Good morning, Friends! Thank you all for coming to worship. I said last week that we’re starting a series of messages this summer about prayer.
Last week we looked at the Lord’s Prayer, which is one of the very best prayers we have. I remember hearing someone say that the way to pray the Lord’s Prayer isn’t just to rush through it, but to pray it one phrase at a time, and not go ahead until you feel in your heart that you’re ready to go on.
That’s kind of what we did last Sunday. We took the Lord’s Prayer one phrase at a time. We thought about each phrase for a while, and then we moved on to the next one.
Today I’d like us to talk about one of the essential things about prayer. Prayer isn’t always what we say out loud, or even words that we say in our hearts. Sometimes, prayer is something we do quietly, without words. Some of the best prayers are quiet prayers.
To help us get started, I’ve handed out readings to a dozen people this morning. The readings are from all different parts of the Bible, but they all say the same thing: prayer is about coming to a quiet place, and finding God in our hearts.
Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Exodus 14:13-14
Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.Commit your way to the Lord;
Psalm 37:3-7
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.
Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him.
In peace I will lie down and sleep,
Psalm 4:8
for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
Wait for the Lord;
Psalm 27:14
be strong and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord.
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
Psalm 46:1-3, 10
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
Psalm 62:1-2
He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
Isaiah 30:15
in quietness and trust is your strength.
That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
Mark 4:35-39
There is a time to be silent and a time to speak.
Ecclesiastes 3:7
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30
You will keep in perfect peace
Isaiah 26:3
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Luke 5:16
I’m not saying prayer is always easy. I read a story this week. Someone asked a 50 year old person, how long it took them to learn how to sit still in church. They shrugged their shoulders and said, “I don’t know! Maybe 50 years! I’m still trying!”
Kids tend to get kind of wiggly during church. There’s just something, about sitting there with your legs dangling. You want to get down on the floor, and run around and make some noise.
I also want to say, that noise from little kids during worship is like music to my ears. I think parents are always much more aware of the noise their kids are making. I don’t mind it at all!
But even little kids can learn to be quiet, and enjoy it. Years ago, I was a camp counselor for five summers. Every year, I used to take the kids in my cabin out to the woods, and I’d send them off by themselves for half an hour. Not far away – maybe just a hundred feet or so. But I told them to go off by themselves, and sit down, or lie on the ground, and be quiet.
Not go to sleep. Just be quiet, and listen. At first they’d only hear the birds sing in the trees around them. But in just a few minutes, if they kept still, they’d start hearing the noises of the forest.
The wind in the trees. Trees quietly creaking to each other. Squirrels jumping from branch to branch. Sometimes a little chipmunk would come out and nose around, or a field mouse. They’d see flowers they hadn’t noticed. The shape of a leaf. All kinds of things, they’d been too busy, or too much in a hurry to see.
When I’d call to them, the kids didn’t want to come back. They wanted to stay there, just being quiet, out in the woods.
I was the only Quaker counselor at the camp, and every year they asked me to lead one of the Sunday morning chapel services. Chapel was always outside, in a clearing in the pine trees. We took away the folding chairs, and sat on the ground. Some of the kids spent the whole time building little forts out of sticks and pine needles.
But most of the kids paid attention, and learned just to sit quietly, and enjoyed it. It was an unprogrammed worship, so we only had one hymn that one of the counselors played on an old-fashioned foot-pump organ.
The kids could speak, and it was amazing some of the things they thought about. Some of them were silly, but some of them were really deep. So, even kids can handle quiet prayer.
The first time I ever visited a Quaker meeting, it was one of the unprogrammed kind. My room mate brought me there, and from the very first moment, I felt like I was at home. It felt like I had actually come home, to a place I didn’t know was home before.
The quiet wasn’t threatening, or uncomfortable. It was as natural as breathing. I went to that meeting for four years.
For me, quiet prayer feels like sitting down in a familiar place. Or like slipping into a pool of quiet water. Or like looking out over a quiet meadow. It’s like letting go, or like being free.
Do any of you have an old friend? Maybe you haven’t seen each other for a while. But when you meet again, you can pick right up, as though they’d never left you.
You know each other so well, even if your last conversation was ten years ago, you can talk without any explanation, and they totally understand you.
Friends like that are really rare. You don’t need to justify yourself to them, about anything. They know who you are. All the good things about you, and the bad things, and the scars, they’re OK with that. Sometimes, you don’t need to say anything at all.
In one of the readings we heard today, Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
There’s an old African-American spiritual that says the same thing:
Be still, God will fight your battles;
God will fight your battles if you just keep still.
One of the Psalms we heard today says:
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and let your heart take courage!
Yes, wait for the Lord.
A lot of the time, we think we have to get busy and do something. Do anything! Run around like a flock of scared chickens. Make a lot of noise! Do something!
Usually, that doesn’t help. When there’s a disaster, or a dangerous illness, when everything gets scary, sometimes it’s best to stop and think, to calm down, or to just to pray.
I remember the first time I ever went to visit somebody in prison. I was a very young minister, and the prison seemed like a very scary place.
I had to go through all these heavy doors and gates and razor wire. I had to be searched, to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything in with me. There were some really big, scary-looking dudes in the room when I went in. Some of them looked like they could rip me apart with their bare hands.
As I stood by the last gate, I took a deep breath. And out of the quiet, a word came to me. It was quiet but clear: “I will not be afraid to go into any place, where Jesus isn’t afraid to go. . .”
That word helped me so much. I wasn’t afraid any more. I had a good visit with the person I came to see. And that same word has been so helpful to me, so many times, ever since.
“I will not be afraid to go into any place, where Jesus isn’t afraid to go. . .”
We know from the gospel, that even Jesus got tired and down at times. Many times in the Bible, it says that Jesus went off by himself to a quiet place to pray.
People didn’t want to let him alone. They followed him everywhere. Jesus had to sneak out by himself at night.
But everything we know about Jesus, tells us that prayer was his strength. Taking time to be in touch with God, was what gave Jesus the ability to do all those other things that he did.
In one of the readings we heard this morning, Jesus was out in a boat in the middle of a big lake, when a storm blew up. The wind blew like crazy, big waves were about to swamp the boat.
The disciples said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re all going to drown?”
Jesus stood up in the back of the boat. He scolded the wind and the waves. He said to them, “Peace! Be still!” and all at once there was a great calm.
When we’ve talked about this story before, I always say that Jesus not only calms the storms that are outside of us. Jesus also calms the storms that are inside of us – the storms in our heart and mind.
Sometimes in quiet prayer, we’re waiting for the Lord to say those same words to us: “Peace! Be still!”
Here at Springfield, we usually have a Bible reading and a sermon, and hymns, and a children’s message every Sunday. But we always have a quiet time of open worship.
Some ministers like to have open worship come after the sermon, in case people want to respond to it. I usually arrange to have open worship before the sermon, in case people have a different message on their hearts that day. Both ways of doing it work. I just like everyone to have a their freedom. I don’t want to be too much of an influence, if people need time for quiet prayer, or in case the Spirit has something else to say.
And even if we just have quiet, that’s all right. In our midweek Bible study, a couple of weeks ago, we were looking at the place in Romans where Paul says,
“The Spirit helps us when we are weak. When we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit prays for us, with quiet sighs which are too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what the Spirit is saying, because the Spirit prays for all the saints. . .”
Romans 8:26-27
Don’t ever be afraid to pray. Don’t ever be embarrassed to pray quietly. Remember the words we heard earlier:
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.”
“Be still, and know that I am God“
“In rest and returning is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”
And finally, Jesus words:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”