II Chronicles 7:11-16

What God Wants in Prayer

Larry Thorson

April 22, 2007

11 When Solomon had finished the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the LORD and in his own palace, 12 the LORD appeared to him at night and said:
"I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.

13 "When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.

It was a warm late April afternoon in Texas. So warm in fact that I drove with the windows down on my pickup truck. But my mind wasn’t on the heat that day. I was scheduled to preach my candidating sermon in a few days. That’s the sermon when church members vote on whether to call you as pastor or not. On that day you want to be especially careful with your words. Nothing about money, sin or speaking in tongues if you know what I mean.

As I turned off Central Expressway in Plano the radio announcer had the audacity to interrupt my anxieties about how the upcoming sermon would go to tell me that two gunmen had opened fire on a high school campus in Littleton, Colorado.

Littleton and Plano, Texas where I was were almost identical communities at least as far as the demographics were concerned. Lives in those places revolved primarily around children and how to advance their education. Children lived under incredible pressure to achieve in all areas of endeavor.

When I took the pulpit that day the first service had an 80 voice youth choir in it, youth who looked a lot like they could have gone to Columbine High School in Littleton. The big question of the day was why did God allow this shooting to happen? I looked down at my sermon manuscript that I had so carefully crafted and it just didn’t fit.

What I needed to say was that God doesn’t send crazed gunmen to kill innocent students. Last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech was pure evil. We’ve all read or heard how the young murderer had been suffering serious depression for a long time and had developed a hatred for women and what he called “rich kids.” He was another one of those who grew up under incredible pressure to achieve. He needed help and whatever he got failed. But God didn’t send him to Virginia Tech to permanently mar thirty three families for life.

Life has its wars, rumors of wars, and economic downturns. God doesn’t cause those things, we do. Life has its robbers and thieves. My next door neighbor had his brand new Ford pickup tailgate stolen last week. God didn’t steal it. Life is just tough. My aunt has a sign in her living room that I suspect many of you have. It says “Getting old is not for sissies”. Aging is a lot harder than it looks and from my vantage point it looks pretty hard. But God doesn’t cause us to grow old. We do that ourselves.

So the word from the Lord that we read today is a little surprising. God says ”When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people…” God is claiming here that sometimes he causes those troubles for his own people. Shutting up the heavens so that there is no rain means that with bodies designed to be made up of 60%-70% water we can’t survive long on our own. Recently on the Marshall Islands the entire country ran completely out of drinking water and the only drinking water they had had to be brought in by ship.

Locusts devouring the land means crops would be destroyed. At that point even the shelves at Stater Bros. would go empty. When I think of food, which is frequent, it’s never a thought as to whether I’ll get some or not but what kind and how much. We have an abundance of grocery stores and choices of food. All we need is the money to buy it and for people who have lost their jobs obtaining food becomes difficult. So locusts devouring crops represents a shortage of money for even the basics.

“A plague among the people” means a lack of the one thing most of us value more than anything, our health. Some of the Old Testament plagues were boils, frogs, gnats, fevers, etc.

Nearly every week we give an invitation to come up for prayer after the service. The all time top two requests that bring people up for prayer are 1) health issues and 2) job issues. Without a job buying food becomes difficult. I’ve been a pastor in a rural Virginia community and the one thing that got hard crusted tobacco farmers to come up for prayer wasn’t for their wife’s health, it was for rain in a drought. Water, food and health are the three things God can get our attention with. Everything else we think we can get on our own.

What you have to understand is that when God said ”When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people… he was saying it to a man who many scholars believe to be the richest and wisest man ever, King Solomon. Solomon could get everything else on his own. For example he owned 12,000 horses with horsemen and 1,400 chariots. That would be the equivalent of owning 12,000 brand new BMW’s. That’s just a tiny sample of what he owned. He also composed 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs. He wrote the biblical books Song of Songs, the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. He was a man blessed with both wisdom from God and wealth.

Last week Helen Walton died. She was the widow of Sam Walton, founder of Wal Mart. Helen died with a worth estimated at 17 billion dollars. There wasn’t anything Helen couldn’t do or buy with 17 billion dollars except her health. Then she was like you and I. I want to add that she was a faithful Presbyterian, member of the First Presbyterian Church of Bentonville and a major contributor toward new church development in our denomination. I am so hoping that she left at least one of those billion dollars for Presbyterian new church development.

