Good morning everyone! My name is Insoo Kim and I am the assistant pastor here at the Hyde Park Vineyard Church, currently serving as the interim senior pastor while Rand is away on a three-month study leave.

If you are joining us for the first time this morning, we are thrilled to have you here with us. If you would please take a minute to fill out the connection card that is in your bulletin, this will help us to know how we can better serve you. You can drop it off at the Welcome Table on your way out and grab a free worship CD or a mug as a small gift to you from us. And if you are new today or have starting coming to our church just recently, we would love it if you can come to the Vineyard Welcome today right after service out in the hallway. The church staff and I would love to meet you and just get to know you a little better. And we would love to answer any questions that you may have about the church. So, please stick around for a few minutes after service.

This week, we are continuing on the teaching series entitled, “The Church that Works.” Last week we learned that the Church that Works is a church where everyone regularly takes risks to introduce people to Jesus. That in the heart, in the DNA of the Church, God created us to be a powerful missional force to declare to the whole world that there is a God and that he loves us. And we talked about how living out this mission means taking risks regularly to be involved in the lives of those around us who do not know Jesus, so that when the time comes, when God is working to soften his or her heart, that you can be just one person to tell him about how much Jesus loves them in every situation, in every circumstance. So, let’s keep taking risks. Let’s keep making friends with those who do not know Jesus. Let’s keep taking risks to introduce people to Jesus. Let’s keep living out our faith in the streets, in the midst of people who do not know Jesus!

So today we come to Part 2 of the series.

The Church that Works is a church where everyone digs deeply into the heart of God in word, prayer, and worship.

Please bow your heads with me in prayer and invite God to come and speak to us, to awaken our senses to his voice, touch, and leading. I will also pray for the offering.

Let me start this morning by sharing with you one fundamental truth about the Christian life!

Spiritual growth takes the spiritual disciplines. I’m sure that’s not the most profound thing you heard recently. But let me say it again. Spiritual growth takes the spiritual disciplines. You can talk all you want about growing and maturing in your spirit, to become a growing and maturing Christian, but you can not do that apart from the spiritual disciplines. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the spiritual disciplines, some of which are things like fasting, meditation, service, solitude, celebration. The spiritual disciplines are simply things that help us to go beyond the surface of life to the depth of our soul, or spirit. Through the spiritual disciplines we acknowledge that we are not merely flesh and bones. That God created us with a spirit, and until we learn that and recognize the need to grow in our spirit, we are living incomplete lives. Spiritual growth takes spiritual disciplines. We read in Galatians 6:

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

Spiritual growth takes the spiritual disciplines. Let me give you another fundamental truth about the Christian life: God can give a person gifts and talents, but God can not give a person character. God can give you supernatural gifts so that you can excel at certain things like music, study, and even leadership. But God can not make you into a deeper and better person. That part is left up to us. Put simply, God can give you the gifts and tools necessary to live a good life but God can not make you into a good person. So we say again and again in our church that when we release anybody into leadership in any kind of ministry, more than looking for their natural talents and how gifted they are in a certain area in which they desire to minister, we look for a person’s character, their maturity. We do this because we know that God can bless anyone with gifts but it is up to the person to become a person of maturity and integrity. So, let’s say if we have to choose between two people for a position or a project, and one person is really gifted and demonstrates a lot of talents but lacks a depth of character and integrity and the second person may not be the most gifted and talented person, but we see a depth of character and maturity and integrity, we will choose the second person again and again. The whole Parable of Talents we see in Matthew 25 attests to this truth. The master gives different amount of talents to three of his servants. Two of the servants use their talents to bear fruit, more talents, in the case of this parable. But the third servant, takes the talent, and simply hides it. And when the master comes back, the first two servants are praised and rewarded for what they have done. But the third servant is chastised.

So, spiritual growth takes the spiritual disciplines. And it is our God-given responsibility to mature, to grow deep. Let me give you a demonstration of how the spiritual disciplines work.

SPONGE INTRODUCTION
Have you seen one of these? I bet there are some of you guys in college who may not know what this is, but this is called a sponge. There are many uses for this sponge. You can make funny comic characters out of it, i.e. Sponge Bob Square Pants. You can throw it at your brother or sister. You can even use it to clean stuff. But one of the cooler uses for the sponge is as a teaching aid for a sermon, which I will demonstrate for you now.

