My Sunday Sermon Reacp 1.16.11
· Do you find yourself often “helping” God answer the prayers you just shared with Him?
· St. Francis of Assisi: “Pray like it all depends on God, work like it all depends on you”
· The problem most Christians have is we work AND pray like it all depends on us.
· I have always had a problem with that. I’m a control freak.
· Poem my mom gave me a long time ago:
As children bring their broken toys
With tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God
Because He was my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him
In peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own.
At last I snatched them back and cried,
“How could you be so slow”
“My child,” He said, “What could I do?
You never did let go.”
- written by Lauretta Burns
· Today we’re going to look at a situation where a need arose, and through a simple request, the act of letting go, and trusting Jesus, an amazing miracle occurred.
Jesus at the Wedding - John 2:1-11
1) Mary goes to the right place with her need.
· She goes straight to Jesus with her need.
· She doesn’t waste time and energy trying to fix the problem herself.
2) Gets to the root of the need.
· “They have no wine” is as simple as it could have gotten
· Gave Jesus her full request. She held nothing back.
3) “Do whatever he tells you” v.3
· Are we willing to do whatever is asked even when we don’t see how our “work” could possibly be used as a solution to the problem or need?
4) She did nothing more.
· Once she told Jesus of the need, she knew she did not have to do anything more about it.
· She knew she did not have to help Him by “suggesting” what he should do or anything else.
· She knew Him and knew the need was left in the proper hands.
· She knew she did not have to influence Him or persuade Him to give these friends a helping hand.
· No one is more willing to help as he is!
5) She trusted Jesus to do the rest.
· She had never before seen Jesus turn water to wine
· Did she even see this as a difficult request? No. Why?
· She knew Him well.
· She may not have ever seen a miracle before but she knew His heart and compassion and knew he would care enough to help.
· She knew He was never at a loss as to what to do.
· She left it with Him
Ok, so why don’t we handle our prayer needs as Mary did?
· We don’t really have a problem letting God know of what we want
· We also don’t have a problem letting God know how we would like for Him to accomplish our request.
· Our problem is very simple: we don’t let it go.
· The secret to prayer that Mary understood was simply that we should not interfere with our prayers. Leave it entirely to God, namely the when and the how concerning the fulfillment of our prayer.
· It’s a basic matter of trust. Do you really trust Jesus with your needs and the needs of others?
· If we can trust our doctors/surgeons, mechanics, educators, and anyone else we deem a professional, why then why is it so hard to trust our perfect Lord and Savior?
· What’s keeping you from letting go today?
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