Working Prayer Into the Rhythms of Life

A sermon preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
May 2, 1999

Text: 2 Cor. 3:18 a paraphrase of which might be, "When we finally catch on that we can connect with God at any place at any time and often do, we are being transformed into the kind of person our Lord is, and these changes are being made by the Spirit of God who lives within us."

A Possible Transformation

Would you like to be transformed into a person who is more full of life, love, and purpose? Paul says, that is possible but you have to begin within, where God loves and lives within you. When you finally realize that you can connect with this God who lives within you at any time and any place, you will begin being transformed into his kind of life and love.

A little boy was overheard talking to himself as he strode through his backyard, baseball cap just right and toting ball and bat. "I’m the greatest baseball player in the world," he said proudly. Then he tossed the ball up in the air, swung the bat, and missed. Undaunted he said to himself, "I’m even a greater hitter than Sammy Sosa." He threw the ball up, swung the bat, and missed. He looked at the bat as if to find a hole in it somewhere. He then picked up the ball and said, "I’m even a better hitter than Mark McGuire!" He tossed the ball up, swung the bat, and missed again. Puzzled he thought for a minute and then got a big smile on his face and said, "Wow. I am some kind of pitcher."

The little boy is a parable of our time. We often strike out, but we find a way to convince ourselves that we are in fact wonderful. What the little boy needs, of course, is help. His swing needs to be transformed. He needs a teacher. He needs to copy somebody who does it right.

Spiritually speaking, we need the very things the little boy needs. We need to admit we need help. We need a teacher, someone to copy, and we need Someone with the power to transform us.

One of the most frightening things about that little boy and ourselves is that we are always in the process of choosing who we will become. For good or not-good, we are changing. In the tugs and pulls of life we are either becoming more like God wants us to become or more like the devil wants us to become.

C.S. Lewis put it something like this:

"There are no ordinary people. We never talk to a mere mortal. For we are, day by day, becoming like God or like devils each stage of life we live. Some seemingly ordinary people change so remarkably that we are tempted to put them on a pedestal and worship them. Others turn into such horror and corruption such as you now meet only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations."

That is frightening. To think that Sadaam Hussein and Mother Teresa were both once little babies - soft, cuddly, cooing little babies. But in the course of their lives, the choices they made, the friends they gathered, the altars around which they worshipped, they changed. One turned into a monster, the other became like the Messiah, her Lord Jesus Christ.

Isn’t it strange that cowboys and kings,
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings,
And common folks like you and me,
Are builders for eternity.

And each is given a book of rules,
A shapeless mass and a bag of tools,
And each will make, ere life is flown,
A stumbling block or a stepping stone.

What is it that makes the difference between someone who is a stumbling block or someone who is a stepping stone? Well, human behavior is terribly complex. But finally we have to realize that what happens to us is not only the result of bad parenting, or being born on the wrong side of town, or poor genes, or a chemical imbalance because we ate too many Twinkies growing up. The difference is tilted by the day to day choices we make, and perhaps most of all, choosing who we want to influence our lives.

"With Unveiled Face"

Paul now turns to Christ’s transforming power. He steps to the canvas of his mind and paints a contrast between Moses and us. Moses, he remembered, had to shield his face when he came in the presence of God. But we approach God’s presence without fear because we have Christ. Christ is for us what a transformer is out from your house. The electric current would be too powerful for your home, so a transformer is needed to give you just the power you need to turn darkness into light. Of course, we have to click on the light switch to access that power. The point is that in Christ we don’t need a veil or a shield, for the more we look at Christ and study his every movement, the more we will be changed into his likeness.

Not that we are perfect.

Some of you are reading or have read in one of John Ortberg’s books his story of the mauve sofa. He and his wife traded in their Volkswagen Super Beetle for their first major investment in furniture. The couch was roughly the shade of Pepto-Bismol, but since it represented such a substantial investment, they thought mauve sounded better. The man at the furniture store tried to talk them out of it when he found out they had children. "Get something the color of dirt," he said. But their minds were made up. And their children were well behaved, they thought. The mauve sofa it was.

