KinmundyChurch.org

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN 557 Blest Be The Tie That Binds
Blest Be The Tie That Binds by Roland Borla/Gospel Souls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujp5gwBpa3k

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN 405 Seek Ye First The Kingdom Of The God
Seek Ye First – Maranatha! Music [with lyrics]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBpM9IcBts

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: Praying For “Jesus Is Lord and People Grow”
Text: Matthew 28:19-20, Luke 6:46, John 8:31-32, 15:12, 1 Corinthians 12:7, 11-14,
1 Timothy 2:3, 1 John 4:7-11
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you …
John 8:31 Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

1 Corinthians 12:7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. … 11 All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

1 Timothy 2:3 This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

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HYMN 156 I Love To Tell The Story
Alan Jackson – I Love To Tell The Story (Live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrCpKa_xOcE

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

We’ve been talking about prayer and how we can pray more effective and powerful prayers for our lives and our benefit and for the lives and benefit of people around us. And while each week has had a different subject, what’s tied it together is the verse from James 4 that says, “You have not because you ask not.”

And I wanted to address what I think is a reality for us. There are things that we could pray for. There are things that we should pray for, but we forget. It doesn’t occur to us. And one of the things that doesn’t occur to us, I think, is that you can pray to grow spiritually.

Now, what happens if we don’t pray for God’s help to grow spiritually? We think it’s all up to us. And unfortunately, when it’s all up to us, we don’t always do the best. But how often is it true that we forget to ask God to help us to grow, to ask God to help us to learn, to ask God to help us to become better people?

So here’s where it starts, friends. You’re familiar with the Centering Prayer, but what you may not know is the Centering Prayer is about the stages of growing as a Christian person: Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be. Far less than the person that Jesus wants me to be. Far less than the person I can be with God’s help.

And so, we don’t forget, but we intentionally pray, “Lord, I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life.” This is where we begin, where we fall short, where we lag behind, where we are far less, and we say, “Lord, help us to catch up to what we want to be and what you want us to be.”

One of the reasons we do not have what we want or what Jesus wants is because we do not ask. Any place in your life which is far less, any place in the life of a family member, of a friend, that is far less than what you would wish you to be or what they would wish you to be, you can pray for that. And you can pray for God to come into the gap and help you and that person to grow.

Last week, we talked about praying for the vision because the vision identifies the gap between where we are and where we want to be. The vision for the church is this:

We are a functional family of God… Do you know why? God created families to help people grow up. Now, that doesn’t mean that everybody does a good job of growing up, that doesn’t mean that every family does a good job of helping children to grow up. But it is the way, through love, that people become all they can be. And you can pray, “Lord, may our church become even more a functional family of God.”

A functional family of God to where two things are important. The first one is this, where Jesus is Lord. Because that’s the secret. That’s the mysterious thing that we forget. If we do what Jesus did, if we do what Jesus told us to do, if we seek first the kingdom of God, then far less is going to become a problem to overcome. You can pray for this. You can pray every morning, “Lord Jesus, be the Lord of my life today, more and more.” You can pray every day, “Lord, help me to learn something today that will help me to grow and become a better person.” You can pray that every day, but you know something? Even I, as if I was a good example – I don’t know that I am a good example! – but I kind of take that for granted. I don’t put it into words – “Lord, I need you to help me to grow!” – because I make an assumption that it will happen automatically. But you can pray that every day!

Now, here’s something that’s not always included in the Centering Prayer, but it certainly is a part of growing. Because again, remember, families help us to grow. So your family of origin helps you, but also your church family helps you to grow. Look at the picture of the flock on the screen. Do you see those sheep gathered into little families? The shepherd is walking across the middle with the sheepdog, but the sheep are gathered into their little families. This is how God helps people to grow. He gathers you together into little families.

I always know when the sermon really touches people’s hearts. Do you know why? I see you standing around in little groups, just like the sheep. Now, I’m not so egotistical to think you’re talking about the sermon, but if the sermon’s good, it makes you want to be together like this. Lord, include me with your flocks. Connect me with other people. Surround me with people who love one another because that’s what I need to grow.

“Jesus is Lord,” means the commandments of Jesus are important. And Jesus says this, John 15:12, “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” Brothers and sisters, no matter how good the sermon is, the sermon’s not good enough. You need the vitamin C of community and connecting and being with each other to grow.

Now, please understand why this is a problem. A pandemic happened. All of a sudden, we weren’t meeting in small groups anymore. A pandemic happened and the Wednesday night Bible study evaporated. A pandemic happened and committees met scattered around a room, 12 feet away from each other. A pandemic happened, and, all of a sudden, Sunday morning worship became Pastor Dave doing all the talking. Why? I wouldn’t want to ask any one of you to come up here and breathe the cloud of air around the pulpit because if I had the coronavirus, you could catch it from me!

As we come out of that time, we need to make some very significant changes. And the biggest change is this, we need to get together, not just in big groups, but in all kinds of groups. Now, thank God for Kim’s bible study; the ladies are getting together. They’re going to be starting another study up later this fall. Thank God for the SALT potlucks. Thank God for the SALT trips. If you look at the SALT potluck, it’s like the sheep in the picture: people are sitting at different tables visiting with each other. We need this to grow spiritually.

And so I’d like to make an announcement. Starting in October, we will have different small groups meet on weeknights. We will have a small group come together and talk about our worship service and how it can be more inspiring and exciting.

We will have a small group come together to pray for each other.

We’re going to have small groups for all kinds of purposes.

And I hope you’ll come out to the ones you find interesting. Come out to the ones that seem to draw you to participate because your opinion is very valuable. And we need this talking to each other in order to grow. Because as it says in 1 John 4, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” You have a chosen family of God. And if we pray that loving one another would grow between us, we will see amazing miracles of God’s love begin to happen all around us.

There is nothing we can do, as I understand the Scripture, that is more powerful than for us to intentionally work at loving one another. Notice that verse, “He who loves is born of God.” When you love one another, God begins to change your life and you become a beginner, someone who is born of God, born again. The word that used to be there was infant, but I didn’t want to call anyone an infant! So, let me call you a beginner!

Beginners grow through relationships. And each one of us, to the extent that we’re a beginner, need someone to reach down and help us to walk. And that person in your life is the person who watches over you and cares for you. And here are two things that beginners need.

They need to be brought into worship so that they will feel God’s love.
They need to be brought into fellowship groups
to experience what it’s like for a church to love one another.

Ironically, one of the most powerful things that you can do to help someone come to Christ, to help someone to come to church, is not to invite them to worship. Now, I know that sounds astonishing – because my sermons are so good! They’re good, but they’re not good enough!

If you look at the fastest-growing churches all across the world, people come first to the SALT potluck and they get to know people. And then they want to come to worship.

They come first to the playground. And they get to know people. And then they want to come to worship.

They come first to the SALT trip. They come first to a small group where you get to know other people. And then, as those other people follow Jesus, they follow them into a church.

So when somebody gets stuck in life or in growing as a Christian, they probably need more love.

Now, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, you know what happens when little children get all the love they need. They begin to feel safe. And you know what happens when they begin to feel safe? They begin to explore their world. And all of a sudden, you’re scared to death, “Where the heck are they?” When infants feel safe, they begin to explore their world.

Curiosity grows within them, and they begin to ask questions. Now, I don’t know the exact age where it starts. But there’s a certain age where children begin to ask hundreds of questions every single day. Parents, you remember the worst one, “Why”? And you give your best answer, they ask “Why?” again. Then you give another answer … and “Why?” But kids begin to ask questions.

Kids begin to ask questions. You know the saddest thing in a church? Because as a pastor now – for over 42 years, this has been my experience – the saddest thing in the typical church is the pastor looks out at all kinds of people, and not a single one of them has a question. Let that sink in for a moment. Beginning to ask questions because you’re hungry for answers is a sign of spiritual growth. Consequently, please, please ask your questions.

On the other hand, as the rest of you want to beat the Baptists to the restaurant for lunch, let’s not ask questions during the sermon. It will make you unpopular. And you see, that’s what that small group is for. It’s a place to where you can ask questions. It’s a place where you can say, “I think it’s this. Is that right?” It’s a time to listen to other people. You need that to grow. Consequently, as the pandemic eases, we need to begin to link up with each other and have these conversations. There is a Sunday school class, perfect place to start, perfect place to start. Because our questions need to be answered.

Jesus says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?” The best answer to that is, “Lord, I didn’t know what you were telling me to do this.”

If you are a learning person, you will pray this prayer. You’ll ask Jesus to guide you, “Lord, guide me to all that is good. I want to let go of all that is bad. Cleanse me from all that is not good. I want it not to be a part of my life. Teach me your ways -now that means you know them intellectually – And form in me your nature; that means it becomes easier and easier for you to live as Jesus wants you to live. But how often do we pray that? How often does our day begin, “Lord, show me what you want me to do today” because it’s so obvious it’s easy for us to let it be an assumption.

So where do we turn to learn what the Lord Jesus Christ wants us to do? The answer is turn right to the words of Jesus. Have a New Testament and read it. And when you find a command of Jesus, something Jesus wants you to do, make a mark or underline it — because whatever it is that Jesus is asking you to do in the New Testament, that’s something that will benefit you to do. As Jesus said in John 8:31 to the people who believed in Him, “If you continue in my Word–“ now that doesn’t mean just to look at the Bible once a month. Continue doesn’t mean just to listen to the pastor once a week. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples.” And because of that – look at verse 32 – “you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” Friends, just simply knowing that this is something you should not do will help you not to do it. Friends, just simply knowing that Jesus says this is something you should do will help you to do it. It starts with knowing. And then it begins to change our lives.

How do people grow as disciples? Let’s take another look at the Great Commission. Matthew 28:19 says, “Go therefore and make disciples.” We know that. But do you know how those disciples grow? Look at verse 20, “Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” What does God want? Whatever Jesus told us we should do. And that should be the topic of our discussion as we’re learning: What does Jesus ask us to do? Because you and I have something to learn. And as we learn it, it will change our lives.

Now, in addition to that, if you get stuck at this phase, here are some things that help children learn. At this child level of spiritual growth, we want to involve each other in reading God’s word and seeking Christ’s commands because that will lead you to begin to ask questions, sometimes prompted by the Holy Spirit, so that your knowledge becomes deeper. And as you ask questions of each other, you will learn from each other. One person will say, “Well, I had a problem with that.” One person will say, “God helped me by telling me to do this.” You’ll share with each other.

And in addition to that, your pastor loves to answer questions! I love to answer questions and probably other people do too. And consequently, if you involve yourself in a group that’s talking and learning, it will help you to grow. After the pandemic, that’s something we need to get back to. Because when people get stuck, they need to learn how to ask and they need to learn how to answer questions.

So please, I want to hear your questions. Because you see, God is preparing you for something very important, and it’s called the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12 talks about the church as if it was a body. The church has all different kinds of parts, just like your body has parts. Everyone has a purpose. As 1 Corinthians 12:7, which is one of my favorite verses in the Bible says, “To each …” To every single one of you here, there is a way that God’s Holy Spirit wants to show up and work through you. Each person is given the manifestation of the Spirit so you can be a part of helping everybody else in the church. You have something to do. You have a church job. Some of you have the job of being Sunday School and Bible School teachers. Some of you, thank God, are wonderful musicians. Some of you are wonderful singers. We need to get you up and out of the pews and up here and singing together. We need to start the choir up again! Some of you are really good at noticing when someone’s discouraged, and you have a kind word. And some of you make the best cookies. Because you see, here’s the problem at the church in Corinth, people would look down on what they were good at and would say, “I’m not very good because I’m not as good as so-and-so.” Whatever you’re good at, you want to ask the question, “How can I use that for God?” Because in order to be the church God wants us to be, in order to be the church really that we want to be, every single person is needed to play their role. God created the human body so that everything has a purpose. God creates the church so that in the church — every single person — has a purpose. And friends, if you’re you’re not doing what God wants you to do, it’s like the church is handicapped. In order to do what God wants us to do, everybody has their part to play.

And this coming together and being together is something that we don’t always talk about, we don’t always emphasize. Small groups are an important means of sanctifying grace that helps us to grow up. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” what that first means is, “Be with me…” And when people be with Jesus, all of a sudden, bang, it’s a small group. “Follow me” then becomes, “Learn with me in a small group” as the disciples spent time with Jesus. And eventually, it means to, “Carry your cross, and serve with me in a small group.”

The basic New Testament pattern is for you and I to follow Jesus in a group, rather than as an individual. As a part of a team, rather than you out there as the Lone Ranger trying to do your very best. We are better when we work together. And in fact, if you read through the New Testament, what you see again and again and again is that when they did things for God, there’s only one example of the disciples doing anything by themselves, and that’s when Philip talks to the Ethiopian eunuch. In every other example in the scripture, it is two or three or more that do God’s work.

We follow Jesus, not alone, but with other people. And when you follow Jesus, where is he going to lead you? Well, friends, you and I have a micro-mission field. The command is for you and I to love our neighbor – our ministry is to pray for the people around us who are our neighbors. Some of them are people we go to church with. Some of them are people who have not found a church yet. But whoever it is that is in your neighborhood, whether that’s the neighborhood of your friends and family, the neighborhood of where you work, the neighborhood of the people who like to do for fun, what you like to do, the people you see, for example, at ball games, or it’s the people who live in your literal neighborhood. They’re next door or down the street. We’re supposed to pray for those people.

And you see, here’s the problem. We get so busy. Thank God we live in a small town. Maybe we’re less busy than big city people. But we want God to help us to notice our neighbors because then we’ll see how to pray for them. And as you pray for them, God will work to redeem them and bring them to Christ.

Because it starts with compassion: Jesus looked out at the crowds, Matthew chapter 9, and he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. The very next verse, Jesus says, “Pray for God to send out laborers into the harvest.” People to help with that feeling of being harassed and helpless. Who do you know who’s harassed and helpless today?\

It begins with compassion because here is the truth about all those people around you. 1 Timothy 2:3, “This is good and it’s acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who desires all–” See that word all? Who desires all people to be saved, who desires all people to come to the knowledge of the truth, who desires all people to find a Savior who can help them, the way the Savior has helped you and me. And the most powerful way for that to happen, I want to suggest, is that when you notice your neighbor, you will also notice whether they go to church, you’ll notice whether they have a faith. And for the ones who don’t have a faith, you can pray for them to find a faith.

We talked about this last week. If you begin to pray for people and love them, you’ll find that they’ll follow you into church. And in this picture of a little girl in the back seat, the main thing mama wants is for her to grow up. And you know the great thing about kids growing up? Yeah. They leave for college. Bye. They go get a job, they move to Austin, Texas. What’s wrong with them? They do that. But if you let them grow up, they bring your grandchildren to visit you. If you help someone to grow up, they’ll help someone else come to Jesus. And that’s the most beautiful thing.

