Virtual Worship - 4 October 2020

Jesus Shaped People - Prayer

Service Sheet (pdf)

Good morning.

Welcome to our Service of Worship from the North Bradford Methodist Circuit. I’m Ruth Kerr, a Worship Leader at Baildon and our theme this morning is Prayer. This is week 5 of a series we have been following called Jesus Shaped People, looking at the teaching of Jesus during the final period of his ministry, on his journey to Jerusalem, described in Luke’s gospel in chapters 9 to 19.

Today we focus on prayer and we’ll be looking at a couple of passages in particular which shed light on the subject, interspersing this with prayers, and I have enlisted the help of some members of the Monday evening Prayer group, currently meeting on Zoom.In the uncertain times in which we are living, I personally feel very grateful for the gift of prayer, very grateful to Jesus for opening up the way for us to approach God in prayer. 

Call to worship

And so, with this sense of gratitude, let’s start our Service with a Psalm of praise, Psalm 100, read by my husband, Peter.

Hymn

We sing, or listen to the hymn, Love Divine all loves excelling, StF 503.

Prayers

Let us pray: God, we thank you for this new day and the opportunity to worship you – whether gathered in church or in our home – to enter your courts with praise, together in spirit. Thank you for your love which excels all others. Many of us come with burdens and anxieties. Thank you that you understand. Help us to lay these at your feet and please send your Holy Spirit to enable us to worship you in spirit and truth. “Come almighty to deliver, let us all thy life receive”. Please speak to us today and encourage us, so that we may be the Church you need us to be in this time and this place. We ask in Jesus name, Amen.

Reading

Jesus teaches us a lot about prayer: he urges us to pray with sincerity, not to make a show of it but to take it seriously, acknowledging our weakness and frailty and our need of God; he tells us that we should ask for the Holy Spirit’s help ; he says we should pray for those we don’t get on with, and we are told to be persistent in prayer – more of that later.

Luke 11 v.1-4

Reflection

The disciples have seen the importance of prayer in Jesus’ own life – he regularly seeks out a lonely place to spend long periods in prayer; they have been witnesses to the amazing miracles Jesus has performed and heard the radical teaching he has given them. Clearly prayer gives him the energy for all this and so eventually they ask him for help in how to pray. He replies with the words, “When you pray …” Not if! Prayer is clearly not an optional extra! As the Rev.Gordon Dey says, in his notes for this session, we need to be intentional in our praying. Prayer is not always easy – I know I struggle quite often when I have a lot going on in my head, or a lot of strong feelings – it’s difficult to know where to begin and we can easily make the mistake of not praying, of giving up before we have even started and distracting ourselves with some other activity. But no, Jesus says we need to pray. “When you pray….” What Jesus then gives his disciples, we now know as the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s look at it line by line:

Our Father – how wonderful that we can address God as our Father. The creator of the universe, our holy, almighty and eternal God calls us to be his children, through faith in Jesus. We may or may not have had a good relationship with our earthly father, but our heavenly father is utterly dependable and always there for us. And we say “our Father” – we pray this prayer as a community of believers. 

Hallowed be your name: How do we keep God’s name hallowed, holy? There are many names for God in the Bible, many aspects of his character we need to honour and give thanks for.

Meditation

Peter is now going to lead us in a meditation on some of the names for God, with the help of some of his photographs:

God our Creator – as we look around our world, we see such beauty, majesty, splendour in Creation; the dawn of a new day, nature on a grand scale, nature in its intimate details.

God our Sustainer – you provide us with all we need – the sun, food and water. 

God our Rock – steadfast and sure, “be my rock of refuge.

God our Shepherd – “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want….

God our Redeemer – you sent us Jesus to bring us back to yourself, when we were lost in our sin, our selfishness, our pride, our greed.

God our light - You are our loving heavenly Father, who longs to draw us closer to yourself, to shine your light on our path and show us the way to go.

Hymn

Be still for the presence of the Holy One, is here. (StF20)

Reflection

Your Kingdom come; Your Will be done. God’s kingdom is very different from any earthly kingdom, as we know from the teaching of Jesus. It’s a kingdom of love and service; we are to put our love for God and our neighbour before love of self – it requires repentance, a turning away from our own agenda, on a daily basis, as Jesus reminds us in his prayer.And how do we discern His will? One way is surely to spend time with God.

Prayer

Let us pray:Lord, we need your help to keep your name holy, to honour you in all we do;we need your help to seek your will and see your kingdom values adopted in our lives. Help us to make space in our busy lives to hear your voice and then the will to obey you. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

The beginning of the Lord’s Prayer focuses on God and then the focus shifts. Over to Gary, then Jonathan, then Peter.

Give us this day our daily bread - Give us today all that we need to fulfil us and make us more the people you would have us be.Let us not worry about tomorrow, because we have faith that you will give us what we need when tomorrow comes.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. I have always been struck by this part of the prayer, because Jesus is indicating that our receiving of forgiveness is somehow connected to our willingness and ability to forgive others. So before we pray to God asking for his forgiveness of our sins, transgressions or debts, let us first pray for those we feel have in some way harmed or wronged us, or failed to do something they could have done to help us. We may actually need to go one step further, and not just pray for these people but make contact with them and let them know that we forgive them.

