prayer for guidance

from my message on 2.26/12 from Psalm 25:1-10

All of us get lost sometime. All of us need help to find our way. We may need more than a map or GPS. Today in Ps. 25, we have a prayer for guidance. One commentary I read said it sets an agenda for prayer in a thorough way. The psalm is easy to follow, because it is an acrostic, that is, each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.....22 letters ...so 22 verses. Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth...Don't worry, I am not going through 22 steps, only 3. This will be as easy as A, B, C.

A is for Ask. We need to ask for help. This is difficult, especially for us men of the male gender! We were patterned not to ask for help. I worked with my dad building hog houses from Yuma, Arizona, to Metter, Georgia. I vividly remember entering a new town, trying to find the lumber yard. My dad would say, "As long as there is some daylight left and a little bit of gas in the tank, we are NOT stopping to ask for directions!"

We find it hard to raise our hand and ask for help. I am going to be making an analogy here about raising our hands, because the text says, "to you, O LORD, I lift up my soul." Lizzie is an associate pastor in Smithville. She is in her first year there, just out of seminary. She has charge of a contemporary worship service which is led by a praise band made up entirely of teenage boys. She had a meeting with her guys to see how worship was going. "Not very good," they said. Is it the message? No, your messages are fine. Well, what about the music? NO, the music is ok. Well, what is it? The problem is that noboby raises their hands during the singing. That's it? Yes, that's it.

A few weeks later, Lizzie and her teenage boy band and several other high schoolers attended a weekend retreat at Mt. Wesley called a Mid-Winter. There was a band in the worship center leading the service. They were rocking out. Youth were raising their hands praising God. The boys in the Lizzie's band looked to their front man. He raised his hands. They raised their hands. Then they looked to Lizzie. Now Lizzie is the daughter of 2 Methodist pastors....who did not raise their hands in worship. She grew up knowing that was right for her as well. She knew that we Methodists might raise 1 hand, about shoulder high, as we sang Here I Am, Lord. But that was pushing it. They all looked to her. She raised her hands in worship.

This is what she found out. When you raise your hands, you make yourself totally vulnerable. You are exposed. YOu can no longer pretend that you are in charge. Your schedule and agenda no longer matter. We can no longer make things better by simply working harder. NO, to you O Lord we lift up our souls. We say we trust you God, not ourselves. We wait on you and your salvation. It is not about us. It is about God, about trusting in God. That's what happens when we raise our hands and ask for help.

And then God can help, when we ask. When we get out of the way and ask. It is like what Jesus says in Matt. 7, Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.

The first step to guidance is Ask. The second is Bible. B is for Bible. The Jews call their Bible the Torah. Often translated as Law, a better translation is instruction. In verse 8, it says, he instructs sinners in the way. The word for instruct is the same root as Torah. There are many synonyms for the Torah in this passage: way, path, truth, covenant, decrees. The Bible is given for our instruction.

John Wesley who founded the Methodist movement that became the UMC today said that whenever we want to know what God is like, what we are to believe, how we are to act, or the way forward, we go to the Bible first. We always read it through the lens of tradition; we can learn from the past. We read it through experience; we can use our feelings. We read it through reason; it is ok to be a thinking Christian. We read the whole Bible, not just the parts we like. We don't pick and choose. We don't take passages at random. The old preacher joke is of the struggling businessman who said that he was going to open the Bible and put his finger down and do whatever the Bible said to do. He open the book, and placed his finger down, and the Bible said, "Chapter 11." During this season of Lent, it is a good time to open yourselves to God's leading by reading the Bible. Start soaking yourselves in what God has to say. As I read the whole of the Bible, I find an arc of God's fierce love for us. I find a God who keeps trying to find another way to get us to understand how much He loves us. The last thing in reading the Bible is to read it in community. We all go to the Bible with our blinders on. We need the counsel of other Christians.

This leads to the letter C, which is for Community. We are better together than we are apart. I didn't have a good illustration for this until the confirmation retreat this past weekend. I led the youth in a catacomb worship experience on Friday night. We transformed a den in a lake house into a cave with candles. We met as 1st century Christians who worshiped under threat. We had no hymnals, so all of the music had to come out of our memories. We sang Jesus loves me, among other favorites. We had no Bibles, so we had to quote scriptures and remember stories we knew by heart. Phil. 4:13 was mentioned, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. We had the sacrament of communion, serving each other in a circle. We had prayers for each other. Before I let them go, I asked them to reflect on their experience. One youth said, "This was so much better than watching TV. I needed this. The pressure of studying and sports gets to me. I feel at peace now. It is great just to be with your friends and to pray and you don't have to explain." Wow! Community is powerful.

The next day we did worship planning for a service that the confirmands will lead on May 6. They chose the hymns, the prayers, all of the liturgy for that day. At the end, I asked them to reflect again. One youth said, "this was fun." Community is fun. It is the context in which we pray for guidance. We do it together.

Ask....Bible...Community....God has plans for you that are better than the ones you have for yourself. Have fun seeking guidance.