POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Prayer should be An Exciting Adventure

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“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dorothy Bernard said, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” Prayer changes you. Like Martin Luther said, “Pray, and let God worry.”

Jesus said in Mark 11:23-24, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea,” and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

A man tells a story of his grandmother. When Grandma was much younger than she is now, she lived on a small farm hundreds of miles from a big city. Her nearest neighbors were so far away she scarcely ever saw them.

Sometimes she would feel very lonely, especially when her husband was working far from home and she was left alone with the children for weeks on end.

Sometimes food would get scarce, and the children would have to go on short rations until their daddy got back with fresh supplies.

One bad winter he didn’t get back when he said he would, and the food ran out.

Grandma was worried. She hated to see the children suffer. Gladly would she have driven to the nearest village to buy food, but there was no way for her to get there. Her husband had the horse and cart.

She could not telephone for help, because farmhouses didn’t have telephones in those days. So, the last little bit of food was eaten, and Grandma wondered what would happen if her husband did not return soon. Next morning she went to the flour barrel and looked in. It was empty. This meant there would be nothing to eat for breakfast.

At this moment Grandma remembered another barrel that belonged to a woman like her, and how the prophet Elijah promised that if she would put God first, the barrel would never be empty.

She knelt by the barrel and prayed.

“I’ve always tried to put You first, dear God. I have paid my tithe and brought up my children to love You. Now we are in great need, and I claim the same promise.”

As she prayed a voice seemed to say to her, “Bang the barrel!” So, she stood up and banged it, good and hard, with the flour dipper. Then she looked inside. There was flour at the bottom. Quite a lot, in fact; at least enough to make a nice little breakfast for everybody. Next day Grandma banged the barrel again, and once more found flour at the bottom of it, this time enough to make a pan of biscuits. The third day she banged it again, and still more flour came.

The day after that she banged it again.

Believe it or not, she kept on banging that barrel for a whole month, and without fail always found enough flour at the bottom to give them something to eat. She was still banging it when her husband arrived home with fresh supplies of food. He laughed when he heard the story, but she did not.

To her it was something very precious. Ever after she would remember 1 Kings 17:14, “The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.”

She had claimed God’s promise, and God had kept it, as God always does.

Would it happen? What do you think? Do you believe what Jesus said about mountain moving faith? Or are you like some people in the world who think that in order to have great things happen in life through prayer, you have to have an “in” with God? That somehow, you have to be just a little bit better than what you are right now?

After all, most of us tend to think that big prayers are the privilege of those who are just a little bit holier than us.

The criterion for answered prayer has to do with your attitude toward your oneness with God.

What we ask (as Jesus spoke of) with faith in our hearts, we will receive. Having faith is not really that difficult. Stop and think about it for a minute. We all have faith IN SOMETHING, even though sometimes we do not call it faith because we misuse it. We may have our greatest faith in the worst possible outcome that we worry about.

Jesus told us we must have faith. Jesus tells us to have faith in God, and that which you desire will be yours. Wherever you focus your attention, that is what you begin to draw to you.

So, if we have that kind of enthusiastic attention-drawing ability toward God instead of focusing on the potential negative events, we are on our way to a truly faith-filled God blessed life.

Mark 11:23, Jesus said, “If you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. “When you pray, do you doubt in your heart? Most of us have doubted.

The Truth of God is we cannot get away from God’s support and love. We are a living part of it. We all have the support and love of God every minute of every day. The spiritual quest is to act like it, to believe it.

Free-will is a spiritual law of life. We are free to accept our good or to reject it. It is up to us to accept it. You see, even God will not break that gift, it is one of our purposes in life to learn to use our free-will in oneness with God’s will.

If you choose to believe in God, God will give. If you choose to believe that God is eager, willing, and wanting to give you your good in life, then you are open and receptive to God’s good.

But if we choose to believe that God will not, then we are creating that circumstance for our life.

