Body Building:
God builds the body through conversation: Prayer
Sunday, August 8, 2004
Pastor Timothy Phillips
Typed from audio transcript Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for a great opportunity to come together today to gather in the name of Jesus to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior and also to grow in our faith. Bless us to know it's a guarantee when we confessed our sins earlier, they are forgiven and forgotten. Help us to know we can come to you as a loving Father with all our requests and concerns. Bless us now as we meditate on your Word and learn about prayer. In Jesus' name. Amen.
The basis for our meditation is from the Book of Ephesians where Paul speaks about many things, and we have decided for the month of August that Ephesians would be the basis for our five weeks of sermons. Today we're talking about prayer, and I want to introduce this first by reading a prayer in Ephesians. Paul writes, “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and about your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, and I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of His mighty strength which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly realms far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who feels everything in every way.” Paul was a man of prayer, and you can find it throughout all the letters, the 13 books of the New Testament he wrote, prayers for the people, prayers for faith, prayers for new things in the lives of believers, and we pray for those things, too.
But today, we're talking about prayer as it relates to building up the body. Last week, we talked about the Holy Spirit and how He breathes into us life and salvation. Today, we're talking about prayer. And you might think of it in this sense, the body preparing for competition, the body preparing for an event, a challenge. We are close to the Olympics, aren't we? Just a week or so away from the Olympic events that are starting, and they're all gearing up for that over in Athens. It's real for us to think we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, are involved in a competition in a sort of athletic event, a challenge to our spiritual strength. Paul talks about it this way, “I prepare my body and I fight, not as one beating the wind, but I compete in such a way as to win the prize.” That's how Paul describes his life as a Christian. He is in a competition. He is in a challenge, and he needs God and His strength.
I can remember the first time I was made aware of prayer and competition. I was in 6 th Grade, and our school had Field Day. I don't know if you guys have that in Iowa . Field Day and all the kids were out there doing all the different events, the 50-yard dash and all these different things. That was before we went metric. I was in the high jump. I can remember it was down to one other person and me, and every time this other guy would get ready to jump, he'd make the sign of the cross. And I'd look at him, “What is that?” He'd go and sometimes he'd make it and sometimes he wouldn't, so whatever he was doing I don't know if it was working or not. But he'd just do that real quick as he was starting to run up to the bar, and I'm like, “What is that?” Later on, I learned that's kind of a tradition in Christianity and specifically it's a tradition in the Roman Catholic church and many Lutheran circles as well to make the sign of the cross, to remember your baptism, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But I kind of sense that some people, as they enter a competition or some people when they say a prayer, do that simply like it's a good luck charm, you know what I mean? Without a whole lot of thought or sincerity from their heart, just about like crossing your fingers. Hope this works. But that's not what prayer is. It's not a good luck charm.
A good way to talk about what prayer is, is to think of the story in the bible about the Pharisee and the tax collector, how the two different people approach God. You remember that story. The Pharisee began like this, “God, I thank you that I'm not like all those other people.” And then he went on to list all the things he did for God and how he gave a tenth of all he had and on and on and on. And then there was the tax collector, and you remember the role of a tax collector in those days. The tax collector was a Jew hired by the Romans to take taxes from his fellow Jews. Not a very popular guy. So here was this tax collector. Here's how he approached God. He said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus said that the tax collector went home justified before God, so you can see a key element in prayer is to be humble before God, not to be arrogant or demanding but to be humble before God. A good description of what prayer is, is a heart-to-heart talk with God. And if we want to put it back into that athletic competition context, you could think of it this way. Say you're a young athlete preparing to compete at another level of competition. Maybe you're in Junior High and you're a basketball player and you go to basketball camp to develop your skills and work on your moves and work on your shot. And there at that camp is a famous coach, say John Wooden. A lot of you probably don't know who that is, but he's probably the greatest basketball coach ever. He coached UCLA to championship after championship after championship. He coached great players. He's the guy everybody calls Coach. Even the coaches call him Coach. And this guy is going to have a conversation with you about your skills, about your moves, about your approach to the sport. You're talking to the greatest coach of all time. That's what prayer is like. You and I, one on one, with God Almighty, the creator of the universe, the one who made and formed our bodies, you and I, one on one with the greatest coach of all time.
What would an athlete prayer for? Well, we know there's a lot that goes into competition. These Olympic athletes probably have been training ever since they were little kids, and we know that back in the days of the Soviet Union, they would run these kids all through kind of like a talent mill where they'd evaluate them in different areas and from little on up they would focus those kids in the direction they seemed to be gifted in and so their whole life was programmed for success in this athletic endeavor. But what would an athlete pray for as he's entering the competition? We are the body of Christ, and we are in competition also. Our opponent isn't another human being. It's the devil, and the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking persons to devour. He wants everyone to go to hell. That's the competition. We're with God, and God wants everyone to trust in Jesus as their Savior and receive salvation and eternal life. That's the competition. What would we pray for?
