The Starting Point for Prayer

Jeremiah 10: 23-24
June 12, 2005
Rev. Curtis J. Young

Jeremiah 10:23-24 -       23 I know, O LORD, that a man's life is not his own; 
  it is not for man to direct his steps. 
 24 Correct me, LORD, but only with justice— 
  not in your anger, 
  lest you reduce me to nothing.

I don’t suppose it is especially shocking to hear that most of us find it hard to pray. On our worst days, we struggle to pray at all. We come to the end of most days having spent more time skimming the sports page than praying. We struggle to pray consistently. We struggle to pray from the heart. We struggle to pray beyond for things above or beyond our own needs 

I think many approach prayer like exercise. It’s good to do, necessary for long term health, but in the short term, there isn’t a lot of damage done by taking that third scoop of Ben & Jerry’s, popping in another DVD and letting the workout wait till tomorrow. 

We pay lip service to the benefits of prayer, but what we most associate with prayer are the costs. Prayer is work. It requires concentration, determination, self-control. 

But then, enter the crisis -- the heart attack -- and exercise, and prayer, never felt so important. Because something important really is at stake. We feel it, we know it.

David Healy writes for Intervarsity Press on prayer. He observes that most books, retreats, and conferences on prayer focus on how to pray when that’s not the problem at all. Most of us know how to pray. The more pressing issue is why we are to pray, why it is important to pray. And I would add, “why”, not in lofty theological terms for the super sanctified, but “why” in terms that we feel in our gut and stick with us.

If I asked you to come up with a list of reasons why we should pray, I have no doubt you could do it. We have been taught to affirm many things about prayer. Do we really believe them? 

More important, are they on track? Are they the reasons God gives us to pray over and over again in Scripture? God’s reasons will bring you to your knees. 

Prayer is an action. It is something you do, or not, depending on your values, whether it matters to you. And what matters to you depends on your beliefs, what you hold to be true. And your beliefs depend on your worldview, how you see reality. 

Everything you do springs from how you see the world, especially prayer.

In Jeremiah 10, the prophet spends 22 verses denouncing idolatry and the worldview that supports it. An idol, he says, is like a scarecrow in a melon patch. It can do you neither harm nor good. (5) But God is real, and the Lord is really God. And so we read:

Verse 6: “No one is like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.” 

Verse 7: “There is no one like you.” 
Verse 10: “But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King.” 

Verse 12: But God made the earth by His power; He founded the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding.” 
Verse 16: “The Almighty is His name.”

So what does Jeremiah stress is the problem with idolaters? That they are wicked, or evil? No, but that they are ignorant. Verse 14: “Everyone is senseless and without knowledge…” In verse 21, he writes, “The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.” 

They don’t know who He is and His control of every thing. Their worldview is messed up. Because they don’t know how things are, of course they don’t seek God. They don’t pray

But Jeremiah does, and in verse 23, as he begins his prayer, he tells us why: “I know…” “I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.” This is one of the most potent worldview statements in the entire Bible, and why I have entitled this morning’s sermon, “The Starting Point for Prayer”. For we have before us, the great underlying assumption for all prayer. 

“I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.” 

Jeremiah isn’t talking about how things ought to be or what ought to happen. He is talking about how things are and why things happen as they do. 

Yet, did you notice that each of the two parallel statements in this verse is put in the negative? A man’s life is not his own.
It is not for man to direct his steps.

Jeremiah is presenting his worldview as the very opposite of idolaters. What do they believe, but that a man’s life is his own and that it is for man to direct his steps?

It doesn’t matter whether people are religious or irreligious. The great majority really do believe that a man is in charge of his life, that his will and choices and actions determine its course and outcome.

Those who believe in God believe only that He is powerful, not all powerful, not in any ongoing regular way that affects things. No wonder they don’t pray except in extreme situations, and then out of fear or desperation, not faith. 

When Jeremiah uttered his words he was talking about what C.S. Lewis might have called the deeper truth about the world. It is for those who have eyes to see it.

