Prayer: An Unequal Partnership

 “An Unequal Partnership // Message @ JRCC – Sunday, Oct 30, 2011

Text: John 15:9-16 // Series: “Lord, Teach Us to Pray”

Good morning, everyone, my name is Brad Sumner, I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge.  If you are new or visiting with us today, you have joined us for an exciting season in the life of Jericho Ridge.  Because we are exploring one of the most universal topics that humanity wrestles with – the topic of prayer.  Sometimes you can come into settings whether it’s a new job situation or a church or wherever, and you think to yourself “wow – these people have it all together.  They seem to know everything there is to know about this stuff!”  Well, I don’t know how you feel, but I feel that when it comes to the topic of prayer, I am an infant.  There is just so much to learn and grow in and explore – I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface!  And so if you’re here today and you feel out of your league and there’s so much to learn about who God is and how He works in the world, you are in good company.  When it comes to prayer, we’re all learners and explorers together.

So last week, Pastor Keith explored the question of unanswered prayer.  And we began to learn that prayer might not be about getting what we want from a divine vending machine.  This morning, we’re going to continue asking the question “what is prayer?” and inviting the Lord, Teach Us to Pray.  Now, if you ask a Christian what is prayer, they will likely come up with something like “talking to God” or “it’s a conversation” but we should probably talk a little bit about what are the ground rules for this kind of  conversation?  To do that, I want us to listen in on some prayers offered by the characters from the CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory” and ask yourself, if prayer is a conversation, would I really want to talk with these people?!

[MEDIA: Clip from The Big Bang Theory] – 2.5 minutes       

Sometimes we think of prayer like that, don’t we?  We ask God to do things that we aren’t really interested in doing.  So Penny says ‘wassup God’ and asks Him to talk to her brother about his drug issues.  Or we ask God for things that we think He forgot to do, like make us taller.  Or we feel nervous or guilty so we focus on not saying the wrong thing or screwing up our prayer somehow.  Or we ask God to help us drop the last 5 pounds like He is a magic wish granter.  But this clip brings up some great questions for us on prayer.

Two weeks ago, we launched this teaching series with an interactive conversation on Twitter and we asked you to submit your questions.  If you haven’t done so, you can still e-mail them to Keith and myself – our contact info is in the Info Sheet.  There’s room for you to write them out on page 21 of your Momentum Journal.  But we got some great questions, which have informed some of the directions we are going in this teaching series.  For example, some of the questions that came in that we’ll be exploring today:

?) When I pray, what part is God’s responsibility and what part is mine?  

?) Does God need our prayers?  

?) How do we move prayer from a monologue to a dialogue?  

?) What should I ask for or not ask for in prayer?  

The themes of these questions centre around the specific nature of prayer as a dynamic partnership between God and humanity.  And so the title for today’s Scripture reflection is “An Unequal partnership” and we’ll be looking together at John 15:9-16. 

One of the profoundly challenging things about prayer is that there is almost always the existence of polarities within it.  There are two things occurring at once, both of which are in tension with one another but both of which are true.  And that is certainly the case when we explore what the Bible says about the nature of the partnership we have with God in prayer. 

One of the first things to note about prayer, whatever else if going on, is that it is a relationship between two unequal parties. In prayer, you and I have the incredible privilege as created beings or approaching and having direct dialogue with our Creator.  I think about the Psalms we have been reading this past week in our Momentum Journaling and how they speak so clearly of the power and majesty and mystery of God’s character and His work.  I think about the scope of creation and the smallness I feel looking up at the mountains or the stars and I in the words of Hebrews 2:6   

What are mere mortals that You should think about them?”                                                                 

The flip side to this coin, however, is that you and I have been invited to approach the throne of grace with boldness and participate in a dynamic partnership with God.  Jesus himself modeled this during His time on earth and in John chapter 15, as He prepares to return to heaven, he reminds us of the powerfully interdependent Multiplicity of Partnerships that exist in prayer.  I’m going to begin reading in verse 9, we’ll see here in this text three partnership images that help us understand more how prayer works.          

