Part 6 “Being Bold In Prayer”
Hebrews 4:14-5:10
Intro – how many of you would consider yourselves to be a bold person?…that “bold” would be one word that accurately describes you?…
But for many of us this downplaying of boldness has translated into how we live our spiritual lives…we wait, hesitate, defer to others, try not to appear or sound too confident…
And I’m here to tell you that way of thinking can really prevent us from living the Christian life in the way God intended…and praying the way God has intended…
You need to hear this: there is such a thing as biblical boldness…a godly boldness…a boldness that comes from God’s Spirit…which affects how we live our spiritual lives…
-this boldness from God is not meant to be feared, or resisted, or squelched, but rather embraced and lived under the control of God’s Spirit for the glory of God…Boldness from God is essential if we’re going to grow in our life of faith and our effectiveness in God’s kingdom…
Our Prayer Life
-our reluctance to be bold can really affect how some of us approach God in prayer…we feel hesitant to draw near to God with confidence…
…we don’t want to ask for too much, be too demanding…we don’t want to risk asking for something too big…so we opt for safe prayers, small prayers, prayers that settle for so little…
That is what our passage today in Hebrews addresses: boldness…boldness in prayer…the kind of boldness in prayer God wants us to express and not hold back…a boldness which is not about us at all, not based on our courage and confidence, not based on our personality, but based on Who God is and what He is able and willing to do…
…a boldness based in faith in our great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ…
…a boldness in prayer we will have an opportunity to practice at the end of our service today…
-turn to Heb. 4:14-5:10…prayer…read vv.14-16…
To understand what this passage is teaching we have to understand why the book of Hebrews was written. It was written to help a struggling group of 1st century Christians who came to faith in JC out of a Jewish background…but they were now in danger of defecting from the faith because of opposition and difficulties and discouragement…
…and so the writer of Heb. is telling them, “No, don’t do that. Stick with Jesus! Please remember how much greater Jesus is than any part of your old religious system…please remember how superior He is to any OT prophet, or the angels, or any created being…please remember that He is even better than any of the OT priests and their work on behalf of God’s people…why go back to a lesser system when you have Jesus?
So don’t hold back from your Great High Priest, don’t hesitate, to approach Him, don’t drift away from Jesus: come toward Him boldly and with confidence…come right into His presence…He’s here for you…He welcomes you warmly, compassionately and with the assurance that He wants to do something about the needs in your life…
** And that’s what some of you need to hear today…
Listen to how the writer shows that Jesus is the superior High Priest in 5:1-10…read…
You and I today have no idea how revolutionary this teaching was to these first century believers from a Jewish background…the idea that God was approachable…that as non-priests we could enter the presence of God, God’s throne of Grace, which would be equal to saying you can go into the holy of holies in the temple…
-this was almost impossible for a Jewish mind to comprehend, let alone embrace…we with the benefit of the whole NT get this too well…but anyone with a Jewish background couldn’t…
In the OT system of Jewish religion, only a priest could represent the people before God and only the High Priest could go into the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifices once a year, on the day of Atonement…
And to become a high priest (picture) was an extremely rare opportunity. You had to be a member of the tribe of Levi, you had to be free of all physical defect and deformity. And you were held to a rigorous standard of holiness. This was the greatest honor in the Jewish religion…most people had no hope of attaining to this level of honor and responsibility…
And there were so many regulations and customs you had to follow. The High Priest went into the holy of holies after a lengthy purification process, dressed in a richly ornamented robe with twelve precious stones attached to it representing the twelve tribes of Israel…all sorts of other adornments…
…including bells sown to the hem of the robe (Ex.28:35) so that the people outside could know if he was still alive or not…
…as long as they heard the sound of the bells they knew he was alive, ministering to the Lord, but if the bells stopped ringing, then he had died…
…the Lord had struck him down probably because of some sin or impurity…and they would have to drag his lifeless body out of the Holy of Holies…
I mean, this is the way a Jewish person understood entering God’s presence, coming into the throne room of God…
-can you see why this teaching was so revolutionary?
Throne of Judgment or Grace?
Now while we today know that as God’s children we have free and open access to God’s presence…many of us are still reluctant to come near to Him because we fear judgment instead of grace…we think that God is displeased with us and is going to speak harshly to us or judge us or point out our faults and sins instead of be kind to us…and so we stay away…we find it hard to believe that we will meet a God of mercy and grace instead of a God of anger and wrath…
eg. talking to teacher in gr.6, wanting to share something good…getting chewed out instead…that’s how some of us think God is…
But that’s not how God is…God’s throne is a throne of grace, not judgment…God is a God of grace toward His children.
