A House of Prayer

Sermon given at Sydenstricker UMC 10/30/16

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^NRS  Mark 11:15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶ and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ He was teaching and saying, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? 

In 1960 I was four years old, growing up in the Methodist Church where I had been baptized as an infant. I don’t really remember those years all that well, but I remember some things about them, the fact that I had a little dog, that we lived in a neighborhood and I had friends and my youngest brother came into the world that year in January. For those that remember those days, they were the beginning of the end of the heydays of the church. In 1960 there were 275,000 people living in Fairfax County, 145 people were members of this church up from the 20 just five years before when Rev. Amidon was sent to close the church within the year. Those are the historical facts from 1960. Now here we are 56 years later and it is as if that time never existed in the life of the church. Interestingly enough, the county has shown considerable growth to 1.3 million in the 2013 census while the church had grown to over 1000 members by 1990 with an average worship attendance over 400. Today we have declined to around 561 members with an average worship attendance of 213. In that same period the larger Methodist church has lost 3 million members while the world has grown significantly.

I’m tired. How about you? Are you tired? We have been on a roll in this church for some time now, battling spiritual issues while the world around us deals with economic crisis and war. It’s enough to make a saint weary. We have been formulating vison, leading studies, focusing on what is happening and even have thrown in a mission activity here and there where we have reached out to the community. I heard the other day that if we are so busy for God that we feel worn out, maybe somewhere along the line we left out God. Let me say that again. If we are so busy in our work for God that we are tired out, maybe we have left out God. Boy, when I heard that I had to say AMEN. Sure sounded like how I am feeling, tired, worn out, exhausted and struggling to figure out what God wants us to do next.

It has been said that in the history of the world, the people strayed from God more often than they followed His will and His plan. Why is that? Because we like to be in charge! And we often think that we know more about what God needs us to do than God does. So we make plans, go off in some direction without consulting God, and find ourselves worn out, out of resources, and not accomplishing what we had hoped. In fact I can assure you that if we decide to do it our way, we will never accomplish what God could have done through us. So I am here this morning to tell you that where I am is realizing that I need to be revived. How about you? Here is what I know. All things are possible with God. There is nothing that God cannot accomplish if you and I are willing to be utilized as His instruments in the world. Matthew 7:7 tells us that ask and we shall receive, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives and everyone who knocks, the door is opened.

Let me share some stories with you. Remember the story I told you last week about the church with no children? Well they came, twelve of them in three families. We prepared a Sunday school room for the children and purchased some children’s Bible’s for them when they came. All of them were baptized in that church and the older ones came to God as they professed their faith before God and the church. All because of prayer! When we pray to God for resources and direction, God answers us in incredible ways.

There is prayer story about four-year-old Melinda. Her favorite story was “The Three Little Pigs” which she asked her mom or dad to read every single night before bed. They gladly obliged, but after several months, her father got a bright idea. He recorded the story on tape and told her to simply press “play” before jumping under the covers.  She resisted. “But, honey,” he told her, “you can still hear it.” “Yes,” she replied, “but I can’t sit in its lap.” The Apostle John tells us in his Gospel, chapter 15 that if we allow God to abide in us and God’s words to abide in us, then whatever we ask for will be done. The first question is what it means for God to abide in us. Bishop Cho, our now former Bishop in the Virginia Annual Conference challenged us to a spiritual revival. There have been revivals in the church before with great success. And I have shared a personal story of witness that prayer works for the church. Bishop Cho’s challenge is for us to spend an hour each day with God. Whether we use a devotional, use that time for Bible study or just pray, to spend an hour each day with God. Now I can hear you already cranking up. But Pastor, do you really know what you are asking. I don’t have an hour in my day to give up. Wish I did. In fact I talked with someone just the other day and was told we would love to be at church Pastor but my new jobs a hassle and the kids have the flu but its sure nice talking to you. Actually that line comes from the song Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin. But it sums up our lives pretty well.

But truthfully, what is your life worth? What if that hour might be the difference between salvation and hell? Maybe not for you, but what about the person who does know God and your lack of giving God that hour assures that that person will never know God? How does that make you feel? Or I could just try and guilt you into it, asking you questions like, you tell me that you love God and yet you never spend any time with God. That’s the personal side of all this. What is your life worth? Is it less than an hour a day? Give God the hour and then watch what God gives back to you.

But what about the church? Maybe the reason we are so tired and worn out is that we need God to give us resources and strength. It wouldn’t hurt that God would provide a little direction as well. We know sort of what we need at Sydenstricker to be a good fruitful church. We need a church full of people willing to share a little of that Sydenstricker spirit with others. We need a church willing to take the time to reach out to those in need in our community. We need a church willing to change the nature of worship so that our focus in on glorifying God rather than a place to make each of us feel a little better about ourselves. When we have a deep loving relationship with God we will feel so much better about ourselves than we ever did. Maybe it means giving an hour a day to God. The church in my story gave that a little more and look at the results that they saw. If they can do it, so can we. Each week we print the prayer concerns in our community. What if you prayed for them by name each morning? I would like to extend that challenge this morning. Our relationship with God starts with our desire to communicate with God. We do that through prayer. Is eternity worth an hour a day?

So the real question today is this, what do you want Sydenstricker to be about? Do you want Sydenstricker to be a nice place to come once a week, encounter God and then go about your business? Or would you desire that Sydenstricker is the place where God lives through the ministries and outreach? Fifty plus years ago Sydenstricker was the center of this community. Through prayer and thanksgiving, a willingness to do the will of God, we can be again.

I would like to challenge us to become a prayer covenant church in the Virginia Annual Conference. That would mean for us that we start and maintain a prayer service sometime during the week where folks can come to pray. It would mean we spend time during the year learning or re-learning about prayer. But it would mean that we have made a concentrated effort to be in prayer.

In a speech made in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said, "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

Is God the central focus of your life today? If not, why not change that right now.