Pray Confidently

Today's gospel was John 14:1-14.  It is one of those texts that I could preach 600 different on 60 different general topics.  This week I decided to focus on prayer and how Jesus tells us to pray confidently because whatever we ask in his name will be given to us.  


I was really excited for today's sermon, yeah I thought it was a good sermon, so hopefully you do too.

Enjoy!

What do you look like when you pray?  What is your posture like?  How many of you fold your hands, bow your head and close your eyes?  Why do you do that? 

Many of us were told to fold our hands, bow our head and close our eyes as we pray when we were young children but why?   Does it help us pray?  Does it make us more confident in our prayers?  Does it help us receive the Holy Spirit anymore?  Or does it just keep kids from hitting their siblings during the middle of a prayer? 

This posture of bowing out head, keeping our hands in towards ourselves and closing our eyes keeps us closed off during prayer.  We become like an armadillo curled up, waiting for the attack to be over, or a turtle that is tucked into its shell.  When we pray that way we are being passive, waiting for things to be done to us, waiting for God’s will to happen to us, and in many ways we become indifferent. 

And then because of this posture, we have taken on a new meaning to a phrase of the Lord’s Prayer.  “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Have you ever heard after someone has died “It was God’s will.”  Or after being laid off “it was God’s will.”  Or after someone received a diagnosis for a serious life-threatening disease “it is God’s will, whatever happens, whether a cure or death, it will be God’s will.”  WHAT!

It is not God’s will that we die or we under go pain and suffering, whether mental, emotional or physical.  God doesn’t want such things for our lives. 

Instead Jesus told his disciples that whatever they ask for in his name will be given to them so that the Father may be glorified.  And that all who believe in him will do greater works that Jesus himself. 

That doesn’t sound like pain and suffering to me.  It also doesn’t sound like anything to be meek, passive or indifferent about.  Jesus is asking us, telling us to pray with confidence.  Jesus is telling us that we will do great things, that we are agents of God’s will.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” doesn’t mean “God we will begrudgingly accept whatever crap that is given to us in life, because it must be your will and we must therefore accept it even if well frankly it sucks.”   And as we pray it we must look down and passively receive whatever happens to us.

Instead we are to pray all prayers, especially the Lord’s Prayer with confidence, not with the “fold your hands, bow your heads and close your eyes” mentality.  The early church didn't pray in this way, with head bow, hands folded.  Instead their heads were facing God, arms reaching out to God and at the same time open to receiving God’s grace and love.  This is a position call orans.  It is the posture that pastors and other worship leaders still use today.  It is a posture that is both filled with confidence in what we pray and yet opened to receive gifts.  Think of a child reaching her hands up to a parent asking "up!"  The child is both confident that the parent will pick them up but she also has to rely on the parent to pick her up.  We should pray with confidence that God will answer our prayers and rely on God to answer those prayers. 

And when we pray with confidence, Jesus has told us that we will do great things.  When we pray with confidence, Jesus told us that whatever we ask in his name will be given to us so that the Father may be glorified.  When we pray with confidence “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” means that we become agents of God’s will.  We are asking to be part of God’s will, to show God to others in this world.  We are asking for God’s will on this earth to be done through us.  When we pray with confidence we do not sit back passively and think that whatever is happens to us must be part of God’s will, but that God is working in us, to change this world, to make it a better place, to allow good to over come evil, to allow everyone to see God, even if they do not believe.  And that is God’s will for this world.