{"id":457,"date":"2019-10-20T15:44:04","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T15:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/?p=457"},"modified":"2019-10-20T19:46:06","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T19:46:06","slug":"nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/2019\/10\/20\/nineteenth-sunday-after-pentecost\/","title":{"rendered":"Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18:1-8<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace to you and peace\nfrom God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prayer\nis central to our lives as Christians. And yet, how often is it that we pray,\noften the same prayers over and again, without receiving an answer, or without the\nthing that we prayed for coming into our possession? As a pastor, as a\nChristian, I pray very often for healing; I pray also for the wellbeing of\nfamily and friends; I pray for you and I even pray for people I don\u2019t like. I\nsometimes pray that I may find success and I sometimes pray for things. I pray\nfor our church that it will continue its strong ministry. I often pray for our\npolitical leaders that they will finally do and do well the jobs that they were\nelected to do and so I pray for our government and the governments of other\nnations that they will do what is best for all people. And (I\u2019m assuming like\nyou) I wonder, why? Why isn\u2019t God answering all my prayers? I think they\u2019re\ngood prayers; most of my prayers are not exactly self-serving, they have other\npeople\u2019s welfare in mind and also Jesus\u2019 church in mind. How much (I wonder) can\nI continue to pray the same prayers seeing little response from God. It just\ndoesn\u2019t seem like it should be so hard and take so long for God to answer my\nsimple prayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nthen, today, we have the story in Genesis, a story about Jacob wrestling with\nGod, Jacob in prayer. But you ask, where, in all that story was he praying? My\nanswer, what better way to describe prayer than a wrestling with God? Jacob was\nhopeful, a little hopeful that he could mend his relationship with his brother,\nbut he was also afraid of meeting up with his brother; he had not been good to\nhis brother. He was so afraid that he sent his family and all his possessions\nacross the stream and away from him to a place where they may be safe? Jacob\nwanted God\u2019s help, God\u2019s forgiveness and God\u2019s blessing. But God wasn\u2019t going\nto make it easy. Jacob had been a deceiver of his brother and father in law, (though\nhis brother was easily deceived and his father in law was getting a bit of what\nhe deserved). Prayer is not always easy, and we see here that there can a price\nthat we may need to pay. Jacob wrestled with God; all night he wrestled with\nGod and for his efforts, his persistence, he received a permanent limp. But he\nalso received God\u2019s blessing, and the next day things were resolved with his\nbrother and he was able to live in peace, he and his family, and he prospered\nwith a new name, the name that would become the name of a great nation, Israel.\nGod was, through Jacob, now Israel, beginning to fulfill God\u2019s promise made to\nAbraham, as God answered Jacob\u2019s prayers. Persistence in prayer may be\nconsidered our lesson for this morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus,\nin his strange parable of the unjust judge also spoke both of prayer and\npersistence. This story is about two somewhat unlikable characters, an unjust\njudge and a persistent, or one might say, \u201cnagging\u201d women. But the message is\nsimilar to that of the Genesis story, as she was persistent like Jacob, we are\nto be persistent in prayer. I understand that persistence is a good thing,\nstill, why would God want to put us through such struggle. My son Paul was a\npersistent child; when he wanted something, whether attention or a thing, he\nwould stand there, dad, dad, dad, dad, or with my wife mom, mom, mom, until he\neither got yelled at or he got what he wanted or both. He was persistent with a\ncapital \u201cP\u201d. Cathy tells the story of when she took Paul to a \u201cTake your child\nto work day.\u201d at one point he was either bored or needed to go to the bathroom,\nand he started, mom, mom, mom, mom, but Cathy was near the end of putting\ntogether a project on her computer and was trying to finish before turning to\nPaul; well, Paul young as was, not yet in school, knew what to do; he switched\noff Cathy\u2019s computer. He survived, he got yelled at and he got what he wanted. A\ncoworker of Cathy\u2019s remarked, he was surprised to see Paul come out of the\nbathroom alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\nwould God want to put up with such persistence? But that\u2019s not the point; God\nis better than us and certainly better than the unjust judge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\nagain why must we be persistent in prayer? God sees us as his children. I think\nof my kids and now grandkids and how what they want one day they often forget\nabout the next day, making the point that sometimes their want is just a whim. God\nmay very well be watching to see how much we really want what we are asking\nfor. There may be other instances where God hears our request and feels that it\nwould not be good for us or those we pray for, or sees the opportunity for a\nlearning, in our waiting or has a better idea for us. We need to remember that\nGod is not a wish machine, giving out whatever we ask for; God, like a good\nparent knows when to say \u201cno\u201d, God has our best interest at heart even when we\ndo not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prayer\nis simple, how God answers our prayer is complicated. I wonder sometimes\nwhether the issue of God not answering our prayer is about our not listening to\nthe answer. I remember as a kid only wanting to hear the answer that I wanted. And\nmaybe it is a matter of our lack of trust. We don\u2019t trust that God will answer\nour prayers so God doesn\u2019t answer them. Faith in God is at the heart of our\nrelationship with God and trust is a big part of faith. I can\u2019t tell you that\nevery prayer that you pray will be answered, at least I can\u2019t guarantee that\nyour prayers will all be answered as you may want, but I can tell you to be\npersistent and have faith, that God will see that what is best for you and the\nworld around you will take place. Don\u2019t stop praying; and remember to, in your\nprayers, to thank the Lord for all the good you now enjoy and say thank you\neven for the challenges and that you find your way through them (with God\u2019s\nhelp). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genesis 32:22-31, Luke 18:1-8 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Prayer is central to our lives as Christians. And yet, how often is it that we pray, often the same prayers over and again, without receiving an answer, or without the thing Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-and-services"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stpeterschestersprings.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}