Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA)

From ambivalence to resolve

by Patrick Lafferty

May 7, 2009

Matthew 6:9–10

“Pray then like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’”

—Matthew 6:9,10

What we’re asking the Lord to do today is nothing He hasn’t asked us to do already. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches His disciples to pray beginning with “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (KJV). In simplest terms, that’s what we’re asking of God today: that the way things go in heaven would become true of the way things go here.

But perhaps you come into this Sanctuary today with a measure of ambivalence about the whole matter. I will confess that when I pray for a city, or a nation, or the world, at times I feel like a child at the beach trying to protect his sandcastle from the encroaching tide with a plastic shovel. The needs and calamities and corruptions of our world, near and far, seem to be so beyond our manipulation—beyond the reach of our praying.

One reason for your ambivalence might be from magnitude of the need, which may cause you to think: will this help? Or maybe when you set out to pray you inevitably bump into the depth of your own flaws. Your own weaknesses and sins come flooding into your mind when you begin to pray boldly, and you wonder, will God even listen if I ask?

What does Jesus’ instruction on prayer say to these two reasons for our ambivalence?

When it comes to the magnitude of the need and our concern that prayer can’t make a difference, we’re certainly in a culture that would second that notion. There are those who would look at what we’re about to do—we’ll call them the Modernists—who would feel that prayer is pointless. Time and energy would be better spent thinking, discussing, theorizing, experimenting, implementing. It would be more appropriate to employ people, ideas, resources, machines, and technologies. But as for prayer, they might say, “We’ve got no time to spare; let’s move.”

That’s one very prevalent undercurrent of thought around us. But there’s another. There are those—we’ll call them the postmodernists—who would say about prayer, “With no disrespect to the path you’re on, but praying to this ‘one God’ who allegedly revealed Himself in His one and only ‘Son’ is an obsolete way of looking at the world and laboring for its improvement. What’s needed,” they might say, “is for all of us, on whatever spiritual path we find ourselves, to seek a higher consciousness—a truer awareness—of all that is. Then we’ll see clearly how to end war and violence, stamp out corruption and oppression, and push back disease and famine. You can pray to your God and His Son all you want so long as it leads to the consciousness that leads to change, but let’s not be so narrow in our conceptions of the solution.”

That’s another sentiment whose influence might cause us ambivalence. Those are two widely held ideas today.

How would we respond? How does Jesus’ instruction to pray boldly respond?

To the modernist, who would forsake praying for more conventional means, this text says, ”Oh, there certainly is room and necessity for thinking, discussing, theorizing, experimenting, and implementing. There is wisdom in employing people, ideas, resources, machines, and technology in laboring for justice, equity, opportunity, and compassion.” But the reason we’re praying is that despite humanity’s best efforts at improving itself—despite its astounding attempts at eradicating everything at odds with a just and sustainable culture—the one thing that keeps getting in the way of progress is us!

Intelligent, capable, and resourceful people have always been part of the equation, and they’re the ones who are inclined, for some reason, to self-interest, opportunism, indifference, corruption, and hatred. It’s as if Jesus has come to us in His instruction on prayer and said, “I’ve seen your work. It is both astounding and tragic, just like you are.”

The Lord wants us to use every tool in the toolbox to bring heaven’s ways to earth—to use every resource, gift, and talent to bear on everything. That’s why He entrusted us with them. But the gifts He gave were never intended to be used apart from life with the Giver. When that happens, the recipients end up using the gifts in some monstrous ways.

We pray because we need more than the gifts and talents we possess. We need Him who gave them so that we use them properly. That’s what Jesus says to the modernists among us.

To the postmodernists, He would be no less respectful and no less clear. To those who see our need solved by a higher consciousness He might say, “I couldn’t agree more that what’s needed in humanity is a deepened awareness of what governs and guides the universe. Indeed, it will be a deeply internalized sense that all is not right with the world and that there is a power to see it all change. But this world must become more conscious of two things:

1) That our misery stems not merely or mainly from an absence of understanding, but from a fundamental alienation. We neither know nor cherish the One who had and has a hand in all that is; that’s the source of all our misery.

2) That all our hope for change, peace, stability, and equity comes through the One who came to change the world, brought peace by suffering violence, restored stability between man and God by enduring alienation, and treated all men with equity by bearing the shame of an unjust death.

Becoming conscious of those two truths will help us to see that we are more part of the problem than perhaps we’d like to admit, and yet more abundantly loved that we could ever fathom. It’s in the awareness of the depth of our flaw that we find the humility to let go of what stifles goodness. It’s the awareness of the boundlessness of the love of God in Christ that gives us the courage to steadfastly live for what is good.

To modernist and postmodernist alike we say we’ll pray as Jesus taught:

1) that His will will be done on earth as it is in heaven;

2) that justice, equity, honesty, integrity, reconciliation, and endurance will reign in every segment of society.

3) that there will be a technology transfer from heaven to earth because people will see God as hallowed. We have no illusions about the sustainability of virtue apart from humble life before God.

4) that this world will see God as hallowed because they know He is above all things, yet knows us and loves us anyway like a true father—our Father. (And as we pray for such things, we’ll at the same time be praying for ourselves.)

Jesus says that the world will be persuaded of the majesty and love of God through both the preaching of His Word and through the demonstration of His goodness by His people. That’s you and I. It will be through our heightened awareness of the goodness of the gospel that we then use every means at our disposal to make that goodness known.

That’s what we’ll pray for, and this is why: Jesus says in His teaching on prayer and elsewhere that earth will become more like heaven as it sees God as eminently holy and eminently loving. Jesus validates those two truths in Himself at the cross. If God is that holy and that loving, then we have reason to follow His Son’s command to pray that the Lord’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

If that’s not enough for you, consider this last reason why: The One who lived a perfect life, who submitted willingly to a heinous death, and who offered Himself as an unblemished sacrifice is the same One who arose to a new imperishable existence. He arose, brothers and sisters.

If He didn’t rise again, then we should just go eat. But if He did rise again, then we have every reason to pray for miraculous things in our midst.

If the magnitude of the need causes you to question the efficacy of prayer, remember the resurrection as you pray. For if God is able to bring back a dead man from death, He is able to bring new life to a dying world.

If the depth of your own flaws causes you to doubt His interest in hearing your prayers, remember the resurrection. As one pastor put it, ”Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace” (Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace, p. 19). The resurrection proves that.

May that be the source of your resolve as you pray. Amen.