And so last week I shared this example with you, this church in Seoul, Korea, the world’s largest church with over 700,000 members. They keep starting new churches, and they grow right back up to 700,000 again. And that’s because the entire church is divided up into small groups just like we talked about. The entire church. And each one of those small groups is asked — now this can be anywhere from 3 to 12 people. They’re asked to select someone who’s not a Christian and to begin to pray for that person and help them, whatever that help might mean, and care for them and consistently show them Christian love.

And the founding pastor, Dr. Cho, says is after three to four months of being consistently loved like that, the hardest soul softens up and surrenders to Christ. That’s why Jesus told us to love one another.

So friends, if you look at the empty pews around you, I want to tell you, in all honesty, what will help them to fill up with people who love Jesus Christ, just like you do, is for us to consistently begin to love people — because that’s how they will realize that Jesus is real if they’re loved. That’s how they begin to realize that God’s Word is true if they’re loved. And they’ll begin to hunger and desire the same Savior you and I have found because it begins with compassion and it grows with love.

Please pray with me. Lord, not to criticize anyone, not to judge anyone, not to look down on anyone, help us to begin to notice the people around us. Help us to begin to notice the people around us so that, Lord, if they seem harassed and helpless, we can pray for them. But if everything is going perfectly well, we can rejoice with them.
Help us, Lord, to build caring relationships. And Lord, not with 100 people, not even with 20 people, maybe not even with 12 people. But Lord, help us to notice that there could be one person, who, if we showed them consistent Christian love over the three to four months, as Dr. Cho said, they’ll begin to hunger for You to live in their life, too.
And so, Lord, we pray that You would help us to be, as a church, a functional family of God. And especially, Lord, that You would help us to grow as Christians. And not simply to grow, Lord, but to grow up. Because infants cannot have babies. Elementary school children, with all their questions, can’t parent children. Only mature Christians can be trusted to love someone else who needs Jesus Christ. And Lord, so I pray that we would be those mature Christians. And I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN Bringing In The Sheaves
Marshall Hall & Friends – Bringing in the Sheaves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLD5vpi40w

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN 399 Take My Life and Let It Be
Take My Life and Let It Be – Chris Tomlin [with lyrics]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA9zA7O6bH0

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: Praying For the Adoption of  Lost Sheep
Text: Luke 15:1-7, Matthew 9:35-38, 28:18-20
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

Matthew 9:35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Luke 15:1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

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HYMN 572 Pass It On
Pass It On – The N Crew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovdKx6lQ8OM

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

We’ve been talking the last few weeks about how our prayers can be more powerful, how we can pray in such a way that God answers our prayers, not just for ourselves, but for people we care about. Today, following on last week, I want to talk about how we can pray for the adoption of lost sheep.

Last week, we talked about this reality, which is that in a lot of churches, the pews are emptier than they used to be. Everybody has their own particular place to sit. This particular week, I’m not sure where everybody was, but if the room around you for more people bothers you, what I suggested last week is that the smart thing for us to do is to pray for God to bring more people to us. Because as James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” But I’m quite sure in all the various prayers that you pray, it hasn’t occurred to you, on a typical week, to pray for more people to come to church. And we should do that. I hope you will do that, because Jesus said, “Everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to everyone who knocks, it will be open.”

But today, I wanted to talk with you about how God will probably answer a prayer for more people. And the way I want to suggest to you that God will answer the prayer for more people is this: anybody who is a parent has heard these words, “Mom, he followed me home. Can I keep him?”

Here’s a quote, “Dogs have a tendency to follow people home. This can be for a matter of reasons. Dogs can sense kindness in a person. And if they are a stray dog, they may escape their home because they’re unhappy. Unhappy with their owners, and they want someone to love them. They may also be hungry, and if they have no owner, they will be starving. If the dog doesn’t have a collar, I would recommend adopting the dog. And I would say, especially if the dog comes to you with a rose in its teeth, as the one in the picture does!

Another quote: What does it mean if a dog follows you home? Dogs are smart animals and will often single out one person to follow, sometimes even to the exclusion of others. This usually indicates that this person fulfills whatever the dog is looking for.

And then down in the smaller print at the bottom, I apologize if you can’t read it, an article from England on how to welcome and help your rescued dog become settled in your home. The writers point out, “After about three months– after about three months, your dog should feel comfortable secure at home. Having built a bond of love and trust with you and anyone else they live with.”

Now, it is true, some of us have had this experience of love at first sight. But the point that’s being made here is that if you’ve been hurt or abandoned or harmed, it takes a while for you to believe that people will care for you. It takes a while to build trust. And what this group has found with regard to helping rescue dogs feel a part of the family that adopts them, it takes about three months. It takes about three months for trust to be earned.

Last week, I shared this quote with you from sociologist Rodney Stark, who wrote all the way back in 1965, “True conversion is the result of a close relationship with a genuine, caring, practicing Christian.”

And when you find that people are coming to a church, it’s more a process of adoption than anything else because people are hungry for the feeling of a family. I saw in an article on the internet just this morning, you will see them again and again and again, one of the greatest social problems we have in the United States today is loneliness, that leads to depression, and that leads to serious illness. People need family.

Fifty years ago, it was said that people are looking for a friendly church. What we understand now is that people are actually looking for friends. Consequently, the vision of our church, what we want to see happen is that We are a functional family of God… Because why would anyone want to be a part of a dysfunctional family? And so we work to be more functional, more loving, more caring. And what helps us to do that is if Jesus is Lord, Jesus will guide us. And if Jesus is guiding us, then people will grow. And sometimes I’m tempted to say it this way: people will grow up.

But here’s the reality that we’re finding all around the church these days. People want to feel that other people care and people want to be a part of a family. So, consequently, what you see in a flock of sheep is visible in this photo: Sheep gather, in a flock, into families. And that’s because that sense of trust, that sense of caring attaches to another person. They connect with a person, not barns. Even though we have a lovely barn here. Not coffee and cookies – even though after church, there will be coffee and cookies. What draws people into the family of God is connecting to a person.

And sadly, if you talk to experts, they will tell you that what we need are bigger barns. What we need is fancier food and gourmet coffee. But I want to suggest, brothers and sisters, if we don’t have loving, caring people, new people won’t feel that a family is available in us. But see the shepherd? That’s a good thing. But all the sheep are in their little small groups because all those little small groups are like a family.

After church today – this is something I’ve always said – I can always tell if the sermon has been really good, because you’ll be gathered in little groups of two or three or four after the service like you don’t want to just leave yet. This is what happens because sheep and a flock gather into little families that make up the big extended family of the church.

Now this is photo of a teenage girl. And I put the words on the screen there that “I Need a Grandma”. Let me tell you where that comes from. They did a test – I found this in a journal, a scholarly journal, back in 1979. They did a test with teenagers. Now, that was 42 years ago, a long time ago. But they took a big room, like our fellowship hall, with lots of tables. And on all the tables, they put hundreds of different pictures: pictures of people of every age, people of every race and nation, every ethnic group; they had people with long hair, people with short hair, they had men and women. And they took those same people, and they had them dress in jeans and T-shirts. And they had them dress up in fancy outfits.

And they sent teenagers into that room one at a time. And they said this, “We would like you to imagine that your best friend just told you that she’s thinking about suicide. We would like you to imagine that another good friend told you that his father beats him up. We would like you to imagine what it would be like to think that you were pregnant as a teenager or your girlfriend was pregnant. And go in that room and bring back three pictures of people who you feel you think you could turn to to care about you and help you. Who would you choose?” And I don’t know how many teenagers they sent in. Probably, it was over 100 or more. But every single one, every single one brought out three pictures of people their grandparents’ age.

Now, think about that for a moment. I love my dad. But he’s working two jobs to try to pay the bills. I love my mom. But she’s really worried about my younger sister, and she’s so busy. Who’s got time to listen – Grandma?
Who’s got time to help me fix my bike – Grandpa?
Who has time for me?

But you know the damage that has happened in our world over the past 100 years. Grandma lives in Pennsylvania. And Grandpa lives in California. And you’re lucky to see them once a year. And so we have nuclear families trying so hard to keep everything together when the way God made the world is you’re supposed to live down the road from your parents. You’re supposed to live down the road from brothers and sisters who become uncles and aunts, and when there’s a problem, you all help each other.

Nowadays, that doesn’t very often happen unless people are able to find family in a church. I need a grandma. I need a grandpa. Having older people around is not necessarily a problem if you really want to help people. And if your grandma or grandpa lives down the road, how fortunate you are in this day and time!

Now, here’s what Jesus says about sheep. Luke 15:1, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him…” You see, people felt that caring in Jesus, and they wanted to get close to him. In other words, they followed him home.

Verse 2, “And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.'” So he, Jesus, told him this parable. “What man of you having 100 sheep, if he has lost 1 of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’

Just so,” Jesus says, “I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents – now listen carefully here because Jesus is making a joke – than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.” Friends, there’s no such thing as 99 persons who need no repentance! If there were 99 people in this room, every single one of them would need repentance.

But what Jesus is lifting up here is that one is important. And Jesus will leave the 99 to take care of themselves. And he will go “look for that one” because one is important.

And we talked about what “lost” meant last week, and I suggested to you that “lost” simply means not with the other sheep. If you look the word up in the dictionary, that’s what they’ll tell you, lost means not being present.

And we talked about how in 1965, on a typical Sunday, only one out of four people would be in worship. Three out of four people technically were lost. They weren’t present with the others.

I told you that in 2009, our bishop communicated to a nationwide gathering for evangelism that the percentage had dropped to 18% – only one out of five people are in worship on Sunday morning. And what that means is when you go to Walmart after church and stand in line, when you go to the ball diamond and watch a little league game, when you’re in any kind of crowd, only one out of five people you see were in church that morning. And so, technically, a lot more are not present than just one. In fact, out of every 100, there are 18 sheep present, and there are 82 that aren’t.

And we talked about how in Kinmundy, the population, according to the 2020 census, is 733. That means this morning, there are over 600 people within a few blocks of this building who are not in church today. Now, maybe they’re on vacation. Maybe like Steve and Cathy, they’re in St. Louis for health reasons. Maybe they have the flu. But there are lots and lots of people out there who need what a church offers.

And that’s where I’m supposed to be. And when God looks at the world, Jesus hasn’t changed. He still wants to find that one lost person and have that one person come home.

So how does God answer the prayer for more people? It’s usually like this, you see, as you follow Jesus, if you pay attention, you will find that somebody’s following you.
Very likely, someone is going to follow you home because they want to be with you. They like you. Just as we talked about the dogs that follow people home, they sense that there’s something about you that meets their needs, that makes them feel safe, that makes them feel loved.

And so when you pray, “Lord, send those 600 people to our church.” God says, “How about if I give you one to watch over? How about if I give you one?”

And you know how you know who your one is? You will notice them. They will follow you around. They’ll be interested in what you’re doing. They’ll be interested in what you have to say. They’ll ask you for your advice. They will appreciate being with you because, again, like I said, there’s something about you. When they’re with you, they feel safe. They feel loved.

So here’s the question. If you started to look around you, who’s your one person? Well, Pastor Dave, somebody may say to me, “I don’t think anyone thinks I’m interesting. In fact, I don’t know anybody who likes me.” Well, we see, here’s the reality. If you just simply pay attention to who comes up to you and says, “Hello,” you may figure out who that one person is. If you pay attention to the people you go up to and talk to them, you may find that one person. If you just simply write down the name of every person you talk to each week, it will become clear.

I had a church member who took this seriously, and I asked him, “Who is it that you think, out of all the people you talk to each week, who would need our church the most?” And he immediately knew. “It’s easy. I don’t know what her name is, but she’s the lady at the convenience store where I buy my morning coffee on the way to work, because she needs a church more than anybody I know. She was telling me all about the struggle she was having while she was filling my coffee cup the other day.” Well, you see, if somebody does that, then you begin to pray for them. Pray every day for God to bless them.

How will God answer your prayer for more people to come to church?
He’ll probably give you one person to watch over.

Now, let me tell you about the power of that. Let me tell you about the world’s largest church. It’s Yoido Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea. Yoido Church has 700,000 members. But they do church differently than the way we do in the United States. They are what is called a cell church. Their church is organized into 50,000 small groups that are called cell groups.

Now we understand about small groups, don’t we? We have Sunday school. We know about prayer meetings. We know that there are churches that will organize people into small groups. And John Wesley also did this for people to help each other and watch over each other.

But you see, friends, here’s the difference: The purpose of a cell group is to reach out to people who don’t have a church. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know of a single church anywhere in Illinois, United Methodist or any other type, that has organized a small group that is entirely focused on helping lost people come to Christ. But the world’s largest church has 50,000 these groups that focus on helping lost people find their way home to the Lord and a church.

And each group is instructed to set a goal to love two people to Christ within the next year.
The group might have six people in it, might have a dozen people in it like Jesus did. But two people, that’s the goal. Just two people.

Now here it comes. It’s on the screen in smaller print. This is the key: “They select someone who’s not a Christian.” They don’t select someone who goes to another church. They don’t select someone who used to go to their church. They select someone who doesn’t have a church, “who they can pray for, love, and serve. They bring meals, help sweep out the person’s store, whatever it takes to show that they really care for them.”

Cell church members – in these giant apartment buildings that they have in Seoul, Korea, will ride up and down in the elevator looking for someone that they can help carry their groceries in. Any little thing that shows that they care, whatever it takes to show that they really care for them.

When a person asks, “Why are you treating me so well?” – because today you wonder suspiciously what that person wants – our people answer, “Jesus told us that we’re supposed to do good to all men, and we want you to know that we love you, and so does Jesus.”

Now, here’s the result. “After three or four months of such love, the hardest soul softens up and surrenders to Christ.”

Now let that sink in. Not a day. Not a week. After three or four months, the person comes to believe that what they’re being told about Jesus is true. After three or four months, people come to believe that Jesus does love them. After three or four months, they come to believe that these people, “Yes, they love me, too. They didn’t just love me during the hard times when my mother passed away or I lost my job or when I was sick, but they loved me on through all the times, three or four months.” And their heart softens up and they want to be a part of a church family.

And you know the very first thing they do when they’re a part of a church family, a part of that cell group? They choose the next person to love.

