MOSAIC SERMON
MAY WE LISTEN TO GOD
Psalm 85:8-9 : Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts. Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
Sometimes when we yearn after a check-up with God, we often conduct an almost completely unilateral conversation, a monologue, where we talk and God listens. We call these prayers, but they are rather monologues.
Especially, when we pray for our personal matters, regarding forgiveness, health, happiness, relationship, wealth, well‐being, progress of any kind.
These are the Prayers like saying:
Oh Lord, you can see that I am sick, I can not lift my finger, I am bed bound, or I am in wheel‐ chair for years, or there is cancer in the body and chemo in the veins, there are tumors here and there, blockages in the arteries, big pain in the chest, the heart is tired to beat, the lungs are shadowed, infections everywhere, broken hips, rusty knees, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, hernia in the front, hernia in the back, broken limbs, broken ribs, cracked spine, shaken brain,weakened bones, Alzheimer and Parkinson in the brain, mental illness in the soul, or just suffering from the spread of epidemics or simple flu.
O Lord heal me, O Lord heal me, please have mercy upon me.
We can have similar personal prayers, that O Lord I have committed my peccadillos, my transgressions here and there, You can see and judge my sins, but oh Lord, my burden is unbearable, heal me , heal me, have mercy upon me, give me forgiveness.
We can have our personal prayers regarding our relationships, that O Lord I am lonely, oh please give me a fiance, give me a spouse, give me a child, give me a friend, give a company, give me a community.
Or the similar one, that Oh Lord my relationship is broken with my spouse or with my children or with my parents or with a friend or a friendship circle or with the community. O Lord heal my relationships, please have mercy upon me.
Similarly in a personal prayer we used to pray for the bread on the table, hopefully not for the lotto prize but for the necessities of the life, especially in the time of need where and where the bread is profoundly missing, poverty hits, hunger and cold prevails.
O Lord help me in the need, may Your kingdom, and your abundance come into my life. All of these personal prayers might be completely legitimate and justified.
There is the human need, and the human turns to the Almighty Creator, Healer, Sustainer God in prayer, asking for forgiveness, healing and Providence.
SO FAR SO GOOD. However we should pay attention to the very advice of Apostle James, otherwise we could somehow end up as even Apostle Paul.
Paul confessed in his second letter to the Corinthians that “By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted excessively, a thorn in the flesh was given to me: a messenger of Satan to torment me, that I should not be exalted excessively. Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me. ”
He prayed three times, but the thorn stayed. The very advice of Apostle James is similar to what Jesus told to the disciples regarding prayers.
The Master said according to the gospel of Matthew that the Lord knows all your needs and also the urging importance of the necessities, however "But seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.”
And this is a game changer or rather a conversation changer, because it eventually means the same thing, which was quoted as a cliché by JFK, that “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Ultimately, it means you shall not ask, what the Kingdom of God can do for you, but what you can do for the Kingdom God. Nonetheless, it is very likely, that if you sacrifice everything for America or your respective country, your homeland will not necessarily pay you with responding kindness. However, Jesus assured the disciples, that it is certain, that if you sacrifice everything for the sake of the kingdom of God, that everything will be also granted as an extra, or its equivalent in Heavenly reward.
Thus, in a respectful conversation of God, we should not sentence God to silence forcing the conversation into a monologue where only we talk about our demands and complaints, because it is not even a danger free zone, as it is written in the Book of the Numbers, that “ The people were complaining in the ears of the Lord. When the Lord heard it, his anger burned; and the Lord’s fire burned among them, and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. The people cried to Moses; and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire abated. ” Instead of demanding attention, we should open our hearts and our minds in our silenced individuality to listen to what God says, as it is written in the Psalm 85, that “Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.”
BECAUSE: “Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.”
The ultimate purpose of listening to God is not really aesthetical, or aiming entertainment, or merely just enjoying the contact and the revelation, but listening to God has the main expression of the human devotion to God, which asks the ultimate question, that oh Lord God, what do you want me to do?
As a community, but even one by one we have a mission, a meaning giving task, what nobody can do replacing you or me or us, what mission and task is carved out for us by the hands of the angels in Heaven according to the will of the all-seeing and all-knowing God, that in our place we have to establish good will and peace, harmony and care, understanding and compassion, seeking the will and the love of God.
For all of that we have to humble ourselves to the level of servants of the Kingdom of God, keep listening the calls coming from the Lord, the messages, that God keeps writing on the tablets of our hearts, the spirit dreams, that are sent to us and by that we fly to and back from Heaven.
Listening is pivotal, because our own voices can deafen us effectively blocking God’s voice, not that they are not audible, but because we block ways of hearing and listening.
In order to listen to God, we have become silent, calming down to the bottom of the heart. As more silent we are in front of the Lord, as more we can listen. As more we are calmed down in the stormy sea of emotions and struggles, as more can listen. For silence and calm we must pray, may the Lord help and bless our prayers, AMEN.