Sponge Bob here is a very hard worker. He works faithfully everyday to help make the world a better place. He sits by the sink day and night, waiting simply to be used by the master in any way he pleases. Sometime he cleans dishes, and other times he cleans the bathtub, and ever so often he has the not-so-fun job of cleaning the toilet. He is a very faithful servant! But in order for the sponge to remain useful, it needs to stay wet. You see, in the very fabric of the way in which he was created by his maker, the sponge can not survive apart from water. And if he is away from water for any lengthy period of time, he becomes dry and hard. And when he becomes dry and hard, he can not clean, he becomes useless. And it is during those times of dryness, he begins to remember those days when he was overflowing with water, where every pore in his being was filled with water. There was life. He desperately longs for those days. And he takes the journey back toward the promise land, the land flowing with water and soap, and there, once again, he lives the way he was created to live, in the abundance of water where there is the abundance of life.

Spiritual discipline is the water to every man and women’s soul. It is the means by which we draw close to God, in whom we find life, the only water that can truly satisfy. I bet there are many of you here this morning, and you are that dry sponge. Some of you are dry as a bone and still can’t sit still long enough or quiet enough to just receive from the Lord. And to you, I hope what I will have to say this morning will help you to navigate your way back to that fountain of life and start drinking again from the living water that only our maker can give.

Others of you are wet and soaking, but the water hasn’t been changed for years because your Christian walk has become nothing more than a set of Sunday morning routines. The water that you are drinking is lifeless, and you’re asking, “isn’t there more to life than this?” Well, to you, let me say that God’s not going to give you anything more until you give out what he’s already given you. You have to realize that you have to give away what God has given you, so that you can make yourself ready to receive more. That’s the cycle of spiritual maturity. We receive so that we may give. And you can only give out of what you have been given.

The Church that Works is a church where everyone digs deeply into the heart of God in word, prayer, and worship. I narrowed down all of the spiritual disciplines into these three categories because I believe that all the other disciplines flow out of these three. If we can get these three right, the rest will follow. And for the sake of our time today, instead of trying to give you broad teachings about all three of these, I want to focus on prayer this morning. But before we do that, to help us get on the same page on Word and Worship, let me recap for you from two teachings that I gave earlier.

A RECAP [Our Daily Bread Teaching]
In the beginning of this year, I gave a teaching on reading the Bible, entitled, “Our Daily Bread – Encountering God in Scripture. I’m afraid to ask if anybody remembers that teaching. So, let’s just pretend that you all remember. One of the challenges that I laid out for us during the teaching was for all of us to read the Bible everyday using the Bible reading plan so that we can finish reading through the entire Bible in one year. I shared how our God desperately longs to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us. He is not a distant or silent God. God has spoken! God has spoken to his creation, and he picked 40 authors to write a book comprised of 66 books in the span of some 1500 years that reveals to us who he is. In the pages of this book, God is bearing his heart and soul, calling us to know him, calling us to seek him, calling us into a relationship with him. God has spoken. And here is what he says about the Bible:

Joshua 1:8 (The Message)
And don't for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you'll get where you're going; then you'll succeed.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NIV)
These commandments (meaning the Bible) that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

So we need to be a people of the Word.

ANOTHER RECAP [Selah Worship Teaching]
And last May, almost exactly a year ago, I gave a teaching on worship. We talked about “Selah – The Theology and Practice of Worship.” I shared that Biblical worship is defined as “the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices and hearts.” Worship is simply the outworking of God-centeredness in the individual and corporate experience of the people of God. Biblical worship, from start to finish, is all about God, all for God, and all to God. Biblical worship begins and ends with God.

We read in the book of Exodus the story of Moses and the people of God and their encounter with God. This is what the Lord says to Moses in Exodus 3:7-12:

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" And God said, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.

So, the history of the people of God is one of redemption for a purpose. And that purpose was so that they would worship God. We see in scriptures, that the people of God again and again turn away from God. God in His infinite love and grace woos back His people, so that they may worship Him and no other.

We are a people called by God, set apart to worship Him and Him only. This is our heritage. This is our legacy. This is our story. And this story does not end with Moses, or even with the modern church. This story will continue throughout eternity. So we need to be a worshipping Church.

So we now come to the topic of prayer. In order to become the church that works, we need to be a people of prayer. Last week, we read through the entire chapter 2 of Acts. Today, I want to revisit that passage again. Not the whole chapter, but just the last few verses. Just as a reminder, this is the beginning of the very first church. Here is how they are described. Acts 2:42-47:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

One of the key elements of the first church was its fervent desire to seek after God in prayer. They knew that what Jesus commanded, to go make disciples of all the nations was not going to happen just by working really hard. They knew it was going to take a miracle. So, they devoted themselves to prayer as one of their foundational practices. So, let’s start from the very beginning. What is prayer?

