How Would You Choose To Pray When You Are Annoyed?

How Would You Choose To Pray When You Are Annoyed?

Good Morning Friends,

Today’s topic could fill a book. It is about our struggle to communicate with God in a way that builds a relationship. Thankfully we are given a format for doing just that even if our emotions are clouding our thinking. Yes, maybe we should think clearly before we engage God in prayer, especially so if we think our heightened emotions are more important than God’s plan. How Would You Choose To Pray When You Are Annoyed?

Scripture: But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Jonah 4:1-11 (NRSV)

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

Luke 11:1-4 (NRSV)

Message: Well, if you do not know your left hand from your right you may want to pray to a merciful God. And if one is angry and displeased with the world as prideful Jonah is in today’s scripture it may end up being a very strange prayer. You see Jonah feared that God would give a second chance to the Ninevites and that is exactly what God does. What is interesting is that Jonah knew that God was all about pardon, pity, patience and provision but Jonah had a problem with a God who took pity on a population that Jonah was prejudiced against. And this clouded his thinking. Unfortunately, because of Jonah’s emotional state his reasoning was flawed. It is thought provoking and rather appealing that God would help Jonah rethink his position by giving him a real-life lesson in learning about mercy for a plant and then helping Jonah realize that people are more important than plants and animals. So too the disciples had a problem with God’s mercy. They had a problem because they too were prejudice. It is rather remarkable that the disciples, when they asked about how to pray, would receive an answer that addressed some of these same elements of our human nature. You see the Lord’s prayer is a prayer about becoming humbled by a request for daily bread and the learning about mercy by extending it to others as a way of receiving it in return. This is all about mercy and our willingness to not only receive it but also extend it to others. It should not surprise us that the most offered pray is, “Lord have mercy.”

And So, we will all have times of being a little off balance emotionally in our efforts to pray and love and evangelize. Jonah certainly did. The challenge when we are is not to be fearful but to discover a relationship with God through scripture and prayer and fellowship. Here we need to discover, as Jonah, that God is gracious and merciful and slow to anger and kind and has standards that should humble us. Jonah had his own ideas about salvation that was tainted by his prejudice. He needed to rediscover a way of thinking and reasoning with a healthy mind. Here we learn that to really learn how to pray one must pray. To really learn how to love one must love. To be evangelized one must evangelize. And here we need to
have perspective as well as faith. The message here friends is that Christ has set us free and the whole world free. The Christian life is not about working as hard as we can to live right but about believing differently allowing God to live in us. For freedom in Christ is for all people everywhere. Regardless the world has many cultures and traditions and addictions that keep people from believing this and therein is the challenge that should prompt us to our knees in prayer.

Pray we have the right attitude about prayer and witnessing and God’s will. Pray that God’s will is revealed to us when our reasoning is clouded. Pray that until we respond appropriately to this revelation that
the Lord have mercy on us. Pray we understand the importance of inviting God into our earthly lives so the world might become more like heaven. Pray we listen. Pray we put away our anger and depression. Pray we offer requests to God for ourselves but also for others. Pray we avoid the judgement of God and repent. Pray we invoke the mercy of God for we are all sinners. Pray
we learn how to pray like Jesus in the power of a personal and new relationship that acknowledges that we are children of God healed. Pray therefor we experience a profound love that overflows out of us and into the lives of others. Pray we share the Gospel and are transformed.

Blessings,

John Lawson