Let’s examine ou r situation

This sermon is an edited and abridged version of an original sermon written for Lent 2017 “The Art of Living by Faith, by Dr . Charles Arand. When my brothers and sister and I were growing up in Peoria, Illinois, we had very little of what one might call the fruits of life. We lived in a run-down two-story house that rented for $75 a month. Mom worked full time at the neighborhood IGA. Dad was a traveling salesman for Dennis Chicken Company. Mom raised us. Dad came home on the weekends as was gone when we awoke on Monday. We never thought of ourselves as poor. Mom and Dad always provided what they could. And Dad, although he was gone every week, He always had somethings for us when he came home. Dad would sell some things to his customers, then go out and find something from whatever new town or city or state he had gone into. It became such an expectation that the minute the door opened on Friday evening, we would fight to get to Dad to ask “What did you bring me?” It wasn’t any fancy or e xpensie, but it was something from Dad. Dad taught us something we could not have known at the time, but only over time, in our own families, with our own children- That’s what a Dad does. D ads do this out of love .

It's like that with our heavenly Father too. Martin Luther pointed out in the explanation of one of the articles of the creed, that God withholds nothing. He has given us Himself and His entire creation. But He doesn’ t stop giving there. He gives us His only begotten son. “ That whoever be lieves in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Still not through, though, God gives us The Holy Spirit and the blessed gift of the age to come. No wonder Luther exhorts us to run to God and to ask Him “With all boldness and confidence,” as “de ar children ask their dear father.”

Two points of focus for today: First, to pray is nothing less than to ask. Asking is the essence of prayer. Asking goes to the heart of prayer. Now, I know that may sound like asking means “gimme, gimme, gimme.” Isn’t that self-centered and selfish? Even though Dad brought home gifts each weekend out of love, my siblings and I had often had “gimme, gimme, gimme,” on our minds . That’s the nature of human relationships, isn’t it? We believe we have a sense of entitlement; that we deserve it, that we ought to have it. But when it comes to our relationship with God, it reveals something of our actual situation before God. We will never be in a position where we are indepen dent and don’t need EVERYTHING from God.