Sermon: Guided by Prayer
January 5th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Mark 1:21-45, Psalm 103:1-5
During the time I worked at Rainbow Acres, I headed up a Chaplaincy Team. We all had other jobs on the Ranch, but each of us had training or a sense of calling to participate in spiritual leadership. I recall one particular person on the chaplaincy team who had a different scheduled than the rest of us, not on campus as much, he was hard to contact, not good at returning calls, texts, messages. Have you ever had that experience when trying to work with someone – PTA, work team, a group project? If someone is going to be a vital part of a team and vital part of plans and activities, they need to know their role, they need to know how they fit into what the team is doing. I wonder if God ever has that problem… God has invited us to be a vital part of His team, we have said ‘Yes, Lord’. But then are we ever hard to contact, not good at returning calls and messages?
We look to Jesus as our model, and here in Mark 1 we see Jesus forming his team. Mark tells us in verses 16-20, immediately before today’s reading, that Jesus invited Simon and Andrew to leave their fishing nets, and “Come, follow me. I will send you out to fish for people!” He walked further down the beach and said the same thing to James and John. That’s how Jesus began the years of his life that we call his public ministry – a time of about 3 years, when he traveled and taught, when he performed healings and miracles, and set people free from evil spirits. He seemed to have 2020 vision about what needed to be said and done, discerning his response in a whole variety of situations. A man yells out in the synagogue while Jesus is preaching, and Jesus knows how to respond, how to take control of the situation and what to say to deal successfully with the problem. He enters a house where nothing is going right because the lady of the house is sick. They are trying to fill her shoes but things just aren’t getting done like they normally would, everyone’s anxious and upset. His team tells Jesus the problem and he knows to go, take her hand and help her up.
Crowds of people come to the door with all kinds of needs, the whole town, Mark says, and Jesus deals with each and every one. Or does he? Actually, Jesus also discerns when it is time to stop, to send people away, to get some rest, to spend time in prayer recharging his body and soul, and listening to the voice of his Father. He discerns when it’s time to move on to the next village, and then next. Not because he has healed and brought faith and understanding to everyone in that village. Jesus’ disciples seem a little confused by Jesus’ choices. He leaves a place where apparently “everyone is looking for him,” where there is still need and opportunity for teaching. He disappears off by himself when they think he should be catering to the crowd. But it is from those quiet, solitary times that Jesus is enabled and empowered to discern what to do next, to see in each moment with 2020 vision.
Discernment
We do know that at some point, God the Father made Jesus aware of what would ultimately be required of him – to suffer, to be crucified, to enter into and then defeat death’s hold. But the common human experience is not that God provides an itinerary and a script for believers each day. (Wouldn’t it be great if He did?!) The common human experience – and scriptures say Jesus experienced life like us in every way except for being sinful – is that we have some ability to plan our days, to plan our travel and activities, but there will be many times when things don’t go according to plan – someone interrupts your presentation, someone gets sick when they were needed to do their part, or has a crisis that is completely unexpected. And then we need to be able to discern – to see clearly where to go, what to do, what to say. We don’t usually get 2020 vision that sees into the future, but God can give 2020 vision for the moment, and then next moment, and the next.
Generally we know what we ought to be doing as followers of Jesus Christ – we should be practicing discipleship. That is part of our mission here. What is that? It is fishing for people. It is making disciples, teaching the Good News of Jesus, being a healing presence, working for justice, peace-making. It’s inviting people, not necessarily into church, but into the Gospel, into relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s building bridges, tearing down walls, building relationships. It’s being attentive to needs – individual needs and community/ national/ international needs. Lots to do! We can’t do it all, so where and how do we begin? What are the priorities? What should our focus be?
Answering these questions is the task of discernment. What is discernment? In her book, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Ruth Haley Barton writes, discernment is “the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God both personally and in community.” Discernment requires trust that God will provide guidance and direction. Discernment requires listening for the voice of God, and then responding obediently.
At its core, discernment is a close, intimate relationship with God. In Deuteronomy 4, Moses tells the people of God that others will look at Israel and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” After all, is there any people that have a god as close to them as the Lord our God is close to us whenever we call to him?” The Message: “What other great nation has a god that is intimate with them the way God, our God, is with us, always ready to listen to us?” What Moses is saying is that wisdom and discernment come from a close relationship with God.