Jesus says in John 15:9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10 When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

-      Jesus’ partnership with His Father

         “I obey my Father’s commandments & remain in his love” (15:10)  

“I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow…

• Our partnership with Jesus  

          - Rooted in JOY (15:11) and in OBEDIENCE (15:14) 

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

• Our partnership with each other 

          “Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” (15:12-13) 

Now, listen to how Jesus describes the former and the current nature of our partnership in verses 14-16…  Slide – John 15:14-16    

In prayer, Jesus says, the Father will give you whatever you ask for.  It’s a promise repeated in chapter 14 and then again in chapter 17 where Jesus models it in his own prayer.  But the level of access to God rooted in a movement, not just mentally, but spiritually and positionaly, from being a slave to being a friend.  

Partnership Image #1 – Slaves to Friends

Now, let’s do a little brainstorming together here…  Jesus is inviting us to approach God in prayer as friends.  On a human level, what are the characteristics of a good friend?  [Q&A].

In these verses we see that Jesus lays out some of these characteristics and invites us to apply them in our prayer conversations with God: 

• Friends value what is on their partner’s mind

          “A master doesn’t confide in his slaves…” (John 15:15)

God already knows what is on my mind, but how often do I know what is on His?  In prayer, I am inviting God to help me value what he values.  What is on His mind for today and for His world.  Another characteristic is

• Good partners share everything with each other

          “I have told you everything the Father told me.”  15:15

In prayer, God is inviting me to come to him as a learner and listener but also to ‘make my requests known to Him”  This is a dialogue where He wants me to share with Him just as I ought to want to be shared with.

In his commentary on this passage, Dr. Rodney Whitacre notes that “the result of this level of communion is answered prayer.  Prayer in Jesus’ name is prayer that is in union with Him and in keeping with His character and His purposes.”  If my desire in prayer is to value what God values in the way that He values it, then I will begin to learn to pray for God’s will and not for my own selfish desires.  This is what it means to pray ‘in Jesus’ name’.  It’s not a magic incantation you tack on the end of your list of requests so that they will be answered.  Because even while we are called friends, verse 16 reminds us that

• Friendship does NOT mean we are equals

                   “You didn’t choose me. I chose you.”  (15:16)

God is still the initiator, the choos-or, the object who initiates with the subject. 

And even the HOW of God’s initiating and the very mechanism of this partnership in prayer are discussed in the wider context of this passage.  Look at verse 26 of John 15: “I will send you the Counselor – the Spirit of Truth (the Holy Spirit).  He will come to you from the Father and will testify about me.”  If I am privileged to be called a friend of God, how do we mediate this friendship?  The answer is the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  In John 14,15 and 16 the Spirit is  described as the Counselor. 

Now I don’t know what your experiences with counseling have been.  There was a time in my life when I couldn’t figure out what was going on in here (head) and here (heart), so I sought out professional assistance in the form of counseling.  I don’t remember what my picture of counseling was going into that time but I think I thought the counselor would wave a magic wand and make my problems go away.  Instead, they had me do work – they had me reading things, they had me writing things down and having conversations I may not normally have pursued.  And this is where we get our second image of what partnership in prayer looks like.  A Counsellor.  Or more precisely, The Counsellor.  The Holy Spirit.  When I open myself to God in prayer, the Holy Spirit begins to work in my life just like a counselor does.  I love the way Philip Yancey says this in his book on prayer:

“We know how counsellors work: not by giving orders and imposing changes through external force.  A good counsellor works on the inside… Prayer is a cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work.  Most of the time the Counsellor communicates subtly…  God’s spirit whispers rather than shouts.”   

Sometimes we want God to wave a magic wand and make clean up our brother’s meth habit or take 5 pounds off.  But just like a good counselor, God works on the inside, bringing to life issues to the surface of my life that are dormant and inviting me to deal with them by His grace and in His power.  This has always been His way.  I am indebted to Philip Yancey’s chapter on partnership for much of the thinking that follows… But think about the things that God wants to “get done” in the text of Scripture.  Let’s look at some Partnership Examples from Scripture.  In Genesis 1-3, God initiates as creator but then immediately invites Adam and Eve to participate as

• Stewardship of creation 

“The earth provides seeds and soil and rain, but food crops only grow with cultivation.  Abundant materials exist for technology, but human beings themselves must figure out how to use them.  When God wanted a dwelling place on earth, the  

• The building of the Tabernacle & Temple 

Didn’t descend from the sky like a spaceship thousands of artists and craftsmen worked to fashion them.”

In the New Testament, Jesus says “I will build my church” but He entrusts

• The mission and work of the church  

The pattern in Scripture that comes up is that God is always looking for partners to advance His plans and purposes in the world. 

