Rob Morgan - Help, Lord!

Help, Lord!

A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________

Robert J. Morgan
March 19, 2000

Our current series of sermons is entitled "God Will Make A Way," based on the story of the Children of Israel at the Red Sea. You remember how they were trapped there in that desert near the shores of that vast lake. They could go neither forward nor backward, and they faced two equally undesirable options. They could either drown in the sea or they could be mowed down by the sword. Their situation seemed hopeless.

But the story in Exodus 14 is given to show us that there are no hopeless situations where God is concerned, that He will always make a way when there seems to be no way. He works in ways we cannot see. With that in mind, we've been drawing out a sequence of rules from Exodus 14 for handling the discouraging times in our lives.

There are ten principles or rules here in Exodus 14 that can help us in any difficulty we ever encounter. The first three, as we've already seen, are these:

Red Sea Rule #1: When you find yourself in a tough place, recognize that God has either put you here or allowed you to be in this situation for reasons known for now perhaps only to Himself.
Red Sea Rule #2: Be more concerned for God's glory than for your own relief.
Red Sea Rule #3: Acknowledge your enemy, but keep your eyes on Christ.

Now today we're coming to…

Red Sea Rule #4: Pray.

Look at Exodus 14:10: And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.

We aren't talking about our regular, daily prayer habits here, as important as those are. We're talking about crisis-time prayers, prayers that demand importunity and unusual intensity. Prayers for those life-threatening or soul-shattering times that engulf us. Times when we cry out to the Lord. What can we learn here from Exodus 14 about such prayers?

Urgent

First, notice the urgency of the prayer that ascended to heaven, as evidenced by the verb: So they were afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.

I had a friend in college named Joy Thompson whose father had written a little book on prayer that was published by Back to the Bible. My copy is underlined and tattered, but I still treasure it. Here's something that Cameron V. Thompson said:

There comes a time, in spite of our soft, modern ways, when we must be desperate in prayer, when we must wrestle, when we must be outspoken, shameless and importunate. Many of the prayers recorded in Scripture are "cries," and the Hebrew and Greek words are very strong. Despite opinions to the contrary, the Bible recognizes such a thing as storming heaven--"praying through." The fervent prayer of a righteous man is mighty in its working.

"O God, Thou must do as Thou has said!" is the cry of those who must have an answer, who cannot be denied. It is not that we overcome the reluctance of God; rather that we take hold of His willingness, plowing through principalities and powers, inviting His almighty power into our desperate needs.

On various occasions in the past when I've been in Chicago I've visited the Old Pacific Garden Mission, the "grandfather" of all the rescue missions in America. Until recently I didn't know how the Pacific Garden Mission got its start; but I've come across an old book that tells of its early days.

In the 1880s, the Pacific Beer Garden in Chicago was for sale. Long regarded as the most notorious and murderous bar in the Midwest, it was nightly filled with alcohol, drugs, gambling, immorality, and the darkest figures of the underworld.

Imagine, then, how surprised Chicagoans were to wake up one morning in1880 and read that a sweet Christian couple, George and Sarah Clarke, had purchased the lease for the Pacific Beer Garden.

But Colonel Clarke and his wife knew what they were doing. Promptly dropping the word Beer, they added the word Mission, and launched a ministry to homeless alcoholics and downtrodden men and women. Thus was born the now-world-famous ministry of the Pacific Garden Mission of Chicago--the "Old Lighthouse"--the second oldest rescue mission in the United States.

In the early years, Colonel and Mrs. Clarke bore the cost of the mission themselves, but as expenses grew and the ministry expanded their funds became low. Eventually the day came when they could not pay the rent. Attempts to secure the needed funds failed, and Colonel Clarke was told that he had only twenty-four hours to make the payment; otherwise he would lose his lease, and the Pacific Garden Mission would close.

Throughout the night, Colonel and Mrs. Clarke prayed, asking God to guide and to provide in His own way and time. They reminded the Lord of the souls being saved each night, of the men and women whose lives were being salvaged. They asked Him why they should find themselves in such straits while trying to do His work. But, determining to trust and not question, they remained before the Throne of Grace in simple faith and in earnest pleading until the breaking of dawn.

When they emerged from their Morgan Park house that morning, they gasped. What had happened to their front yard? It was covered with something white, something that instantly reminded them of the manna of the Old Testament. Looking closer, they discovered their lawn was filled with mushrooms of the very best quality. It was quite mysterious because it wasn't the season for mushrooms.

