Home
Meet Father KempThe Seventh Sunday after Trinity – 18 July 2010
Lord Alfred Tennyson once said:
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?[1]
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” More things are brought to pass through prayer than we can imagine. As one of my favorite writers, Simon Chan, has said, “Prayer is the first act that link doctrine to practice, and all the other exercises are simply elaborations of the primal act.”[2] The most basic, elementary and primal Christian act is to pray, prayer is a consistent means through which God interacts with his creation and yet prayer is something so difficult to maintain. We would expect our conversations with the God who created the cosmos to be anything but dull, but our prayers are often boring drudgery. We would expect our conversations with the God who became incarnate, died on a cross, scourged hell, defeated sin and death and has freely given us life to jump start our heart as a heart defibrillator, but our prayers are often as lifeless as the figures carved upon Mt. Rushmore. We would expect our conversations with the God who sustains all creation, who holds all things together with the breath of his Word to be the highlight of our day, but we begrudge giving Him a few leftover seconds of our day. We would expect that our prayers to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit to be life shaking, but our prayers rarely shake us out of our spiritual slumber, let alone shake our lives and let alone actually shake the world like the prayer of the disciples as Acts 4:31 records, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.”
Usually when our expectations are not met, there is something wrong with our expectations. However, this is not the case concerning prayer. When we pray we should have these expectations, we should expect our life and the world to be shaken by God, just as God shock the world for the disciples. I suspect that our prayers are listless and ineffectual because they lack to divinely pleasing ingredients: a fortifying belief in God’s sovereignty and a healthy dose of Scripture. So let us look at the disciples prayer in Acts 4 and see how these two ingredients create a prayer that pleases God.
The first noticeable trait of the disciples’ prayer is that it contains a healthy dose of Scripture. The disciples began their prayer with as ascription to God (“Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them”) drawn from a prayer of Hezekiah found in Isaiah 37. The disciples’ prayer continues with a quotation from Psalm 2, “Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.” Two things can be drawn from the disciples us of Scripture. First, our prayers should be quotation of Scripture. The words, phrases and paragraphs in the Bible are to be prayed through not just read. The stories in Scripture do not just inform our theology, they inform our prayers. Therefore, to pray well one must know the Scriptures. Second, as we read and pray through Scripture, we should seek to find how each text reveals Jesus. This is how the disciples prayed through Psalm 2. The ‘raging of the nations’ became the raging of the gentile authorities against Jesus. The ‘plotting of the people’ become the plots of the Sanhedrin to put Jesus to death. The ‘kings of the earth’ become King Herod and the ‘rulers’ become Pontius Pilate who met and decided the fate of Jesus. Scripture, which during the disciples’ lives was just the Old Testament, all points to Jesus Christ. When we read the Bible, or better yet, when we pray the Bible, it is good and right for us to see Jesus in every verse. The first ingredient to healthy prayer is to pray through Scripture.
The second ingredient to healthy prayer is a fortifying belief in God’s sovereignty, a belief that nourished the disciples prayer. Their prayer begins with the words “Sovereign Lord,” which is the Greek word, despota that was a word used to address Greek rulers and authorities. Before going any further, it would be prudent to give a definition of God’s sovereignty, so the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms says, “The biblical concept of God’s kingly, supreme rule and legal authority over the entire universe.” The first section of the prayer is an ascription to God, “Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” This ascription, as I said earlier, comes from Isaiah 37:24, “O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.” (Is. 37:16) This passage affirms God’s supreme rule and legal authority by virtue of his creative powers and it is the beginning of King Hezekiah’s prayer when Sennacherib, king of Assyria, threatened to destroy Jerusalem. Just as Sennacherib threatened to destroy Jerusalem, so the Sanhedrin was threatening to destroy the disciples, and in the face of a grave danger, both Hezekiah and the disciples invoked God’s sovereignty. I find this to be counter intuitive. I love God’s sovereignty when life is great; I take great comfort in God’s sovereignty when the tree of life is full of fragrant blossoms and abundant fruit and requires no toilsome, painful work. Yet, King Hezekiah and the disciples found comfort in God’s omnipotent power and authority when they were under severe oppression, when the tree of life was full of anvils that where waiting to drop on their heads, just like in the old Warner Bros. cartoons. Nothing happens in this earthly sphere outside of God’s sovereign control, there is nothing that happens in this world that catches God by surprise , there is no place we can go to escape his sovereign rule. Therefore, God’s sovereignty becomes an impetus to lively prayer for if God has created the cosmos, if he sustains all creation, if his powerful hand molded the heights of the Himalayan Mountains and the depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, if his gentle hand sustains the delicate orchid and the fragile creatures of this world, than he alone is sovereign enough and caring enough to manage all our problems.
The disciples’ prayer continues with a quotation from Psalm 2, “Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.” In the light of God’s sovereignty, the raging and plotting of the nations are in vain. This means that God’s sovereignty is not limited to the affairs of creation, it extends to the affairs of man. The raging and plotting of Herod, Pilate and the Sanhedrin were all part of God’s eternal plan, as the disciples prayed, “They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.” Does this mean that Herod, Pilate, and the Sanhedrin are not held accountable for their actions? May it never be! It means that all things will work out for God’s glory and for our benefit, God’s sovereignty guarantees it. It means that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God as it is revealed in the events of our lives. Life is not easy and God’s sovereignty is not like a magic eraser than can erase all our pain. God’ sovereignty it is not like a force field that keeps pain away, it is more a reminder that our pain is not pointless, that our tribulations are not in vain. As someone has said, “You said I know that this will hurt, but if don’t break your heart things will just get worse. When the burden seems too much to bear, remember the end will justify the pain it took to get you there.”[3]
Furthermore, the disciples conclude their prayer with a petition for the Sovereign Lord not to use his sovereignty to stop their persecution, but to use his sovereignty to enable them to proclaim the gospel boldly. The disciples prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” One commentator notes, “[The] early Christians were not praying for relief from oppression or judgment on their oppressors but for enablement ‘to speak your word with great boldness’ amid oppressions and for God to act in mighty power ‘through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’ Their concern was for God’s word to go forth and for Christ’s name to be glorified, leaving to God himself their own circumstances.”[4] Is this not also counter intuitive? Would we not pray first for our own safety so that we could go forth in peace and proclaim the blessings of God? The disciples were not concerned about what happened to them, because they believed that they were in God’s sovereign hands. God’ sovereignty means that our lives are God’s concern so that our concern can be to announce boldly God’s sovereign authority.
Maybe our listless prayers are a reflection of our limp faith in God’s sovereignty. Maybe our dull prayers are a reflection of our shortsighted beliefs. Maybe our unhealthy prayers are a reflection of our inadequate knowledge of Scripture. Maybe our prayers are impotent because we think God is impotent. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God may be safe, but he is not a tame lion. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth; he is the legitimate owner of all created things. His plans and purposes for our lives cannot be altered or swayed and he knows not just the number of hairs on our head, but also the number of days in our life. This great king of the universe has given us his word to help us communicate with him, he has given us his Spirit to pray with us, through us and in us. He has promised to hear the prayers of his servants and his sovereignty guarantees his promise. So let our prayers rise like a fountain before us, nourishing this life with living water.
[1] Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur, http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2315/
[2] Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology, pg. 125.
[3] Reliant K, “Let it all out” Yes; I have been listening to Reliant K again while I run! In fact, these words are a good description of running, or at least my running.
[4] Richard Longenecker, Commentary on Acts, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 9, pg 309.
