Help!

We apologize for the sound quality this week. Not Sure what happened.

Texts:  Psalm 86

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah,

October 15, 2023

This past Tuesday Nancy and I went to Kol Ami synagogue in Salt Lake City for a gathering of support for Israel after the world-shaking events of last weekend.  The gathering was also in support for Jewish people here as Kol Ami plus two other synagogues in Utah received bomb threats last weekend. Rabbi Samuel Spector is a friend of ours and we wanted to support his congregation.

I also texted Rabbi Chaim Zippel, the local Rabbi here in Utah County, and told him I was distressed by what was happening in Israel.  I told him that I hoped his congregation was OK and that he and his family were OK.

Little did I know that Rabbi Zippel was in Israel last week, with his wife and young child, attending a bar mitzvah.  The day after they heard sirens, went to the bomb shelter, and heard explosions.  Early Monday morning they were able to get a flight out of Israel and landed late Tuesday night.  He texted me when they landed and said that they were grateful to be back. Probably an understatement.

Life is big.  Life can be heavy.  Life can be overwhelming.  And that’s before we even look at the news. And life seems to be getting bigger, heavier and more overwhelming.

If you don’t ever feel hopeless, or that things are getting worse, or that this world is looking up, tell me what you are drinking or what pill you take.  If you don’t ever cry out to God for help, then you are stronger than me and you probably don’t need to listen to this sermon.

The writer Anne Lamott said that when she runs out of good ideas on how to fix the unfixable, when she finally stops trying to heal her own sick, stressed out mind with her own sick, stressed mind, when she is truly at the end of her rope and just done, she says the same prayer: “Help.”

Help, this is really all too much, or I am going slowly crazy, or I can’t do this, or I can’t stop doing this, or I can’t feel anything.[1]

One of our biggest prayers is “Help!”  And as we pray that we often wonder what will come.

What is happening when we pray?  How does it work? Is God listening?  Is he even there?  Why even pray?  Doesn’t our Father know and see it all already?  Is this just some spiritual game?

Or are things really being changed?  Are circumstances moving?

Back in the twelfth century, over 800 years ago, in England, there was a Christian hermit named Godric.  He was well known for his holiness of life and fervency in the faith.  Godric was known as a man of prayer.

The late Presbyterian pastor and writer Frederick Buechner wrote a historical, fictitious work on the life of Godric.  In the book called “The Life of Godric” Buechner imagines Godric’s view of prayer like this:

“What’s prayer?  It’s shooting shafts into the dark.  What mark they strike, if any, who’s to say?  It’s reaching for a hand you cannot touch.  The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea.  You beg.  You whimper.  You load God down with empty praise.  You tell him sins that he already knows full well.  You seek to change his changeless will.  Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast.  Prayer is the wind that fills his sail.  Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides.  And sometimes, by God’s grace, a prayer is heard.”

Why do we even pray?  We pray for many reasons, but one of those reasons is our need.  We need God. We need help.  We need to know he is with us.  We need his strength, his love, his presence. We need his mercy.  We need forgiveness.  We need his peace.

I agree with Godric, God is like breath for us.  And speaking to him is the wind that fills our sails, or else we will find ourselves wrecked on the rocks of life.

I quote C.S. Lewis from time to time.  He is worth getting to know. Lewis was a prolific writer, and had a deeply intellectual mind.  He was a professor of literature at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the 50’s and 60’s. Lewis’ coming to Christ was not a straight line.  He was an atheist for many years but encountered Jesus Christ and became a Christian.  C.S. Lewis became one of the great voices for reason and the defense of Christianity.

We may not be as familiar with his personal life.  He never married until late in his life.  He married Joy Gresham, a Jew by birth who had converted to Christianity.  She was from New York, had been a Communist but later came to Christ.  She was a divorcee with one son. Lewis married her in a civil ceremony so that she could gain citizenship in England after her husband left her for another woman and asked for a divorce.  Lewis tried to make the relationship purely Platonic but began to realize he had deep feelings of love and affection for her.

Not long after this it was discovered that Joy had cancer and would die from this.  Lewis realized he loved her so much that even though there was no guarantee of a future for them because of her health, he took vows of marriage to Joy in a religious ceremony, this time for love.

Lewis loved Gresham like he had never experienced love for anyone before. Gresham eventually died after they were married only a few short years.

The movie Shadowlands is about Lewis and Gresham’s relationship.  Joy Gresham is played by Debra Winger.  C.S. Lewis is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. There is a scene where Lewis is praying in a church.  This is followed by us seeing his wife lying on a table in a hospital being treated for the cancer which was destroying her bones.  The cancer goes into a temporary remission and things begin to look better.

Then, there is a scene where a friend comes to Lewis congratulating him on the good news about his wife and how Lewis obviously received what he prayed for.  Lewis then shares how he doesn’t pray only because his wife has cancer.  He says that prayer is much larger than that.  He says this, “I pray because I can’t help myself…I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping.  It doesn’t change God, it changes me.”

Part of the dangerous act of prayer is that we might be the ones who end up being changed. What if God answers that prayer to make me more patient?  Watch out how that might happen. What if his will really happens in my life? What if he uses me in that situation? What if he gives me what I want, and what if that ends up ruining me ruins or takes me from him?

What if all the prayers of God’s people are having effect, unbeknownst to us and in spite of how things look? Given the way life is, we can’t help but pray.

Psalm 86 beautifully shows our need for God and our need for help in our praying.  Psalm 86 is one of David’s prayers.  It is part of the prayer tradition of ancient Israel as are all the psalms. And the prayers in the Psalms can become our prayers. 