You might say it was easy for Moses to discern how God was leading, he could easily recognize and respond to God’s presence and activity because God lead him with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Sometimes we might wish that God’s presence and leading was that clear. But Jesus said we have something even better! We have the Spirit of God within us; we have an even greater capacity for discernment, for clearer vision, because we have the close and intimate relationship with God through the living presence of Jesus. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Those who live under the control of the Holy Spirit, will think about what the Spirit wants.. will live according to the Spirit’s desires.”(Rom.8:5)
So knowing what God wants us to do or say in any given situation is a matter of submitting and allowing the activity of the Spirit within us. We need to create space for God’s activity in our lives, as individuals and in the life of the church. We create a container for discernment by spending time reading God’s Word, by worshipping God, by creating space for prayer with words and prayer with silence. Again in Romans, Paul directed the church: Do not be conformed to this world,but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom.12:2) The Message: So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.
In this new year, this new decade, this church faces many uncertainties and challenges. We are not able to see what will happen tomorrow, or what 2030 will be like, but we can expect and trust that God wants us to recognize what it is that He wants from us and that He will provide direction and guidance if we nurture that close, intimate relationship with God, if we ask and if we listen.
On the Call to Prayer for First Baptist Delavan insert in your bulletin this morning, I have named some of the challenges facing our church in 2020 – challenges of attendance, of declining income trends, of human limits on our energy and time, of aging. There are also signs of hope – 2 baptisms and 2 other new members in the past year, 2 new giving pledges for this year. There is the impact of our participation in serving our community, serving the least among us through the Spirit of Hope Homeless Shelter that we are hosting this week, as well as feeding children through Food in a Backpack and Breakfast in the Park programs. There’s your generous giving to ministries like the Milwaukee Christian Center, Agape House, Lisa’s service to people in Honduras. 2020 also holds opportunities for growth – for personal growth, hopefully for congregational growth, opportunities to impact lives, to serve one another and serve the community.
Just as Jesus faced the need to discern what was within his human capacity to do, to set priorities, to attend to his team and lay the foundation for the growth of God’s kingdom, we too face those same concerns. As a congregation, we have made a commitment to Christ and to this church and to one another – it is reflected in the Church Covenant which we read at the beginning of the service. It is a covenant, a commitment of walking together in Christian love, striving together for the advancement of the church, its ministries and the spread of the Gospel, the advance the kingdom of our Savior. In the middle of that covenant, we promise to maintain a devotional time, a prayer time – that’s no mistake, no coincidence – prayer, and time spent in communication with God, time in God’s Word, is necessary to fulfill all the other promises.
As I sought to discern the vision for this church in 2020, asking God for 2020 vision, it became clear that the first thing we needed to do was to lay a foundation of prayer so that all our subsequence activity would flow from God will and vision. I began to pray that God would give us a prayer that we can all pray that would lay this foundation – not necessary to me, but that God would give this prayer to someone in the church. One Tuesday morning in November, I shared this with Rocky when she was helping in the church office. I invited her to join me in praying for God to give us a prayer for 2020 vision, a prayer for our church.
On December 4th, as Rocky was driving home from Janesville. Alone in her jeep, a prayer began to form in her mind and heart. She prayed as she drove and then wrote it down as soon as she got home. Rocky then emailed it to me, and with just a few small edits, that is the prayer that you have on the side of the insert title, “My Prayer For Us.”
So this is what I am inviting you to do: First, to pray this prayer at least once daily for 40 days (today through Valentine’s Day). Jesus’ ministry was preceded by 40 days in the wilderness in preparation for ministry – he was led there by the Holy Spirit, spent time in prayer, and was attended by angels. He was also tempted by Satan, but was prepared for it by drawing close to God and discerning the proper response.
God has invited each one of us to be a vital part of His Team. Let us not be team members that leave God’s messages unanswered, that are hard to get a hold of, that procrastinate on getting back to God or that ignore the tasks we have been given. I hope that each one of you will have a part in building our foundation of prayer for the new year, discerning our 2020 shape and service, our 2020 vision. Let us pray together “My Prayer For Us”.
Closing Song: “O Jesus, I Have Promised” # 648, vs. 1, 3, 4
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