Let’s pray now and I will pause at times for you to add your own names or situations which you want to bring before God. Let’s pray: 

O God, you always welcome us with open arms, no matter what we have done. You long to forgive us and your mercy never ends. As we acknowledge your unbounded love, we are left wanting to say sorry, but before we ask for forgiveness, we bring to you those who have wronged us. (Pause) 

 

Father, as we forgive these people we come asking for forgiveness ourselves, for the times we forget you (Pause), 

for the times we have hurt others (Pause), 

for the times we have ignored the needs of others or not cared for your Creation (Pause) 

May the God who is love, forgive us as we forgive one another.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Jesus resisted temptation many times and we too are tempted but sometimes we do not resist successfully. 

Let us pray – Father God, we thank you for the example of Jesus and how he resisted temptation. We pray for the strength that we also may resist temptations no matter in what form they come, in thought, word or deed.

Reflection 

Jesus often speaks of the evil one, the devil – who seeks to draw us away from God, to distract us from following Jesus, to feed us with lies about ourselves and God – and Jesus urges us to pray regularly for protection from him.

The final line of the Prayer, the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, was added later and wasn’t part of Jesus’ teaching, but it serves to close the prayer and bring us back to focus on our amazing God.

Reading

We are going to look at one other passage from Luke’s gospel now, Luke 18, v.1-8

Reflection

Persistence in prayer is hard – there’s a strong tendency to give up when we don’t get the answer we are hoping for; when we don’t see the healing for a friend, when another friend doesn’t get the job offer they are hoping for, when we don’t see the end of the pandemic. But I am reminded of that verse in Isaiah 55: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. We have to admit that we don’t see the whole picture – only God knows what is best in a certain situation. He will act in his way and in his timing. Jesus urges us to persevere in praying – to acknowledge our dependency on God. One way we can encourage each other to keep going in prayer, is by praying with others. I have asked a couple of the prayer group members to say why they go to the prayer meetings. 

Elaine

Why go to a prayer meeting, when I can pray anytime, anywhere? It’s good to share with those of like mind and worship God together in our everyday language. In difficult times, it can be like the eye of the storm where there is great peace and stillness from which we can draw strength to go on. Not only are we blessed in enjoying the presence of God together, but we can ask God for his blessing on others too.

Jonathan

Being informed – knowing who and what to pray for, e.g. Circuit Prayer. It’s good to read that on our own and use it in our prayer times but when we use it in the Monday night Prayer Group it comes alive and, through the prayers of others, you learn so much more about what we can pray for and how to pray for the people and situations

I get inspired and motivated by hearing other people pray and joining in with them. We all pray in different ways and use different words but when people are praying in a group you can often pick up their concern or passion for a particular person or situation and that inspires me to pray. Other people’s faith, confidence, conviction and expectancy that God will hear and answer our prayers is infectious.

Encouraged – one of the most privileged, faith-building and encouraging things about praying in a group is hearing how God has answered our prayers. People regularly share stories of how God has worked in the lives of the people we are praying for and how they’ve been supported and helped to know that people are praying for them. It’s also encouraging when the group prays for me. I know that I’m part of a loving, caring, praying group of people, and that’s what means the most to me. 

Hymn

What a friend we have in Jesus StF 531. 

Intercessions

Let us pray: Our heavenly Father, we bring in prayer to you our troubled world. We pray for countries torn apart by conflict – Syria, Yemen, Belarus, Afghanistan; we pray for places suffering the effects of climate change, for countries that are struggling to cope with the pandemic. Give wisdom to governments and authorities everywhere – may their leaders seek your wisdom and guidance, may they seek peace and cooperation, and put the common good above their own ambitions.

Father, we thank you for the NHS and we pray that you will continue to equip doctors and nurses in their fight against Covid and their care of all those who are sick. Please protect the vulnerable, the elderly and the key-workers. We pray for all those who feel isolated and anxious in these difficult times, for those who have lost jobs.

Lord, we pray for the Church and its Leaders. May the good news of Jesus continue to be preached and received. May this be a time when people turn to you, God, and find hope and strength to meet the challenges they face.

We ask you Father to be with all those we know personally who are ill, or bereaved, or struggling with life in some way, in this present time. Please bring your healing and peace. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen. And we conclude by saying together the Lord’s Prayer.

Overview

Before we sing our final hymn, a reminder of Jesus’ teaching: approach God in an attitude of humble worship, honouring Him for all He is and has done; askfor His help in adopting His values in our lives; ask daily for the things we need; seek his forgiveness and His protection and strength to face life’s trials. And then persist in prayer!

In preparing for this Service, I have been challenged by two questions: Do I really think about the words of the Lord’s Prayer every time I say it, or do I just recite the words without really engaging with them? Am I intentional and persistent in my praying?

You might like to ponder those 2 questions in the week ahead. Jesus took prayer seriously, so must his disciples!

And a final prayer, taken from the Methodist Prayer handbook: 

God of holy love, you call your church to be a community of reception and a community of response. Grant us the humility to receive your gospel and so be shaped in the ways of Christ, and give us the faith to respond to your gospel, so that we might be drawn into the life-giving ways of your Spirit in the world. Amen (Julian Pursehouse, East Anglia District Chair)

Hymn

Our closing hymn is: “To God be the glory, great things he has done”, StF 94. The third verse begins: “Great things he has taught us, great things he has done”. Let’s praise God together for all that Jesus teaches us.

To close our Service today, I am going to read two verses from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen

May God bless you and your families this week.