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Interrupting Heaven
Revelation 8:1-5
Milford Baptist Church, 6.30pm, 25
May 2003
Does God really care?
A man was taking it easy, lying on the grass and looking up at the clouds.
He decided to talk to God. "God," he said, "how long is a million years?"
God answered, "In my frame of reference, it's about a minute." The man
asked, "God, how much is a million dollars?" God answered, "To me, it's a
penny." So the man asked, "God, can I have a penny?" God answered, "Sure!
Just a minute."
Sometimes I feel like that man must have felt - like praying doesn't
really make a difference. It's not that I wonder whether God can do what
I'm asking, but whether he will. Does he really care? That's an important
question for all of us. Because it affects whether and how we pray.
A while back I saw a film called Fallen. A pretty grim film. Denzel
Washington plays a cop who has to do battle with a demonic force, which is
claiming lives in his patch. He's really struggling. One night he and
another cop, played by John Goodman, get into this very issue. Take a look
at this.
". there's five billion of us, we're like ants. Do we care what ants do,
from a moral standpoint?" "No." The implication is that God probably
doesn't care about us, that our prayers probably don't make a difference.
Do our prayers make a difference?
Tony Campolo, a sociology professor, was about to speak at a college
chapel service. Eight men - eight pastors - took him to a back room, had
him kneel, laid their hands on his head, and began to pray. That's a good
thing, except that they prayed a long time, and the longer they prayed,
the more tired they got, and the more tired they got, the more they leaned
on his head. Eight guys leaning on your head doesn't feel so good.
To make matters worse, one of them was not even praying for Campolo. He
went on praying for someone called Charlie Stoltzfus: "Dear Lord, you know
Charlie Stoltzfus. He lives in that silver trailer down the road a mile.
You know the trailer, Lord, just down the road on the right hand side."
(Tony was thinking, "Hello? Do we really need to furnish God with
directional material?) "Lord, Charlie told me this morning he's going to
leave his wife and three kids. Step in and do something God. Bring them
back together again." Tony finally got the preachers off his head,
delivered his message, and got in his car to drive home. As he drove onto
the motorway he noticed a hitchhiker. This is what happened.
We may not often (at least not in my experience) have prayers answered in
such dramatic fashion, but that's not the point. The point is that God
does care about us. Our prayers do make a difference.
History belongs to the intercessors
Hudson Taylor tells about a missionary couple who were in charge of ten
preaching points in China. They wrote to their home secretary back in the
UK confessing an absolute lack of progress. They urged their secretary to
find prayer intercessors for each place. After a while, in seven of those
places, opposition melted, spiritual revival broke out and the churches
grow strongly. But in three places there was no change. When the couple
returned home for a break, guess what they found out? The secretary had
succeeded in finding people to pray for only seven of the ten places.
Some other missionaries with the Overseas Missionary Society were working
in India. After 25 years of hard slog all they could report was 2,000
believers in 25 churches. They adopted a new strategy. In their home
countries they recruited 1,000 people committed to pray for the work in
India for just 15 minutes per day. Within a few years the church exploded
to 73,000 members in 550 churches. Prayer changes things.
In 1982 some Christians in East Germany started to form small groups of
ten to twelve people, who committed themselves to meet and pray for peace.
By October 1989, 50,000 people were involved in Monday night prayer
meetings. In 1990, when those who were praying moved quietly into the
streets, their numbers quickly swelled to 300,000 and "the wall came
tumbling down."
Equally amazing is what God has been doing in Columbia, a country wracked
by drug trafficking, guerrilla warfare and corruption. In 1983, in the
capital city of Bogota, a church was started in someone's living room with
eight people. By 1999 it had grown to over 200,000. Guess what? That
church gathers every morning from 5.00am to 9.00am and all night every
Friday simply to pray.
A guy called Walter Wink says, "History belongs to the intercessors -
those who believe and pray the future into being."
On a much smaller scale, but much closer to home, I've been praying for
eighteen months, asking God to provide three key people to join the staff
of the church here. For two of these people, their circumstances prevented
them from coming on board. But last month the third person came on staff.
Prayer changes things.
Interrupting heaven
That's the message of the Bible. Take the book of Revelation, chapter
eight. The apostle John has a vision. He describes a scene that takes
place in heaven after all the seals have been broken on a scroll that
tells the history of human sin and God's judgment. Look at this:
This is incredible. John says that an angel with a golden incense burner
comes to the altar before God's throne and offers lots of sweet-smelling
incense representing all the prayers arising from the earth (v 3). "The
smoke of the incense, mixed with the prayers of the saints, ascended up to
God." (v 4).
During this time, John says that there was complete silence throughout
heaven for about half an hour (v 1). Usually we think of events on earth
being interrupted because of actions taken in heaven. Here it's the other
way around. All of heaven comes to a standstill. The endless songs and
praises of angels suddenly stop. Why? Because someone is praying. All of
heaven stops so the prayers of God's people - your prayers and mine, every
one of them - can rise before God. Our prayers matter.
Then what happens next in this vision? There are great acts of judgment on
the earth - pictured by rumbles of thunder, flashes of lightening, and
terrible earthquakes. See it? These acts on earth occur in response to the
prayers of God's people. What happens on earth happens because people
pray.
Our prayers - the prayers of ordinary human beings - interrupt heaven. Our
prayers can change the world.
Come near
Let me ask you this: What do you need
to pray about this evening? Who do you need to bring before God right now?
Is it someone you know and love and they don't yet know Jesus?
Is it someone you know who's struggling, and they need wisdom or strength
or faith?
Is it you?
§ Do you need to be touched by Jesus?
§ Do you need to be filled with his love?
§ Do you need his wisdom and direction?
§ Do you need his strength - his strength to forgive maybe?
§ Do you need to cast onto him a burden you've been carrying?
§ Do you need to confess and hand over to him something you know has been
stunting your life?
§ Maybe you simply need to come before God and give him your life,
completely and unashamedly.
Do that. Because of Jesus' death and resurrection for us, we can interrupt
heaven. I remember seeing a great black and white photo of President John
F. Kennedy in the Oval Office at the White House. He's surrounded by the
vice president and other important statesmen. They're obviously in
counsel, discussing weighty matters of national or international
importance. And there, crawling across the papers on the President's desk,
interrupting the meeting, is JFK Jr, the president's little child. He
could interrupt the President of the United States, because it was his
dad. And his dad did cared for him. The president of the universe cares
about you. So crawl up to him, come close. God says, "Come near to me and
I will come near to you" (James 4:8). Let's do that as we sing. There will
be people up the front here to pray with you, if you'd like that. Come
forward. God is here. He's everywhere, but it's up to us to come to him in
faith, to put ourselves in his presence. Let's do that. Let's interrupt
heaven and change our world.
"In [Jesus], and through faith in him, we may approach God with freedom
and with confidence" (Eph. 3.12).
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