WHAT IS PRAYER?
First of all, I believe that there are two elements of prayer: First and foremost, prayer is the way we commune with God. It is the way that we relate to him. It is the way that we communicate with him. And unfortunately, prayer is usually more one-sided than it is meant to be. Secondly, prayer is the primary way in which we, you and I, co-labor with God in expanding his will and purposes here on earth. And with that statement comes many philosophical questions like, “Why does an all-knowing, all-powerful God need me to pray?” Or, “how exactly does prayer work?” There are questions about prayer that I can not answer. There are many, many questions the answer to which we many never fully understand. But, and this is an important “but”, our questions about prayer should not cause us to stand back and dismiss the whole practice because I believe that half of the understanding about prayer will come simply as we begin to take risks to live it out.

Oswald Chambers wrote that:

Prayer is not an exercise. It is the life of the saint… Prayer does not equip us for the greater work, Prayer is the greater work.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE CHURCH PRAYS? [Acts 12]
A few chapters later in the book of Acts, in chapter 12, we read another story that powerfully demonstrates what happens when the people of God are united in prayer, consumed by the knowledge that God answers the prayers of his people. Please turn with me to chapter 12 of Acts. And I will read starting in verse 1 to verse 16.

In Acts 12:2 we read that Agrippa had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. This was the first time an apostle had been killed. After James’ death, Agrippa took a poll and discovered that the Jews appreciated his persecution of Christians. As a result, he arrested Peter also and made plans to kill him.

How did the church respond to James' death and Peter' imprisonment? They prayed. In Acts 12:5 we read, "Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him." And in Acts 12:12 we read, "When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying." In this time of great trouble and confusion, the church sought God through prayer.

It may be that the church at that time met together in several houses rather than in one large building. When we read the New Testament, we don’t find even one mention of a building being used as a church for a large group. But we know members of the early church met frequently in various houses. Here, at this time of crisis, we see that they met together to pray at the house of a woman named Mary.

Why do you think the first thing the disciples did was to pray? Because the power of the church is in prayer. The power of the church is not the power of an army or of money or of influence. It is in the power of prayer. In James 5:16 we read, "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." Here we see the whole church uniting to pray about this serious emergency.

And in response to the prayer of the church, God delivers Peter in a miraculous way! God answers the prayers of his people! And simply put, prayer begins with quieting ourselves for long enough to hear. And it is in that place of silence where God begins to speak to you. And as God begins to speak to, you respond in co-laboring with him and what he is doing. Prayer is that place where we commune with God. It is the place where our relationship with our Maker grows deep and strong.

PRAYER AND SUFFERING
The difficult thing about talking about prayers is responding to those people who simply dismiss the whole practice of prayer altogether, or for someone who has been praying for many, many years without seeing any results.

I recently came across a website, www.WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com. And they assert that this is the most important question we can ask about God. It is a website run by someone who has obviously been hurt by the church and those profess to be Christians. It basically goes chapter by chapter trying to disprove the existence of God and the foolishness of prayer. The website also had a forum where people would write in and share about their personal experience with God, mostly very painful and angry stories. And in reading through the website, my heart just broke. The website had some 170,000 postings in some 8,000 topics by some 3,000 users. One posting on the forum caught my attention. It was entitled, “How I decided that the Christian God wasn’t for me.” And here is what he writes:

My family was never very religious. Both my parents had gone to church as children, and very much believed in Jesus and God, but they never took us. So around the age of ten or eleven I decided that on the face of it, there just wasn't enough evidence to make me believe that there was a god. I wasn't, and still am not, completely averse to the idea, but until something comes up to prove it I won't believe. Anyway, one day me and my very best friend, a guy I'd known since I was four years old, we bust our Atheist-cherries with each other. We're walking to class and I tell him how I was grounded for talking about how some stuff in the Bible didn't seem to make sense. And he looks at me and goes "Holy sh*t, you don't believe either? You're the first guy I've met I could talk to about this!" So we have a nice long conversation about how neither of us believe anymore.

And two weeks later, the guy is walking towards the field by my house to meet me and my other friends so we can all walk to school together, and gets hit by a semi. Killed instantly.

At first I was very, very, upset. How much more obvious could you get? We had doubted God, and God had done smoted the sh*t out of one us, Old Testament style.

But then, I started to think. We were kids. This God gave us curiosity and intelligence and rationality, and expected us to believe 3000 year old stories with absolutely no empirical proof for it. And for not believing, he murdered one of us.

It became pretty simple for me, then. The baseline was still, no proof, therefore no believe. But even if you took what happened to my friend into account, and used that as a cornerstone for belief, then the only God that revealed was a vicious tyrannical murderer. And I refused to worship THAT on basic moral principles.

