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Baptism of the Lord “Be Prayerful” Reading: Psalm 29, Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17, Luke
3:15-17,21-22 Preached at Baldwin Presbyterian
Church on January 10th 2010 As we head into
a New Year I want to focus your attention on a little detail that Luke tells
us about the baptism of Jesus. Luke 3:21 reads, “Now when all
the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was
praying, the heaven opened”. It’s that
little phrase, “and was praying” that
caught my eye. Somehow I’d got the picture in my mind that the Holy Spirit
came down on Jesus as He was being baptized. You’ve maybe seen pictures in
Christian art with that familiar image of John baptizing Jesus in the River
Jordan, and the Spirit alighting on Jesus as this took place. But that’s not
how Luke tells it. Luke tells us, all the people were baptized, then Jesus
was baptized, and then Jesus prayed, and then the Spirit came. Luke does not
picture everything happening at once, but gives us a sequence of events that
take place. Baptism in water, prayer, and then the Holy Spirit. In religious
life there are the corporate things and the individual things. There are the
things that we do, together, and there are the things we need to do for
ourselves. Through His baptism Jesus shows us that both are important; the
external things and the internal things. But it can be a hard job to keep
them both in balance. In church life
there are a whole lot of external things that need to be done. We need people to serve on session and as
deacons. We need people to be on committees to plan and arrange things. We need choir practices if we are to have a
choir. We need Sunday School teachers
if we are going to have a Sunday School.
We need to care for one another. We need to give
our time and our talents and our treasure to the churches work if the church
is to flourish. We need to be physically involved and seen to be involved
with our church. We should rejoice in those times we get to share in the
sacraments of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper. These things are an important
part of Christian life. But they are only one side of the coin. The other side
of the coin is that we need to be people who, on a one to one basis, are
getting their act together with God. We need to have a personal walk and a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We don’t just need to hear the Bible
read on Sunday, we need to read it for ourselves. We don’t just need to sit
under the preacher’s prayers; we need to be cultivating a personal prayer
life. We don’t just need to be just listening to a sermon on a Sunday
morning; we are called to be a living sermon for the entire world to read
24/7, 52 weeks of the year. As we head into
a New Year of this churches life I would urge all of us to be active in the
different activities of the church, but more than that I want to invite you
to be prayerful.
Whether in the Church you hold particular positions of responsibility or you
just attend occasionally, be prayerful. We all lead such busy lives. Personal
devotions, and in particular prayer can be pushed aside. We need to find time
for it. One of the
great things about prayer though, is that the only equipment we need to pray,
is a heart willing to listen to God.
We can pray anywhere, anytime. We don’t need a blackberry, or a laptop
computer, or a book, or a phone or anything external. We don’t need to be in
church or at any office or in any special place. This opens up a lot of
opportunities! Some people
like to pray when they are driving to work. Turn off the radio and tune in to
God instead. Some like to take a walk
around the block and have a word. Some like to jog and pray. Some work-out
and pray. Some chill out and pray. Some like to have a special time of the
day when they can shut the door behind them and be alone with God. Some people
have ways they like to approach their prayer times. Maybe a song or a piece
of music. Maybe a bible reading. Maybe
a breathing exercise or meditation. Others find it easier to just keep
chatting away through out the day, whenever they get a chance. We’re all
different and there is no one way or one discipline or one system of prayer
that suits all. If you haven’t
made any resolutions this year, (or maybe did make some but have
blown them already), then why not
resolve to make 2010 a more prayerful year? To be prayerful
will bring all sorts of benefits. You will be far more centered on God and
better focused on the things that God can do through your life. You will find
other ‘full’ things start to come along –you’ll be a little more joyful,
peaceful, and hopeful. It’s no secret.
Even an atheist, secular, psychologist will tell you that if you take a
little time out of a day for reflection and meditation then you will become
far more focused on the tasks that you have to do each day. That it’s
something that reduces stress. Prayer has definite health benefits! But more than
all of that, I keep coming back to that little detail about Jesus baptism
that Luke tells us. That it was after His baptism, when He prayed, that the
Spirit came down and He received the assurance, “Thou art my
beloved Son, with thee I am well pleased”. There is Jesus
in all the midst of that religious activity and expectation. There is Jesus
being baptized. He comes up out of the water. And He prays. A deep personal
and heart felt prayer. This was the
start of His new life. He was about to embark on a road that would lead Him
to the cross. He would be filled with
power from on high. There would be those who would love Him and those who
hated Him. There would be so much to share and so much to do. So He prays.
And assurance comes. An assurance that He would need to hear again, for
doubts soon set in. And time and
time again we see Jesus withdrawing from the busyness, walking away from all
the things that needed doing then and there, walking away from the needs of
the people and the disciples clamoring to learn, walking away to take time
out to pray. If He who was already so
close to the Father’s heart needed to do that, then how much more do our
lives need to be prayerful! Prayer has been
called ‘the most talked about and least practiced discipline of the Christian
life’. You hear sermons about it, buy books about it, think about it, talk
about it, muse about it, wonder about it, see the benefits in it, hear the
testimonies concerning it, hear people extolling it and praising it, yet
still never get around to really doing it! So I urge you,
if you want to be a better husband or wife, a better friend, a better parent
or grandparent, a better son or daughter, better at your schoolwork or better
at your office work or better at whatever makes up your daily lot, if you
want to be a better contributor or a better caregiver, or a better lover, or
a better worker… then be prayerful. If you want to
be a real treasure to your church, to your family, to those you love, to your
community, and you value your own personal growth and your own well being,
then let 2010 be a prayerful year. This is a
win-win resolution to make. You are not being asked to give anything up. You
are being invited to deepen your relationship with God. You are being invited
to deeper fellowship with God and a deeper experience of God’s love. Luke tells us,
it was when all the people had been baptized, and Jesus himself had been
baptized “and
was praying” that
heaven opened and the Holy
Spirit came down as a dove and Jesus received the assurance He needed to see
Him through the tumultuous days that lay ahead. We do not know what the days
ahead may bring to us. But we can know that God will
walk every step of the way with us. How? Be Prayerful! Adrian Pratt
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