Sermon Psalm 139 Prayer: Not Room Service
Richard Niell Donovan
Just imagine what it would be like to be God, and to listen to all the prayers that are prayed. There must be millions of prayers each hour, prayed in every language. What do all these prayers say?
If there is any one common denominator, I suspect that it could be summarized by the words, “Give me!” That would not be true of all prayers, but it would be true of most.
And that is, to some extent, in keeping with the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. He taught us to say,“Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), so it must be all right for us to ask for things.
But we should examine our prayer lives to see if our prayers ever rise above asking if we have grown in the Christian faith sufficiently for our prayers to include something other than asking.
I used to travel and spent lots of nights in nice hotels, so I really appreciate the image that Kenneth Wilson draws of prayer. He says:
“There’s something exquisitely luxurious
about room service in a hotel.
All you have to do is pick up a phone
and somebody is ready and waiting to bring you
breakfast, lunch, dinner, chocolate milkshake,
whatever your heart desires and your stomach will tolerate.
Or by another languid motion of the wrist,
you can telephone for someone
who will get a soiled shirt quickly transformed into a clean one
or a rumpled suit into a pressed one.
That’s the concept that some of us have of prayer.
We have created God in the image of a divine bellhop.
Prayer, for us, is the ultimate in room service,
wrought by direct dialing.
Furthermore, no tipping,
and everything charged to that great credit card in the sky.
Now prayer is many things,
but I’m pretty sure this is not one of the things it is.”
Billy Graham puts it this way:
“Prayer is more than verbally filling in some requisition blank.
It is fellowship with God!
It is communion with the Lord through praising Him,
rehearsing His promises,
and then sharing our needs.”
Note that what Billy Graham says corresponds to the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer. Graham says that we communion with God and praise him, only then “sharing our needs.” Jesus said for us to pray:
“Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
Let your Kingdom come.
Let your will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth”
(Matthew 6:9-10).
Only after we have prayed thusly does Jesus teach us to pray:
“Give us today our daily bread.”
The asking follows the establishment of a relationship with God. We get to know him as our Heavenly Father who is always there always loving us always rooting for us always providing for us always forgiving us. Once we get to know God in that way, it is the most natural thing in the world that we should want to thank him and praise him. It is also the most natural thing in the world that we would ask him for guidance and sustenance.
If you want a Biblical example of a wonderful prayer that lifts up the majesty and wonder of God before it asks anything for itself, you will find it in the 139th Psalm:
“Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up.
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
“You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
but, behold, Yahweh, you know it altogether.
You hem me in behind and before.
You laid your hand on me.
“This knowledge is beyond me.
It’s lofty. I can’t attain it.
“Where could I go from your Spirit?
Or where could I flee from your presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there!
If I take the wings of the dawn,
and settle in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there your hand will lead me,
and your right hand will hold me.
“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me;
the light around me will be night;’
even the darkness doesn’t hide from you,
but the night shines as the day” (Psalm 139:1-12).
This psalm goes on to magnify the wonderful nature of God. It is not until the end that the Psalmist begins to ask. And then he asks:
“Search me, God, and know my heart.
Try me, and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the everlasting way” (Psalm 139:23-24).
That is rather elegant asking by comparison with ours, isn’t it? I am more likely to ask him for a new car and a comfortable retirement. Instead, the Psalmist says:
“Search me, God, and know my heart….
and lead me in the everlasting way.”
However, I want to avoid suggesting to you that we should not pray for a new car or a comfortable retirement. A part of really accepting God as our Father is feeling free to say anything to him.
Clement of Alexandria said that “prayer is conversation with God,” and it is important that we be able to converse with him about everything that is important to us. If that means praying about new cars and comfortable retirements, so be it. That is a starting point.
But when we look at our prayers and find them centered primarily around new cars and comfortable retirements, we might ask for one more thing that God would help us to grow in our prayer life so that we might also include other things:
Adoration
Praise
Prayers for others
Thanksgiving
It isn’t that we need to stop praying about the things that are really on our hearts. Rather, we should pray that God would expand our hearts and our relationship to Him, so that we can encompass other concerns as well.
What we want to avoid is becoming, in relationship to God, like the graduating senior who sent an invitation to the graduation ceremony to a wealthy man whom he had never met in the hope that he would get an expensive gift.
Or like the efficiency expert, who prays only once a year and thereafter jumps into bed saying, “Ditto.”
Rather, we want our prayers to be rooted in a relationship with God. And our prayers help make that relationship possible. Mother Teresa says:
“Prayer enlarges the heart
until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself.”
We need not be old to attain that kind of spiritual maturity. Jesus was very clear that children have spiritual insight that we would all do well to emulate.
The story is told of a mother who noticed that her little girl was in her room a long time and she had said she was going in to pray to Jesus. Finally, when the little girl came out, her mother asked her what she was soing in her room for such a long time when she had just gone in to pray. The little girl replied:
“I was just telling Jesus that I love Him
and He was telling me that He loves me.
And we were just loving each other.”
This morning, I challenge you to become like that little girl, for of such is the kingdom of God.
Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.
Copyright 2009, Richard Niell Donovan