Yonggi Cho would constantly spin off new churches. He would give one of his associate pastors $5 million and 5,000 people and send them off to start a new church. But at 100,000 new people converting every year, bang, they’d be right up to 700,000 again because this works. And it will work right here because it’s based on what Jesus asked you and me to do, to love God first and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, we are busy people. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot to get done and we go back and forth and back and forth, and all too often, Lord, we don’t take the time to see the people that are around us … because we’re in a hurry. We’re in a hurry to get to the store and get what we need and get home so that we can spend the next three to four hours sitting in front of the television set. And as a result, Lord, quite often we really don’t visit with our neighbors like we could. But Lord, I just simply pray that you would help us to notice our neighbors. Because it’s certainly possible, Lord, as we seek to be faithful to you, that as we go about our business, we will find that there’s someone, maybe at work, someone maybe at our hobby that we see at the bowling alley or a baseball game, someone in our family, someone, Lord, who lives just down the street and is literally a neighbor as the dictionary defines it. But maybe we notice, Lord, that they’re coming closer to us, and maybe, Lord, we should consider the possibility that that is you working in their lives. And so, Lord, help us to be kind, help us to notice, and when we become aware of needs and difficulties and concerns, Lord, help us to listen and help us to pray for you to help the people that want to follow us home to church. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN

701 When We All Get To Heaven
Alan Jackson – When We All Get To Heaven (Live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mei1MYF_fm8

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN 393 Spirit Of The Living God, Fall Fresh On Me
Spirit of the Living God | Jeremy Riddle – Worship Moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23KZWK6Pa6M

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: Praying for the Vision and Mission of the Church
Text: Matthew 9:35-40, 28:18-20, John 13:34-3
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

Matthew 9:35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Vision Statement: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.

Mission Statement: “Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional.” (¶126, Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church)

The world has 2 needs and 2 kinds of people: People who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple-makers. (T4T)

————————————————————————————————————-

HYMN 569 We’ve A Story To Tell to The Neighbors (Nations)
We’ve A Story To Tell To The Nations by Matthew Owens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmmOZ4ROJp0

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

We’ve been talking for several weeks now about prayers and how our prayers can be more powerful and how God can answer our prayers and change the world in which we live. And I’ve asked you to pray specifically and I’ve asked you to pray courageously and I’ve asked you to pray persistently and I’ve asked you to forgive people as you pray. Today I want to ask you to pray for the vision and mission of the church so that our church can be the kind of church that God wants and the kind of church that this world needs. But the theme of this entire series is really very simple. You have not … because you do not ask. You have not because you ask not.

Now, this particular Sunday, I’m not sure why, but that particular section of pews didn’t have very many people in it. And some of you have expressed a concern to me about the fact that there’s a lot of room in our church for more people to be here. And you express it as a worry – that the church is more empty than full.

But I honestly want to ask you this. How many times this week did you ask God for more people to come to church? How many times this week did you ask God for 100 more people to come to church, or 50 people to come to church, or 20 people, or 12 people? Because again, we want the church to be full, but it never occurs to us that we should pray for people to come to church.

I was in Caseyville for nine years. Lovely town, eight miles east from the St. Louis Arch. You can see the arch from the parking lot. And our choir had one soprano. And she said one night in choir practice, “Folks, I’m in my ’80s. When I sing, my voice quavers. I’m going to have to quit the choir.” And there we were with a choir with no sopranos and eight altos. And they said to me, pastor, “What are we going to do?” And I said, “Friends, you need to pray for more sopranos.” We started to pray for sopranos and within three weeks we had three new sopranos singing in the choir.

Friends, if you think there need to be more people sitting in the seats, you and I need to ask God for them because God is very capable to answer our prayers for more people. Luke chapter 11:10, as we said a couple of weeks ago, “Everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will be open.” If there’s something we want, we need to pray for it and ask specifically and boldly and persistently.

There’s a branch of psychiatry called reality therapy that uses four questions to help people in counseling work through incredibly difficult problems. And the first question might take you by surprise. The first question is this, What do you want? Because one of the realities of mental illness, one of the realities of anxiety and depression is it causes people to be in a lot of confusion. And what they found is that once a person who is distracted and confused, who is worried and anxious and depressed and fearful, if they can figure it out so that they can say, “This is what I want…” – Ironically, it’s almost as if the whole world begins to rearrange itself so that what they want begins to happen.

Friends with regard to your church, What do you want? Because certainly, when people understand whatever it is that they want – we would want to express that in prayer because God can make a great difference. If you want more people to come to our church, ask God for them! Ask God for more people … because we have not because we haven’t asked.

Now, the problem with church growth is that there are a whole lot of experts who want to tell you how to fill up those pews. And I want to argue with them; in fact, when I went to seminary to get my doctorate, it was on this subject, so I can argue with people like that for 12 straight hours! And I promise you, I will not do that today.

But here’s the advice the experts want to tell you. What you need to do, if you want to fill up the church, they say, is make the church like Disney World. It needs to be full of excitement and entertainment. It needs to be like showbiz. We need a band. We need drummers. In fact, one drummer is not enough. We need two drummers. The church down the street has one drummer, but our church has two drummers. Because bigger and louder is better, from this perspective.

And so you have in churches something similar to what you see in stores. You see your big box stores, and you see your big box churches. One of those churches is Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. Lovely place. Full of beautiful people. 20,000 people attend in three services on a weekend. 6000 people on a Wednesday night service, another 6000 on Thursday night. And I attended there once when I was on vacation because I was curious. The sanctuary looks like a big theater, like the Fox Theatre in St Louis.

And you know what their fellowship hall looks like? First of all, it’s a room about four times as large as our sanctuary. And in one corner of it, they have a bookstore. And all along the sidewalls, it’s like a food court in a mall. The little garage door goes up and you can get pizza at this little store, and you can get Italian at this little store, and Mexican at this little store. It looks just like a mall. Maybe that works in suburban Chicago. I am not so sure it’ll work in suburban Kinmundy! But the experts want you to imitate this.

And, of course, I think there are things we can learn from the big box church show biz model. But something that people don’t realize is when you look at that crowd going into Disney World, guess what, they’re going into Disney World in families. And my argument is that most of the people out there in the world have a very deep need for family because we live in a world that is full of anxiety and trouble and people feel lonely, people feel abandoned, people feel desperate, people feel that there’s no one they can turn to. Bill Eason, one of the great experts on evangelism and filling churches, did a workshop I attended in 1992, where he said to the group of pastors interested in evangelism, he said, “What’s the greatest crisis faced by young families with children today? What’s the greatest crisis?” And of course, this room full of men did not know. And he said, “Now, think about these young mothers. What’s the greatest crisis?” And this room full of men could not figure it out. But what the greatest crisis was he told us for young mothers in San Antonio, is that their mothers lived on the other side of the country, and there was no one to teach young mothers how to toilet train their children. Now, think about that for a moment. Think about your own young married life.

Of course, young mothers are able to call their mothers on the phone, but sometimes you need help that just isn’t a phone call. There is a desperate shortage of grandparents in the lives of families scattered across the USA today. And I understand that because you have to go to Austin to get close to my grandchildren, and my other sons and their families live in New York City and Vermont. Now, they grew up in Illinois. I have no idea why you would grow up in Illinois and move from Chicago to Vermont, but I can tell you whatever you need a grandpa for, whatever you need a grandma for, it’s a long way to Vermont.

But see, here’s the thing I figured. There’s all kinds of old people in Vermont, and most of them might go to churches. And there’s all kinds of grandmas and grandpas that go to this church, but there’s all kinds of kids that don’t have a grandma or a grandpa within a few miles. I think it’s family that people really need and consequently, I think that what people really need is a church that’s like a family.

So if you look at that bottom line there, this is the vision that I have of the best that a church can be. It’s printed in your bulletin every single week because to me, the perfect church would be for us to be a functional family of God. Now, pay attention to that word functional. A dysfunctional family, that’s not always so good. And there are dysfunctional churches that are not very nice to each other. But if we can be a functional family of God, we are something that people really want and need in this world. A functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord, and people grow. In other words, I’m better today than I was last year. I am tempted sometimes to take that word and change it to where people grow up.

Rodney Stark, sociologist, brilliant sociologist, studied religion, studied conversion. He is not actually a practicing Christian himself, but he studied conversion, and he identified, all the way back in 1965, true conversion: conversion that lasts. True conversion is the result of the convert having a close relationship with someone who is a genuine, caring, practicing person of that group. And so for us, what that means is the potential of who could become a part of a church is a result of how many relationships we have with people, where we are a genuine, caring, practicing Christian. Because they’ll want that sense of family. They’ll desire that feeling of being loved by God. If you don’t have that close relationship, Stark said, they get excited and then they drop out. And you kind of have a shallow religipous experience where people come in the front door and a few weeks or months later, they go out the back door, and they say to themselves, “Well, I tried that religion stuff. I guess it just doesn’t work.”

In order for it to last, a person needs to have a relationship that, I want to suggest, is almost like a family with people who are caring and genuine people who practice their faith. Well, what does it mean to practice our faith? Well, let’s go right here.

Matthew 22:35, one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him. In other words, it wasn’t as sincere question: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” And I would suggest to you, for a person who is genuinely a practicing Christian, this is the goal. But how often have you prayed, “Lord, help me to love you with all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my mind?” You see, we forget to pray for these very simple things. Jesus goes on to say, “This is the great and first commandment.” This is the highest priority. Take care of your relationship with God.

And then Jesus says, almost like an afterthought: And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then he makes the most astonishing statement, verse 40, On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. In other words, if you have a container that is made up of these two commandments, it holds the entire Bible – because if you do this, you’ll fulfill everything God wants. And what that means is this; to be a genuine practicing Christian, you need to pay attention to loving yourself and loving the people around you.

Now, Jesus says that summarizes the whole Old Testament. In John Chapter 13, he has another command: A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, but a special kind of love: Even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. We need to love people, not our way, but the way Jesus loved them.

And when Jesus loved people, you know what happened? They became disciples. And they decided to follow him. And they decided to trust him and rely on him. And we need to love people, our neighbors, in such a way that they will also want to follow Jesus. By this, all people, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love, for one another. But how often do we pray, “Lord, help me to love that person, that person, the way you would? And Lord, what would you do? Lord, what would you say to them?” Next time you lose your temper, you can pray: “Lord, what would you say in this situation?” You see, those prayers can guide us to be that Christian that helps a person want to have Jesus in their life.

In our list of prayer requests, every Sunday, this one is listed because it’s something Jesus asked us to pray for: Then he, Jesus, said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful…” What does that mean? It means that people are ready to come to Christ. People are ready to believe. People are ready to come to church. “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus says, “But the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

You see, the reason they’re are not as many people as there could be in a church, is because we’re waiting for them to come to us instead of going out there and loving them out there. And that leads to the mission statement, the print on the screen is a little small, but it’s printed in your bulletin every single week. It’s a quote from the Book of Discipline, which is the rules by which United Methodist churches are supposed to operate. You know what it says? Every layperson… Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Every layperson is called to be missional. To be missional is to be a part of what God is trying to do. Because do you know something? When all of us work together we can get a lot done. But how often do we pray, “Lord, help me to understand what it means to carry out the Great Commission. Lord, help me to understand what it means to be a laborer in your harvest”? It’s not a prayer that occurs to most of us. And I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t always occur to me because this has been something I feel so deeply I’m beginning to realize it’s almost like I take it for granted, but I need to put it into words and pray it as a prayer.

We have not … because we ask not.

Now, here’s the Great Commission. This is not just for the pastors. It’s not just for the church as an institution, it’s not for us to form a committee to do this. Every person is asked to go. And when you’re out there, make disciples of all nations. Well, now, how do we do that?

Well, remember, if you are a caring, genuine, honest, loving, practicing Christian, God will use that. And by the way, you have influence with people who don’t come to church. You want to continue to use that influence … because look at verse 20, “Teaching them to observe every command of Jesus.” People out there – we talked about this in a sermon a couple of weeks ago – sometimes the only gospel they read is the gospel of a person because they don’t actually read the gospels in the Bible. They learn about Jesus from watching your behavior and my behavior.

Consequently, remember how in the beginning of the service we prayed this prayer, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief”? In order for us to believe and understand what is possible for God to do, we pray, “Lord, help me to see my world as you see it.”

Let me share some statistics with you that might surprise you. The picture you’re looking at on the screen is a picture outside of the house I lived in, the parsonage in Caseyville, Illinois. I was there for nine years before I moved here to Kinmundy. You’re looking at the road that goes three blocks to the church. And here’s what I have to tell you – Caseyville is not that far from East Saint Louis. And in traditional big city ways, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know most of the people who live in those houses. I don’t know their names. But God does. But it would be on my mind every time I would drive out of my driveway toward church … to think that the Lord Jesus Christ loves the people who live in those houses. And the Lord Jesus Christ wants to help them and forgive them. And the Lord Jesus Christ wants them to find a church family who will take care of them. And if it’s not the one I’m a part of, I hope they find one somewhere.

Now, here’s an interesting little bit of statistical stuff. Back in 1965, as a part of census studies, people kept time diaries. Just like the Nielsen families who write down what they’re watching on TV at different times during the day, these people wrote down what they were doing at different times during the day and turned those notebooks into the Census Bureau. And a couple of sociologists by the name of Presser and Stinson studied what people did on Sunday morning. You know what they found out? The average person in the United States, 40% of them say “I was in church on Sunday.” But do you know what they found out back in 1965? Only 24% of them were in church on Sunday.

Think about that. You’re standing in line at Walmart. You’re in the stands at a little league baseball game. In 1965, only one out of four people you’re looking at were in church on Sunday morning.

Our bishop in 2009 quoted these numbers at a national evangelism event. And he said that the number has now dropped to 18%. Only one out of 5 people you see was in church last Sunday morning. Friends, it’s probably dropped further than that now. Pastor Dave, does that mean that things are horrible? Not exactly. It means that every place has great potential because what Presser and Stinson found because the people doing these time diaries were a statistically valid representative sample of people across the United States.

Therefore, these statistics are supposed to apply all the way across the United States from big cities to little towns like ours.

So what that means, Kinmundy population according to Wikipedia in the 2020 Census was 733. You know what that means? If the statistics are valid over 601 people are not in church right now.

Well, Pastor Dave, I think when you look at the Catholic church and the Christian church and our church, there’s probably more than 132 people in church this morning. Well, yeah, that’s true. But over half of you here this morning live in the country or commute here from Salem or Farina. See what I mean? People drive in, but just counting people who live in Kinmundy, a few blocks from this church building, there is a potential of over 600 people coming to our church next week. “Oh, Pastor, if that happens we’re going to run out of cookies for the fellowship after worship!” Well, friends, if the statistics are valid, there’s definitely a possibility that 12 new people might come next week. Because the harvest is plentiful.

Now, head on out into the country to Wesley Church. Wesley is in Foster Township. There are two churches in Foster Township. 379 people live in Foster Township. There are 2 churches and 193 housing units. What that means out near Wesley, there are 158 houses where people don’t leave Sunday morning to go to church anywhere. The potential is there. And if you and I begin to pray, we are praying a prayer that God wants to answer because God wants those 601 people to find Jesus Christ. God wants 158 households to be a part of a church that cares, and you and I can pray for that.