It begins like this:

Hear me, LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.

Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God;

have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long.

Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you.

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.

Hear my prayer, LORD; listen to my cry for mercy.

When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me.

Right there are words you can recite as your own personal prayer to God.  Whatever the circumstances, you can pray that.

Psalm 86 acknowledges our need; our need to be heard by the Lord, our need for an answer.

It admits how poor and needy we really are. This prayer of David is empty of self-confidence and pride. It’s full of humility and dependence on the Lord.  “Answer me, for I am poor and needy.”

Jesus, in the Beatitudes, said “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Psalm 86 is a “poor in spirit” psalm.   To be poor in spirit is to feel our poverty. It is people who recognize that they are helpless without God’s help. It isn’t the winners of the world who need Psalm 86. To be poor and needy is to realize our inadequacy, to feel our sin, to be brokenhearted for the pain of the world.

Psalm 86 acknowledges our need to be guarded by the Lord. It admits our need for mercy. It admits our need when in distress. Later in the Psalm David acknowledges how the arrogance and violence of other people have put him in a place of need.

We pray because we need to pray.  We can’t help it.  We pray because we need God, the One who created us and gave us breath. Even the person who never sets foot in a church, who isn’t sure they believe in God, and never gives thought to spiritual things might very well find themselves praying when they are in great trouble. Sometimes we hear people who were never religious face some horrible situation and they pray. Why does the thought of praying to God knock on the doors of our hearts, even those who aren’t sure about God?

And while much of Psalm 86 is an admission of need, it is also an affirmation of who the Lord is and what he is like.  In his need David focuses on the Lord, remembering his greatness, his faithfulness, and his love.

…there is none like you, Lord… (v. 8)

For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. (v.10)

For great is your love toward me… (v.13)

...you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. (v.15)

One of the things that will help us in our praying is to focus not only on our need, or the needs of others, but focus on the Lord.  Our confidence is not in our self but in him. Our hope is not in our ability to pray but the one who hears our prayers. God is not intimidated or alienated by darkness, terror or chaos. Our God is great.  He is full of love. He is full of power. He is light and his light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. I always need to remember that as big as the crisis is, God is bigger still.

Sometimes we need help in the praying itself. We may not know what to say, or we may feel so overwhelmed we can’t come up with the words. In Romans we read that the role of the Holy Spirit is to help us in our weakness.  “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”[2]  God doesn’t expect us to do this by ourselves.  He comes along side of us through the Holy Spirit.  I can always know that if I am not making sense, the Spirit takes my stumbling and stammering to the Father and makes sense of it.

Prayer is not always smooth sailing. The Christian prays in faith and it can be a deeply rewarding exercise.  But we can also find prayer to be difficult, challenging, frustrating, stretching, and mysterious.  It can seem like shooting shafts into the dark, like Godric.

Prayer is not something to control or even master.  It is part of our relationship with a dangerous, wild, often unpredictable God. Prayer is not just a program to get stuff done.  There is huge mystery in it.  And there are no shortcuts to put us in control.[3] To be in control is a lousy reason to pray.

We step into the ring to pray and find all kinds of obstacles fighting against us.  Prayer can be like a wrestling match.  We find ourselves pinned, locked up or having trouble grabbing a hold. Sometimes it is like we are just holding on for dear life.

Sometimes we keep trying to pray but don’t seem to be getting anywhere. We don’t feel close to God.  We don’t feel like we are making any progress.  We don’t feel like he is listening or that it is making any difference. Tell God that you are discouraged.  Let that be your prayer.  Pray for hope, endurance and faith.

Be careful of praying solely on feelings.  Often times our feelings are not accurate gauges of what is really going on.  The Spirit may be moving in ways far beyond touch and sight.  We just need to keep going.

Prayer can be work and there is a work to prayer.  Prayer takes a certain effort and energy.  But sometimes we can try too hard. Relax and back off a little.  Rest in the Spirit. Make it simple.  And we might need to leave that request which we have been praying day after day at the throne of God, trust that he knows, and let it go, at least for a while.

Sometimes we lack confidence. We don’t think we can say it right or do it right. First of all Satan wants us to think this so we won’t pray. Second, make this our prayer: “God, I don’t know if I am very good at this.  Would you help me?” Remember, even if we don’t have the words the Spirit does. 

Yes, we all need help in life and in our praying.  We all need help as we ask for help. Owen Hallesby, a Norwegian pastor and theological professor, in his classic book simply entitled “Prayer”, wrote this:

“I never grow weary of emphasizing our helplessness, for it is the decisive factor not only in our prayer life, but in our whole relationship to God.  As long as we are conscious of our helplessness we will not be overtaken by any difficulty, disturbed by any distress or frightened by any hindrance.  We will expect nothing of ourselves and therefore bring all our difficulties and hindrances to God in prayer.  And this means to open the door unto Him and to give God the opportunity to help us in our helplessness by means of the miraculous powers which are at His disposal.”[4]

If nothing else, needing God’s help puts us in a place of greater dependence on God.  That’s a good place to be. It doesn’t always feel like it but being totally in the hands of God is the best place to be. Let’s admit our helplessness, and cry out “help” and open the door for God to come and help us by his miraculous powers.

Prayer:

Bend an ear, God and answer us.

Help us, your servants, because we are depending on you.

You’re our God, have mercy on us.

We count on you from morning to night.[5]

Amen.

[1] Help, Thanks Wow.  P.29

[2] Romans 8:26

[3] These words come from Eugene Peterson.  I can’t remember where I read them.

[4] p. 26

[5] Words from Ps. 86 in The Message