On May 4, Jim Hartnett rushed me to the airport so I could fly to be with my mother. I was praying and asking God to help me get Mom into hospice so she could receive the care she needed. 

As we pulled up curbside on the departure level, my cell phone rang. It was Mom’s doctor. I had been waiting for his call to talk about the immediate crisis that put her in the hospital. I knew nothing about him.

“Dr. Gonzales, there is one thing I feel I must accomplish when I get to Brownsville. I must get my mother into hospice.”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. Then like the shaft of an arrow into the heart of a target, he said, “I’m the medical director of hospice.” Stunned, I asked, “Would you repeat that?” 

Several years ago, I took my sons, Isaac and Luke, backpacking into the Cascade Mountains. They were around nine and seven. We were five miles from the trailhead working our way up a boulder field when a rock dislodged and landed on Isaac’s ankle. He crumpled in pain. He couldn’t stand to put weight on it. We hobbled back to our nearby campsite. As afternoon turned to evening and evening to night, his ankle didn’t improve. It swelled and throbbed. Throughout the night, I prayed that God would bring us help. The next morning we broke camp. Slowly and painfully we began the trek down the mountain. He kept wincing. I kept praying.

We hadn’t gone very far before we met two men coming up the trail. Seeing Isaac, they asked if we needed some help. I explained what had happened. One of the men then assumed the role of spokesman: “We’re both doctors from Seattle. Would you like us to take a look?” One of them turned out to be an orthopedic resident. Within a few minutes Isaac’s ankle was properly wrapped, he had been taught how to use a staff to walk more easily, and we had a doctor’s judgment that his ankle was badly sprained, not broken.

A man is not his own. It is not for man to direct his steps. Now you might say Dr. Gonzales was the head of hospice long before I ever prayed for God to guide me, or that those two doctors on the trail to Colchuck Lake were driving out of Seattle and headed to the mountains before that stone landed on my son’s ankle.

That’s no proof God did not answer my prayers. Who is to deny these things were so because God, who is eternal, unbound by time in any way, heard my prayers and answered them by causing these things to occur? Who is to deny that God so ordered Providence to affect the lives of those three men so they would be the answers to my prayers? 

Is it possible, after all, that God could have begun orchestrating the answers to my prayers months or years before I prayed them? God is not bound by time in answering my prayers. As Aquinas stressed, there is no past or future to Him.

Had I not prayed, would Dr. Gonzalez have sat on the board of a hospital instead of hospice? Would the two doctors have taken some other trail into the mountain? I can never know, and you can never know, and they can never know. I can only know that at the end of those days I experienced wonderful answers to prayer, and masterful examples of God’s perfect control of His world. Yes, He is in control, not so I doubt the point of praying, but so I understand the importance of it, and the power in it.

We stumble in our attempts to describe God’s sovereignty because this truth is far greater than our minds’ ability to grasp. God Himself is far greater. He is the Almighty. The man who knows this prays. The man who doesn’t won’t. 
Job characterized the boast of the wicked in these terms (Job 21:15-16): “Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?' But their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the counsel of the wicked.”

Jesus taught quite to the contrary, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)

In my lifetime, I have witnessed three events that I regard as absolutely extraordinary: The internal collapse of the Soviet Empire without a world war; the colossal rise of Christianity in China despite constant, murderous oppression; and the opening of the Islamic world to Christ at the very time Islam seeks to expand by terror and bloodshed.

Each of these in its own right is a world empire pledged to the destruction of Christianity; each is a gateway to hell. Now in God’s Providence we see them give way! And before what? Violence and terror? No, but before the power of a praying church. God is revealing His Son most powerfully in the kingdoms of this earth that are most hostile to him. 

Only once in Scripture, Psalm 2, are we told that God scoffs. He scoffs at the kings of the earth who think they can overthrow the reign of His Son. Even the proudest tyrant is not his own; it is not for him to direct his steps. The person who is convinced of this prays. The person who doesn’t, won’t. Let’s pray!