significant for us and defy even a lot of the ways in which we perceive the good life or the directions that we want to go. Jesus calls us to places that are very difficult for us to say yes to at times. We can't just grin and bear it. We have to work through it and allow the Spirit to work at the depths of who we are so that the kingdom of God can flourish in our lives.

We have to avoid the temptation or resist the temptation to rush through. A lot of times what happens is that we hear these teachings or we feel this conviction of some sort and we want to just jump ahead to the end result where we are living in this way fully. But that's not the way that reality works. The patterns of our lives that are developed are developed over time. And for them to be undeveloped and replaced with the ways of Jesus also requires time. And so we have to move slowly. Eugene Peterson suggested that discipleship is a long obedience in the same direction.

But when we think about how our economy works and we think about the influences of accessibility and convenience, we would be wise to consider how these

pursuits can lead us away from the kingdom of heaven. Our economy runs on accessibility and convenience. Jeff Bezos, the leader of Amazon, has made a lot of

money on accessibility and convenience. The goal, generally speaking, of these two influences is production at the lowest cost, which then doesn't generally equal durability or quality. And so we end up purchasing a lot of things or bringing a lot of things in our lives that we will end up trashing or throwing away. Things are no longer manufactured to last. They're manufactured for mass distribution, mass availability, and for the lowest cost, which takes down the quality.

So when we purchase something, first of all, we usually purchase a lot. Just think about all of the things that we buy in a given week. We purchase so many things, but the things that we buy today are typically useful for a short while, and then we discard them or we replace them with a newer or better thing. Think about the way in which we utilize cars and cell phones and all kinds of other gadgets and technology. We are quick to trade them in and move on from them and

trash them. Things are so difficult even today to repair because they don't have quality parts. Their parts aren't made by the manufacturer.

They're manufactured who knows where in the world. And the reason why is for convenience and accessibility so that we can make them quickly and get them out the door and have them purchased by consumers. This way of life definitely shapes the way in which we interact with God, the way in which we understand ourselves, the way in which we interact with our neighbors and the world around us. It is easy for Christians to get into a mode that just like the things that we purchase are disposable, it is easy for us to think that this world is disposable, as the quote that we read suggests, and operate under this idea that once God has had enough, this world will be destroyed and then we will all move on. But again, that's not the narrative of scripture. This world isn't headed for destruction. It's headed for restoration.

This place isn't disposable. It is God's intricate handiwork designed to endure forever in the grace of God. And why this is important for us as followers of Jesus who are seeking to learn from Jesus how to pray and lead us in the narrow way is that we have to shift our minds from restoration or to restoration from being disposable. That is the work that Jesus does in us, and the way in which Jesus competes with the narrative of accessible and convenient is to remain and abide. Think about the difference between these two ideas. The dynamics of the kingdom of God that compete with accessibility and convenience are remain and abide. Listen to how Jesus talks about this in John chapter 15, and I'm going to keep a tally here of how much Jesus uses this word remain.

Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Remember for any plant any flowering thing, what happens under the surface is more important than what happens above the surface. It's what influences what happens above the surface. You are the vine, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will what? Bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is withered and thrown away. Such branches are picked up and thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this, that my joy may be complete in you and that your joy may be complete. Now notice Jesus does talk about something being cut off and withering and being tossed away, but it's that which doesn't remain in him. But what remains in him flourishes and thrives and bears much fruit. And that fruit is lasting. That fruit is eternal.

That fruit is forever. And here is something else we need to understand here is that the external circumstances don't dictate how the fruit is bared, born. I don't know what the proper way to say that is, but it doesn't influence the way that the fruit is produced in our lives. What influences the way that the fruit is produced in our lives is what happens in the depths of our lives, where our lives are rooted. According to Jesus, the invitation that he offers to us for spiritual growth is to remain and abide in some translations. But in our modern times, ain't nobody got time for remaining and abiding. We as people, we like our margins thin.

We like our schedules full and our downtime short. Don't let our complaining about those things confuse anyone because we like it that way. We're conditioned to like it that way. And we spend whatever time we have in between things multitasking, trying to prepare for whatever comes next. And if this is the pattern that we live our lives by, and this is the pattern that we, our faith exists in, then we will greatly limit the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So it's no wonder then that people often shortchange the gospel of Jesus for accessible and convenient means to fit into our hurried lives. But that produces lives that are sprinkled with Jesus rather than lives that are rooted in the kingdom of God.

A life sprinkled with Jesus does not have the proper nourishment to withstand the harsh conditions above the ground. And so we again divert back into these patterns of everything is disposable because our core is not rooted in the kingdom of God to produce the fruit that withstands no matter what happens above the surface. One of the things that I have realized about myself that's somewhat new to me is that I have to watch what I eat now late at night. If I am not careful about this, I will lay awake with heartburn, which is new. I've never had heartburn in my life. I could normally eat spicy food, which I love spicy food. I could normally eat it and then go to sleep right after that and not have any problems.

