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This week is our final question from “The Wesley Challenge” and it is “am I enjoying prayer?” 

For the past nine weeks we have taken on “The Wesley Challenge” and have sought to answer nine of the 21 questions created by John Wesley and his fellow clergymen as they sought to tend for their own souls and hold one another accountable. The heart of this challenge is for all of us to be asked the question “how is it with your soul” and to be able to answer this question honestly. As we end this sermon series this Sunday, my hope is that we will continue to ask ourselves questions that help us grow in our faith and “watch over one another in love.”

Prayer is a gift from God. It is how we communicate with God and a way that we can practice our faith. Chris Folmsbee, author of “The Wesley Challenge” says, “To ‘enjoy’ prayer is to experience God through realizing and remembering God, self, others, and the world, and at the same time trust the direction God desires for our lives.” This study and our Scripture lessons for this Sunday encourage us in the many ways we can pray for one another. Today we remember that prayer is powerful!

Come to hear more this Sunday as we celebrate a 5th Sunday Joint Worship Service at Sperryville UMC at 11:00 A.M. followed by a potluck lunch at Reynolds Memorial Baptist Church.

Prayer: Almighty God, like Esther, help us believe that we can participate in your saving action in the world. Help us to pray with feeling and not apathy. Help us to recognize that you are still fostering healing in the world. Help us to be brave. Help us to pray for one another. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. 

Scripture for this Sunday: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, Psalm 124, James 5:13-20

My son, Dean, has been learning his ABC’s. Every time he sings the song all the way through my husband and I clap for him and I tell him how proud we are and he just beams. Pride can be positive when we are so full of love for a person we care about and we want them to succeed.

We can also take pride in the things we do and do them well. We may have a great sense of pride when we accomplish a project we have been working on for a long time.

There is also a negative side to pride. This happens when we think we are better than other people. For me, I experienced pride rearing its ugly head when I was in high school. As a sophomore I tried out for varsity soccer. I trained every day. I heard from the conditioning practices what was needed to make the team. I had to have my two mile under a certain time, I had to be able to sprint, I need to be a good team player. Tryouts went great and I was so confident that I made varsity.

But when the list was posted, my name was under Junior Varsity. I was devastated. I did everything they told me to do. How did this happen? I found out a senior had made varsity, a senior with an injury who would never play, but would always sit on the bench. But that was my spot! I was better than her! I was consumed with pride. I was embarrassed also that I did not make the team.

Even though I became captain of the J.V. team and even though I got pulled up to play varsity in their tournament at the end of the year, it was never good enough. This is what pride does to us. It causes us to feel like we are better than other people. That we deserve more than they do because we are more special.

Pride consumes us and it causes broken relationships and sin in our lives. This kind of pride can be found in our gospel lesson this Sunday from Mark 9. Here we see the disciples arguing about which one of them was the greatest.

Now these were men of God. They found themselves in the presence of Christ every day and yet they too struggled with pride.

As you may have guessed, our “Wesley Challenge” question for this Sunday is “Am I Proud?” Come to worship and hear how God calls us to turn away from pride and surrender to God. I hope to see you on Sunday. 

Prayer: Loving God, fill me with more of you and less of me. Help me to see the world through your eyes, and not eyes that are green with comparison. Help me to let go of the control I think I have, help me to receive help when I need it, help me to offer your grace to others who are prideful. Guide and direct me God to do your will. Amen. 

Do you remember the game telephone? I loved this game! The teacher would pick out a funny phrase and whisper it in the ear of the person closest to her, then it would go down a line of giggling children until it came to the last child who then had to relay the message. It was never the same as it started and I remember as a child thinking how funny this was. Often kids would just make up a new phrase, a funnier phrase, and usually when it came time for the last kid to tell the message, they were laughing so hard you couldn’t even understanding what they were trying to say.

