What Prayer Can Change Your Life Like No Other? This One Can.

 

Go figure.  I’ve been a pastor for close to thirty years, and I talked about the story you’re about to hear only once.  But this year that changed.  I talked about it two months ago, and now I’m talking about it again, twice in less than three months.   That’s kind of weird. 

You see.  This story doesn’t have anything to do with viruses’ or pandemics or any of the exact challenges that we’re facing.   But the story happens during the same sort of time.   It happened in a time in-between, in what’s known as liminal time.  That word liminal comes from a Latin word.  It simply means the threshold that’s part of every doorway.  And that makes sense.  For liminal time is where you’re stuck in exactly that place.  You can’t go back to where you were.   And yet, you can’t go forward to the next thing.  

Now that may not sound like an awesome place to be.  But in places like that, big changes happen, awesome opportunities open, huge growth occurs.  In fact, researchers first coined this word liminal around manhood rituals, ones they saw in certain premodern cultures.   In those cultures, the tribal elders sent boys of a certain age out together for days into the wild, days that profoundly tested them and changed them too.  For when they returned from confronting the dangers, the boys had become men, men bound together by those days in the in-between, in that space where they were no longer boys but not yet men.

These days have a similar quality for us.  We’re all facing the dangers of this pandemic together.   And we know.  The world we knew won’t return. It’s gone.  Yet we don’t know what the new world is going to look like either. We’re living in the in-between.  But in that space, wondrous things happen.   And in this story, one that takes place in such an in-between time, not only does a wondrous thing happen, but in the prayer that it inspires, God shows you the key step in living out these days.  God shows you, in these days, the prayer you must pray, the thing you must ask.  For in that prayer, God will do powerful things.   What is this prayer God calls you to pray?  Here God shows you the way.  Let’s listen to what God has to say.

Isaiah 6:1-8    

What do you do when you’re stuck in the in between?   What do you do, when you know, once this pandemic ends, it won’t be the same world it was?  But you don’t know what sort of world it will be.   You’re stuck in-between.   Here God tells you.  God tells you, even when you’re stuck, you can go.  You can go because God sends you, and God never gets stuck. 

In this story, you can get distracted by all the special effects of the bizarre divine creatures, the ground quaking, the smoke rising up.  But if you focus on that, you’ll miss why God did all those things, why God showed up in such a powerful way.   God showed up like that because King Uzziah had died.  

You see. King Uzziah had been a terrific king, a great leader of the people.   But nobody had confidence that his son, Ahaz, would follow in those footsteps.   Honestly, Ahaz looked way less impressive than his dad.  And Israel still faced huge challenges especially from the Assyrians, who were looking to gobble them up any day now.   So, Isaiah, like the rest of Israel, felt stuck in between.  Uzziah had died, and no one knew what would happen next.   So, in those moments, Isaiah goes to the temple, and when he does, boom!   Boy, does God shows up!   

And God does that for a reason.   God is saying.   Yes, Uzziah’s gone, and no one knows what the future holds.   But, Isaiah, just because you and Israel are stuck in the in-between, God says, don’t think I am.  No, God says.  I am moving.  I’m taking action.  

And that’s a good thing for us to remember in our own in-between days.  Sure, lots of things no one knows.  No one knows when vaccines will be there for everyone or when this pandemic will truly be over or when things will get back to something that looks even a little familiar.   We are stuck in that in-between.   But God isn’t.   God is moving.  God is taking action.  

And as the passage ends, Isaiah starts moving too.  But before you get there, we’ve gotta talk about what comes before. 

This past Monday I was sitting at home feeling sorry for myself.  You see.  Mondays can be treacherous times for preachers, that day and often Sunday afternoons.   Why?  Well, we get tired, and when we get tired, we often get discouraged.  

I remember years ago, one Sunday evening I was feeling really down about the church I was serving in New York.  So, I called my parents.   And that’s when Mom told me about Sears.   She told me.  One Sunday afternoon, she said, your dad (who was a preacher by the way) got so discouraged, he called up a member of the church who managed the local Sears to ask for a job.  Wisely that manager told my dad to sleep on it.  Then, if he felt the same way in the morning they could talk.   And my dad, who was on the call, reluctantly admitted.  “Yes, that happened.”   And hearing that made me feel good.  Sure, that Sunday, I was feeling bad, but I wasn’t yet feeling looking for a job at Sears bad!

And this past Monday, while I wasn’t ready to go job hunting, I was feeling pretty discouraged.  This whole pandemic thing was getting old.  And as much as I enjoyed the quiche last Sunday, I was hoping we’d have a few more folks show up.   Then I started talking to God about those things.  And well, God wasn’t so understanding.  Basically, God said to me.  “You’re healthy You’re Covid-free You’re relatively comfortable. You’ve got things way better than most and you’re discouraged? You gotta be kidding me.”   I had to admit.   God was right.  

Like Isaiah in that temple, I was looking for God’s perspective.  But the first perspective God gave me was on me.  And in that perspective, I didn’t look that good.  And Isaiah gets that same perspective.  And when he does, he realizes.  He doesn’t look that good either.  The whole nation doesn’t look that good.    Yet, when Isaiah faces that, when he faces up, to, as he puts it, his “unclean lips,” what does God do?  God sends his uncleanness, his guilt, his sin away. 

