GENESIS 13:4
In the last
few posts we have learned that in the early days of human history, somewhere,
at some point in time, for some reason, “men
begin to call upon the name of the Lord”.
They realized that God was all-powerful, ever-present, all-knowing
and all-loving and that He was a God whom they could call upon for help. And then those men “called out” or
prayed to Him with passion and intensity and God heard and answered their
prayers.
We also learned that men established a “place to pray” which they called and altar. They came to this altar for predominately three reasons which were:
- Gratitude
- Sacrifice
- Supplication
In the last post we left Abram at that little place where he
established his altar and called on the name of The Lord. We want to continue our journey with Abram
now as we read chapter 12 verse 9 and following. I hope you will take time to read that portion of scripture.
We see some interesting things that happened in the life
of Abram at this time that often happen in our lives. Notice that Abram:
·
Went South
·
Went through a famine
·
Went to the land of Egypt
·
Got into some trouble
Going South:
Without ever reading it in the Bible, without ever hearing a preacher
preach about it and without ever hearing a teacher teach about it, you know and
I know that when we come to that place of the altar and we offer thanks to God
for His kindness to us, and we sacrifice our sins, and our selfishness and our
all there and we even offer up sweet smelling prayers to Him that we can’t STAY
there. We get up and leave the altar and
continue our journey through life. And
as we do we come through times when things “go south”, or go bad for us. (If you are one who still says amen this would be an appropriate place for that uterance).
Famine: As
Christians, we go through times of “famine” as well. At the altar the sweet water of life seems to
flow all around us and soak and saturate our beings. When we kneel at the altar we partake of the Bread of Life but when we leave the
altar, when we leave that place of prayer for any extended period of time, we
begin to travel through a “famine”. We experience some dry times.
Egypt: Those of us who speak “Christian-ess” often
refer to getting away from God or wondering away to places where we shouldn’t
be as being in “Egypt”. We are
in bondage, we are enslaved, we are pressed-upon by evil.
Get into trouble:
I heard someone say that if you have never had anything bad happen
in your life to just hang on, it’s coming.
Someone also said that men and women are usually in one of three places. Just coming out of trouble, in trouble or
just about to get into trouble.
So when all this stuff happened to Abram we see in
Chapter 13: 3-4 that Abram and his
family went back to the place where they
had been, they went back to the altar.
I primarily want to address the premise that you cannot
survive on simply one trip, one decision, one experience at the altar. If we
are to survive and prosper and be productive as Christians we must make the
altar or our “place of prayer” a place where we go “continually”. We read last week scripture that told us to “be
instant in prayer”, to “pray without ceasing”.
We should never get to the place where we think we can just run in to
the closet, say our little prayer and run out and get the results of our
prayers that we expect and that God wants us to have.
I spoke in the last post about “Dollar Store prayers”,
or prayers that don't cost us much.
Now I want to introduce you to “Doorbell prayers”. I’ll do that with a little story that
happened to me when I was much younger than I am now.
Many years ago, our should I begin the story, “Once upon
a time”, I attended a
little Nazarene church in Calera. I don’t recall my age at the time. I would guess I was about 11, I could have
been as old as 14-15, I just don’t remember.
But at that time we were about to have a revival at our church and our young pastor
asked us to go out into the community and give out fliers with information
about our revival and invite people to the services. It seemed like a reasonable request. But at that point and time in my life I was very timid. I did not like to talk to people. I was embarrassed to speak to folks that I
did not know. ( I know that's hard for you to imagine). So it was going to be a
big step for me to go into the community, knock on doors and invite people to
our church. Why, I didn’t even have a
community. We lived in the country.
But I determined that I was going to do the things I should
do. So I went to my Grandmother’s house
and chose that street to do my inviting.
I gathered my stack of fliers, I practiced my speech and
took off down the street to do my job.
Usually people will say a little prayer when they go to visit or talk to
people. I was no different. I prayed,
“God, please don’t let anyone answer the door. I’ll just leave the flier and move on”.
It was something that
was uncomfortable. It was something that
was out of the ordinary, it was something that cost me time and effort. But I felt like I had to do it if I were
going to be pleasing to God.
Back then there were not that many doorbells on houses
but there were a few. Most of the time
when you went to a house you simply knocked on the door. So I knocked, or rang the doorbell whichever I did, I didn’t do it loudly. It was a little knock, a quick or tiny ring
of the bell.
“Don’t let them
answer, don’t let them answer”
Do you know that out of all that “inviting” and giving
out fliers that I did that afternoon, I didn’t get one single person to come to the revival.
No wonder I didn’t get a single person to come to
revival. I was too much into what “I”
wanted and not what God wanted.
Can I tell you that we pray like that. We do doorbell prayers.
We come to God and often we are uncomfortable, we are doing something out of the
ordinary, it is something that cost us time and effort and we don’t want to hang
around. We do a simple little “knock,
knock” or a tiny “ring” and quickly move away and go about our business.
“God bless my kids.
God help my spouse. God help the
preacher on Sunday. God visit us and
give us a good service on Sunday, AMEN”.
And we run on down the street doing our own thing.
NO WONDER WE DON’T GET ANSWERS TO OUR PRAYERS, NO WONDER
WE DON’T SEE RESULT, NO WONDER OUR KIDS ARE LOST, OUR LOVED-ONES ARE SICK AND OUR SERVICES ARE DRY!!!!
We need to pray. We need to establish that place of
prayer. We need to come to the altar and
offer our thanks, sacrifices, and intercessions and prayers. And if God doesn’t answer we need to RETURN
TO THE ALTAR. We need to be persistent.
Please read Luke 18 verse 1-8.
Notice that the judge says because she “troubleth me” or
she bothers me or she pesters me, “I’ll give her what she wants”
This lady didn’t just tap on the judge’s door, she didn’t
just ring the doorbell and run, she troubled him and got her answer.
One of the most recognized verses of scripture regarding
prayer is this Matthew 7:7-8:
“Ask and it shall
be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you;
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth, and to hi
that knocketh it shall be opened”
We like that verse don’t we? What does it say God will do for the person
who doesn’t ask?
NOTHING
What does it say He will do for the person who doesn’t
seek?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
And what does it say He will do for the person who doesn’t
knock, or who rings the doorbell and runs?
NOT ONE SINGLE THING!
I encourage you not to be afraid of the altar. Don't get tired of asking, seeking and knocking. RETURN
TO THE ALTAR. If you do, IF YOU ASK, IF YOU SEEK, IF YOU KNOCK…….God
will do His part.
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