Gathering the crop, the Clarkes carted the mushrooms down the street and sold them to the chefs at the Palmer House, the famed hotel just off Michigan Avenue, for a large price. The receipts were enough to pay the rent with enough left over to meet other ministry expenses.

The Old Pacific Garden Mission carried on, its work undeterred. Years later, "Mother" Clarke, commenting on the experience, said, "No mushrooms were ever seen there before--nor any since."

Unfeigned

The second thing we can say about the prayers of the Israelites by the Red Sea is that their prayer was unfeigned, sincere, and utterly earnest. They weren't like the Pharisees who prayed beautifully worded prayers just to be seen and heard by their peers. They weren't praying just because it was in their religious ritual to pray at that hour. They were alarmed, frightened, and their outburst of prayer was real, raw, and earnest.

Listen to the way the men and women of the Bible prayed, and compare it to your own prayer life:

/Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain for three and a half years.
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith./
Luke's Gospel says about Jesus: And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
1 Peter 4:7 (NLT) says: The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers.
Colossians 4:2 says: Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.
We're told in the same passage about a man named Epaphras, who is always wrestling in prayer for you that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.
The prophet Daniel wrote: So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God.
When the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib sent King Hezekiah a letter threatening the annihilation of the Jews, we're told Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: "O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth…. And he prayed down the victory.

The story of the Bible is the story of sincere men and women, moving the machinery of heaven and hell through their earnest praying. There are times in our lives when only urgent, earnest prayer will do.

United

The third thing to notice about the prayer of the Israelites is that it is a united prayer. The pronoun is plural: . So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.

There's something about having another person or other people praying for us that intensifies prayer and sends it to heaven with greater velocity. I was reading in a Gideon publication the other day about a young man, 19, named James Stegalls who was sent to Vietnam during the war. Though he carried a small Gideon New Testament in his shirt pocket, he couldn't bring himself to read it. His buddies were cut down around him, terror was building within him, and God seemed far away. His twentieth birthday passed, then his twenty-first. At last, he felt he couldn't go on.

On February 26, 1968, he prayed for it all to end, and his heart told him he would die before dusk. Sure enough, his base came under attack that day and Jim heard a rocket coming straight toward him. Three seconds to live, he told himself, then two, then…

A friend shoved him into a grease pit, and he waited for the rocket to explode, but there was only a surreal silence. The fuse malfunctioned. For five hours James knelt in that pit, and finally his quivering hand reached into his shirt pocket and took out his Testament. Beginning with Matthew, he continued through the first 18 chapters.

"When I read Matthew 18:19-20," he said, "I somehow knew things would be all right."

Long after Jim returned home, as he visited his wife's grandmother, Mrs. Harris, she told him of a night years before when she had awakened in terror. Knowing Jim was in Vietnam, she had sensed he was in trouble. She began praying for God to spare his life. Unable to kneel because of arthritis, she lay prone on the floor, praying and reading her Bible all night.

Just before dawn she read Matthew 18:19-20: If two of you agree down here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them. She immediately called her Sunday School teacher, who got out of bed and went to Mrs. Harris' house where together they claimed the Lord's promise as they prayed for Jim until reassured by God's peace.

Having told Jim the story, Mrs. Harris opened her Bible to show him where she had marked the passage. In the margin were the words: Jim, February 26, 1968.

Sometimes we need the power of united prayer. Even one other person, praying along with you earnestly, can help turn the tide of a matter.

Unbelieving

But the last thing I want you to notice about the Israelites by the Red Sea is this-- their prayer, though urgent, unfeigned, and united, was yet unbelieving.

Look at the way the whole paragraph unfolds: And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"

They prayed, but they didn't have a shred of faith that God could or would actually answer their prayer. Now, the Lord in His graciousness answered their prayer anyway for His own Name's sake, but He was dishonored by their lack of faith.

But let me give you a countering Old Testament example. Look at 1 Samuel 1. Here the woman Hannah, wife of Elkanah, is very troubled, deeply burdened to pray for a son. Her husband had married another woman and now had two wives, just in order to provide children for himself, for Hannah was barren. The home was fractured, and Hannah's rivals provoked her day and night. The problems were deep, painful, and seemed endless. One day Hannah could stand it no longer.

/In bitterness of soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord…. As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard.