There’s a place where Jesus says that if there are 99 people or sheep on a hillside that “need no repentance” – as if there are 99 people anywhere who don’t need repentance! – and only one that’s lost, Jesus will go find that one. But what we need to understand, friends, is that lost honestly means not with the other sheep. And statistically, there’s a lot of potential that surrounds us, because there are a LOT of people who aren’t with the rest of the sheep.

So let me tell you a story. Let me end with a story. Once upon a time in Scotland, in a small village, there was a very cranky older man – now, I know it’s hard to believe in a church that there’d be a cranky older man – who just felt there was too much talk in church and so he stopped going. And the pastor was told, “This guy hates it when people talk to him.” And the pastor said, “Well, I’m going to do something about that.”

So he went to this man’s house and knocked on the door, and he knew there’d be a war to see who would talk first. So the man came to the door, nodded his head to the pastor, inviting him in without saying a word. The pastor came in, they sat down in front of the fire, and each one waited for the other one to say something. After 15 minutes, the pastor took the poker and pulled a coal out of the fire and pulled it out to the edge of the fireplace, sitting on the stone. And they sat there in silence, both men, and watched that coal, separated from the others, begin to go out … until finally, it had gone out. And after another ten minutes the cranky old man turned to the pastor and said, “Pastor, that’s the best sermon I’ve ever heard. I’ll be in church next Sunday.” The pastor nodded, and didn’t say a word as he left.

Because you see, friends, we can’t stay on fire unless we come and help each other stay on fire. We need each other. And the 600 “lost” people around us, they need the fire, too, because it’s a cold and a difficult world. Let’s pray for them to find our Lord and Savior.

Lord Jesus. I don’t know who the 601 are. In fact, a lot of them will tell me they belong to another church, but they just don’t go. But Lord, they need you, and you asked us to go. So Lord, help me to go to the people around me. Help me to be a practicing Christian, not just in the church here, but to be a practicing Christian out there where you can use that to make a difference in people’s lives. And Lord, help us to help other people find you and come together because, Lord, they need to be a part of a functional, caring family of God. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN 77 How Great Thou Art
Carrie Underwood – How Great Thou Art (Official Performance Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf6C0L_7-CA&list=RDYf6C0L_7-CA&start_radio=1

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN 352 It’s Me, It’s Me, O Lord
Standing In The Need Of Prayer (Live) – Gaither Music TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x90HfUJl6eY

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: The Power of Forgiveness In Prayer
Text: Mark 11:20-25, Matthew 5:23-24, 9:2, Luke 23:34, Acts 7:58-60
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

Mark 11:20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” 22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. ”

Luke 23:34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.

Acts 7:58 Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Matthew 9:2 Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

Matthew 5:23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

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HYMN 377 It Is Well With My Soul
Guy Penrod, David Phelps – It Is Well With My Soul (Live) [Official Video] Gaither Music TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nJ6wQpLmuo

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

We’ve been talking over the last few weeks about how our prayers can become more powerful, so that our prayers will be answered and we will live the kind of life that’s possible when God answers our prayers. And today, we want to talk about something that is a significant help and powerful prayer – and that is the power of forgiveness.

Now, let’s assume that Jesus knows what he’s doing. Let’s assume that Jesus knows what he’s talking about. Do you remember the Bible story in Matthew, chapter nine? You’ll also see it in Mark. Four friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus. And the crowd is all around the house and they can’t get through the crowd. So they actually go up on the roof– slate tile roof, thatched roof, not sure. But they make a hole in the roof. And they lower the man on ropes down right in front of where Jesus is standing. And it says, “When Jesus saw their faith–” these four friends. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven.'”

Now immediately, an argument starts about whether or not Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. And then, Jesus says– to those who want to argue with him – “so that you may know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins,” he reaches down and takes the man by the hand, and says, “Stand up!” And the man is healed. But let’s go back to what Jesus said first with regard to healing, with regard to many human problems: What if the main thing that is needed for healing is forgiveness?

I would like to tell you that something I deal with. Psychologists call it rumination. Rumination is when you’re dreaming about something that’s happened in your past. Rumination is when you’re dreaming. And your dreams move toward that bully in elementary school that beat you up or harmed you. Dreaming is when your mind goes– or rumination is when in a dream, your mind goes to someone who’s hurt you, someone who has harmed you to where you’ve been the victim of trauma or abuse. Rumination is defined as engaging in a repetitive negative thought process that loops continuously in the mind without end or completion. Now, the form that takes with me is to remember sometime in the past when I’ve been victimized, and I wake up, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I just replay the events over and over in my mind. Sometimes, it’s like a court case to where I make the most brilliant statements, and the person who harmed me looks at me and says, “Dave, you’re right. I’m a terrible person.” But in reality, that never happens, and I’ve learned that the hard way.

If I can’t go back to sleep, sometimes I just have to get up and sit in my La-Z-Boy recliner and pray. Well, what do you pray for in a case like this to where someone’s done something harmful to you? Or you’ve made a mistake and done harm to other people, and you can’t stop thinking about it? Here’s what I’d like to suggest is quite powerful: Pray for God to forgive the person who did wrong. Sometimes it’s me. Pray for God to make it better. Sometimes it’s me, and sometimes, it’s the other person. And I found that that’s one way that I can get back to sleep, which is that when things from the past torture you, to pray prayers of forgiveness because they can be powerful.

They did a survey once; what was the smartest thing that Ann Landers ever said? This was number one. “Hanging on to resentment,” Ann Landers wrote, “is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.” Whatever that person did to you, sometimes years and years and years ago, they’ve already forgotten. But it lives on in your head over and over again.

One of the things they tell us pastors. When you’re a new pastor in a church and somebody comes up to tell you about some horrible thing another church member did, you should ask them when that was. You want to know the secret? It will turn out to be 10 years ago, 20 years ago, sometimes even longer. Friends, we don’t want to let the memory of us being harmed live in our heads forever.

As Bernard Meltzer said, “Your history, your past, should not have automatic control over your mind. It should not have automatic control over your future.” And here’s the truth. “When you learn how to forgive, you don’t change the past, but you sure do change the future.” It’s time for a spring cleaning in your mind of everything that holds you back. And forgiveness is a powerful cleanser.

Mark 11:20, In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look, the fig tree you cursed has withered.” The day before, according to Mark, Jesus had come up to a fig tree that was green and covered with leaves, looked among the leaves for fruit, found none, and said, “May no one eat fruit from you forever.” Now, here’s the weird thing about that. It wasn’t time for fig trees to bear fruit. That’s like walking out into a cornfield in the spring looking for ears of corn.

But Jesus wanted to make a point, and this is the point: verse 22, “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea does not doubt in their heart, but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” That’s pretty blunt. But he wants to teach his disciples that faith can move mountains. You’ve heard that phrase. Faith can cause miracles to happen. Faith can cause our prayers to be answered.

And then Jesus teaches the lesson. “Therefore, I tell you,” Jesus says, “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it. And it will be yours.” That’s the first part of the lesson. We talked about that last week. If you pray for a fish, the Lord won’t give you a snake. Now, keep in mind, if you pray for a snake, the Lord may give you a fish. God is smarter than us when it comes to answering prayers. But the first part of the lesson is very simple: Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it. And it will be yours. That’s the first part of the lesson.

But it’s a two-step lesson. Verse 25, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Now, this principle is repeated multiple times in scripture, even in the Lord’s Prayer that we just prayed.

Because you see, we always have a choice. We always have a choice, whether we choose to be like Jesus or not.

Luke 23:34, Jesus has been nailed to the cross. He is suffering in incredible agony. And he looks down on the soldiers that put him there. And Jesus says, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” We always have a choice to be like Jesus.

Now, I don’t want to claim that this is easy. I guarantee you, if you nail me up on a cross, I will say, “Lord smite them!” Friends, road rage is a problem. I’m good, but I’m not that good! But Jesus set the example of perfect. We always have a choice to be like Jesus.

Acts chapter 7:59, “And as they were stoning Stephen, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus receive my spirit.’ And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he died.” Stephen sets an example. But I’m not even there yet!

But I know I have a choice to forgive. Now, it might be 10 years later before I am ready to forgive. It might be 20 years later, when God wakes me up in the middle of the night and says, “Dave, I want you to think about this before you go back to sleep.” Might be 30 years after what somebody did to me. But I always have a choice. I always have the choice to be like Jesus. And that’s a priority.

Here’s another place where Jesus talked about the same thing. Very much a high point in the worship of the temple was when people would come to the place, and they would put their gifts in the offering plate. And when they were doing this one day, Jesus said this to his disciples. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you … Now let that sink in for just a minute. When we think we need to forgive people, we think that we have something against them. But here’s the standard that Jesus sets … maybe you’re innocent. Maybe you did nothing at all. But if somebody out there has something against you, here’s what Jesus says: leave your gift right there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled to that other person. Then come and offer your gift.

Why? God wants us to reconcile with other people. Pastor Dave, you are always telling us that we should love our neighbor. I want to say, brothers and sisters loving your neighbor includes forgiveness.

Even when people don’t deserve it, even when people are evil, God wants us to be the kind of people that offer forgiveness. One of the things I find amusing about this particular scripture is if you and I took it seriously, we’d all have to pause church so that you could leave and come back later. But we’ll just keep going. Nonetheless, reconciling with other people is a priority. But the decision to be like Jesus is not very common in our world today.

As I was thinking about this, I remembered back in Watergate days – you have to be an old person like me to remember that! But people were shocked when, in the Watergate days, a memorandum written by John Dean came to light – there’s a pictorial of part of it – about “dealing with our political enemies.” People were shocked that the Nixon White House had an enemies list. An enemies list where they were going to use the government, the IRS, you name it, to harass people who were their political enemies, and guess what? There were 20 people on that list.

In a presidential debate that happened in the last 10 years, those candidates for president in the primary seeking the nomination of their party were asked about their “enemies list.” And one candidate literally said– now, they were joking with each other and laughing, but friends, it’s not funny. One candidate literally said that their campaign had an enemies list with 50 million people on it. Remember when Jesus said that we need to pray for our enemies? Friends, this is just not right.

But I have to be honest with you. The last time I preached on the importance of forgiveness– I can’t remember if it was a year ago, or six months ago. But I told myself I needed to sit down and make up an enemies list. I need to make a list of the people who were my enemy because they had harmed me, because they had abused me, because they had betrayed me. And I’ll be honest with you, there were 18 specific people on my enemies list. And I actually wrote it out. It’s in my phone. And when God wakes me up in the middle of the night, it’s usually about one of those people did to me, and I start praying for forgiveness for everyone on the whole list.

You see, you can turn your enemies list into a forgiveness list. And maybe you should. Because I don’t believe that it’s possible that anyone here has never been harmed by a person acting evilly. But if you can turn that list of harm into a list of forgiveness, maybe healing will come.

Because you see, as Corrie Ten Boom– you remember Corrie Ten Boom, arrested by the Nazis, along with her sister? Her sister was killed in a concentration camp. Corrie survived. Here’s what she had to say: “Forgiveness is an act of the will. And the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”

See, the reason I wake up in the middle of the night is because I remember the harm done to me; I know forgiveness will ease the pain in my heart, but my heart’s not in it. But even if my heart’s not in it, I can say, “God, I choose to forgive. Lord, I choose to be like Jesus. I choose to be like Stephen. I choose to let go.”

As Joyce Meyer said, “forgiveness is not a feeling. You and I don’t have to wait for our feelings to do the right thing. You and I don’t have to wait till we feel like doing the right thing. We can do the right thing. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy. And it may take time to get through the process depending on the severity of the offense.

And so Corrie Ten Boom forgives the concentration camp guards that murdered her sister. There’s a great need for forgiveness because there’s a great deal of evil. You may not know this, but Nazi Germany put millions of children into concentration camps. Nazi Germany killed about 1.5 million Jewish children. Along with tens of thousands of Gypsy children. And 5,000 to 7,000 German children, who were crippled or mentally disabled, living in institutions, were executed in concentration camps. And since the little children couldn’t work, building Nazi military supplies, they were usually killed immediately when they arrived at the concentration camp. Friends, there’s terrible evil in this world – like that.

But as Jesus said upon the cross, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they do.” Now, that doesn’t mean that when they’re forgiven, they’re excused; there are always consequences. But forgiveness for us is a decision. And if we decide to forgive people, I think it frees God up to work in their lives.

I was looking for a picture of the fences along the interstate highways that keep deer off the interstate highways. I couldn’t find one. And the deer still get over those fences. But I did find this underpass which is literally for mule deer, to give them a way to get on the other side of the road. Why did the chicken cross the road? Too far to go around. But these mule deer don’t have to cross the road. The state of Wyoming at Interstate 80 has provided a way for them to get safely from one side to the other, which helps them. But you know something? If you’ve ever gotten your deer with a Ford, it helps us, too.

Love your neighbor doesn’t just mean to forgive your neighbor, but it does include that. But love also includes providing healthy boundaries because, as Robert Frost said – and it’s true – good fences make good neighbors. And you’re allowed to put safe boundaries between you and other people so that they are not able to do you harm anymore.

Forgiveness does not mean you let someone harm you again because you’re letting go of the past when you forgive. And good boundaries channel activities so that people can be safe.

But please don’t forget this also. What Jesus said was for us to love our neighbor as ourselves. A man was once told, “I will give you $50,000 if I can give the person you hate most in this world $100,000.” And the man said immediately, “Give me the money.” The check was written now for $50,000. And the man said, “No. No. No. You actually owe me $150,000 because the person I hate most in the world is myself.” Friends, sometimes you’ll wake up in the middle of the night because you need to forgive yourself and accept the reality that Jesus Christ has already forgiven you.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, talking about forgiveness stirs up a lot of painful memories, memories that we’d actually prefer not to think about, memories we would like to pretend about events that never happened. But, Lord, we can’t make something go away by pretending. Lord, help us to take a shovel and dig up those poisonous memories, dig up the trash buried deep in our minds that festers and harms us, and take out the trash. Help us, Lord, to become clean by asking you to cleanse us. Help us, Lord, to help our world to be cleaner by forgiving others and forgiving ourselves. We ask this in Jesus’s name. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN 419 I Am Thine, O Lord
I Am Thine, O Lord by Lynda Randle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVLQBAaZzNg

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN Seek Ye First The Kingdom Of God
Seek Ye First – Maranatha! Music [with lyrics]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBpM9IcBts

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: The Power of Persistent Prayer: Ask, Seek, Knock
Text: Luke 11:1, 5-13, Luke 18:1-8, James 4:1-3
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

——————————————————————————————————–
SERMON NOTES

Luke 11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything’? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Luke 18:1 And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; 3 and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Vindicate me against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor regard man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

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HYMN 370 I Heard an Old, Old Story
Victory in Jesus [Live] – Gaither Music TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ajtJtNXF4

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

Almost every week, in different places on the internet, on Facebook, people are talking about how to live a happier life. And I’ll be honest with you, as a pastor, as a Christian person, I think one of the most powerful and effective things that you and I can do to live a happier life and to help other people live a happier life is not only for us to pray, but for us to learn how to pray so that God powerfully answers our prayers. We’ve been talking about that.

