Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer is just about the simplest thing a Christian can do, isn’t it?

It costs nothing.

You can do it anywhere, anytime.

You don’t have to interact with people.

You don’t even need to speak out loud.

You don’t need an advanced degree.

Introverts can pray just as easily as extroverts.

The misanthrope can pray just as much as the most exuberant people person.

Yet we screw it up.

“Give thanks to the Lord for he is good”?

Sometimes.

“Your will be done”?

Grudgingly.

“Pray continually”?

Hardly.

“Call upon me in the day of trouble”?

Maybe we do this best, yet sometimes we turn on God in that day and say, “You jerk!”

Occasions for prayer pass us by.

We fill the seconds right before and after sleep, when we could say “Help me” or “Thank you”, with thoughts about the day or the need to see what happened on Facebook in the last ten seconds.

Meal prayers turn into, “Come Lord Jesus, where’s the corn on the cob?”

Even in a “house of prayer,” we blow it.

“Our Father who art in heaven, without the approved, written consent of Major League Baseball.”

No wonder Paul talked about “hope” so much in the previous verses of Romans 8. Remember that?

“For in this hope we were saved.

But hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

And then he went on with our words today, “In the same way.”

In the same way, what?

That takes us back to the end of Romans 7 and the beginning of Romans 8. Paul laments his sinful flesh, “Nothing good lives in me.”

Then he rejoices in the non-condemnation that comes from Jesus being condemned for us.

He reminds us that in Christ we have this same non-condemnation, yet because we aren’t in heaven, we fight the battle between flesh and spirit.

We groan right alongside the creation and can only find joy in God’s promise to co-inherit with Christ, a future glory that surpasses all this.

What a challenge.

We don’t have what we want, what we need, what God promises: the transformation of our lowly bodies into Christ’s glorious body.

We aren’t yet relieved of the flesh, and because we aren’t, we struggle with hope.

And prayer.

We struggle because we want success, good fortune, blessing, growth and numbers.

We expect it to be easy to pray, because God will answer.

He promised it.

He promised to hear and answer, “Ask and it will be given to you.”

Well, where is it?

We don’t expect prayer to end with us still stuck in weakness, failure or frustration.

We don’t expect God’s providence to include sickness, decay, and death.

And this warps our prayer life.

Either we get lazy, “What’s the point?”

Or we get demanding, “Your will better be my will.”

Or we redefine it.

We turn prayer from pleading with God into directing and commanding God.

Deep down we hate this need for intercession.

We hate the whole passivity of prayer; the idea that we speak to some invisible God and, well, just wait.

And trust.

And hope.

It’s offensive.

We’re Americans.

We’re not quitters or sit-idly-by-ers.

We do stuff.

We accomplish things.

We finish what we start.

We win wars.

We build companies from the ground up.

I wait for no man.

Waiters fail.

So when God says to rely on him in prayer, to let him listen and answer in his own way, in his own time, we find this unacceptable.

And so because we’ve convinced ourselves that we can own this talking to God thing, we warp it beyond all recognition.

Take a crass example, the name it and claim it theology of a Joel Osteen that says, “If you believe it enough, God will give it to you.”

Take your typical American Evangelical church service that includes the altar call where you pray the sinner’s prayer and accept Jesus as your Savior and ask him into your heart.

Unspeakable words for the sinful nature, yet appropriated by us as if we can do the Spirit’s work.

That’s us doing it, us taking the initiative from God, all so typically American: picking ourselves up by our bootstraps.

In the end it’s about power.

That’s a big Bible word.

The Greek word is dynamis.

You hear our words “dynamite” and “dynamic” in there.

Something dynamis can do things.

It’s active; it’s powerful.

We want that power.

We think we have it.

We try to seize God’s power.

We’re not happy with his timetable, so we adjust it.

We’re not happy with his promises, so we adjust them.

And if he chooses not to do something, well, then we’ll just seize it, whether it’s faith in Christ, “I accepted him into my heart,” or spiritual gifts, “I’m going to speak in tongues or else,” or some material thing, “God hasn’t given me this or that, I’ll take it for myself.”

But this search for power and this desire to make our prayers our act of power has dangerous consequences.

Notice the end of Romans 8:27, “The Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”

Literally, Paul simply says that the Spirit intercedes “according to” or “in line with” God.

That’s a high standard: to be “in line with” or “according to” God.

It’s a standard that I, on my own, can’t meet.

Mankind hasn’t met it since the first time we acted not in line with God, back in Eden.

Since then, it’s been, at best, the struggle of Romans 7.

Even when I know what’s “according to” God, I don’t do it.

My words and actions aren’t always “according to” or “in line with” God.

My prayers even fail to stay in line with God.

I don’t know what to pray for or how to pray for it.

I don’t pray as I ought.

I pray selfishly and sinfully.

I fail to pray.

I seize prayer as my power and demand that God grant my wishes, like some sort of heavenly slot machine: when I pull the handle he’d better come up all 7’s.

Or else!

Here, though, Paul teaches us that even in prayer, something we do, God’s the active one, the dynamic one, the powerful one.

When I seize the initiative I’m dopey and self-indulgent, spoiled and dumbfounded.

I want all of God’s providence, I demand it: clothing, shoes, food, drink, house, home, wife, children, land, cattle, and on and on, right here, right now, in superabundant amounts.