Value of Silent Prayer

Let’s open up our bibles together and find with me Johns Gospel chapter 11. Johns gospel Chapter 11. Find with me Verses 1 through 7. Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” 4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death.

No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” Let me ask you… Have you ever in your life been in a hurry and it seems like everything just seems to be slowing you down?

When I was little we were on our way to Pee Wee little league game, my mother swung by the house to pick me up and we were already running late. But right beside the baseball field was a little store in a place called Jackson Mills. As she turned on the road for our baseball field, instead of dropping me off, my mother swung into the parking lot of the store just a Quarter mile from the ball field and she stopped to run in to grab something.

I remember sitting in that car so impatient, irritated and upset because I was going to be late. Some of you kids don’t know what it was like in the 80’s and 90’s to hafta wait for things that are faster today. We had to wait for our internet to dial up. There was no instant connection or being connected all the time. We had to wait by the phone for a phone call.

And for the most part not knowing who was calling. Speaking of phone calls, some of us had the pleasure of waiting for a rotary phone to finish its rotation. We didn’t have fancy instant number buttons to dial with. We had to wait… waiting was a part of our life back in those days. In our text this morning that’s the first thing we notice when we read these first 7 verses.

Mary and Martha sent Jesus a message, to tell Jesus that there is an immediate need. Someone is very sick. Someone he loves. Sometimes in our own life Don’t we make the mistake of waiting till the last minute to send up desperate prayers. But another mistake we make is when we are in the midst of our waiting. We begin to think about if our prayer was wrong. Is my unanswered prayer because I asked wrong?

One of the devils tactics is for us to be in the midst of our waiting and the enemy begins to whisper into our ears that we prayed the wrong prayer. Now, there is a wrong way to pray. With wrong motives to pray about. There are things in our life that will block our prayers. I won’t go into full detail because that’s a sermon in itself. But, please let me share real quick a few things that will block our prayer.

Unforgiveness blocks prayer, Unconfessed sin blocks prayer, selfish intentions blocks prayer, ignoring Scripture blocks prayer, Did you you can block prayer as a married man. In 1 Peter 3:7, it says your prayers are answered according to how you treat your wife. If you dishonor her and fail to treat her with great worth as an heir, meaning as a co-partner in this life, your prayers will be hindered. Do you Want your prayers to be answered?

Then be a Godly husband and love your wife as Christ loves the Church (Ephesians 5:25). These are obvious reasons… But, Let’s ask the question. Was Mary and Martha wrong for asking Jesus to come? No, they desired a good thing. When all seems to be going wrong in life, there is nothing more comforting than praying for and having the presence of Jesus be near to us. His presence comforts us.

It guides us. It gives us peace and joy. There is nothing better than being near Jesus and knowing that he is near. But what about those moments when we pray and there’s nothing but silence? What about those moments of patiently waiting but we hear or see no answer to prayer. Well, for the most part what we learn is this: The Silence is most often the right answer. One amazing truth we must learn is that God might be silent but doesn’t mean he is absent.

The book of Malachi is the ending of the Old Testament and during the period from that book to Jesus was 400 years of God’s silence. No one heres from God, but guess what? Listen to what happens historically, there are three things that are important leading up to the birth of Christ. Number one: Alexander the Great conquered the known world and the world began to speak Greek. Then the Romans imposed peace through it’s military strength.

And finally: The romans also built a transportation system that allowed people to get to places faster. So what we find, in 400 years, when God pulls the curtain down with Malachi, through this 400 years of silence, we find that there’s a common language, a relative peace in the land and a transportation system to get around faster. In the 400 years of silence, God was setting the stage for the arrival of Christ, while perfectly positioning the birth, burial and resurrection so that when the followers in the upper room were praying, and they received the Holy Spirit, the stage was set to spread the message of grace, forgiveness and the message of Jesus in a common language, with relative peace and an improved transportation system.

What we learn is that God was silent, but not absent. So how does that apply to us? What we learn is this: when we are in God’s silence and we feel his absence, we must learn to trust and rely on His presence. We trust that he is still there, working in the background, working behind the scenes. He tell us that he would never leave us? Why then do we keep acting as though he has?

Where’s our hope? Where’s our faith? The word tells us in Deuteronomy, I will never leave or forsake you. Jack Graham the son of the late billy graham once said, “Very often, people have a hard time taking God at His word, If God says it, that settles it, and there’s absolutely no reason to doubt it.” Why do we struggle with trusting in God. We struggle because we feel let down when he doesn’t answer our prayers.

we struggle because we fear we wont be taken care of. If the only time we trust God is when he gives us what we ask for, or if we only take answers that are visible to our sense, then we are living in a very elementary view of grace. If Jesus must give us an exact answer to our prayers then he cannot trust us with the intimacy of his silence yet.

