Ephesians
6: 10-20
Resources: Brother Lawrence; prayer diaries
Joke - "God can I have one of your
farthings? Yes, just hold on a
second."
I was talking to a woman at another lodge for people
slightly above middle age such as yourselves the other day and I asked her what
she did with her days. Her reply was
this:
"Well, my husband and I eat our food, wash
up and keep ourselves tidy. There is
not much more you can do when you are our age, is there?"
I can understand that not being able to do what
you used to be able to do must be a tiring process, and for her I got the
feeling that getting older had made her feel that she had served her real
purpose for this life, that there was nothing really useful that she was able
to do.
And yet part of me wanted to say to her in my
youthful impertinence, "There must be something God wants you to
do." Because I believe that God
has something for all of us to do for each day of our lives - he gives each of
us a calling to live up to, a potential to fulfil.
It may seem much easier for me to stand here
and say this at this point of my life, but we need to remember that God does
not think of us in terms of our age, and that to him a thousand years are like
a day. There is no reason, too, why his
intentions and calling for us should not change as we get older, to fit in with
our physical and mental capabilities.
The important thing is to remember that we are still called to stand
ready, to build up our strength in him however old we are.
I would like us to see if we can find a calling
in verse 18 this morning;
"For this reaon keep alert and never give
up; pray always for all God's people." (repeat)
Do you know there is so much need in the world,
so many things that need constantly praying for. And I come to you as someone who finds it difficult to find the
time to pray for God's people in the world to ask you to consider whether God
wants you to see it as something you can do to build his kingdom in the world
and serve him in this way with your life.
Brother Lawrence lived in the seventeenth
century, and he wrote this to a nun when he was eighty years old: (read p68)
If you can make a single generous resolution to
pray for the world you will be helping to bring hope out of despair and light
out of darkness. We need to believe
that our prayers can make a difference.
Listen to this from Eastern Kenya:
"If we want that Moslem headmistress to
lift the ban on our Bible Club meeting after school on Friday, then we should
chain fast and pray for her heart to be touched by God," said one
teacher. So we did, each team member
taking one day in the weekly chain. The
ban was lifted."
It's fantastic when prayers are answered and it
joins us to people we can never see.
The Jews had a saying: "Let a person unite himself with the
community in his prayers." I
remember with a friend praying almost every day for a Russian Christian,
Galina, to be released from a concentration camp when I was a teenager. When the news came through that our prayers
had finally been answered, I felt as if we had been part of something much
bigger than we can imagine.
So will you accept the call to pray for God's
people? Where do you start? I have here some prayer diaries which we are
now going to use....(Pray) Please phone up and ask for the next one!