And this past Monday when God gave me that perspective on me, it didn’t weigh me down.   It freed me.  I felt God’s grace, God’s love.  And I realized all the ways God had been watching out for me and how blind I had been in seeing it.    

Like Isaiah, we can lose perspective.  We can look at the challenges of these days and forget all the signs of God’s love and provision that surround us.  You’ve got the beauty of this space we find ourselves in, the folks who have decorated our patio with garland and lights and ornaments, and the video cameras that we already had ready to go when this pandemic started.  You’ve got the fact that this year, a saint of our church, Bonnie Springer, left at her passing, the largest gift we’ve gotten in twenty years, one that has sustained us in so many ways through this pandemic.  You’ve got the fact that in the middle of a pandemic we opened a new branch of our Learning Center at a church in Hollywood Hills, a campus we got rent free!  And last Sunday, you’ve got the fact that we ate quiche!   We have so much to be grateful for!

And when Isaiah gets his newfound perspective, it prepares him for what happens next.  God starts asking some serious questions.   Who are we going to send?  Who’s going to go for us?   And when God asks, Isaiah answers.  Isaiah answers with one of the most powerful prayers you can ever say.   Isaiah says.  “Here am I; send me!”   For when you pray that prayer, you never know what God will do.  

Has anyone heard of Henrietta Mears?  Mears grew up in Minneapolis near the turn of the 20^th century.   And in high school, along with a friend, she prayed Isaiah’s prayer.  She told God.  Wherever you send me, I’ll go.  Send me. Soon after, that friend who prayed that prayer with her went to Japan as a missionary, but not Henrietta.  She didn’t go anywhere.  She wondered why.  Nevertheless, she went on.   Though hampered with terrible eyesight, she graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota, and she became a teacher.   For 14 years she taught in high schools throughout Minnesota.  But then she found herself in the in-between.  She loved teaching, but she felt that God had something more.  She just didn’t know what.  So together with her sister, she took a year off to travel the world.  On the way back, they stopped off in California to visit with a pastor they had heard preach in Minneapolis, Stewart MacLennan.   And MacLennan asked Mears to come and direct the education program at his church, Hollywood Presbyterian.  But Mears wasn’t even a Presbyterian.  She was a Baptist.  Nevertheless, she remembered that prayer to go wherever God sent her, even to the Presbyterians.  So, at age 38, she answered the call and moved to Los Angeles.   And what happened after that?   Well, Hollywood Presbyterian was already pretty big. When she came, it had 400 people in its Sunday School alone, but in two years, under her leadership, that Sunday School grew to over 4000.   And since Mears didn’t like the curriculum, she created her own, founding a publishing company, Gospel Light, that exists to this day.   But Mears didn’t stop there.  She founded a camp in the mountains, Forest Home, where young people could go to develop their faith, a camp that 80 years later still serves 50,000 campers every year.  But more than anything else she taught.  Over 35 years at Hollywood Presbyterian, she developed leaders that created ministry organizations that changed the world.   A couple, Bill and Vonette Bright lived in her house for ten years.  And inspired by her, they started an organization, now known as Cru, that currently has 19,000 workers serving in 190 nations around the world.  Or then there’s the young preacher, struggling with doubts, who she invited to speak at Forest Home one weekend.  There, under Mears’ guidance, that preacher resolved his doubts.  And from that weekend at Forest Home, he went on to do a series of meetings in Los Angeles that launched that preacher, Billy Graham on a path that impacted the entire world.   All in all, Mears inspired over 400 people to go into full time Christian ministry from that one church in Hollywood, and through those folks, she influenced millions more.   One of those called her, the grandmother of us all.   This one woman, who never had a child of her own, became the grandmother of millions.  And all because she said to God.  “Here am I.  Send me.”

Now of course, not everyone, who prays this prayer, will become Henrietta Mears. In fact, only one person did, and her name is Henrietta Mears.  But if you pray this prayer, God will act.  God will move.  

For Isaiah, God moved him to preach a message that at the time didn’t seem to impact anyone at all.  God even told Isaiah that no one would listen but to go preach anyway.   And sadly, because Israel didn’t listen, Assyria did conquer them.    But Isaiah kept preaching and thank God he did.  For Jesus used Isaiah’s very words as his own call to ministry.   And after he died and rose again, Jesus’ disciples looked to Isaiah’s word to understand who Jesus was, and what he had come to do.   And those same words inspired artists and musicians throughout the ages to create works such as Handel’s Messiah.   And today, here, thousands of years later, we’re still listening to Isaiah’s words.   And it all began with a simple prayer.  Here I am. Send me. 

In these difficult days, these days in between, you could just keep your head down and try to endure.   Or you could pray this prayer.   You could say to God.   I don’t know what the future holds.  I don’t know what place I have in it.   But here’s my prayer.  “Here I am.  Send me.”    And in that prayer, you’ll never know exactly what God will do.  But you can know this.   God will do something.  God could do something that for all you know, will impact the world for thousands of years to come.   But it all begins with those words.  Here am I. Send me.   So, will you pray it?  In this in between time, will you pray that prayer, the prayer that Isaiah prayed.   “Here am I, Send me.”   And don’t just pray it today.   Pray it every day.  When you wake up, make that your prayer.  “Here am I.  Send me.”  And if you do, buckle up. Because God is moving, and God is sending you.