Last week, we talked about praying prayers that are ambitious, courageous prayers of blessing. In other words, our prayers should not be timid, our prayers should be bold and ask God to help people. Because as James says in 4:2, the second part of that, the reason that we do not have so many things that we desire and want and need is because we have not asked God in prayer.

All too often, a problem gets worse and worse and worse, and when it’s too late for anything, that’s when we think to pray … instead of praying at the beginning and praying for God to act and help and teach us. In the previous weeks, with regard to you do not have because you do not ask, I mentioned hockey star Wayne Gretzky who said, “You miss every shot you don’t take.” Every prayer we don’t pray, we’re missing something.

But in addition to that, when we pray, we need to ask unselfishly. And I’ve changed my prayers. As I would go to sleep at night, I would always pray, “Lord, heal me for this and this and this and this and this.” And I’ve realized that – this was a sermon a couple of weeks ago – I need to pray for my neighbors to be healed as well. So I very quickly mention all of your names, so that as I’m praying for myself, I’m praying for others. I got that down. We need to pray unselfishly. We need to ask unselfishly.

What we talked about last week was the need to ask specifically, not some sort of vague, mysterious prayer, but also to ask for enough, be bold enough to ask God for what is needed, not half of what is needed or part of what’s needed, but for everything that’s needed.

And today, this is a very solidly supported idea in scripture: Jesus Christ wants you and I to ask persistently, to pray persistently.

And you may not quite know what to pray for. This is a pyramid which is known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I’d like to invite you to keep it in mind as you think about your own life, as you think about your own needs but also the needs of other people. Some people are down at that lowest level, physiological needs. This is someone who can’t get their breath. All they can think about is trying to breathe. This is someone in the middle of a lake who is drowning and trying to keep their head above water. All they can think about is keeping their head above water. There are people that you know that are at this place. I was in the public library two weeks ago where I volunteer on Wednesday afternoons, and a woman came in and asked me if our church would pray for a family that was burned out in a fire. This is a family that doesn’t have a place to live. That’s a physiological need, when life is in danger; ask for that.

Now, the person who is in the middle of the lake, once they got their head above water, you know what’s on their mind? Getting to shore. Now, that’s a whole lot better! But the need now is for safety and security; ask for that. There are people that you meet who are living in unsafe conditions, in families where there’s abuse, in families where there’s not enough food on the table. If you meet someone like that, you want to pray for those safety and security needs.

But if those needs are met, then all of a sudden people start to feel a desire to be connected to other people. People have belonging needs. They want to have a friend. They want to have a family. They want to know that people care for them. They also want to care for people. And there’s all kinds of trouble in families. There’s all kinds of troubles with belonging and caring. If you know that somebody’s going through that, you can pray for God to help them in those relationships.

But when those relationship needs are met, then we’re up to what’s called esteem. Self-esteem. Now, that’s a little complicated. But maybe somebody comes up to you and says, “I lost my job. I feel badly about that.” Well, I want to pray that God brings you to a job. “Well, I am having trouble with my spouse. I feel badly about that.” Well, I’m going to pray that God resolves that.
And in different ways, you can pray for people to come to a place of feeling good about themselves and feeling that life is good.

Now that very last level is called self-actualization. It would be great if you could look at me and say, “Pastor Dave, I don’t have a single problem that you can pray about.” Well, I can still pray that your life is better … because there’s always something better.

But all the people coming toward you will have needs at different levels, and when you think about what level they’re at, it will help you to figure out how to ask specifically for something that would benefit that need.

But the other thing in today’s scripture is that Jesus encourages us to ask persistently. You see that little bit of green grass there? It’s growing out of a crack in solid rock. You know what happens? That green growing thing pushes that crack and then in the winter water runs down in it, freezes, and pushes it open even more. Living things can break up the hardest stones, but it takes a long time.

I was thinking I should put a picture of the Grand Canyon here. The same water that flows and beats on you as you’re taking a shower, carved out the Grand Canyon. Let’s see, here’s the deal. It takes a very long time. And that’s why I think God calls us to pray persistently.

President Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not. The world is full of educated failures. But persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” And this may be why Jesus encourages us to be persistent in our praise and prayer.

Now let’s look at the specific verses that talk about that. Luke 11:1, “He was praying in a certain place and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.'” And so Jesus began to teach the disciples how to pray. Very first lesson, pray then like this, and it’s the Lord’s Prayer.

But there are more lessons about how to pray, and here’s the very next one. “And Jesus said to them, ‘Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me. The door is now shut and my children are with me in bed.'” Families used to sleep together like that in the days before central heating. “I cannot get up and give you anything.”

Now I never in my life have thought that I should go over to Linda and Stan’s house at midnight and say, “I need three loaves of bread.” And probably, if I knocked on their door at midnight, they would get up and give me three loaves of bread. But apparently, this guy in the Bible isn’t a very good friend. But here’s what Jesus points out. “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is a friend, yet because of his importunity,” which is a fancy word for rudeness, “he will rise and give him whatever he needs” as long as he keeps on knocking.

I don’t know who your best friend is, but you can think about trying this at midnight sometime. Ice cream and things like that! But the point that Jesus is making is if you’re persistent, that will have an effect. If you’re persistent. So here’s what Jesus says in verse 9. This is the advice on how to pray. “Ask and it will be given you.” The Greek tense there is, Ask and keep on asking.

“Seek, and you will find.” The Greek says, “Seek and keep on seeking.”

“Knock and it will be opened to you.” Keep on knocking. Why? Look at verse 10. Here’s the promise. “For everyone … For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. “

And so Jesus says, “When you pray, pray persistently, ask persistently, seek persistently.” Now, I’m someone who sort of feels like, “Well, Lord, I asked three weeks ago at 9 o’clock in the morning. Weren’t you paying attention?” I’m the one who thinks if I send God an email, that should be enough. I put it in writing … once. Well, I know that God heard me. But even so, Jesus says, “Ask, keep on asking.” Maybe that’s for my benefit. Maybe that’s for my benefit.

Jesus goes on to say, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, you could trust that you’re heavily father knows what’s good for you.”

So as for a fish, if you get something else, there’s some reason for it. But sometimes you ask for a scorpion and God says, “No, no, no, no, no, you need a fish.” Sometimes you ask for a Ford and God says, “No, no, no, no, you need a Chevy.” Sometimes you ask for a John Deere tractor and God says, “No, no, no, no, no. You need red instead of green.” But the whole point is this, you can trust God. You can trust God.

So sometimes when you’re praying for a serpent – I hear they taste like chicken – God may say, “No, here’s the fish. It’s better for you.” Therefore, it’s not a problem for you to ask persistently because God still knows what’s best.

But Jesus wants us to ask persistently because sometimes God gives us something that, when we start asking, we didn’t realize we needed. Take a look at the rest of that verse. Your Heavenly Father knows how to give good gifts … how much more will the Heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit? Maybe what you actually need is the Holy Spirit. Maybe the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through you is what causes a prayer to be answered. Maybe you get a fish and an egg and the Holy Spirit because God is wiser than we are about what we need.

Seven chapters later, Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells a parable about the unjust judge who is a crook who is waiting for a bribe, but the widow just keeps asking for justice. And finally, the unjust, selfish, crooked judge gives in, so she will stop asking. Now, please understand this. God is not an unjust judge, but it’s good for us to be persistent in what we ask for.

And I’ve used this slide a couple of times because you see that pipeline, I think it’s one of the greatest wonders of the world. That is the Goldfields Water Supply pipeline in Australia. It starts on the western coast of Australia, where there’s water. Up in the mountains, it’s desert and there are gold mines, and people need water. So the Australian government built this pipeline; it was finished in 1903, 120 years ago. They built a pipeline from the coast up into the desert. That pipeline is 330 miles long. That’s as far as from Chicago to Marion, Illinois. It is 30 inches wide. And it supplies water today to over a 100,000 people in over 33,000 households as well as mines, farms, and other enterprises in the desert in Western Australia. It goes uphill 1,300 feet. It’s a 30-inch pipe. And when you put water in it at one end, it takes over two days for the water to get to where the people need it to drink.

Add that idea to your prayers. There’s a pipeline from heaven. Maybe your answer to prayer is in the pipeline. It’s just not going to get here till a certain time in the future.

But God has heard your prayer. The answer is in the pipeline. But you need to persist in your prayers. You need to keep on praying or otherwise, this can happen. You can give up almost when you get to the diamonds. And this is why Jesus says to us with regard to persistent prayer, “He told them a parable to the effect that they ought,” what? “always to pray.” Don’t just pray once, keep on praying. Keep on asking. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking. A parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not give up, not lose heart, not lose hope, keep praying. You know why? You don’t know what God can do tomorrow. You don’t know what the doctors can do next week. If you live long enough, they will have a cure for everything that goes wrong with us today. And, of course, we’ll find other ways to get sick, too, like COVID surprised us all. But we don’t know what the future holds, so we have to keep on praying, keep on seeking, keep on asking so that our prayers will be answered.

So here’s the truth, friends, don’t lose heart. Little acronym over here – P.U.S.H. Don’t be afraid to pray pushy prayers and to pray them persistently. Don’t be afraid to Pray Until Something Happens. And then keep praying for the next thing that happens and the next as God begins to work on you and your life, as God begins to work, on your neighbor’s life, on your children’s lives. Keep on praying. Keep on asking, seeking, and knocking.

I think Winston Churchill said it best. “If you’re going through hell, don’t stop and build a shrine by the side of the road. If you’re going through hell, don’t find a comfortable place to sit and complain about how tough your life is. If you’re going through hell, you don’t want to stay there.” As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” And if you’re going through the valley of the shadow of death, keep praying. Whatever sort of problem you are dealing with, keep praying. Whatever sort of problem your neighbor or your parents or your children or grandchildren or anyone you care about, whatever they’re going through, don’t lose heart. Keep praying and let God answer your prayers.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, we understand that when we pray, you do hear us. But we are wanting to learn how to pray. We are wanting to let you teach us how to pray. We are wanting to let you teach us how to be powerful in our prayers. And, Lord, for some reason, you want us to be persistent. Maybe it’s for our benefit. But you want us to be persistent in our prayers. And I believe, Lord, that the reason you ask that of us is it makes our prayers more powerful. And so, Lord, we ask you to remind us when we pray for something one day, Lord, please remind us to pray for it the next day and the next and the next as we hopefully and joyfully and faithfully anticipate your answer to our prayers. And we ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. on Thursday, August 17, at the Kinmundy United Methodist Church in Kinmundy for Dennis L. Seavers, 70, of Iuka, with interment in the Evergreen Cemetery in Kinmundy. David Kueker will officiate. Visitation will be held Thursday at the church from 11 a.m. until the time of the service.

You can listen to the audio of the service by clicking on this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fNXrjPZJjeTm0WmXaJsnhs0IFdpHVOXT/view?usp=sharing

Mr. Seavers died on Saturday, August 12, at Flora Gardens Care Center. He was born in East St. Louis on July 1, 1953, the son of Grailey and Alice (O’Brien) Seavers. On April 26, 1975, he married Joyce (Lowe) Seavers at the Kinmundy United Methodist Church, and she survives in Iuka.

Dennis was a member of the Kinmundy United Methodist Church. He was a plumber and pipefitter for many years as well as a dedicated and hardworking farmer. He was a member of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 653 in Centralia. Dennis enjoyed NASCAR, tractor pulls, Christmas, collecting model tractors, and enjoyed trains. He could often be found tinkering on small engines, repairing three wheelers, snowmobiles and mini bikes.

In addition to his wife of 48 years, he is survived by two sons, Neil Seavers of Omega and Shawn Seavers and wife Lily of Centralia; his dog, “Mattie;” and several cousins and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his parents; one brother, Jim Seavers; and one sister, Kathleen Kinnard and husband Elmer.

Memorials may be made to the Neighborhood Pantry in Kinmundy and may be received at the Crouse Funeral Home in Salem. Online condolences may be left at www.CrouseFH.com

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again,, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord, I believe: Help my unbelief. Help me to see my world as You see it.
Lord, I obey; Help my disobedience. Focus me; guide me. Prune me.
Lord, I follow;  Help me to stay on the path. Thank you for the path, for guidance, for providence and protection.
I humbly ask for wisdom and for knowledge in every human situation. 
Lord, help me to flourish as a part of the vine, as a means of grace, as a person through whom your Holy Spirit flows. Amen.

HYMN My Hope Is Built
My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkMapZB8qMk

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN Through It All
Andrae Crouch – Through It All [Live]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO5Qt2VQn4k

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: ABC Prayers: Ambitious, Blessing, Courageous
Text: Matthew 9:20-38, Romans 5:3-5, 12:12, 15:13,  James 4:1-3
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

Matthew 9:20 And behold, a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment; 21 for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I shall be made well.”22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

27 And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” 28 When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.”

35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Romans 5:3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

Romans 12:12 Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

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HYMN Great Is Thy Faithfulness, O God My Father
Carrie Underwood – Great Is Thy Faithfulness ft. CeCe Winans (Official Performance Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT0HcAr9aeI

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

ABC prayers. You want to know your ABCs? ABC prayers are ambitious, they bring a blessing, and they’re courageous. I want to encourage us to pray more courageous prayers, because what God wants from us after Pentecost is for the Holy Spirit to flow out from us to circles of influence, to people we know, because God wants to show love to people around us, and what God has decided is to work through people like you and me. Now, sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror, I think, “Lord, you should find someone more qualified.”

But the truth is that God has decided to work through ordinary people like you and me, and the simplest way to say what it is that we do, to do God’s will, is we pray for God’s will to be done.

So I’d like to ask you to consider your prayers for a moment. James, chapter four, verse two, the second half of it says very plainly, “You do not have because you do not ask.” Now, there are some other reasons why God does not answer our prayers the way we request them, but this is the main one. Are we praying for what’s needed? And I think it’s a reality, unless you’re encouraged, and I want to encourage you today, this is a reality for many of us. Sometimes we’re very timid in our prayers. We ask for very tiny little things, as if God had great limitations.