They got it home but immediately the number one rule of the house was, "Don’t sit on the mauve sofa." "Don’t touch the mauve sofa." "Don’t play around the mauve sofa." "Don’t even think about eating on the mauve sofa." To paraphrase the instructions in the Garden of Eden: "On every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but upon this sofa, the mauve sofa, you may not sit, for in the day you sit thereupon, you shall surely die."

Inevitably it happened. A red jelly stain appeared on the sofa. So Mrs. Ortberg, who dearly loved that sofa, lined up the three children in front of the sofa to see who did it. Mallory was the first to crack. With quivering lip she said, "Laura did it." Laura passionately denied it. Then there was silence. John Ortberg knew they would never tell because they had never seen their mother so angry. They would never tell because if they did they knew they would spend all eternity in the time out chair. He knew they would not confess because they were innocent. It was he who spilled the jelly on the mauve couch. He didn’t say anything because he needed a safe place to confess, like in a book.

Look, we have all put stains on God’s dream for our lives. We have soiled the sofa of holiness. The red jelly stain is ours. So if you think that you can divide the world into two camps – the jelly-stain people and the non-jelly stain people, or as the Bible would say, between sinners and non-sinners you just don’t understand the situation. As the Bible says in Romans 3:23, "all have sinned and put the jelly stain on the couch of God’s holiness." Well, that is my translation!

How Are We Transformed?

Paul now turns to how we are changed. He says we are changed from one degree of glory to another by the Spirit who dwells within us. It is the living Spirit of Christ that forms us, fills us, fashions us, into the dream God always has had for us.

Glenn Hinson speaks of the presence of God as the loving energy of God. He says that this loving energy of God is all around us. As flowers close during the night but open during the day, so we are called to open ourselves up to the loving energy of God that transforms us.

The question is, how do we find time to connect with God? How do we find time to open ourselves to the loving energy of God?

I remember looking over John Baillie’s Diary of Private Prayer many years ago. It includes beautifully worded petition after petition for the beginning and ending of every day. But I surrendered before I even started. We had three preschoolers at home. I was in the Seminary working on my doctorate. Shirley opened a preschool to help put food on the table. Raising children and a rigid prayer schedule are often impossible.

Back then I wish I could have heard Timothy Jones, who speaks of working prayer into the rhythms of life. By this he means that life follows patterns, habits, duties. These all have their rhythm. We can learn, he says, to open ourselves to God as these moments appear within our schedules.

For instance, when you mothers take your children to school and let them out you often drive home by yourself. While returning home connect with God and lift them up to Him in prayer. Then, like a tulip opening itself to the sun, open your life to the Spirit of the Son of God.

You men who travel spend a lot of time driving. Try centering prayer. Centering prayer makes no petition but just centers in, or absorbs, the loving presence of Christ. My favorite two words to connect with God when I am driving are, Lord Jesus. No request. No praise. Just connecting. Just opening. These two words became special to me when during a terrible time in our lives, with our son very sick, I would fall in bed at night exhausted. I found all I could get out was, Lord Jesus. It was enough. I went to sleep night after night simply plugging into the loving energy of God.

Or again, when you turn on your computer in the morning, it takes a moment. Use the moment. A simple prayer might be, "May I come to life like this computer is coming to life. Lord, I need your power. I need your program for my life for this day."

I read about a lady who in her later years invariably woke up at 2:00 in the morning. It was frustrating. She would wake up and try this trick and that, to go back to sleep. One early morning she thought, "If this is the rhythm of my life, why don’t I use it to pray, to read, to study."

Study the patterns of your life, the rhythms that they take. When you peal potatoes, or wash dishes, or load the washer, or watch your child play ball, find a way to connect with, to open yourself up to God.

A junk mail advertisement some years ago announced a book entitled, How to Do Everything Right. That is sheer nonsense. Forget about doing everything right. There are too many jelly stains on the sofa. Study the rhythms of your life and use them to connect with God. Let God do the rest.

In the historic rhythm of the Passover Meal, Jesus took the bread and said, "This is my body which is broken for you. This is my blood which is poured out for you. This is a rhythm of our church life. The first Sunday of every month you are handed an opportunity to connect with your Lord. Close your eyes to shut out distractions, and enjoy some spiritual time, just you and your Lord.

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