Can he trust us with the intimacy of his silence? I think this is why the local church is important and why I believe that if we are going to grow as a Christian we need to be present to be disicpleled.in prayer. Jesus tells us in Matthew 18:19 “if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My father in heaven.”?

Did you know that Scripture was spoken to people who are not spiritual. It’s for those who haven’t learned the intimacy of walking with trust and reliance in the silence. Read Luke 11 and 18… those chapters are for those who are spiritual, its for those who remain in confidence in prayer. If all we ever want it’s to be able to point to something and say, This is the way God has answered me.

This is the way God answered my prayer. Then what we learn is that God can’t trust us yet with the intimacy of his silence. Wasn’t that the test in the garden? Can God rely on us to do the right thing when he seems absent? We find Adam and Eve living in the garden and then comes along the serpent and within the silence of God, he was silent, not absent, Adam and Eve was tricked into believe that God wasn’t being honest with them.

I imagine God in that moment just watching Adam and Eve in the garden being tempted and just saying with all of his heart.. love me… choose me… don’t choose disobedience…. Don’t choose to not trust in me, I have given you everything you have ever needed… don’t do it… rely on me… and I can just imagine God’s heart breaking, the moment eve and Adam bit into that apple, God’s heart was just breaking.

And God has spent everyday from that day till today reminding us that he still loves us. So it’s absolutely vital that we learn That… God’s silence is our proving grounds of our reliance. What we do in the silence, proves our trust and intimacy for him. Think of the story of Emmaus road in Luke 24. To be honest I think that is the road we choose to walk often in our lives.

Here are these disciples, followers, men who probably were a part of the crowd singing Hosanna as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, men who could have broken bread with Jesus, and here they are, walking Emmaus road, overwhelmed by sorrow. Plagued with questions. Wondering where God is in all of this madness… when, all along, he’s walking beside them. Walking with them, silently, but not absent. I think of Mary and Martha in this story and I wonder….

By their waiting they received a greater miracle than just healing of a sick body. They witnessed the resurrection of a soul. Could they have ever imagined, in their wildest dreams that the answer that Jesus had for them by their waiting in silence, was to witness a raised brother, and the manifestation of the glory of God and the understanding of Jesus Christ in a way that has blessed the church for 21 centuries?

I want to close out our message with this one thought… I hope it helps with your walk with God. So many times we associate love as in what we get. If you love me, you will give to me. And that is how we expect prayer to be… Jesus if you love me, you’ll answer me. Prayer is not waiting to be blessed. Prayer is not that GOD MAY BLESS US.

Prayer is how we give glory to God. Jesus tells his disciples that his waiting was for what? To bring glory to the Father. I believe we read the Bible through a very selfish intentions sometimes. And for the most part that is because we don’t read the Bible through prayer. remember, prayer is what interrupts our personal ambition. It redirects us back to God and off of our elves. One of the greatest love scriptures in the Bible is John 3:16.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That’s love being given..It’s selfish of us… to only read that verse and go.. I get something… i get eternal life. Because I believe in Jesus, the son of God, i get enteral life. I have receive Jesus, so now I get eternal life. It’s selfish of us to read that without knowing that is not what eternal life means.

Eternal life isn’t me getting life for me, eternally. So, What does that mean? Eternal life? Eternal life isn’t me going to heaven and playing golf for eternity. Eternal life isn’t me gaining health, wealth and comfort in this life to prepare me for an eternity in heaven. No, we can only define eternal life through Christ, through His word. What’s this gift, we receive that cost him his Son’s life?

SO let s ask Jesus to define eternal life. The definition of Eternal life comes from John 17:3… “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” That they know you… Do you see it!!!! To know God is to love God. To know God is to be known by Him. To love God is to be focused on the Son, so that his glory is reflected out into the world and back to Him.

One of the greatest realities is when we pray… Our chief end is to glorify God and to know Him. That’s eternal life: to know him, to know him forever, to know him with increasing knowledge, and increasing admiration, and increasing wonder, and increasing joy. That’s eternal life. Now reread John 3:16 with the understanding of what the chief end of man is… For God so loved the world (yuou and me that is in the world), that he gave his only Son (Jesus), that whoever believes in him (Jesus) should not perish (that means death away from God in hell, a part from his presence) but have eternal life (meaning a life that knows God and knows the one that God has sent.) Our life is to be reflections of his hope to a community that has no hope.

And the only way that… the only way a Christian gains this increasing of knowledge, admiration, wonder and joy, is through prayer and learning to walk by faith, even when God seems to be silent. TO know him means we trust him…. To know him means to rely on him. To know him means… we give to him all praise and honor and glory.. even when he feels distant, silent but not absent….

Silent but reliable. *