What should leaders pray for?

 How should leaders pray when they look out their windows and all they see are enemies to take them down?

How should leaders pray when they know their people have missed the mark--have refused to follow where God is leading?

How should leaders pray when their people are exiled from their home in God; how should leaders pray who long for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth?

Jehoshaphat

2 Chronicles 20

The descendants of Lot, the Moabites and Ammonites and a few other tribes banded together against the kingdom of Judah while Jehoshaphat was king. Jehoshaphat was a good king, but when he looked out the window and saw the hostile armies he became afraid.  And here’s how he becomes an example for leaders whose people are surrounded by enemies.

He set himself to seek the Lord; he proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah and gathered people together from all the towns into Jerusalem to pray and seek the Lord together. This is what he said to God:

O Lord, God of our ancestors. Are you not the supreme God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you.  Did you not give this land to us, the descendants of Abraham.  We have lived here and built you a sanctuary, and promised that when disaster, the sword, judgment, pestilence, famine come upon us, we will stand before your house and cry to you in our distress and you will hear and save.  See now, people you protected from us as we left Egypt, kinfolk from ancient days, they reward us by attacking us and driving us out of the land you yourself gave us.  O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

King Jehoshaphat took the lead and spoke to God on his people’s behalf.  He began by celebrating the grandness of God, by reminding himself and his people of God’s omnipotence.  Then he rehearsed their history, which included the promise of the land to Abraham but also all kinds of hardships, some of them judgment for sin, and reminded all of them of the shared commitment to stand together before God, cry to God together, and invite God to hear and save them.  Then they asked God to intervene with justice between them and their enemies, ancient relatives, really, to set things straight.  They admitted their own powerlessness against the enormous threat, their ignorance of what to do next.  They affirmed at the end their faith that God would act.

If you know this story, you know that God responded through a prophet: “Do not be afraid or dismayed before this great threat. The battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow, go down to meet them, take your position, and stand still.  You will see that God wins this battle on your behalf.  Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow stand still before them and the Lord will be with you.”

And then Jehoshaphat led the people in a hymn of praise.  The next day, they did what God said, encouraged by Jehoshaphat, who said, “Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established. Believe the word of God through the prophet. “ They marched toward their enemies singing a song, and when they arrived, they found their enemies had destroyed each other. 

Leaders—and Quaker churches are full of leaders—when things arise that alarm your people and cause them to fear, remember Jehoshaphat.  

Gather together, rehearse the Lord’s faithfulness, make your request and listen to what God tells you. Then sing praise and do what you are told.

But what about when the threat is not external but internal? The people God has called you to lead will not go where God says to go. 

Moses

Numbers 14

When the Israelites had journeyed across the wilderness to the promised land, they sent in spies to see what they were up against.  The spies brought back word that the land was lovely and productive, but the inhabitants were giants.  Ten of twelve said there was no hope, and only two counseled going on into the land.  The congregation howled and wept and complained against Moses and Aaron.  “We wish we had died in the wilderness? Why has God brought us here to die by the sword, leaving behind our wives and children?  Let us go back to Egypt.  Better to be a live dog than a dead lion.” The few who wanted to follow God into the promised land were horrified and dismayed.  They pled with the congregation, “Do not rebel against the Lord; do not fear the people of the land. The Lord is with us, do not fear them.” But the congregation threatened to stone Moses and the few with him.

Then the Lord showed up in front of all Israel and said to Moses, “I have had it with this people.  They despise me, they refuse to believe in me, despite all the signs I have done to preserve them.  I will strike them with pestilence and start over with you. You will father a great nation.”

Interesting spot for Moses.  What would you do?  As a leader, what would you do if your followers all wanted to stone you and God said, “I’ll level them and make a fresh start with you.”

