PRAYER- ATTENDING GOD AND GETTING HIS ATTENTION  I Kings 8:29-45  5/3/09

                 By now everyone knows what happened on Easter Sunday right after most churches let out on the east coast of America.  Do you remember?  It was an Easter miracle.  Captain Richard Phillips was in pirates hands for five days.  His ship was freed because he gave himself to save his crew- in itself a type of what Christ did for us.  He tried to escape but could not.  I have no doubt in my mind that thousands of churches and millions of Christians were praying for Captain Phillips that day on the east coast of America (where the largest density of churches are).  His wife, Andrea Phillips’s first response to his release was to thank the millions who prayed for him.  She and her family were praying too.  I know we prayed for him here in our church as well.  Of course the end of the story is that three navy seals shot the three pirates with one shot each on a rocking boat.  Captain Phillips escaped without a scratch.  Now was that just a coincidence or was it possibly an answered prayer.
                There was a debate not to long ago in Newsweek between an atheist and Rick Warren about the efficacy of prayer.  They talked about the statistical studies done.  At the conclusion the atheist said that the only real way to find out if prayer works is for a billion people to pray all at once for the same thing (like a leg growing) and   see if it happened. Well millions of people prayed for the same thing, and at 12:05 eastern time, the captain was set free.  Yet, I know there will always be skeptics to everything.  I also know this- that walking by faith means that we don’t always see or are able to measure what God does.  But when God does something, we ought to recognize it. Today, we do not recognize that we need to pray and we need to put God in our lives.  As a nation we have done everything we could to remove prayer from graduations, from schools, from football games—as if it does some public harm to us, and is not good for our country. 
                Our passage in I Kings 8 tells us that God desires for us to pray.  Jeremiah says, “Call unto me and I will answer you and show you great an marvelous things that you do not know.”  Jesus said, “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you; for everyone that asks receives, those who seek find, and to those who knock the door will be opened.” (Mt. 7:7,8).  John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian church said that when there is a plague, people shouldn’t panic but there should be efforts at hygiene and calls to prayer. 
                Today people are afraid about swine flu, they should be afraid about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases; many are fearful about the economy and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fact that North Korea has nuclear warheads and IBMs. Our response to the fear should not be to hide our heads in the sand, but to find courage and hope in God.
                Prayer is a way that we pay attention to God, and it is also how God promises to attend to us.  Prayer is the key that unlocks the door to the attention and power of God.  Prayer is how the captive is set free.  Prayer is a help to those who are sick.  We have secularized our world so much that even good Christians have stopped believing we ought to pray.  Thsi coming Thursday (5/7) is National Day of Prayer.  I invite you to join us at Chapin Baptist for our community prayer service for our country. 
                I’ll never forget that before the first Persian Gulf War George Herbert Walker Bush called the nation again and again to pray.  FDR in World War II and during the Great Depression called us to pray and even fast.  Certainly Woodrow Wilson during WWI called us to pray, and Eisenhower in the Korean conflict called us to pray.  During a time when we are afflicted and humbled, someone needs to call us to pray.
                Next year there will be hundreds of thousands of people going to Oberammergau Germany to watch the Passion Play.   Why do they do the towns people put this play on every ten years?  It is a living testimony and an act of thanksgiving for answered prayer.  In 1633 the townspeople prayed that if God would relieve them of the bubonic plague they would perform the play.  After they made that pact, the plague miraculously went away.   Every ten years there they are reminded that God answers prayer.  We need to hear from those who have gone before us that God hears our petition and longs for us to pray to Him.
                But it is also the way that we calm our hearts and find perspective and peace.  Paul said, “Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God and then the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord (Phil. 4:6,7). Prayer is a way to obtain peace.  There have been all kinds of studies about prayer’s effect on blood pressure, and stress.  But they didn’t have to make these studies. I know it in my heart when I pray I calm down.  Sometime when I am angry, or worried, I just stop and say a quick prayer. In our busy-stress-filled world we need to do that. We need God’s blessing.

                The story is told that at a graduation May 20, 2001 at Washington High School in Washington, Illinois that all those who were taking part were told they could not mention God.   They were given strict orders not to pray.  The schools valedictorian with the help of the ACLU sued to make sure no invocation (Blessing at the beginning) or benediction (blessing at the end)  be said at the service. So one of the graduating students, Ryan Brown, went up to the microphone and at the count of three sneezed and many in the student body said, “God bless you!”  The whole group (except the valedictorian and her parents) laughed.  Ah yes, we need God’s blessing.  We need to call out to God in our time of trouble. 
                Communion is a way that we attend to God.  It is prayer enacted.  We remember His love and grace in communion.  God also attends to us in communion with his presence, and his poured out grace.  As we come to communion, let us come prayerfully seeking His blessing.