I think a lot of athletes entering into a very challenging and difficult sport might be praying for safety, like people who play football. “Lord, we pray you bless our team and make sure nobody gets hurt today. Watch over us. Keep us safe.” As the body of Christ, we need to pray prayers of protection, too. We need God's protection for our church, for every believer, for every family, for every marriage, for the leadership, for the children in Sunday School, for those who teach. We need God's protection, because the devil doesn't want us to do all these good things. He wants to distract us from that. He wants us to divide, to argue amongst ourselves, so we need to pray for God to build a wall of protection around our church, not a wall to keep people out but a wall of protection against the devil and his schemes, so we pray for safety.
The second thing an athlete might pray for and we in the body of Christ need to pray for is strength. Good training develops the body. We grow through our study of God's Word, but sometimes we need God's strength to do those things which are beyond our human abilities. I pray for God's strength and God's wisdom and God's spirit every time I stand up to preach, every time I lead a worship service, every time I teach a bible class or lead a meeting, every time I witness to a neighbor, every time I counsel someone I pray for God to give me His spirit and strength. In an athletic context, about a little over a week ago, I had to pray for strength in a different way. I was riding a day in RAGBRAI. I don't know if you've done that yet, but it's 70 miles. And I got about 40-45 miles into it, and I wasn't feeling so good. And I was riding with a good friend, Doug, and he was helping me out by kind of going ahead and I was following him. And another guy was helping out by breaking the trail because we were in a headwind. I was praying for strength. Not good when you feel a little bit thick and you're at mile mark 45 and you have another 25 miles to go. That's not a good thing. But it worked out great, and I resolved two things. I need to be in better shape and get a different bike. So I'm working on both of those. Next year I'll do it again. We need strength in this body, don't we? We need to be built up and fortified with all the right nutrition spiritually that comes from God's Word.
The third thing an athlete might pray for is victory. Remember, Paul said, “I run the race so as to win the prize.” Only one wins. Spiritually, there are no ties. A victory is when somebody comes to faith in Christ. A defeat is when somebody rejects Christ and loses their life for eternity. We pray for victory, don't we? We don't even want to contemplate somebody not going to heaven, but it's good to be sober about that and to realize that because people don't know Christ, because people don't trust in Him as their Savior, they are destined for eternity in hell. That is a fact, so we pray for victory, that men and women might be released from their sins and given forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus.
Finally, in the course of competition, often there's injury so we pray for healing in the body of Christ. We pray for healing where there are wounds, where there are bruised emotions and strained relationships, we pray for healing. An athlete with an injury, they always evaluate him. “He's operating at 80%, 90%. He's not 100% yet.” And you always think, “How do they calculate that?” Usually, you just lace them up and go at it and the winner wins and the loser loses. Sometimes, though, we need to pray for that healing for our whole congregation, the whole body of Christ, every member, every believer, every person for healing. Healing in leadership, healing in small group ministries, healing in staff, healing, God's healing, where hearts are made right with Him. God is the God of reconciliation and restoration, and that's what His plan is for us that we might be complete and whole as the body of Christ.
Finally, I want to talk about something that's been really a powerful ministry in this church for many, many years. And you're aware of it maybe vaguely or maybe in a big way you're aware of it. It's called a Prayer Chain. You've heard of that, haven't you? The Prayer Chain is this wonderful group of people, prayer warriors in our congregation giving the gift of prayer by God. And so when someone's facing a surgery, somebody's sick, they call the church office and say, “I'd like to put this person on the Prayer Chain.” And these people faithfully pray. That's the good news. The bad news is it's just a handful of people, just a handful of people. This church has over 2,200 members. Imagine the blessings if every member was part of that Prayer Chain. What kind of a difference would that make in the body of Christ called Gloria Dei? I think it'd make a huge difference. How would you feel knowing there are over 1,000 people praying for you as you're facing this difficult situation? That's great comfort.
Compare it to a body and all the different cells. Each one of us represents a cell. Now if some of those cells aren't functioning properly, what happens to the body? Not good. They might be some pretty important cells and some pretty important functions that aren't happening.
Let's pray about that. Heavenly Father, you have given this congregation great resources. We're just beginning to see the potential, the potential for what you can do here in and through us. 40 Days of Purpose campaign is coming up. 200 host homes are needed, but there are 2,000 of us so we could easily get 200 host homes. Lord, move with your Holy Spirit on the hearts of the people. Sign up that your body might grow, that your body might be strong, that your body might be victorious as we proclaim the gospel. Fill us with your Holy Spirit that each and every cell will function to the fullest of its ability, tuned into you, trusting in you, guided by you, obedient to you. Bless us in Jesus' name. Amen.
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