“Agreeing with God in Prayer”

Sunday, October 4, 2009

David Schneider, Interim Pastor

Matthew 18:15-20

Rebecca Stowers gave me a book, The Pursuit of God, by A. W. Tozer. She said, it is the best book she has ever read. One of his chapter titles is, "Removing the veil,"

"God made us for himself. This is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking (person)," Tozer writes.

"He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile."

This presence of God is "the central fact of Christianity....Wherever we turn, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us."

Therefore, we are "thirsty," we are always thirsty for God.

For A.W. Tozer, then, our goal throughout life, in prayer, in communion with God, is to lift the veil of our "fleshly, fallen nature," our carefully and closely-woven veil that we have knit all around us which hides the face of God from us.

We lift the veil through prayer. In our prayer lives we do this when we seek agreement with God who created us with a thirst for himself. Our prayer is a drink of living water

You may remember last week I said it is important for Christians to communicate with others in a win-win situtation.

Why seek agreement with God in prayer?

This creates mutual safety and respect, where each gets something we want, according to authors Ronald Shapiro and Mark Janikowski.

Here, seeking to agree with God in prayer, it is a win-win situation.

We seek God’s face, God’s will, to know why God made us,

and God receives intimacy with us.

In the Gospels, Jesus called this asking something in his name and according to his purpose.

Tozer calls it, "restoring the creator-creature relationship."

I have mentioned Dr. David C. Jacobsen’s book from my seminary days, Clarity in Prayer: Telling the small t truth. He devotes one section of his book to this topic.

Jacobsen says creating agreement is necessary for "the real and vital communion between souls."

It is "invisible and spiritual- so deeply buried." It takes us to depths of sharing and oneness we never imagine otherwise.

Between lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children, two people in the church who are very close.

(Example: In Oklahoma City, my dear friend Dorothy Hyatt had had a minor stroke, she does not want to do her occupational therapy, she refuses to eat–everything tastes like sand. She told me, "Dave, I feel dead." Dorothy has a desire to die, she wants to go and be with Paul who died several years ago, and I buried him, to have her ashes spread over the high mountain meadow back at a lake near Ruidoso, New Mexico. It is a state they both loved so much. Paul and Dorothy were married for 53 years. I was called by two of her daughters, one who lives in North Little Rock, and asked if I would go see her this week. So, after getting to Oklahoma City and visiting her, as I talked it over with Dorothy’s youngest daughter, whose wedding I also did, it became a matter of finding agreement in the family, giving permission, then making sure that permission is understood as a gift of loving surrender, loving submission to God, and calling in Hospice.

For Jacobsen, the possibility of any kind of intercessory prayer –praying for someone else, interceding before God out of your love for another– is based on this deep prayer communion, seeking agreement with God.

In our Lord’s Prayer, today, one of the petitions you and I have memorized and recite without thinking implores God, "‘Thy will be done...’" "‘Thy will be done... in heaven as it is on earth.’"

There is great resistance by you and me to such a prayer.

You and I do not want to be controlled by anyone else, we must be in charge of our lives.

We do not want to listen; we want to tell it the way we see it.

We pray our prayer from our point of view. We "inform" God!

Have you ever prayed, or has your minister ever led the congregation in prayer with these words, "Almighty God, today in our prayer, let it be only your thought we think, only your desire we ask, lift the veil from our prayers of the flesh in which we ask from our own selfish sinfulness"?

Agreement in prayer may only happen when two persons hold the same idea with the same intensity at the same time for the same purpose as though each one thought of it themself.

But here it is only God who holds this idea and embeds it deep within us each.

What do you think will be God’s answer when you seek agreement with God in your prayer?

It means that I come to prayer with less rigid expectations about how God answers my prayers.

God answers my prayer as I listen and let God do the speaking.

God in Matthew promises, that "‘wherever 2 or 3 agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them...’"

what we "bind" or what we "loose" here in the church.

It means secondly, that even though God may delay, or gives me another answer, I know and confess there is still agreement.

It means, third, I have yielded, surrendered to him.

like Jesus, "‘nevertheless, not my will but your will be done.’"

fourth, that I have made a commitment to see it God’s way,

fifth, it is an agreement about intention and purpose which is mutual

and finally, #6-most importantly, I understand that God has made me for himself, how God loves and cares for me.

In this way I will understand myself more clearly, and my own purpose in life–why God made me for himself, as Tozer says.

To recap, to agree with God in prayer:

#1, come to prayer with less rigid expectations-listen.

#2, there is still agreement when God answers his own way.

#3, I have yielded to him.

#4, I am committed to see it God’s way.

#5, I agree with God about intention or results.

#6, I understand that God made me for himself. [PAUSE]

The writer of the 139th Psalm has put it much more eloquently:

"How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God!... For you have formed my inward parts. You have covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wondrously made. Search me, O God, and know my heart; (page 2) Try me and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me. Then lead me in the way everlasting."

David Jacobsen says agreement with God in prayer is the highest form of prayer there is. It is the basis for all other prayer.

Jesus in Matthew 18 promises, not only when 2 or 3 of us agree on anything they ask, will it be done for them in Christ’s name,

but also, "where 2 or 3 gather together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.’"

This closing prayer I also found In Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God:

"Lord, I would trust You completely, I would be altogether Yours; I would exalt You above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of You. I want constantly to be away of Your overshadowing presence and to hear Your speaking voice.....and every act of my life may be an act of worship...that I may perfectly love You and worthily praise You. And all this I confidently believe You will give me through the merits of Jesus Christ Your Son. Amen." (page 3)

May all of God’s beautiful people say, "Amen!"