Well, here’s what Moses did.  He prayed: Oh Lord, if you destroy this people, the Egyptians will hear of it, and the Canaanites will hear of it.  You have been in the midst of this people, and the surrounding nations know this.  This people has seen you in person, and you led them by day and by night with a miraculous pillar of cloud or fire.  Now if you kill them all, the nations will say it is a failure for you, that you were unable to bring them into the land you promised them.  You will look bad.  So show your power instead by being slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression even though the sin of these people will have effects upon their children for generations. Forgive this people for their faithlessness according to your faithful love, just as you have done all along, from Egypt until now.”

And the Lord replied to Moses, “I do forgive, just as you have asked, but their faithlessness has this consequence.  They themselves will in fact die in the wilderness as they preferred.  They have tested me again and again, they have disobeyed me repeatedly, and they will not enter this land.  Only the few faithful will endure and enter the land I promised these people.

So leaders, when your people cannot believe in God’s ability to bring them through difficulty into the promised rest, what should you do?  Even when you know that God’s will is to move one direction and the people want to go another direction?  Even when they are prepared to get rid of you so that you won’t make them do what they fear to do?

Pray for them.  Intercede with God for them.  Remind God that whether or not people are faithful, God is faithful.  Remind God that underachievers are still his people, that if God abandons them, it will hurt God’s reputation with the onlookers.  Even though you know that their sin may cripple their children for several generations, pray for God to have mercy on them.  

Hard words, aren’t they.  Counter-intuitive.  As Jesus said, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, How often I have longed to gather you under my wings, but you would not.  And now, you will die in the ruts you preferred to me.

Finally, what if there is not so much a threat, as a sense of being trapped in an alien culture, a sense of exile and homelessness?

Daniel

Daniel 9

The royal prince, Daniel, was taken into captivity in Babylon.  As was the custom with captured royalty, it is likely he was made a eunuch with no hope for children, and certainly we have no record of him having any family.  Daniel served the Babylonian kings Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and then the Persian king Darius as advisor and seer.  He was a loyal and faithful minister who rose to the top in both Nebuchadnezzar’s and Darius’s administrations, despite the attempts of others to trap him because of his faithfulness to God. 

The Jews were taken into captivity, and Jeremiah wrote them there and told them to pray for the welfare of Babylon because they would be there 70 years, long enough to have children and grandchildren.  As Daniel got closer to 90 years old, he recognized that the 70 years was winding to an end, and he began to pray and ask God for an answer.  He fasted and wore burlap, and he began his prayer like this.

Ah, Lord, great and awesome God, you keep your covenant and love steadfastly those who love you and keep your commandments.  But we have sinned, done wrong, acted wickedly, rebelled, and turned aside from your commandments and ordinances. We have not listened to your prophets to our ancestors, our princes, our kings, and all our people.

The most interesting thing about this, besides the comprehensive list of synonyms for sin, is the use of “we”—we have done this.  Daniel has, in fact, led a faithful and authentic life of dedication to God.  Yet, as a leader, he includes himself in the list of those who have done wrong. 

Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame falls on us, the people of Judah, Jerusalem, Israel, near and far away, dispersed to all the lands where you have driven us because of our treachery against you.  Open shame, O Lord, falls on us, our kings, our officials, our ancestors, because we have sinned against you.  We have rebelled against you, we have not obeyed your voice by following the laws you sent us through your prophets.  To you, to the Lord God belong mercy and forgiveness.

All of us have refused to obey you, and the consequences spelled out in the law of Moses, God’s servant, have fallen on us because of our sin against you.  The calamity of removal from our homeland, the city of Jerusalem has come upon us.  The Lord God is right in all he has done, for we disobeyed his voice.  We did not entreat the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and reflecting on his fidelity.

And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and great fame even to this day—we have sinned, we have done wickedly.  O Lord, remember your righteous acts and let your anger and wrath, we pray turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain.  Our sins and the iniquities of our ancestors have disgraced us and our city Jerusalem among all our neighbors.

Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleading and for your own sake, Lord, let your face shine upon your desolated sanctuary.  Incline your year, O my God, and hear.  Open your eyes and look at our desolation and the city that bears your name. 