You can see how earnestly and urgently she was praying and pleading with the Lord.

/Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine."

"Not so, my lord," Hannah replied, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord."

/Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine."

"Not so, my lord," Hannah replied, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord."

Notice that description of earnest, urgent prayer. It is "pouring our souls out" to the Lord. She was "casting her burden upon the Lord," and the result is seen in verse 18: Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.

Going to the place of prayer, she was unable to eat, her stomach was churning, and her face reflected the anguish of her heart. But she took her problem to the Lord, prayed about it until she had a sense that God had heard and responded, then she got up utterly confident that He was going to take matters in hand one way or the other. She trusted Him, and as a result her appetite returned and her face was filled with radiance.

Now, was Hannah pregnant at that point? Had she conceived? Was there a baby in her womb? No. Outwardly things were just as they had been before. Nothing had changed. But having given her problem to the Lord, she trusted Him to handle it for her, and that made all the difference.

It was what James would later call the prayer of faith. J. Oswald Sanders once wrote: An analysis of our prayers might afford the disconcerting discovery that many of them are not the prayer of faith at all, only the prayer of hope, or even of despair. We earnestly hope they will be answered, but have no unshakable assurance to that effect. God has, however, undertaken to answer only the prayer of faith. "Whatever you pray for and ask, believe that you have got it, and you shall have it" (Mark 11:24, Moffatt).

Thomas Watson, the Puritan writer, said, Faith is to prayer what the feather is to the arrow; it feathers the arrow of prayer, and makes it fly swifter, and pierce the throne of grace.

Let me give you a closing example. Alice Taylor and her husband, missionaries, had sent their four children across the vastness of China to boarding school at Chefoo. When the Japanese invaded the region in the early 1940s, reunion became impossible. One day Alice, already fretting, entered her house just as the paperboy arrived with dramatic news: "Pearl Harbor Attacked!" She instantly knew conditions had dramatically worsened for the children, especially since Chefoo had been in the Japanese line of attack.

I remembered the horror stories of Nanking--where all of the young women of that town had been brutally raped. And I thought of our lovely Kathleen, beginning to blossom into womanhood…. Great gulping sobs wrenched my whole body. I lay there, gripped by the stories we had heard from refugees--violent deaths, starvation, the conscription of young boys--children--to fight. I thought of ten-year-old Jamie, so conscientious, so even-tempered. "What has happened to Jamie, Lord? Has someone put a gun in his hands? Ordered him to the front lines? To death?" Mary and John, so small and so helpless, had always been inseparable. "Merciful God," I cried, "are they even alive?"

As Alice knelt, sobbing and praying, a scene from her childhood came suddenly to mind. Her minister, "Pa" Ferguson, back in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, had shared Matthew 6:33 with her--"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." His rendering of the verse had been: Alice, if you take care of the things that are dear to God, He will take care of the things dear to you.

Alice now felt God had given her those words just for this day. A deep peace replaced my agony. This war had not changed God's promise. With that assurance I felt the aching weight of fear in my stomach lift.

Alice daily concentrated on taking care of things dear to God--visiting the sick, holding open-air meetings in the villages, delivering babies. Conditions at Chefoo worsened--the students were captured and herded into a Japanese concentration camp. The war meanwhile reached Alice's region; all around her bombs fell, rockets exploded. She, however, devoted herself to treating the wounded, distributing Scriptures to doctors, officers, troops, and students--and to taking care of things important to God.

Years passed. Then as I sat one September evening in our home during a faculty meeting, my mind wondered once more to the children. Again I pictured them as I had last seen them, waving goodbye. I heard their voices, faintly, calling excitedly. Then I heard their voices louder. Was I imaging this? No, their voices were real! And they came bursting though the doorway. "Mommy, Daddy, we're home--we're home!" And they flew into our arms. Our hugs, our shouts filled the room. We couldn't let go of one another. It had been five and a half long, grueling years. Yet there they were--thin, but alive and whole, laughing and crying. Oh, they had grown! But Kathleen still wore the same blue jumper she had worn when I last saw her….

For our family that advice from Pa Ferguson long ago will always hold special meaning. I pass it along to you, for it is truly so: "If you take care of the things that are dear to God, He will take care of the things dear to you."

When facing impossible odds, learn to pray… urgently, unfeignedly, unitedly. And learn to trust the One who tells us to come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.