Connecting with God through Prayer
1-5-20Sermon Notes“Connecting With God Through Prayer”
Happy New Year! Have you made your New Years’ Resolutions yet? (Have you broken them already? Just teasing!) Sometimes we think of things we are going to “quit” in the New Year…
Like a story I heard about a small rural Methodist church years ago where the folks got real excited in a revival meeting. One man stood and declared, “I’ve been smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, and I’m going to quit.” Folks in the congregation said, “Amen!”
Then another man stood up. “I’ve been drinking a six-pack of beer a day,” he said, “and I’m going to quit.” “Amen, amen!” the congregation replied.
“I’ve been cussin’ an awful lot, and I’m going to quit,” confessed another church member. The “Amens” came from all over the room.
Caught up in the excitement of the moment, a prim and proper man stood up and said, “I haven’t been doing anything . . . and I’m going to quit that, too.”
Maybe that last guy was on to something. Maybe what we need to quit in 2020 is “not doing anything.”
So what shall we do? The thing we will focus on doing on in 2020 is “connecting”… connecting with God, and connecting with others. The “thread” that will run through our whole year is PRAYER. So – let me ask a personal question… “How is your prayer life?” Maybe, when it comes to prayer, you feel like that one prim and proper man at the revival service… “I haven’t been doing anything…and I’m going to quit that, too!”
This Sunday, we will hear the Apostle Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians.
6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4: 6-7)
Do you have some leftover worries from 2019 that have followed you into 2020? I do. Do you have some things in 2020 that look a little overwhelming? I do. Where do we start? That “peace of God which surpasses all understanding” – how do we get there? We start by connecting with God through prayer.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Sam