friends

This Friday night at friends group we listened to a message by Jamie Wilson who is the pastor at Coast Vineyard, titled “Why not ask?” His message had three sections, which I will attempt to summarize in the following three paragraphs.

First he addressed why we do not pray to God. 1. We are insecure and doubt God’s answers. How can we trust God with our needs? 2. We have an cultural (American) commitment to self-sufficiency. We have a perspective where asking for help is weak, where we would rather be isolated instead of vulnerable. 3. We have a deep pain or are tried of trusting God. We asked for something and didn’t get what we wanted.

Second, Pastor Jamie went over Luke 11:5-13 and draws out three points. 1. “Request are at the heart of community.” - Dallas Willard. Until we are vulnerable with each other, we will never have true community. People wioll come into our lives with needs that only God has the resources to meet. 2. Culturally, the story’s circumstances of a Jewish man refusing to give bread to his neighbor was ludicrous. Luke is making the arguement about how much more ludicrous it is to think God will not answer a prayer. He may not answer it in the way you hope it will be answered, but he will answer it. 3. We often turn prayer into a polite conversation or chat with God, but Jesus says to ask, to knock. This is like Jacobe wrestling in the Old Testament. Pastor Jamie drew out some crazy stuff about the greek here, in verse 10, where is says “Ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened.” Apparently the greek is such that it more accurately should read, ask and keep on asking, knock and keep on knocking, and through the process of persistence, answers will come. Wow.

Thirdly, the closing points were as follows: 1. Be specific. 2. Prepare for a journey. 3. Don’t be afraid to pray hard (there is a difference between knocking when you think someone is home or when you know they are not). 4. Understanding the character of God is key to prayer. 5. Holy spirit is what we need most from God. Pastor Jamie left us with this challenge, what is one God-sized prayer that you are going to wrestle through that only God can meet?