Recovering Boldness
What often prevents us from entering God’s presence with boldness, confidence, is the awareness of our sin…our sense of unworthiness in the presence of a holy God…
But listen dear friend: God forgives sin…thru JC…when we confess our sin, the Bible says His blood cleanses us from all sin…it’s gone, wiped away, removed forever…
God makes us holy/righteous in His sight thru Jesus Christ
eg?…it’s like getting called in by your teacher because you’ve broken the rules and are expecting judgment, because you deserve it and you know it…but instead you find mercy, kindness and pardon from your teacher…because he informs you that one of your fellow students served the detention for you and so the price for your disobedience has been paid…you’re free to go…
-that’s God’s grace…His gift to you to simply receive…
The thing that gives us confidence/boldness to enter God’s presence is an understanding of God’s mercy and grace shown to us through JC…
Our boldness in prayer will then come from believing that this great God of ours, this Great High Priest, welcomes us with love and compassion and empathy and tenderness…
…and beyond that, He longs to give us the desire of our hearts…to bless us by providing the help we need with our problems and concerns…He loves to answer our prayers…even if we pray for the wrong thing…or bring our hesitant faith into the throne room of grace…
eg. meeting the princesses at Disneyland…now there is no comparison between a fictional Disney princess and Jesus Christ…but what a picture of a loving, welcome reception…
Bold Prayer for Sheri Lueck
One of the great prayer answer stories of our church involves Sheri Lueck, now Scheel, Frank and Marlene’s daughter, when she was 16 yrs old. It was a sudden and extreme case of blood poisoning, that within a matter of hours took Sheri from a doctors office, to the Sturgeon Hospital and then by ambulance to the Stollery Childrens hospital.
Frank called Pastor Sieg and asked him to pray…PS got the word out and others began to pray…
Sheri became quickly and critically ill.
The doctor told Marlene that “if she makes it through the night she should be OK”. Frank and Marlene were in a state of shock…their daughter’s life was hanging by a thread…
Later that night things were still looking grim, so the doctor suggested that Marlene call the family to come up to the hospital…
Now sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Deb and Daryl Tetz, two of our long-time members, were woken up by the HS and urged to pray for Sheri…prompted by the Lord Daryl woke up and then he woke up Deb: “we have to pray for Sheri”…
…and the two of them prayed what Daryl describes as urgent prayer… asking God to heal her and deliver her…bold prayer for her healing and deliverance…
PS came to the hospital to pray for Sheri…he had been praying for her, along with other people, from the moment he heard the news…
I asked Pastor Sieg to describe how he prayed for her and he said, “I prayed with great urgency that God would heal her and that we would not lose her. I said to God, “This is it. We refuse to lose this girl. Her whole life is at stake here. Lord You’ve got to heal her. You are our only hope.”
Sieg describes being at the breaking point, emotionally, physically and of course spiritually. He says he prayed in a way that people don’t normally pray…quiet, timid prayers…
When I read v. 7 in our passage, that to me describes the kind of prayer that was happening on behalf of Sheri…read…
Well, I am happy to tell you that God answered the bold prayers of His people…the fervent prayers to our Great High Priest…the prayers of many who spent hours in the throne room of grace…for after two days she recovered to the point where she was moved from the ICU and taken to a regular room…and was released from the hospital a few days later with no lasting damage…
eg. even the bold prayer for our niece Jennie who was in the horrific bus crash in Ontario…miraculous healing…
Fervent Cries and Tears
…you know I’ve been saying for years that it isn’t the fervency of our prayers that makes them effective…but you know I’m really re-thinking that…v.7 certainly challenges my thinking…
-but so do many other passages in the Bible…
eg 2 Kg 20 prayer of Hezekiah…told by the prophet Isaiah that he would die because of his illness…but Hezekiah prayed urgently to the Lord…and v. 5, “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.”
The Bible does teach that there is something important about the way we pray… about the fervency and boldness and faith we bring to our prayers…that is something that really moves the heart of God…something He loves to respond to…
How God Makes Us Bold in Prayer
God wants to make you bold in prayer…but how does He do it? The Bible gives us two ways:
1. Through praying together (v.16 “Let us…”)
-boldness in prayer is learned when we pray together with other believers who are bold in prayer…
-I’ve said it many times, we learn how to pray by praying with others…and being stretched in our prayer life…to learn how to pray with passion and faith, inspired by the faith of others…
-don’t stay away from prayer gatherings…there are plenty of people in our church who pray to God with boldness, great faith, great passion…there are plenty of opportunities to pray together…to hear stories of how God is answering prayer…
2. through the filling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31)
Acts 4:31 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
-the filling of God’s HS changes us…transforms us from shy, timid, reluctant people to surprisingly bold and confident…the HS brings boldness, faith and courage…and that comes from the power of God’s Spirit working within us…
Conclusion
So, would you like to become more bold in prayer? Would you like to see an increase of boldness in your prayer life? in the corporate prayer life of our church?
As I said earlier, we’re going to have an opportunity to put this into practice right now…
…number of important and urgent prayer needs in our bulletin…ask God to show you one and then stand and prayer publicly, boldly, for this need…don’t be limited to what is in the bulletin…but please chose only one thing to pray about…
…worship team up front…
Prayer Time and Worship…