We do not plead before you on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of your great mercies.  O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, listen and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people bear your name. 

And God answered Daniel and sent Gabriel to explain things to him.  And later, under King Cyrus, another messenger came from God.  Do not fear, Daniel greatly beloved.  For from the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. 

The message they brought Daniel said that God has a plan in history, that God is sovereign, and that Daniel himself will rise for his reward at the end of the days. 

The lesson for leaders is this:

Do we see that our people have been taken captive by a culture that is hostile to the Kingdom of God?  Do we hope for a return to our spiritual homeland?  For Quakers, has our American middle-class culture captured us and taken us into captivity?  Have we moved from praying for the welfare of our nation to participating in its sins and the structures of evil?  Quakers were called Friends because they obeyed Jesus, who said “You are my Friends if you do whatever I tell you to do.” Jesus gave us a unique vision of Christianity that reaches Seekers otherwise unreached.  How have we systematically ignored or violated what Jesus taught and is teaching us?

Let the leaders of the Quakers pray with Daniel.  O, our God, we have missed the mark and strayed from Truth.  We have turned our back on what it means to be Friends of Jesus while we have kept the title.  We have not lived up to the light that is in us.  We have put limits on the Spirit of God. We have become prosperous at the expense of the good news that Christ is present among us.

We share the prejudices of our nation and we let politics divide us and distract us from what is true and right, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save the world, that the will of God is that none should perish but that all should live eternally, that we are to share this good news with our neighbors and introduce them to the Son of God who can explain everything to them. 

We do not plead before you on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of your great mercies.  O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, listen and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your people bear your name. 

Please pray for how NWYM Quakers and Quakers as a movement have missed the mark.

There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good;
There is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in his blood.

Human souls! why will ye scatter like a crowd of frightened sheep? Foolish hearts! why will ye wander from a love so true and deep?

It is God: His love looks mighty, but is mightier than it seems;

'Tis our Father: and His fondness goes far out beyond our dreams.

For the love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word;
And our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.

Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy

Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy
Preached 2/1/09 at Vancouver First Friends

One hot and windy August night, my husband Mark and I were awakened at 11:30 p.m. Our neighbor drove up our driveway, honked his horn, and, shouted, “There’s a car on fire across the road.” Then he left. We went into the living room and looked across the road by our mailbox. There was indeed a fire. The summer had been dry in the Northwest, marked by forest and brush fires. Our new puppy had chewed up every hose we owned but one. Mark went outside. I stayed inside with our sleeping children and called 9-1-1.

While I watched, I saw the fire suddenly flare up. The pine tree at the end of our driveway seemed in imminent danger. All the vegetation was dry. The wind was blowing sparks onto the road, where Mark and neighbors were directing the little water that came through our 5/8-inch hose. In the interval before the fire trucks arrived, I felt panic rise in my throat. I knelt and prayed for the safety of our children, for the preservation of our property, and for protection for Mark.

It was a reasonable fear. It took hours to completely extinguish the fire, but no one was hurt and, except for our mailbox and the car, no property was lost. I do not believe that God was grieved over the fact that I was afraid in an emergency.

But that moment of panic was nearly immobilizing for me. And I think that my more chronic fears are similarly immobilizing. One spring when I was afraid at a fairly low but constant level, I suffered from a burning esophagus and hid out in my house.

Because our fears inhibit our ability to live the abundant life Jesus promised, we do well to examine them in the light of Scripture, which is filled with God’s instruction to us: “fear not.” This command runs throughout the Old and New Testaments, showing the recurring need of God’s people to be reminded not to be afraid. The Psalms show the various psalmists’ need to remind themselves that they will not fear. Psalm 46: 1, 2 “God is our refuge and strength, a well proved help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change …”

The word fear includes the meaning of “reverence”; what we chronically fear, we bow down to. In fact, what we fear becomes a rival to God in our lives. We let our fear take from us our gifts, our callings, our health, our children, and our principles. At the same time, the Bible is full of reassurances that we need not feel panic, paralysis, or self-hatred in response to God: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus tells us, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Central to our understanding of our relationship to God should be this principle out of Zechariah’s hymn of praise on the birth of his son John: “that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75).