So I want to ask you to contemplate for a moment, what is the most ambitious prayer that you’ve ever prayed? Now, thinking about how to answer my own question, I had to think pretty hard. I had to go all the way back to the spring of 1972, and the spring of 1972 on February 29th. That was the day I gave my life to Christ, and I asked other people at the revival I attended where they went to church. And I would go to a different church, or a different small group Bible study every single day of the week except Saturday. I was a junior in high school and I was highly offended that I had nothing to do on a Saturday night because nobody had a Bible study on Saturday night, and nobody had church on Saturday night.

But the most ambitious prayer I ever prayed was as a high school junior. I wanted to go to the evening service at the church I attended as often as I could, and I was unable to drive at the time. That’s a long story; I won’t go into it now. But I remember walking out of my house at night, it was dark, thinking, “I need God’s help to get to church tonight.” Now, the church that I attended was seven miles from where I lived. It was on the other side of Champaign/Urbana. And I remember thinking, “Lord, maybe someone will pick me up if I’m hitchhiking.” But I thought to myself, I should not limit my faith. I should be a little more bold and brave, so I actually stood on the sidewalk, in the dark, on a busy four-lane street, Mattis Avenue in Champaign, and I prayed that God would teleport me to church. And I still remember praying that and rising up on my tiptoes thinking, “Well, I’m four inches that way.” That prayer sadly was not answered. And it was not answered because God needed to teach me something as I literally, I kid you not, walked seven miles to church that night. But that’s the most ambitious prayer I’ve ever prayed. Now, most people would say, “Well, Dave, that’s ambitious, but it’s also stupid.” But I was not– yes, Kim. You just go right ahead and laugh. (Everyone laughs.) If you don’t occasionally pray a stupid prayer, are you really trusting God for the big things?

Let’s be courageous when we pray. Pray for everything, and then let God sort it out. Let’s pray for great and beautiful and wonderful blessings to happen all around us and let God sort it out. Let’s be courageous in our prayers. As we said in the Call to Worship, do you remember the man who said, “Lord, if you can help me, do something,” and Jesus said, “All things are possible to him who believes.” And the man cried out. He said, “I believe.” And here was his first prayer: Help my unbelief.

Help my unbelief. Now, I have prayed a lot of ambitious prayers since then, but I have never been teleported to the other side of town when I’m late for church. But you see, if we can pray stronger prayers, it will create a revival. Evangelist Gypsy Smith was once asked how to start a revival, and he answered, “Go home, lock yourself in your room, kneel down in the middle of the floor and draw a circle in chalk all around you, and ask God to start the revival inside that chalk mark. Don’t leave the circle until your prayer’s answered. When He’s answered your prayer, the revival will be on.” The first place I ever saw this quote, it is on the wall of the museum in Corrie ten Boom’s house in the Netherlands. And it’s credited with something that helped her to have the faith to do what she did. There’s a new movie out called The Hiding Place, just to remind us of someone who was willing to be ambitious and bold and courageous in her faith. But friends, the revival always starts with one person, with you and me. Ask God to increase your faith.

Finally, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time– which means this is a made-up story. Once upon a time, a little boy built a trap to catch birds. He built it in the woods. And I looked for a diagram of how you build a trap, and here’s one way. You have a mousetrap and you have a box, and you put seeds on that mousetrap so that when the bird lands there, the mouse trap bar flies over. And if that doesn’t catch the bird, the box falls on top. This is one way to build a bird trap.

And the little girl came to her mother, and she said, “Mom, I’m just so upset. My brother–” now she’s a little bit younger than her brother. “My brother’s killing birds, and I just think it’s wrong. I just think it’s wrong. What should I do? What should I do?

And her mother said, “Well, honey, why don’t you pray about it?”

The little girl said, “Okay.” So she went to her room and she prayed and she prayed and she prayed. And her mother asked her later, how her prayer time went, and she said, “Mama, I have so much faith. I prayed that my brother’s trap would not catch a single bird. And I’m so filled with belief. I know God has answered my prayer.”

The mother said, “Oh, no, what’s going to happen to her faith if the trap catches a bird? I need to help her.” She said, “Well, honey, sometimes God doesn’t answer every one of our prayers.”

And the little girl said, “Mama, I have all the faith in the world. I know God will answer my prayer.” The mother thought, “Oh no, what have I done?”

I’ll tell you the rest of the story in a minute.

Because here’s the principle for ambitious and courageous prayers. Matthew 9:20, “And behold, a woman who had suffered from a hemorrhage for 12 years – endometriosis; we believe – came up behind Him, Jesus in a crowd, and touched the fringe of His garment, the hem of his garment. For she said to herself … now keep in mind, she is not an expert in prayer or God or even medicine. But she has the gall, the courage to simply decide, if I can just simply touch the hem of His garment, I shall be made well. And so she sneaks up to him in the crowd and is able to touch the hem of his garment. And the other translations say that Jesus felt power going out from Him, and He stopped in the crowd and He said, “Who touched me? Who touched me?” And the disciples said, “You’re surrounded by this big crowd. What do you mean who touched you? Everybody’s jostling against you.” And the woman came forward and admitted that it was her.

And Jesus turned and seeing her, verse 22, He said, “Take heart daughter, your faith has made you well. Her faith in her God, in her decision, if I touch the hem of His garment, Jesus says, that’s what worked. Friends, we believe, but may God help our unbelief. And instantly, the woman was made well.

Later on in that same chapter, in fact, that whole of chapter 9 is full of times where Jesus answers prayer. But here’s another one. As Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, have mercy on us, O son of David. And when he entered the house, the blind men came to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe I am able to do this?” And they said to Him, “Yes, Lord. And He touched their eyes saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” And according to their faith, verse 30, their eyes were opened.

Friends, we need to take care of our faith because it allows our prayers to be answered. And a little bit later, you see this scripture. We talked about this last week. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, like people who have problems, like people who are struggling, like people all around you and me. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, The Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest,” for people to be sent so that God can help the lives of all those people who are harassed and helpless. And in these days following Pentecost for the people who are around us as well! I think that’s what God wants us to do.

The next morning, the mother came to the little girl, and she said, “How do you feel about your prayer today?” And she said, “Mom, God has answered my prayer. There will not be a single bird caught in my brother’s trap.”

And the mother says, “Well, honey, now how can you be so certain? How can you be so certain?”

She said, “Well, mom, a couple of weeks ago, the preacher was talking about how we need to take a step of faith and I decided to take a step of faith. I went out to the woods and I stepped all over that trap. I stomped it to pieces.”

And the mother said, “That’ll work.”

Friends, sometimes, like touching the hem of his garment, God asks us to do something. And it releases God’s power. But it may take a little courage for you to go out there in the woods and kick that trap to pieces, or whatever it is. But you can take that step of faith. Sometimes a step of faith is part of your prayers … to not just ask God for something but to do something in response to your prayer.

Now with regard to that, however, there is a caution. You do not want to play chicken with God. The picture you’re looking at on the screen is a picture that a family in St. Louis saw on their way to church one Sunday morning. Apparently, this man and his car had an argument with a brick building and he lost. Now if you’re not familiar with that term, to play chicken, is where one car and another car race directly toward each other for a head-on collision, and the one who veers off is the chicken. Apparently, the brick wall did not veer off.

The reason we don’t play chicken with God is that that’s something the devil tempts people to do. If you really believe, the devil says, then you do this, you do that. Jesus was tempted three different ways in Matthew chapter 4 at the beginning of his ministry. The second one is that the devil takes him to the top of the temple, and he says, “Jump off. And while you’re headed to the ground, the scripture says that God will send angels to catch you to prevent any harm from coming to you. And carry you safely to the ground in the temple.” Which, by the way, was how they expected the Messiah to come.

And the response of Jesus to the devil was this, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” This is a quote from an Old Testament story involving Moses, but the whole quote is, “You shall not tempt the Lord to destroy you” by not answering your prayer.” Don’t play chicken with God. Because maybe those angels will make that other car veer off, but maybe not. Because sometimes God lets consequences happen.

But I see this from time to time. Good, well-meaning Christian people say, “You are not serious about prayer unless you take chances, unless you gamble, unless you put God in a position to where you are going to be terribly hurt if God doesn’t do what you want.” And Christian people are encouraged to do that. To bet the farm, so to speak. And I would say that’s not a godly thing. It’s good to be ambitious. It’s good to be courageous. But sometimes God does not answer our prayers.

Please do NOT put yourself in a position where if God chooses not to answer the prayer, you will be harmed. You can not dare God to rescue you. It’s disrespectful. The man who’s driving that car, the fellow who was driving – Well, how did he dare God? Well, first of all, he was drinking. Interestingly enough, he crawled out the back window and was completely uninjured. He also dared God because he was driving without a license. I hope the accident taught him something.

But don’t play chicken with God. Don’t say, “God, kill me if you don’t answer this prayer,” or something like that. Don’t be like that. Thy will be done. But you can still pray bold and courageous prayers.

And answers to our prayers, I believe, have the most powerful effect on the lives of people. Because when God answers your prayers and my prayers, people become aware that there is a God. Rodney Gypsy Smith, the evangelist, said that there are five gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the Christian. He went on to say most people will never read the first four. These books of the Bible are the books that talk about the life of Jesus. How most people learn about the life of Jesus, however, is by looking at your life and my life. And I believe that when they see that God is answering prayers, it makes them hungry for their own prayers to be answered. Consequently, I’d like to say the most effective evangelist is answered prayer. And in order for God to prove God’s love for us, God’s people need to pray. And it’s not at all a bad thing to give God the credit when God answers prayer in a positive and a good way.

And so I want to encourage you to pray ABC prayers. Ambitious prayers that bring a great blessing, prayers that are not timid, but courageous. Because your hope that you feel for the welfare of the people around you will empower the faith of your prayers. Romans 5:5: hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. And out of your hope for people, you pray with faith. Romans 12:12, Paul says, rejoice in your hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Hope will empower you to be constant in prayer. Romans chapter 15:13, Paul prays this prayer, may the God of hope, fill you with all joy and peace in believing. So that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. And I believe that this hope will help us to pray prayers that change the lives of people all around us.

So take heart, friends, your faith will make people well. Take courage, friends, Jesus will ask you, Do you believe that I am able to do this? And you can say, I believe, help my unbelief.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, help us not to be timid in our prayers, help us not to ask for little teeny tiny things, but to have the courage to pray for what’s needed. Help us to have the courage to pray for a great blessing that will turn someone’s life around. Help us have the ambition, Lord, to ask you for a full and complete answer to the problems of people. A full and complete healing, all the help that is needed. Lord, help us to pray ambitious and courageous prayers of blessing. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again,, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help.
I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life.
Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not.
Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature.
Help me to serve you in flow as I am gifted.
Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood.
I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Holy Spirit, come alongside of us, fill us, comfort and counsel us, speak through us, and empower us to do God’s will. Amen.

HYMN Children of the Heavenly Father
Children of the Heavenly Father by SE Samonte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Le7-y9xVI

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus by Alan Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO4uIyz_d90

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: “Ask Me For Them” – Praying In Your Circle
Text: 1 Timothy 2:3-4, Matthew 9:35-38, James 4:1-3, John 7:37-39
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

——————————————————————————————————–
SERMON NOTES

1 Timothy 2:3 This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 

Matthew 9:35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

James 4:1 What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? 2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

John 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. 38 He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

ARTICLE: Forrest Chapel UMC welcomes prayed-for new members
July 14, 2023
https://www.umcna.org/postdetail/forrest-chapel-umc-welcomes-prayed-for-new-members-17489680

————————————————————————————————————-

HYMN Blest Be The Tie That Binds
Blest Be The Tie That Binds by Darby Hughes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r42dPVi3AVM

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

“Ask me for them.” Last week, we talked about circles of influence and circles of blessing to where God would bless people around you because every single one of us has a circle of influence. And I shared this diagram with you. This is a diagram from Oregon where the irrigation arms go around in a circle, and they water everything in the circle, and consequently, everything in the circle grows. And I suggested to you that this is a little bit like the Holy Spirit overflowing out of us to, in effect, water the people around us so that they can grow. And I suggested to you that what God wants from us after Pentecost is to be able to flow out from people like you and me, ordinary people, to touch the lives of people around us.

A number of years ago, a good friend, Pastor Tom Logsdon, shared something with me that made an impression. He said, “The very first meeting when you go to a new church– the very first meeting you have with the Administrative Board, bring them all up into the sanctuary and have them sit where they sit. And people being people, they’ll be scattered all over the sanctuary.” And he said, “I look at them, and I tell them this, ‘Wherever you’re sitting, that’s your zone. And whoever sits near you, those are your people. So you pray for them. You ask God to help them when they need help. And if there’s a Sunday that they’re not there, you pray for them. And pray that they’ll soon find their way back.‘” And he said, “If it ever happens that a new person comes and sits in your zone” – hi, Susan – “those people are yours.” [laughter] Susan loves to say hello to new people, although they’re not all new. But we’re just so glad that you’re with us today.

And I thought to myself, “What a beautiful idea it is, that we should care for our neighbors.” Now, the commandment says to love your neighbor as yourself, but the idea is that part of our neighbors are the people who sit near us when we come to church, the people who live near us, the people who we are in touch with as the week goes by.

Let me tell you a story from the history of missions. This story comes from Burma, now known as Myanmar. I’m guessing, around 1828, there was a Baptist missionary, Adonirom Judson. And he was a missionary to Burma. And what you’re looking at is the Salween River valley in Burma. And he was coming there to preach the gospel. And he camped on a hill overlooking this valley.

And in the night, he couldn’t sleep. And he looked down and he could see the fires, little fires in the distance, which were fires in the villages in that entire river valley. And he cried out in prayer. He said, “Lord, what should I do so that these people can hear the gospel?” And even though he was a good Baptist and good Baptists generally don’t think this way, he actually heard, as the story goes, he actually heard God speak to him in an audible voice. And what the voice said was this, as he looked out over all the people who lived in that valley, what the Lord said to him was this, “Ask me for them. Ask me for them.” And so before he went down into the valley to begin to preach, he spent a day there in prayer on the hill, asking God for the people who lived there to come to Christ.

Asking God for people makes a lot of sense. I have here in my hand a story that comes to us all the way from Alabama. I put the link on our church Facebook page so that you can read it if you would like, the whole story. But there’s a small church in Alabama, it’s called Forest Chapel. And they decided to pray for God to bring them new members.
And here’s the story.

About a year ago, a small group of church members at Forrest Chapel UMC in Hartselle embarked on a prayer journey.

The group began meeting right after Sunday morning worship service each week to pray. The time was brief and to the point. The prayer was for God to send the church five new families.

Jennie Turney, a longtime member of the congregation, shared that her daughter’s large church in another state was praying for 25 new families. She challenged her own church to do the same on a smaller scale. They decided to pray for God to send five new families.

“For a small country church, this seemed like a big ask!” said Patty Andrews. “We hadn’t really grown at such a rate over the last several years.”

