Sermon for the youth service 16th November 2008 by Jared Haywood

According to Oxford it is a solemn request or thanksgiving to God or object of worship, according to Merriam-Webster it is an address (as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought, according to Wikipedia it is the act of attempting to communicate with a deity or spirit and to me it’s just a good ol’ chat with God. Unless you tuned out almost immediately, you would have guessed I’m talking about prayer. Prayer can mean many different things to people. Some people use it as an emergency backup system, you know when the red light is flashing “quick get on the phone to God” sort of thing. Other people have made it a good habit; say for instance every morning when they first wake up. While others may pray, minding the pun, religiously. But I believe that most people overlook the simplicity of what prayer is. As I said, it’s just talking to God. Now while there are a few ways that prayer can be broken down into but I find it easier to think of it as talking to God the Supreme Creator who is the holy trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Firstly, we can talk to God, the Supreme Creator. The Creator that made the universe and has already mapped out the future until the end of time. This is the most common person people talk to when praying. People ask for help, ask for something to happen or even just simply ask why. This is also the person that can disappoint when things don’t happen when we ask for them. But we must remember that God has a plan for every one of us. Things do happen for a reason, as Selwyn Lewis said we are all part of God’s “divine story”. The final thing we can talk to the “Supreme Creator” about is praise. Often the least common thing prayed about is praise. How easily in a consumer filled world, we can fall into the trap of it’s all about me, we forget to praise God. God made everything. How thankful we should be to God. Obvious exceptions to this is thanking for “New South Welshman, the Kiwi rugby union team, people with ‘No Fist’ and ‘50% clothes sales’”. I personally think it is amazing that we have direct access to the Supreme Creator.

Now God the Supreme Creator is the Father. Now obviously a Father loves their children, wants the best for them and will always be there. This is true with God the father as well. He loves us, wants the best for us and will always be there for us. This means that when we talk to the Father we know that he will always be listening. For me this is one of the most encouraging things to know. That while there are some things you don’t always want to tell people, the Father is always there to listen and to care about what you have to say. I’ll tell you this little anecdote actually about this, this fact hit me hard a couple of months ago. I had what you could call falling out with one of my close friends. It had sort of been bubbling underneath everything for a while but it finally came out and it basically didn’t turn out how I would have liked. Even though my gut instinct knew it was gonna turn out like it did, it still hits you when it does. A few people knew about it and after it happened they asked me quietly “are you alright?” and naturally being the strong 16 yr old male I was fine. But that night my daily bible devotional reading was a prayer from Psalms. So after the devotional, I went back and found a prayer for help, the one from the reading earlier tonight, Psalm 40 v12-17, “I am weak and poor, O Lord, but you have not forgotten me. You are my savior and my God – hurry to my aid!”. I can honestly say that after praying that prayer, giving up my problem and my emotions to the Father, I started to weep. Partly with sadness of my troubles and partly with joy. The joy of knowing my Father in heaven was listening with love. It felt like when a father gives a hug to their crying child, whispering into their ear “it’s going to be alright, trust me”. By the way for the record, that person and I have since solved our problem and are friends again.

God the Supreme Creator is Jesus, the Son. I believe that we can talk to Jesus about two main things, things concerning human life and forgiveness of our sins. As John said in John 1 v14, “The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth lived among us”. Jesus knows exactly what it is like to be human. He has gone through the same troubles we have passed through. So there is no way we can say to God, you don’t know what it felt like or what I am going through. He does, he has been there done that. Therefore who else is better to ask for help with worldly matters other then Jesus? This also leads onto the second matter on which we can talk to Jesus about, forgiveness. When we come for confession we come before Jesus, thanking him for the eternal gift he gave for us on the Cross. It is because of Jesus that we have an everlasting life with God. When we confess our sins, we are really saying “Thank you Jesus for saving my life”.

The final person of the trinity is the Holy Spirit. Now I have been saying that prayer is just talking to God. Generally when I talk to people, it’s nice to get a response. If it’s through verbal communication, body language or some other sign. This is where the Holy Spirit steps in. You could say the Holy Spirit helps complete the circle and makes it a conservation with God. While we can talk with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit mainly talks back to us. This can be through many different ways. One example was the story I told earlier about my problem with my friend. The Holy Spirit spoke to me through God’s Word. Another way I have found the Spirit talk to me, was one morning after praying the earlier night for guidance, I had a totally random thought which made me realize what I needed to do. I knew immediately that God had spoken to me. There are many ways that the Spirit can talk to us and the greatest thing about it is that God knows us personally and talks to us in our own individual way. This is one of the best distinguishing aspects of Christianity. God answers our prayers in our own special way.

I’ll stop just for a moment and show you this video. This video is actually an ad for a book by Tommy Blaze, you’ll see the plug at the end but the message it gives is very powerful. The book is called ‘One Question to God’. As far as I know, the book is not out yet. From my research on the book, the questions that are presented show the unifying thoughts of humanity about God. Here it is.

The thing I love most about this video is the concept that everyone can talk to God. No matter what job you do, what language you speak or how you live. God listens to everyone. He is not like a call-centre; he is always there, on demand. A final note, don’t worry about being all formal, it just having a chat. As Jesus said in Matthew 6 v7-8 “When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words…who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long…Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him”. You can be as casual as you like. So in the next week, try to take some time out from your busy life to have a chat with your greatest friend, God. Try to take advantage of this great hotline to the “big man”. Amen