           “For we are labourers together with God.”  (I Corinthians 3:9) 

In prayer, Jesus welcomes us as partners of the kingdom.  And this partnership continues today.  (Partnership examples from Today)

God is still inviting and searching for people to partner with him in

• Global Mission 

I love the story of William Carey, a young man who in the late 19^th century “felt a call to travel to India as one of those workers in the harvest.  Pastors around him scoffed at his idea: ‘Young man, if God had wanted to save the heathen in India, he could certainly do it without the likes of you or us.’  They missed the point of partnership.  God does very little on earth without the likes of you and me. 

Another example would be how prayer can function when we are

• Wrestling with addiction (alcohol, sexual, other)  

An alcoholic prays ‘Lord, keep me from drink today’  The answer to that prayer will likely come from the inside, for a stiffening resolve or a cry of help to a loyal l friend, rather than from some marvel like the magical disappearance of liquor bottles from a cabinet.”

• Working for justice  

IJM, UTSS, Danny of Youth Unlimited working to raise awareness of human trafficking…  We don’t just sit around and pray, God would you please do something about that.  We are invited as partners to step into the place of advocacy and work for peace. 

• Raising your kids in the fear & knowledge of God 

There’s work involved here.  You don’t sit back and pray, ‘God would you reveal yourself to my kids.  You teach and instruct them.  You place them into environments where they can hear God’s word and respond to His Spirit’s leading.  You train up a child in the way they should go so that when they are old, they will not depart from it.  

• Showing love and mercy to those on the margins 

This is part of our work in Guatemala.  We don’t just sit around and pray that God sends wheelchairs – we collect mobility aids here and ship them down there and fit the almost 20% of the population of Guatemala living with a disability the tools they need for success in life. 

“I appointed you” Jesus says in John 15:16, “to GO and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name”.  Eugene Peterson, the translator of the Message and professor at Regent College here in Vancouver makes a note on this passage that the Greek uses a very peculiar and unique grammatical structure called “The Middle Voice”, which is Partnership Image #3.  The middle voice is a tone halfway between the active and the passive voices.  It describes that use of the verb which describes the subjects as participating in the results of the action.  Peterson notes that:  

“It reads like a description of Christian prayer: ‘the subject as participating in the results of the action.’  I do not control the action; that is a pagan concept of prayer, putting the gods to work by my incantation or rituals.  I am not controlled by the action; that is a Hindu concept of prayer in which I                 slump passively into the impersonal and                      fated will of gods and goddesses…

 

“I enter into the action begun by another, my creating  and saving Lord, and I find myself participating in the results of the action. 

I neither do it, nor have it done to me;

I will to participate in what is willed”

This is the point of partnership in prayer…  I am a subject, participating in the results of the action.  And I am invited to pray as such.  And so the point of our time today is to help each of us recognize that

We pray knowing that we are radically dependent on God even as we recognize our own responsibility.

The best image I can think of for this is any project that a parent does with their kids.  I think of some time we spent at the beach this summer, and I wanted to build a massive sand castle.  The kids really wanted to help.  And as any parent knows, whenever you get your younger kids involved in a project, it is going to take longer, be messier, and less polished than if you simply did it yourself.  Their “assistance” actually complicates the project.  I could have built the castle in less time and to higher heights without their help.  But what fun is that?  The real fun comes when, at the end of the day, bursting with pride in their accomplishments, the kids call mommy over and say “daddy and I did it together” [sandcastle photo].  Their sense of accomplishment and pride in our partnership makes it all worthwhile. 

Let’s pray together.

As a way of responding to God, we are going to move into a time of communion.  And as we do so, I want you to ask two questions;

1)   Are there any blockages to my partnership? 

2)   Where might God be inviting me deeper into partnership? 

1. For some, this might mean learning more of what it means to remain in Him as opposed to running around doing things ourselves. 
2. For others, this might mean getting up from our knees and engaging in action where God has invited us to partner with Him.

Here at JRCC, the tables are open – it is an active but voluntary act of participation for all who know Jesus as Leader and Forgiver of their lives.  When you are ready, you are invited to get up out of your seat and come.  You can take the bread which represents Christ’s body, and the cup, which represents His blood shed for the forgiveness of sins - back to your seat or you can participate right there at the tables. 

The prayer team is available close by so if you want to bring a request to the Lord in partnership with a trusted and wise friend, we encourage you to do that. By coming to the table, we are saying “God, I will to participate in what is willed by You”.