The group decided not to have any big events to attract people. They were just going to pray. They met in a room off the narthex for about five minutes of prayer each week. Six to eight people were involved, taking turns leading the prayer time.

“We didn’t have strangers immediately lining up at the door, begging to join,” said Andrews. “We didn’t even have a strategic plan of action. We just had a real desire to share the love of Christ with our friends, family and community, offer a place to meet together to worship God and provide space to experience the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.”

Since the group started praying, Forest Chapel has added six new members. “We are very thankful for our six new members, and for God’s love, mercy and grace,” she said. “God is so faithful!”

https://www.umcna.org/postdetail/forrest-chapel-umc-welcomes-prayed-for-new-members-17489680

So whether it’s a valley in Burma in the 1800s, whether it’s a little tiny country church in Alabama in 2023, we can ask God in prayer. It’s a prayer that God answers. As I said to you last week, things that we never pray for may never happen. And so James pushes us. James says very clearly, “You do not have because you do not ask.” And so friends, consequently, let’s definitely ask God for what is near and dear and important to our heart, whatever that might be.

James goes on to say, “You ask and you do not receive sometimes because you ask wrongly out of selfish motives to spend it on your passions, to give you what you want to need instead of what other people need.” We don’t pray for new members so that we can be a bigger church, we pray for new members because God blesses people who come closer to Christ. And there are so many things that we need, and we often forget to make it a goal to ask God first, specifically and deliberately.

Now, this particular prayer, let me give you a couple of scriptures to support it. This one comes from first 1 Timothy 2:3 where Paul says, “This is good and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,” verse 4, “Who desires all people to be saved.”

The United Methodist Church and its history is Arminian where our theology understands that God desires all people to be saved. There are other kinds of theology that say that God chooses these people to go to heaven and God chooses these people to go to hell. And we don’t believe that. We believe in exactly what Paul says right here: God desires all people to be saved.

Consequently, when you pray this prayer, you’re praying according to God’s will and God answers your prayer. God desires all people to be saved, God desires all people to come to a knowledge of the truth. And this is something we can pray.

Now, there is no reason why you could not pray for everyone in that giant crowd. When I found this picture on the Internet, it said there were 2,000 people lined up on that street. You can pray for the whole bunch of them. But I’ll be honest with you, God is most likely to answer the prayer that you pray when you can pray for someone by name. Because your prayers will be most effective among the people that you know. The people in your circle of influence.

And in fact, Jesus said that your service to God in this sort of prayer is very important. Matthew 9 verse 35, “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease, and every infirmity.” Verse 36, “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them. Because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” Like people that had no one to watch over them and take care of them.

How is Jesus going to solve that problem? Here’s the very next verse. Now, what’s interesting about this verse is, as I read the New Testament, there are only two places where Jesus gives people a prayer request. There are two specific places where Jesus says, “Pray for this,” and this is one of those two. It’s in your bulletin every single week. It is on the prayer page in your bulletin every single week, because Jesus asks us to pray for this to happen: Then Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

In 1985, I moved to Quincy, Illinois, and behind the house where I lived was a large plot of farmland. Perhaps 2-4 acres. And the farmer who farmed that grew vegetables for the farmer’s market, and he grew flowers for florists. And my neighbor said to me, “Thank God he’s growing things for the florist.” The previous year, he planted the whole four acres in tomatoes. And the price was so bad, he left the tomatoes in the field to rot. It was not pleasant to live in that house that year!

Now, you think about farmers. Some of us here are farmers. Some of us are retired farmers. You know you work all year long. The most foolish thing in the world would be to leave it out in the field. Somebody needs to go out and bring it in. In the same way, what Jesus, I think, is saying to us is that there are people who are ready. And there are people who are ripe. And somebody needs to go bring them in. And in those days, it was individuals walking out, looking over the field, picking what’s ripe, and bringing it in. And maybe that’s still how God desires to work. Because sometimes, God’s answer to a problem is a person.

Now, we’re in an age to where we invent big machines to do our work for us. I’m not up to date on the latest in farming equipment. But every time I talk to farmers, they seem to tell me that the combines this year are now bigger than last year’s and more expensive than last year’s. But sometimes, God’s answer to a problem is not a big machine, but a person. And that prayer that Jesus asks us to pray suggests that God wants to send people out into the harvest, to help other people find their way home.

Now, let me give you what may seem like a silly example. There’s a Southern Baptist Sunday school expert by the name of Josh Hunt. And he wrote this a number of years ago. He said, “We used to have friends over on Friday nights to play cards. We would have dessert, tell jokes, and play games together. One day, I suggested to Sharon,” his wife, “That we invite a couple who had visited the church to join us on Friday night. We did. And we had a good time in the process. During the entire evening, we never said anything about church, or Sunday school, or the Bible, or anything remotely religious. But do you know what? They joined the church in a few weeks. Now, he is teaching a Sunday school class himself. And they would both tell you that they were not living a disciple’s life before they played cards and ate dessert with us that night.

That’s why I say if you want to double your Sunday school class every two years or less, give a Friday night to Jesus. Have your friends over. Play cards. Eat pie. Tell jokes. Laugh. Have a good time. But most of all, include people who are not a part of the church. Ministry has never been so much fun. And this ministry is based on sound church growth thinking.”

And then, here comes this phrase that really spoke to me. He said, “People are no longer looking for a friendly church. They’re looking for friends.” And what I take that to mean is that when the Holy Spirit tries to wake someone up, you know what will happen? They’ll go to church with their friends. He goes on to write – and this is astonishing – “90% of the people who came to play cards, 90%, later joined the church.”

Well, I don’t know if you want to get together and play cards this Friday or not. But just in case you wondered, that’s why we have a SALT potluck once a month for people to get together and visit with each other. In case you wondered, that’s why we try to go on a trip once a month, and that’s to give you an opportunity to invite people that might be too shy to come to church, to invite people that are disinterested in a sermon, no matter how good it is. But they still love pie, and they still like to get together with people. And more in this day and age than any time in history, people are lonely and feel isolated and abandoned and in need of friends. That’s why Jesus said to the disciples, “First command: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and there’s the second, to love your neighbor as yourself.” Now there are all kinds of ways to love your neighbor, but pie works. What Jesus wants us to do is to show love and care to people at the point of their greatest need because, you see, sometimes God chooses to solve a problem with a person.

So how do we turn this verse into a prayer? Here’s what I would suggest to you: there are specific people around you in your circle of influence. Some of them you probably know by name, but some of them maybe not. Maybe it’s the couple that lives three doors down and have little kids. But you can pray, “Lord Jesus, please help that couple that lives down the street from me to be saved. Lord, please help that young family to come to a knowledge of the truth. Lord Jesus, please help that young family come to follow you as Lord and Savior. Please help them to come home and be a part of a church family.”

Jesus made a prayer request, and we can pray that as a prayer also. “Lord Jesus, please help me to be a laborer in your harvest. Lord Jesus, please help me to love my neighbor in such a way that it helps them to come to you. Lord Jesus, please help me to be the kind of friend that everyone needs who is coming toward you.”

In a minute, we’re going to sing the hymn, Blest Be the Tie That Binds. But I want to suggest, brothers and sisters, just like a baby lives for nine months before a baby is born, the tie that connects a person to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, it starts out there in the world outside the church, as God gently and patiently draws people to come home to Him.

And here’s the thing: sometimes it’s true that we do not have because we do not ask. Lord, please help our church to be a nurturing blessing so that many new people will come home to Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, we ask this in your name. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again,, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help.
I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life.
Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not.
Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature.
Help me to serve you in flow as I am gifted.
Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood.
I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Holy Spirit, come alongside of us, fill us, comfort and counsel us, speak through us, and empower us to do God’s will. Amen.

HYMN 496 Sweet Hour of Prayer
Casting Crowns – Sweet Hour of Prayer (Acoustic)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwOPwAVDN7s

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN 328 Surely The Presence Of The Lord
Surely the Presence of the Lord is in This Place – Don Marsh (Lyrics)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD9-1ZQctV4

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: Four Powerful Prayers from Paul
James 4:1-3, Phil 1:9-11, Col 1:9-12, Eph 3:14-21, Eph 1:16-23
Series: You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Right-click, open in new tab to play … Sermon audio … Sermon slides as a PDF file.
Wesley Sermon Audio

——————————————————————————————————–
SERMON NOTES

James 4:1 What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? 2 You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Phil. 1: 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Col. 1: 9 And so, from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Eph. 3: 14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. 20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Eph. 1: 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; 22 and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.

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HYMN 314 In The Garden
Alan Jackson – In The Garden (Live)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhIGIfsLxVk

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

This morning I would like to talk to you about a way to pray that is better and more powerful and more productive. And I want to use as examples four powerful prayers from the Apostle Paul. But before we do that, I want to remind you last week we talked about what God wants from us after Pentecost. And what I suggested to you and what you’re looking at here are irrigation circles. Maybe you’ve seen those great long arms that rotate around a central pivot to put water on the fields. Where water flows, life grows. And I want to suggest that, around you and me is a circle of influence … that as God flows through us as the Holy Spirit overflows, as we said last week, “out of his heart shall flow rivers of the living water.” And that’s the Holy Spirit overflowing us. We have the opportunity for green growth, love and joy and peace to grow all around us amid the people with whom we have influence, the people who are a part of our neighborhood, so to speak. So what God wants from us after Pentecost is for the Holy Spirit to spread out to the people around us, each one of us.

But here’s what James has to say about prayer, which I think is a beautiful foundation. James 4:1, “What causes war, what causes findings among you?” Take a look at every example of conflict you run across, every argument among people, every feud that people carry on; what’s the cause of that? James says, “Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire, and you do not have, so you kill. And you covet, which is a form of envy. And you cannot obtain the thing that you covet, and so you fight. And you wage war.”

What’s the cause of that? What’s the solution to that? And here’s what James says to us, “You do not have because you do not ask.” Everything boils down to whether you and I asked in prayer. Because if you don’t ask in prayer, what happens is you fall into that place of blaming and feuding with other people instead of turning to God who can help us. And not only that, James goes on to say, the third verse there, “You ask and don’t receive.” Why? Because all you’re worried about is yourself. “You ask and do not receive,” James says, “because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Your desires.

If we want to pray more powerful prayers, nothing can lead directly to a better life than that. It’s a wonderful thing for us to learn, to ask better. And not only that, it’s one way to change the world around us. Because there is such a thing as the holy envy of consequences.

The early Methodist people followed three rules. We spent time in January in sermons talking about these three rules. The first one is there are things that we should stop. And if you stop those things, your life will get better. John Wesley put it this way. “Do no harm.” Stop doing things that harm you. Stop doing things that harm other people. Your life will instantly get better.

Number two, there are things we need to start doing. John Wesley puts it this way. “Do all the good you can,” and that’ll make your life better and the lives of people around you better.

Third, John Wesley says, and this phrase is a little hard to understand and as a result, people keep watering it down. John Wesley says, “Attend upon all the ordinances of God.” In other words, everything that God provides for you to be strong or as a spiritual person, show up and attend. Worship, Bible study, opportunities to learn, and Wesley describes each of these things.

And because the Methodist people followed these rules, instead of spending what little money they had on alcohol, which was the crack cocaine of their day, there was food on the tables in Methodist homes. Instead of spending money on gambling, the Methodist people had money to pay their rent. Instead of spending money on clothing, Methodist people were known for dressing in very plain clothing, but consequently, their children had clothing.

Now, you remember that first slide, what causes wars and fighting between you? What happened with the early Methodist people is this. People around them saw that Methodist children had clothes. Methodist children had shoes. Methodist children had food. Methodist families could pay their rent. And they wanted that. And they saw that by investing in their spiritual life, God could help them, and this holy envy for the consequences of living a spiritual life caused many people to want to follow Jesus … because they saw the benefits of following Jesus in the lives of people who were faithful. Now, the early Methodist people, they did a lot to help people. They did a lot to help the poor. But you have to imagine, as one mother looks at the family living across the street, that she’s wondering, “Why can’t our children have what they have?” And so Jesus says in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven.” Because as my prayers and your prayers are answered for yourself, people will want to come and also receive the blessing of what God is doing. And then, you can see their lives change and be blessed.

So Paul gives us four powerful prayers. There’s a pastor by the name of Larry Stockstill. He shared a practice he has involving four powerful prayers from Paul. He prays the first one in the morning, prays the second one at noon, prays the third one at supper time, and prays the fourth one at bedtime; he says that this practice increases the powers of his prayers. And we can learn from that, too.

Philippians 1:9, Paul writes, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment.” And you and I can take that phrase and turn it into a prayer. “Lord Jesus, we ask that our love may abound more and more and that our love will have knowledge and discernment.”

And that prayer has consequences. Look at what they are. Paul names them, verse 10– So that you may approve what is excellent. You will know the difference between right and wrong but also between what’s good and what’s not good. And you may be pure in blameless for the day of Christ. In verse 11, You can be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which come through Jesus Christ of the glory and praise of God.

Here’s the noon prayer. “And so from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you,” Paul writes, “Asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His Will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Make it a prayer: Lord, I ask that we may be filled with the knowledge of Your Will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. You see, you can turn that phrase into a prayer. And here are the consequences of that prayer. Verse 10– As God answers that prayer, it will empower you to lead a life worthy of the Lord, a life that is fully pleasing to Him, a life where you are bearing fruit in every good work, a life where you are increasing in the knowledge of God. Paul goes on to say, “May you be strengthened with all power.” Make it a prayer: Lord, strengthen us with all power according to your glorious might. And here are the consequences of that prayer. You’ll find that you have endurance. You will find that you have patience with joy even when times are difficult. Verse 12– You’ll find that you’ll be able to give thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in life. Do you see how that works? You turn a phrase from the Scripture into a prayer and ask God to do what God says God wants to do within us.

Here’s the supper-time prayer. Ephesians 3:14. For this reason, Paul writes, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. And this is what he prays: That according to the riches of his glory, God’s glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man. And what happens when you’re strengthened in this way? Look at verse 17. And that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Make it a prayer: Lord, I pray that you would grant to us to be strengthened with might through your Spirit, in the inner person. And through that, Lord, we pray that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith. And here are the consequences of that prayer. The consequence of that prayer is that you will be rooted and grounded in love. And because you are rooted and grounded in love, verse 18, you’ll have power to comprehend, to understand with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and death. You’ll be able to understand the world around you. You will be able to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. And you will be able to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him, Paul writes, who by the power at work within us, because God is working in you, is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. You see, if God answers this prayer, there will be a consequence. You will become aware of the power that God has, which is far more abundant than anything we might be able to conceive, anything that we can ask or think.