So...no longer Christian. I believe the term for me is either weak atheist or strong agnostic. Until there's a good reason to, I won't believe.

Here is what one other person wrote about prayer:

I find its not that god doesn't answer any prayers. It’s that he completely ignores all prayer. And its funny I mean when a coincidence happens like a Christian that prayed for a promotion gets it, he will say "god answered my prayer" However when a Christian prays for something and doesn't get it he will just shrug it off as, its not gods plan for me. Well come on, when there are millions of people praying every single day for millions of things, coincidences are bound to happen, but so far nothing has shown that praying affects the outcome of any event whatsoever.

And it went on, one after another. People from all walks of life, people who are atheists, people who are agnostics, people who used to attend church as children, coming to this website of refuge where they were able to vent their anger and frustrations about a God who doesn’t seem to care or answer prayers. People angry at a God who kills their friend because he doubted the existence of a God. People disgusted at a God who refused to heal their mom or dad from cancer even though they prayed every day for healing. People who simply can not believe that there is a God because of the atrocities we see in Darfur. I’m sure if this website was better publicized, I bet there would be thousands and thousands of more people writing in with their stories of anger and pain. I’m sure there are some of you in this room who can relate to this website all too well.

So, church, what is our response to this? How do we respond to a world that thinks that God hates them or doesn’t care, and think that Christians are a bunch of arrogant, judgmental bigots who talks about how much God loves the world but he himself refuses to lift a hand to help the poor? How should we respond? Let me share one idea with you today. And I will speak more about this three weeks from now when we conclude the series on the “Church that Works.”

First, I think we need to take a very honest look at ourselves and acknowledge that the church has made a lot of mistakes. And the biggest mistake that I see the church making is that we have taken the approach that the only thing that we can do to solve the world’s problems is to pray. And granted, I believe that prayer should be a part of it. It should actually start there, but it should by no means end there. As God has intended, the church should be the answer to someone’s prayer! We should be the ones that answer the prayers of a hurting world who is so desperately longing to experience authentic love, generosity, compassion, humility, without any sort of an agenda. We should serve the least, the last, and the lost because that is the right thing to do without worrying so much if that person is going to become a Christian or not. That is up to God.

We need to talk less and do more. We need to have less church meetings and get out in the streets to serve the people that he loves so much. The church, too often, has done a bad job representing God to the world that he loves so much and is trying to save. The church, too often, has been the reason that people are running away from God. And for that we need to repent. We need to make changes. We need to start right now with those of us right here in this room. I’ll say more about this in three weeks!

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I believe that there are many of us sitting in this room who can relate all too well with those people who wrote into the website. Maybe you have had a loved one killed in some unexpected and tragic way and you feel that God is not able to be trusted. Maybe you have been praying for a family member who had been struggling with cancer for many years, only to see the person wasting away in pain and agony and eventually die. Maybe you have been hurt by the words and actions of the church. And if that is you today, let me say that I am so sorry that you have been hurt. I am so sorry that you have been wounded. I am so sorry that you have grown weary, unable to trust in God or in prayer because it just doesn’t seem to work. I don’t know how to speak to your past experiences, but they do not have to determine what you can experience in the future. Maybe the best thing you can do for yourself is to get up on off the floor and try just one more time. Just hang in there for one more day! And if you can’t hang in there by yourself, let us help you. Let us walk with you. Let us pray with you after the service.

WHAT NOW?
Matilda Andross writes that:

Prayer, though it comes from the heart of an unlearned child of God, can suspend the laws of the universe, if such be God's will, just as the sun stood still when Joshua prayed. There is no other power on earth that the enemy of souls hates and fears as he does prayer. We are told that 'Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees.'

Corrie Ten Boon wrote:

A man is powerful on his knees.

Prayer changes the world. We read in 2 Chronicles:

If my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land

Through prayer, not only can people be changed, but whole nations can be changed. Prayer is a powerful thing! So, let us pray! Let us become a praying church.

Have you grown weary? Why not pray?
Have you grown dry and hard? Why not pray?
Is a member of your family not a Christian? Why not pray for that person?
Is a dear friend of yours not yet a Christian? Why not pray for that person?
Are you going through a difficult season in your life? Why not pray?
Do you long to see the power of God displayed through your life? Why not pray?
Why not pray?

My prayer is that all of us in the Hyde Park Vineyard Church may become like Sponge Bob Square Pants.

May you overflow with the water of life.
May we be a church that prays.
May we be a church that is on our knees.

Please stand with me and let’s start praying right now. Let’s start becoming the Church that Works by digging deeply into the heart of God in Word, Prayer, and Worship.