Soloman was even richer for his time than Helen Walton. But I want you to notice that of all the things Solomon had, God would mention water, food and health because even for the richest person that’s what would get their attention. So God says when he removes one or more of those three things from his people which he does from time to time to get our attention, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Three things God wants in prayer. 1) for us to humble ourselves and admit that we can’t solve our problems apart from him because we’re not God 2) pray 3) turn from our wicked ways. If we do that we’ll hear from God.

There’s a lot of discussion going on about global warming these days and about a pending permanent drought particularly in the southwest. A sizable part of the world is famished due to crop loss. Almost 8,500 people a day die from aids. In areas of water, food and health we may not be able to solve our problem but God can.

I grew up in San Jose as it was becoming the Silicon Valley of California. It is one of the hardest places to pastor a church because there is a valley belief that if we try a little harder to better our technology we can fix anything, anytime. It’s just a matter of time. I talked to a guy who was converting his whole sprinkler system to run off the internet. No more burnt grass. Even the sky isn’t the limit to solving their problems there.

Last week I was back in the Silicon Valley on vacation and I saw a friend I’ve known for almost 30 years. He’s pastor of a Presbyterian church that averages over a 1000 people every Sunday. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and his Parkinsons disease has really begun to show on him. In November hepatitis B knocked him out and put him on life support. He said he almost didn’t make it. Nothing in that Silicon Valley think tank could bring him back. So his church had no other choice but to pray.

John made it out of that death trap by what he and his church believe was a miracle of God. They believe that God gave them a little more time together to finish the job God called them to do. Conventional wisdom would say John you’re 61 years old with Parkinsons disease. You could die any day. It’s time to pass the mantle to a new person and retire quietly. Conventional wisdom would say that a Protestant Christian church located in an area that has become over 90% Asian won’t grow much bigger.

But instead of conventional wisdom that would say slow down or even quit his church came out of that November healing experience humbled that only God and not their Silicon Valley brains could finish this vision.

In the thirty two years my friend has pastored that church they have had ten one million dollar building campaigns. Each time they met their goal and they knew they could do that again just with their big Silicon Valley paychecks. But they asked themselves if they could do it themselves where was God needed in all that. No, they heard the call of God to do something so big that unless God was in it they would fail.

Their elders came out of that healing experience with a vision to raise six million dollars to build the premiere church campus in that part of a very materialistic and secularized Silicon Valley. When all the critics in that valley say that no one goes to church anymore they will be that major exception. Presbyterian Church USA.

Conventional wisdom says we can’t become a multi-ethnic, multi-generational Presbyterian church in a working class neighborhood. Conventional wisdom says we need to bunker down and retire to become what we’re going to become. God’s vision is just too hard.

But what God desires from us is to acknowledge that he is God and not us. What God desires from us is for us to depend upon him and not our conventional wisdom. What he was telling Solomon is all your wealth (which he got from God in the first place) won’t bail out my people when they ignore me. I must have their complete devotion. I must be their God with no other gods before them. 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

This was meant to be spoken to the Jewish nation but it could be spoken to America today. We can’t put our trust in “Shock and Awe” military tactics as much as I admire our fabulous military. We tried that in Iraq. Instead we need to do what we did on the night of Sept. 11, 2001 when church sanctuaries across the land were filled with God’s people on their knees in prayer. Then again in sanctuaries across our land this last week people gathered in prayer for the victims at Virginia Tech.

Again, I want to make this clear God didn’t cause the shootings last week. Evil did. I also want to make this clear, I don’t believe God brings cancer on. We don’t know where cancer comes from. God didn’t bring on global warming. God didn’t bring on aids. But one thing I know, God could bring on all of that if he wanted to.

It’s time for us as a church to pray. Our calling from God is so difficult that unless he’s in it we will fail. This is a step of faith. We have to show God that we acknowledge he is God and not us. God is the solution to people’s problems, not us. If we have to convert our entire Sunday morning worship service once a month to prayer to get everyone here, we’ve got to do it. Our country needs us to pray. Our neighbors need us to pray. We need to pray. So stay tuned