But I am no longer in that place in my life. Oftentimes late at night we reach for whatever is accessible and convenient to put into our mouths because we're not going to cook a gourmet meal late at night. We're just going to grab whatever. We're going to wheel up to whatever drive-thru is open and we're going to get it and then we're going to regret it. Fast food spirituality has the same effect in our lives. It may satisfy our immediate need. It may even taste good going down, but we will lay awake in our bed asking why, just as if we have heartburn from an ill-advised late night meal.

Fast and on the go theologies won't do much in a world that is fraught with anxiety, stress, and fear. And we have to learn to remain and abide if we are going to live faithfully on the narrow path of Jesus. You know, an interesting thing that stood out to me in this series is how much Jesus talks about things that are about our personal lives in this sermon, but He almost immediately, every time He identifies a problem, relates it to our lives with our neighbors. He says, when you pray, ask for forgiveness. And then He says, if you do not in turn forgive, which is relationship to your neighbor, you will not be forgiven. He talks about all of these difficult things in context of how these truths of the kingdom of God play out in the way in which we interact with our neighbor and with the world that we live in. So it's important for us to realize this, and it really shouldn't come as a surprise to us, because later on in Matthew, when Jesus was asked what's the greatest commandment, He says, love the Lord your God with your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

One of the real struggles with our time, our modern time, is how we manage to live our lives and are led to live our lives as if the world rotates around us. But a life that is self-centered will never align with the narrow way of Jesus. And as we learn to grow, as we learn and grow to remain and abide, the Spirit of Jesus will lead us down the narrow way and form us from the inside out. And we will grow an interior life that is able to bear the fruit of the kingdom of God, to bless our neighbors with the realities of this kingdom, and provide for them an image of the invisible God. Evelyn Underhill writes it like this, we are the agents of the creative spirit in this world. Real advance in the spiritual life then means accepting this vocation with all it involves. I love this next sentence, not merely turning over the pages of an engineering magazine and enjoying the pictures, but putting on overalls and getting on with the job.

The real spiritual life must be horizontal as well as vertical. Spread more and more as we aspire more and more. The real spiritual life has to be as horizontal as it is vertical. What we do in this world matters and will exist on for all of eternity, graced by God. I want to offer us an invitation in closing this week. While we are done with the Sermon on the Mount on Sunday mornings, I want you to set a goal for yourself. Being that we have spent all of these last three months talking about the importance of this sermon, it would be silly of us to then move on and never pay attention to the Sermon on the Mount again, right?

So I want you to set a goal for yourself. Maybe it's a weekly reading of at least part of the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe it's a monthly reading or a quarterly reading or a yearly reading, but just make a note in your mind, I'm going to continue to come back to the Sermon on the Mount in this sort of frequency of time. So that's the first thing. The other things are this. This next week, I want to invite us to carve out, maybe for some of us, we all need to set a time in our schedule, write it on our planner, whatever, but carve out a few moments for stillness and quiet before the Lord. The scripture tells us that the Spirit speaks in a still, small voice.

We have to learn to be silent. In an accessible and convenient world, this is very hard for us to do. What I'm, what I want to invite you to do is find some time for you to be still. Find a place to sit, put your feet firmly on the ground, hold your hands in a posture of receiving, and just take some deep breaths and invite God to reveal Himself to you and just continually focus on the presence of Jesus for however long you are able. Then I want you to find a Psalm, one of the passages in Psalm, in the Psalms, and read through it. Don't just rush through it. Don't just read it quickly and get it over with, but move slowly, inviting the Spirit to capture your attention through whatever it is said in the Psalms.

One of the things that I do when I read a Psalm is I try to come up with one sentence that I can pray throughout the day. Like the Psalm 51 that we read, it would be, created me a pure heart. So my timer would go off at certain intervals during the day, and I would take a deep breath, pause, and say, God created me a clean heart. That type of devotion to the Scriptures. Then pray the Lord's Prayer. Spend time praying the Lord's Prayer, moving through it slowly, and then inviting God through the Holy Spirit to show you an area of your life where you can grow in the narrow way. Now I want to give a disclaimer here.

If you spend every day doing this, you might think God's going to do something extraordinary in my life. And there will be something extraordinary happen, but more than likely, it's going to be in the depths of who you are. And so the temptation for us is to develop some sort of rhythm like this and then expect God to change something about us or in our lives or some sort of circumstances. And there's always the possibility that God can do that, but more often and where our attention needs to be is paying attention to the presence of Jesus for the purpose of paying attention to the presence of Jesus, not to get God to do something that we want Him to do. So invite the Spirit to work in your lives at the depth of who you are and commit to this slow and good work as we seek to live out the way of Jesus in responsiveness to the Spirit.