The Bible shows us one way to deal with fear in the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, 2 Chron. 20:

Jehoshaphat is one of the good kings. He has destroyed idols, instituted a system of justice, and set his heart to seek God.

One day messengers come and tell him that a large army is coming against Judah from Edom. Jehoshaphat is afraid. He prepares himself to seek the Lord and proclaims a fast throughout his country of Judah. Israelites come to Jerusalem from all over to seek the Lord. Jehoshaphat leads them in this prayer:

“O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy--they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

The Lord responds through one of the people there: “Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s . . . This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”

The next morning, Jehoshaphat encourages his people to believe God, and he leads them in the chorus, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Perhaps this is the tile of Psalm 136, which begins that way.)

When they arrive at the battlefield, all the army coming against them lies dead already. Two groups had attacked and destroyed the third, and then they turned on each other. It takes Jehoshaphat and his people more than three days to salvage the usable items these armies left behind them.

The fear of God comes on all the kingdoms of the countries when they hear that the Lord has fought against the enemies of Israel. And the realm of Jehoshaphat is quiet, for God gives him rest all around.

What we can learn:
1. Jehoshaphat’s fear is reasonable--the army coming is overwhelming.
2. Jehoshaphat reminds himself and God of God’s previous intervention on behalf of Israel; he does not go into a lot of detail about how big the army is or how well-armed. It is not helpful to repeat to ourselves the horrible, gruesome, painful details about the person or event we fear. In other words, he concentrates on God, not on the enemy.
3. His response is to believe the word of God. He seeks God’s will, fasts and prays, admits his own powerlessness, and goes into danger singing about God’s love.

I think in these times about the economic downturn and how it is too big for us to fix as individuals, how it will change our lives. What do we do? Apparently, we can profitably learn from Jehoshaphat’s example:

We choose to believe the word of God.
We rehearse how God has helped us before.
We seek God’s will.
We fast and pray.
We admit our own powerlessness.
We go on our way singing about God’s love.

Fasting here can be a symbol to us of choosing to depend on God to sustain us, rather than working to sustain ourselves. I don’t like giving up meals, but it’s much harder for me to give up trying to control outcomes. That is a true fast for me.

Let’s link this to a New Testament story from Mark 4.
After spectacular miracles and several parables, Jesus says to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

1. It is reasonable to fear the overwhelming power of natural forces, just as it is reasonable to fear an overwhelming army.
2. This is a picture of our lives: we are a boat crossing the sea; when a storm, a crisis, a potential disaster arises, we are afraid. Though our fear is reasonable, it shows the limits of our faith. After all, Jesus is in us, in our boat, and we cannot be destroyed.
3. Like the disciples, we need to fear (revere) the one who can calm the storm, instead of fearing the storm.

When we are called to let God fight for us, we may discover that God solves our problems so spectacularly that we live in peace because no one wants to mess with our God. Or we may find that, like Jesus, we are crucified with criminals on the way to resurrection.

Being called to let God do the fighting is not the same as setting ourselves up to be victims. In fact, it is fear that turns us into victims: inside we bow down before the overwhelming enemy. When God calls us to let God fight for us, and we are obedient, we are able to go into danger singing. We understand why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. When someone hits me on one side of my face, I can choose to respond fearlessly--I neither run nor fight. I can stand up before my enemy and turn to that enemy the other side of my face. This is a sign of courage, not of compliance. When I don’t respond to danger with fear, I get to keep my dignity.

“Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1). “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). “We are being rescued from the hands of our enemies, so that we might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75). God wants to preoccupy us to a greater extent than anything else in the world. “Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1).