As an adult, I understand what this game can teach us. So often we do not hear the whole story and yet we believe news that comes to us second, third, or fourth hand. Usually we see gossip start in middle school. I really feel for these middle schoolers who are trying to figure out who they are, but there are so many bullies out there and now even cyber bullies who say things that are not true to ruin a person’s reputation.

Gossip gets even worse when we attend high school because there is more at stake. I think the movie “Mean Girls” was such a huge success because so many high schoolers and teachers could relate to the gossip culture of high school. Gossip doesn’t stop when we leave high school does it?

Sadly, gossip happens in the office, in the home and even in the church. In fact, some of the most damaging gossip can happen in the church causing people to never come back again because they have been so hurt.

We see that James warns the early church of the importance of their words. In James 3: 6-8 he says:
^“6And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature,^* and is itself set on fire by hell.^* 7For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, ⁸but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

That is quite a warning from James, and he is right in telling us to safeguard our tongues because so often our words can pierce others so deeply.

Our “Wesley Challenge” question for this week is “Am I a Gossip?” Come and hear more about this topic on Sunday!

Prayer: Gracious God, guide my words that they may be agents of peace and not war; that they would build up the body of Christ, and not tear it down; that they would encourage and not discourage others; that they would convey words of hope and not be agents of spiritual death. Bless my words and my actions this week, Almighty God, so that I can reflect the love of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. It is in his name we pray. Amen. 

On January 28, 1986 the Challenger space shuttle launched up into the air. There was so much anticipation for this flight. Kids and adults alike were excited to watch the launch live. As it took off, everything looked good, but seconds later it exploded killing all seven people on board.

How could this happen? After an in depth investigation, an “o ring” was thought be to at fault. This ring had not expanded properly in the frigid temperatures, and caused the gas leak that led to the explosion. So then the question was why did Nasa launch at all in the cold and not wait until a day when the temperature was over 53 degrees, the safest temperature for the “O ring” to work properly?

The answer to what happened that day is a phenomenon known as “group think.” Group think is when a whole group of people makes a decision together even when there are people in the room who are uneasy with the outcome of that decision. It is when no one in the room claims individual responsibility for the decision. Group think is exactly what happened with the Challenger that day.

So often, we too struggle with group think.

There are so many situations in our lives where we encounter things that make us feel uneasy, but so often we don’t take personal responsibility thinking someone else will help with the problem at hand.

For instance, for me, the times I have the most uneasiness in my conscience is when I am faced with poverty. Leaving Walmart in Front Royal I often see people standing there with signs: “Homeless please help.” “Hungry, please help.” This is when I feel the Holy Spirit, my gut, my God conscience telling me to help this person, then the light turns green and I go to my comfortable home where I have food and do not want after anything, hoping someone else will help. I defer responsibility and end up doing nothing. In our humanity, we all struggle to act even when our conscience is uneasy.

This Sunday we continue the fourth week in our “Wesley Challenge” Sermon Series. Our question for today is “Do I Insist Upon Doing Something That Makes My Conscience Uneasy?”

Our conscience can become uneasy for many reasons. Maybe we are not doing something we feel like we should be doing. Maybe we have done something that we know we are not supposed to do and can’t seem to make ourselves stop. This is our struggle with sin in our humanity. I love the way the Apostle Paul describes this struggle in Romans 7:15-20:

^“15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Followers of Christ, have been struggling with sin for so long. We sincerely desire to do God’s will, but so often we make decisions that glorify ourselves and not God. I think this is why God has blessed us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. God dwelling within us to help us. Those feelings of uneasiness are there for a reason. It is God telling us to stop doing what we are doing, or telling us that we need to help someone. May we all be open to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives this week and always. 

Prayer: Loving God, thank you for the gift of your Holy Spirit. Thank you for speaking to us and showing us how we can be agents of new life to those around us by turning away from sin and turning towards you. Be with us this week until we meet again. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. 