Only you can assure your good, and only you can stop it – you will block yourself off from your source of new creative life, inspiration, and help.

Prayer is an inside job. Your faith in God and belief in yourself as a child of God make the connection between your life and God. The connection makes the completeness.

Jesus said in Mark 11:24, “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours.” I want you to listen to these words, carefully, because Jesus did NOT say, “You have to believe that you will receive it;” He said, “Believe that you HAVE received it.” Do you see the difference?

Most of us believe (at the best) THAT SOMEDAY we will have our prayers answered. Jesus is saying to us: “Stop it! Believe that your prayers have been answered already.” Take that step out on faith. Make your prayer an adventure. Believe that you already have it, and it will be yours.

Let me tell you a true story, There was once a woman who lived a life of sickness. When she was young woman growing up, she had this belief because she had been told by her parents and her doctors that she had an inherited tendency toward consumption, and that consumption would, ultimately, shorten her life. She experienced illness, difficulty breathing, and problems with her health for many years.

It was her prayer that she would be healed. But it was not until she understood this spiritual law and claimed that she was already healed and thanked God for it in gratitude – without having to see it in her body, without having to see the results of it up front, that she KNEW she was healed.

She said it took her body a couple of years to catch up, but when it did, she was not sick again.

A wonderful positive affirmative prayer! I am healed NOW – it will just take my body a little time to catch up.

Healing is not just about what is happening in the body; perhaps more important, it is about what is happening in the mind and the heart in our active positive faith. It is about what we accept as the Truth of God about our own being. Once we accept that wholeness, the body must naturally respond. The body will follow because the body follows what we believe and what we know is the truth of our being.

When you pray, remember to accept with absolute assurance that the highest and best answer to your prayer is already yours. Asking in faith is the act of plugging yourself into God’s Divine Source, immediately and instantly (like plugging a lamp into the electric socket in the wall) provides you with the power and God goodness necessary to fulfill that desire.

But we must make the choice to believe in our prayers, to believe in God, to believe in what Jesus has told us – ask believing and it shall be yours – believe that what you have asked for has already happened, and it will be yours.

It is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. All you have to do is ask and accept the answer ahead of time.

Like the woman in the story, accept the healing, and then allow the body to catch up.

Every prayer we utter should be the beginning of an exciting adventure.

We cannot fathom what wonders God has in store for us, but can accept and give thanks for those wonders.

I would say to you this morning, as you pray may God bless you. May you let go and let God be God in your life. Then hang on, friends, because you are in for the God blessed adventure of a lifetime.

God bless you!

PRAYER / MEDITATION__________________________

In the silence of prayer … God is here.

Let us each one, gently, quietly, move into that secret place Jesus spoke of, into the closet of our minds and hearts, into that place where there is nothing and no one, except yourself, and God.

Nothing can disturb the calm peace of your soul here in this secret place. Nothing can distract your attention. Nothing can take your attention away, for here is the place from whence all good of God comes. Here is the place your healing awaits. Here is the place of pure prayer – nothing less – oneness with God, a total and complete spiritual awareness of my oneness with God.

And in this secret, silent place of prayer, the deepest desires of your heart and mind are laid on the altar and given to God, in the total realization that it is not I but God who does the work – God who brings you new realization of your God-given good.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

That which you have been desiring, the gift of God, is wanting to express through you. Acknowledge it and accept it, in faith into the care and keeping of God you place this now. If there is a healing waiting to manifest in your life, acknowledge that healing now and know it is already yours for you are a child of God, a child of the Infinite, an expression of the Creator.

Acknowledge this, give thanks for it, and release any care or concern now and forever more.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

It is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, dear one. It is God’s good pleasure to give you the gifts of God. Though you may not know how these gifts will manifest in your life, know within your heart of hearts without question that this manifestation IS coming right now. That gift is coming into your life even as we pray, for it is God’s good pleasure.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

We thank God that this is so.

We rejoice and know this in the name and through the power of Jesus Christ … Amen.

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