The bedtime prayer, Ephesians 1:16: I do not cease to give thanks for you, Paul writes, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory – here’s the prayer – may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation, in other words, of God’s will and what God is doing will be revealed– a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. And here are the consequences of that prayer. Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, you will see what others are unable to see – and here’s the consequence – that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. Friends, sometimes we need hope in this difficult world. That you may know, Paul writes, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints – God is able to help us. And the third consequence, you will now know the immeasurable greatness of his power working within us who believe.

Friends, these consequences are worth praying for, and in fact, the truth is, as you read the scripture, you can take any saying of Jesus and turn it into a prayer. You can take any idea that Jesus gives you about what life should be like, or what should be different. You can turn that into a prayer. Lord, help me. You can take any command of Jesus, that we are to do this or to do that, and you can say, “Lord, help me to follow you.” You can take any word of Jesus and turn it into a prayer. And you see, here’s the truth, Friends. If Jesus said it, when you pray it, you are praying according to God’s will, and you’re praying a prayer that God delights in answering. Consequently, in whatever difficulties you or I might face, also remember, we’re not in this alone; there’s this circle of people around us where we have influence. Any difficulty that other people face, the question for us is, What did Jesus say about this? And that will guide us in knowing how to pray.

Here’s an example. We pray this every week, it sinks in. This circle of influence, what is it? Help me to notice my neighbor. Why? Because the commandment is this; love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And oh, love your neighbor as yourself.

I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks. As I would lay down at night and wait to fall asleep, I would always pray for all of my needs. And I became convicted. I now pray for my neighbor as I pray for my own needs. Lord Jesus, heal me of this illness. Oh, and heal my neighbor, Kim, she is my closest neighbor (she is my wife). But I also mention your names as they come to me because you’re my neighbors, too. Help me to notice my neighbor, and Lord work through me. Let the Holy Spirit flow through me, so that the people who are connected to me, their lives will change because it’s true, friends, you have a neighbor.

We are supposed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. You have a circle of influence, and there are people in it, and those people are your mission field. And there might just be a few of them, but they are your mission field, and God can help them through your prayers.

So Lord, help me to notice my neighbor, and as you notice your neighbor, add your neighbors to your prayers. Because here’s the reality as you come in contact your neighbors, as you bump into them, as you see them, you know this first part of the Centering Prayer is true for you and me, but it’s also true for them.

How many times do I find myself saying, Lord, today, I am far less than the person I want to be. But what’s really smart is to include my neighbor in my prayers. Lord Jesus, we are far less than the people we want to be, far less than the people we can be with Your help. Lord Jesus, I ask today that You would be more and more the center of our lives. It’s very easy to include our neighbors in our prayers because our needs are often very similar.

And as the center of our lives, Lord, guide us to all that is good. Cleanse us from all that is not. Teach us Your ways. And form in us Your nature. Because if you only pray for yourself, you will miss seeing the great power of God flowing onward and outward from you to bless the people who are in that circle of influence. Where, as the Holy Spirit overflows you, God’s life will lift them up, solve their problems, and turn them around.

Let me remind you of what James said, “You do not have because you do not ask.” But not only that, I don’t think it’s unfair to take that third verse and say it this way: Sometimes, your neighbors do not have because you do not ask. Let’s learn to be more powerful in prayer. Let’s learn to ask God to flow through us, not just to help us, but so that people around us would be blessed. Let’s learn how to ask and pray in a better and more powerful way.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, You look upon us in our lives, and you see our struggles. We are so thankful for Your help. We are so thankful, Lord Jesus, that You are the shepherd of the 23rd Psalm in our lives. And when we find ourselves in that place that frightens us, that place that is like the valley of the shadow of death, Lord, You come and comfort us. But Lord, help us to also be aware that around us are people who are just as afraid, just as hurt, just as much in need as we are. Lord, help our prayers to embrace them so that they might feel Your presence and Your help as well along their journey. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )
 

If you prefer to worship at home at this time or simply wish to listen to the service or sermon again,, you’re welcome to use the links below to have a time of worship at home. (Just click on the link to play each hymn or the sermon in a separate tab, and close that tab when finished.)

CALL TO WORSHIP:
Lord Jesus, today I am far less than the person I want to be or can be with your help.
I ask today that you would be more and more the center of my life.
Guide me to all that is good, cleanse me from all that is not.
Teach me Your ways and form in me Your nature.
Help me to serve you in flow as I am gifted.
Help me to notice my neighbor and work through me to redeem my neighborhood.
I am a sinner; please be my Shepherd, my Savior and my Lord. Amen.
Holy Spirit, come alongside of us, fill us, comfort and counsel us, speak through us, and empower us to do God’s will. Amen.

HYMN Hymn of Promise, 707
Hymn of Promise – sung by Yusica Elbasia (Indonesia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_k2asJ6EE

A TIME OF PRAYER (Testimonies, Joys & Concerns)

Congregational Prayer − Dear Lord, This morning as I contemplate a new day, I ask you to help me. I want to be aware of and filled with your Spirit—leading me in the decisions I take, the conversations I have, and the work I do. I want to be more like you, Jesus, as I relate to the people I meet today—friends or strangers. Amen.

Please pray for yourself and your neighbors, lifting up your needs to God while giving thanks for answered prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven; hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

HYMN Fill My Cup, Lord, 641
Fill My Cup, Lord – Jessy Dixon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPyz7fR-e6A

MOMENTS WITH THE CHILDREN – If you are blessed to have children with you, ask them what they are thankful for, and then thank God together!

GIVING OF OUR TITHES AND OFFERINGS – these can be mailed to the church office.

MESSAGE: Wells Are Not Rivers
Text: John 4:5-41, 7:37-39, Galatians 5:22-23, 6:7
Series: The Greatest Story Ever Retold

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Wesley Sermon Audio

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SERMON NOTES

John 4:5 So he came to a city of Samar’ia, called Sy’char, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 There came a woman of Samar’ia to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samar’ia?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, “What do you wish?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the city and were coming to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. 36 He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

John 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. 38 He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

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HYMN 367 He Touched Me
Gaither Vocal Band – He Touched Me [Live]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W-MQFVSEXc

BENEDICTION The Prayer of St Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If you worship at home, please let us know so we can pray for you!

TRANSCRIPT

Wells are not rivers.

Some of you will understand this picture very well. This is an aerial shot taken in Oregon. And you see those circles? You may not know what they are, but those are irrigation circles. There is irrigation equipment inside the circle that rotates and brings water. And wherever water flows, life grows. Oregon has an area called the high desert. There’s very little rain there. But wherever the water flows, life grows.

Now, on the sign out in front of the church, you’ll see a question, “What does God want from us after Pentecost?” And I was thinking this week that this picture of irrigation circles is probably the most beautiful picture of what God wants from us after the holiday, the holy day of Pentecost.

And here’s what makes those circles. You see, this is called center pivot irrigation. It was invented in 1940. And there is a center pivot, and this arm goes out, and as far as it can reach, it sprinkles water on the ground. And wherever water flows, life grows. Now, the center of our life is Jesus Christ. But the living water that comes to us from God is supposed to flow out from the center where Jesus is, on out all around us. Now, the circle around Jesus was probably bigger than the circle around you or me. But what Jesus wants from us after Pentecost is still this: we want to let the living water flow because it doesn’t take much living water to change the world.

You’re looking at a picture of what is called a superbloom. You see, in the desert, seeds sit and wait for the rain. They’re all ready to bloom and grow, but they sit and they wait for the rain. And in the desert, when there is all of a sudden a time of rain, all of a sudden, it will bloom into flowers in a very short time. It doesn’t take much living water to change the world around us.

Let’s take a look at John 4. I want to tell you this is a complicated and beautiful scripture. We could talk about it for eight hours, but we won’t. We could probably talk about it for several days. But we won’t. But that means we have to take a quick look at just a little bit of it.

John 4:7, “There came a woman of Samaria to draw water at the well. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink,’ for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. And the Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you- a Jew- ask a drink of me- a woman of Samaria?” Now, here’s my first observation. This woman was feisty, okay? Here she is all by herself at the well, far outside of the village, alone with a man who could be a murderer. And she wants to start an argument with him and say, “How is it that you, a Jewish person, even want me to do something to help you? You think that we are unclean because we’re Samaritans.” “Well, Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,” it goes on to say, but Jesus does.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” And she continues this feisty discussion with him, and Jesus explains it a little further. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Now, if you live in this desert economy, for you to have your own well, for you to have your own source of water, that is a great experience of wealth. And they continue their argument, but basically, this is what Jesus is offering her: I’m going to provide you with all the water you’re going to need.

And I’ve been thinking about this because it occurs to me that there are a lot of people who– and I’m not quite sure exactly how to put it, but they are customers of God. They are customers of the church. They come to church because they want to receive what they need. And there’s nothing wrong with that because that’s how we all got here.

But it occurred to me– and I’ll be frank with you. It occurred to me when I was trying to talk to my son about following Jesus Christ. It occurred to me that for most people, once their needs are met, they’re very happy in that about the highest that they perceive the value that Christ and the church can give them is to meet their needs and the needs of their family.

But wells are not rivers.

You see, a river is an abundance of water. And it is an abundance of water because somewhere, a well overflows. As Jesus literally says in verse 14, the water that Jesus gives us is intended to become within us not a well where we can go for what we need, but it is intended to become a spring of water that wells up and overflows to eternal life.

And you see when the water overflows, it looks like this. Now, that’s not much of a river. but when water overflows, it looks like this. Now, the previous verses came from John chapter 4; these come from 3 chapters later in John 7. In the middle of one of the most important holy worship services held in the temple on the last day of the feast, the great day. My imagination is that Jesus stood up in the middle of the sermon or in the middle of this service when there was a time of silence and shouted out to everyone who was there, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

You see the difference? Wells are sufficient for you and I, but wells are not rivers. What God wants is for the living water to overflow. Now, the very next verse, verse 39, the scripture connects this with the day of Pentecost: Now, this Jesus said about the spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive. You see, when the Holy Spirit is received, the living water begins to overflow. Yet, verse 39 goes on to say, “The spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Jesus was not yet risen from the dead.

Now, the term living water refers to flowing water. Not just water that makes you come alive, but it refers to flowing water, and it again is another statement that the spirit is meant to be within us, but then to overflow because the living water is the presence of the Holy Spirit.

So what does God want from us after Pentecost? Well, here’s what flows when the Holy Spirit overflows; it flows out of you and me to everyone who surrounds us. What flows is love and joy and peace, patience and kindness and goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And some of you, probably on the inside, are shaking your head and going, “No, that’s not what overflows me!” But what I wanted to suggest is that’s what will flow through you to others if you allow the Holy Spirit to flow through you. And when the Holy Spirit overflows, what grows in other people are these things that flow through us, love and joy and peace, faith and hope and love. And this is how God works in the people around us.

Now, sometimes, the living water is best served in individual portions. The picture you’re looking at on the screen right now, if I remember correctly, it’s from Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s on Christmas Day, and the wind chill is 30 below. This man, on Christmas morning, is handing a hot cup of coffee to a homeless person living on the street in that kind of cold, even the smallest portion of living water. (And I especially like mine in the form of coffee.) But in even the smallest portion of living water, God’s love flows through one person into another.

But one of the ways that you can help the living water to flow is to start by noticing the people you talk with weekly. Now, I wouldn’t want to say to anyone for you not to pray for anyone over the whole world. In fact, if you could, it would be great if you could pray for every single person in the whole world, billions and billions of people. But certainly, the people you talk with every week, the people you see as you walk to the mailbox, the people you run into in the line at Walmart or at a ball game, certainly the people you encounter every week, you could begin to pray for those few people. Maybe there’s just a handful, a dozen, maybe a few more. And as you pray for them, the Holy Spirit is going to flow out of you into their lives and more than likely answer your prayers. Because the truth is, when you begin to pray for other people, it creates a spiritual connection, a spiritual relationship between you and the people you’re praying for because you begin to care for what happens to them.

And I think it’s a beautiful testimony when we surround ourselves with prayers, almost like a network connecting the people that we encounter. Because, as I said before, it doesn’t take much living water for a desert to bloom. And it doesn’t take many answers to prayer to change the lives of people around us. Now, some of those people will desperately need hope because they’re having a very hard time. But God can also touch the heart of a person who’s going through a time when everything’s going perfectly right. Both people need the Holy Spirit. Both people need our prayers.

And as we begin to pray for people, the Holy Spirit begins to spread living water on their lives. And just like in the desert, seeds that God had planted, perhaps years before, will suddenly begin to bloom. Because it doesn’t take much living water for a desert to bloom.

And so, consequently, remember those circles? I want to ask you to pray for the Holy Spirit to rise up out of that place in your soul and begin to flow outward to people around you. And there are all kinds of ways that God can use you, but for you to allow God to use you as a little bit more than you reaching down into your well to take what you need, it’s to allow God to use you to meet the needs of others … sometimes not by asking you to do much of anything.
Because your prayers are sufficient to release the power of God not just in your own life but in the lives of others.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to overflow you, and you’ll begin to see God change people in that circle around you. And there will be things that happen, just like Kim described with her brother in our sharing time. Prayers will be answered. And that will make you happy, I promise you. Let the Holy Spirit fill you up and flow out, and let life come to people all around you.

Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, when the Holy Spirit does something, sometimes we’re not that certain of what it is. We don’t always know what the Holy Spirit is trying to do. Sometimes we feel like we should say something. Sometimes we feel like we should say something, and we don’t. Sometimes we feel like we should pray, and we’re not certain what to pray for, but, Lord, you can answer our prayers exactly as you wish. And so, Lord, even if our prayer is little more than, “Thy will be done,” we are so thankful, Lord, that you can bless all the people that we’re in touch with because we pray for them. Lord, may your Holy Spirit flow out from us to the people in the circle around us. And we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: Let’s have a conversation! Please reflect upon the questions below as you consider the material presented above. In a comment, share your thoughts and additional questions. What would you like to know?

What grabbed your attention?
What is the human need or problem?
What questions do you have about any quotes provided?
Does the Bible say anything about this?
What solutions do you see for the problem?
What specifically could we begin to do to make a change?

Additional Resources

Kinmundy United Methodist Church is located at 308 E. Third Street, Kinmundy, IL 62854. Worship begins at 9 am Sundays. The building is handicap accessible.
Wesley United Methodist Church is located at 3381 Kinoka Road, Patoka, IL 62875 in the country between Kinmundy and Patoka. Worship begins at 10.45 am Sundays.
VISION: We are a functional family of God, where Jesus is Lord and people grow.
MISSION: Every layperson is called to carry out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20); every layperson is called to be missional. (¶126 of the 2016 Book of Discipline)
Paradigm: There are two kinds of people in this world: people who need to become disciples and disciples who need to become disciple makers.

(If you wish, you can listen to the Prayer of St. Francis being sung:
Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPnMxp5Occ )