Reference: 
– For information about “The Challenger”

This past week, I heard some news that was very troubling. Andrew Stoecklein, 30, was the senior pastor at Inland Hills Church in Chino, California, and he took his life over the weekend. His wife and three children, family and whole congregation are devastated. In a recent sermon he confessed that even though his church was “thriving, growing and moving,” he was “crumbling, exhausted, weak and tired.” – See article from CBN NEWS. 

Andrew confessed he was experiencing anxiety and depression due to the loss of his father from leukemia and various people that were stalking him. His family and his mother even had to move recently to avoid the stalker. That is a lot to deal with. On top of that, he was the pastor of a very large and thriving church and let me tell you it is emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausting to be a pastor. 

Now I did not know Andrew, but I think this news shook me to the core because it reminded me that no matter how good things may look on the outside, people can be in serious trouble emotionally and spiritually and the truth is, in our humanity through different events in our lives, it is possible for us all to get to a point where we question the importance of our existence, Job certainly struggled in this regard.

I will confess to you that in my past I have struggled with depression and anxiety. Although I am at a point in my life where I feel I have a handle on these feelings and patterns of thought, I have to be ever mindful and vigilent when they start creeping in. I am blessed that I have amazing family, friends, and colleagues which whom I can share my life with. 

The truth remains that it can be so hard for us to really share about how we are doing, especially if we are struggling with something really difficult. I think it would be fair fo us to say that sometime we do create the impression that we are doing better than we really are and the danger in doing that is loneliness, anxiety, isolation, fear, and shame. People cannot help us if they do not know what is going on in our lives. We cannot be ashamed and need to reach out, especially in our most desperate moments.  

Seeing how someone is really doing spiritually and emotionally is what is at heart of the “Wesley Challenge” question for this week. What kind of impression are we creating for others to see? Do we only want them to see the good parts of our lives and then hide all the things we struggle with? Why are we so ashamed to truly let people see our hearts?

On the surface, I think that all of us struggle with this question. We all have a façade we want people to see. We want people to like us and think we are successful. Isn’t this what Facebook is all about? We have the opportunity to portray to others only what we want them to see and not the fullness of our lives. There are filters in pictures to make us look better, thinner, and more beautiful, but the unfiltered world we live in is not something to be in despair about, I believe it is a gift from God. Life is messy. It is beautifully tragic. 

Even when we find ourselves in the depths of despair we have to remember we are not alone. We are in this beautiful mess together. We are called to be honest and vulnerable and there is no weakness when we share about our lives with one another.

There is such a stigma surrounding mental health, but the truth is most people in their lifetime will struggle with depression and/or anxiety. Really difficult things happen in our lives and we don’t know how to deal with it so it is easy for us to become depressed. The danger in staying in a mindset of depression is the mindset is creates: a mindset a lies. A mindset where you tell yourself you are not good enough, you do not matter, no one cares about you. 

We are all struggling with something friends, but the beauty of our faith is that we have Jesus Christ, we have hope and we have each other.

The truth for our lives today are that we are created in the image of God, we are beautifully and wonderfully made, people do care about us, our lives are important and meaningful and I see you friends. If you need some additional care of prayer please tell me. You are not alone. I am here for you. The church is here for you.

Prayer:
Ever Present God, thank you for seeing us. For seeing our beautiful mess and loving us in spite of ourselves. Be with all those who are feeling depressed, or lonely, or desperate today. Help us to see you have already created a refuge for us, a shelter in the storm from the tragedies of life. Help us to truly see one another. Help us to see all those around us who may be suffering silently and help us to take the time to listen that way that Jesus listened to so many and offered them new life. Help us to hold on to the hope and promise that comes through our faith in Jesus Christ. Gracious God, we especially lift up to you the family of Andrew Stoecklein, and Inland Hills Church. Comfort them in their grief, draw them close to you so that that may feel your presence. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. 

National Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 and website.

There is also a local training event happening on September 8 in Culpeper, Virginia to help people be able to see and respond to those who are feeling depressed and suicidal. Here is the info and it is run by my friends Ed & Gloria Long.