Pastoral Letter 22
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and peace to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I don’t know about you, but I am feeling strange, not only because of COVID-19, but because we were supposed to have the Annual Market Morning on the first Saturday of August. The week before the Market Morning was supposed to be a busy time for St. Andrew’s, when all our members, without any exception, as well as our friends from the surrounding neighbourhood, got together and worked hard under the guidance of our dedicated Market Morning Superintendent, Virginia Knowles. But sadly, the passing week was quiet, with no materials still coming in, no jams, pickles, cakes or sweets. We also missed the smell of the sausage sizzle and kebabs.
It is certain that we will also miss the much-awaited Spring Fashion Parade as well, along with all our other activities, such as Bible Study, Time4U, Pizza and Movie Nights and the Sunday Morning Teatime for our fellowship. With the recent developments, we are still not encouraged to reopen our church doors. We are still facing challenges in our state and the neighbouring states. That’s the reality that we are confronted with, but we should have hope and continue praying to God to help us. Our message for this Sunday is a call and a challenge to continue praying hard to God, with faith and trust.
The Elders and the Church Council will meet on Wednesday to have our monthly meeting and reconsider the way ahead. In the meantime, please join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, following the Order of Service. Enjoy singing the hymns suggested by Mark and praise God. If you have any hymns to be included in our future Orders of Service, please let me know. Please, light a candle and don’t forget to have a small roll of bread and a cup of wine or juice for the Communion.
Please continue to pray and remember the following points in your prayers:
- Pray for the congregations who have reopened their doors. Pray for the safety of those who are attending and the leaders who have taken on board the responsibility of providing a safe space.
- Continue to pray for those countries who are still in the midst of the pandemic, where the number of cases of COVID-19 is still growing.
- Pray for those who are struggling financially, those who have lost loved ones and are still in pain and for those who are not well and lonely.
- Pray for world peace.
If you have any prayer points, please let me know and I will include them in the next week’s letter.
Krikor
Your Minister
Message Summary
Bless Me Lord!
Genesis 32:22-32
If you have passed by our church, driving or walking, in the last couple of weeks, you probably looked at our recently rejuvenated church sign board. And I am sure you read the last two messages that I have put there. The previous one said: “Worry Less Pray More!” And this week’s message says: “Answers Are Found in Prayers”. My intention should be clear by those two short phrases: that we need to pray more. Not only because we are living in a worldwide pandemic, but because our lives are full of challenges, uncertainties, surprises and unprecedented events, which makes life difficult and puts stress on us and the people we love.
Since the start of the current year, we have already faced three major disasters. Here in Australia we concluded the year 2019 and started the year 2020 with NSW and Victorian Bushfires, we had floods in some areas and since mid-March we are facing the pandemic. Being concerned with what is happening around the world today, regardless that we, here in Australia, were much better than the rest of the world. But the recent developments in Victoria and NSW makes us worry, not knowing what we should do in these circumstances.
I say, we need to pray more and trust that God is with us as we walk through this dark tunnel, He will keep us safe, protect us and most importantly bless us.
We have many examples in the scripture of people praying fervently, seeking God’s help, strength and deliverance from the evil and their enemies. People like Daniel, David, Moses, Elijah, John, Peter, Paul and Jesus.
James 5:16 says: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective”. Another translation reads this verse “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” and Prov. 15:29 says: “The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.”
Someone has said that prayer is profoundly simple and simply profound. But we need a passion to pray and even struggle before the throne of God, as we pray. We need to pray with a clear vision that God hears our prayers and answers them in His way and in His time, according to His will. That’s why Jesus taught us to say as we pray: “Thy will be done”. We need to have that clear vision, because “where there is no vision the people perish… and where there is no passion the church perishes”.
Persistence is a must in the prayer life. Prayer is not just words we say, with no feelings and compassion.
In our passage today we see Jacob, the deceiver, the one who persuaded his brother to get his birthright for a plate of stew and tricked his father to receive his blessing, is persistent in his prayer, seeking God’s blessing and not letting Him go away until He blesses him.
Yes, for sure we need to pray a lot for the things we face today in our lives, but we need to go to God and cling on Him and keep pressing Him till He blesses us with a great revival, until our homes, families, country, communities and churches are blessed.
Jacob had a situation with his brother Esau and needed to resolve it. He was afraid and needed help from God. He needed Him, to face his brother, whom he had despised and from whom he had stolen his birthright. When he decided to go back to the land of his fathers after working for fourteen years to marry Leah and Rachel (seven years for each) and had children, and finding out that his brothers-in-law, Laban’s sons, were not happy with him for he had gathered a big wealth. The Lord said to Jacob: “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you” (Gen. 31:3). In other words, God was telling Jacob that He is and will be with him. God is on his side, as we said last week that “God is for us and with us”. God was there for Jacob, for him, with him and to protect him.
To make sure that God was with him and will be with him, as He had promised, now Jacob is seeking proof to make sure that God is serious, that he has plans for him to make him the father of the nation, as He had promised to his grandfather Abraham. He needed to be certain, that God would do and keep His promise. So, Jacob is at the stage of going back where he should be, with the majority of his children being born from Leah, Rachel and their maidservants. He needed the assurance that God will do, as He had said and vowed.
But before he entered the land of his fathers, Jacob had another problem. He had to face his older brother, Esau, from whom he had taken the birthright. Jacob was terrified and needed to be certain that God will be with him when he faces his brother. So, He prayed. He prayed hard. We read his prayer in Genesis 32: 9-12. “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper’, I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted”.
It is clear that God had been with Jacob, since the day he left his father’s land. God had shown him the way, had walked with him, protected him, gave him all the promises He had made to that point. Now Jacob was returning back to the land of his fathers, almost ready to become the father of the nation with his twelve sons. God had been and was still with him, leading his way and fulfilling His plan He had for Jacob.
God had done so much for Jacob, He had blessed him with many things, including family and wealth. But Jacob needed more, not necessarily wealth or more prosperity. He needed the reassurance that God will go all the way with him. And for Jacob, this meant ‘blessing’ or ‘more blessing’. So, Jacob prayed. He prayed hard.
The answer to his ardent and sincere prayer was not delayed. As we read in the following verse, God appeared and came to him. Jacob met God. God appeared to him in a human form and Jacob wrestled with Him till daybreak. Strangely here we read: “When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man”. We should be careful here, not to take these words literally, as we can start questioning the power of God. Yes, our passage says that the Lord, or God, appeared to Jacob in a human form, but this does not mean that God is weakened and undermined with His power. Remember, God is the Almighty, Omnipotent, and Powerful. There are no limits for His power and nothing can overpower Him.
We should remember that this wrestling and fighting, in reality is Jacob’s wrestling in prayer. Jacob was not actually and physically wrestling with God, but he was wrestling through his ardent and fervent prayer to God. Jacob was telling Him, this man, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” He was wrestling in seeking to receive God’s blessing before he moves on forward to face one of the mightiest challenges of his life.
He had deceived Esau taking the birthright, he had received his weak and blind father’s, Isaac’s, blessing, he had prospered in wealth in foreign lands and now he was returning to be the father of a nation. So, as he wrestled “with God”, in reality he was seeking the full blessing, the one he was supposed to receive. Jacob was not letting go of the man till He blessed him. And he did get blessed. God blesses him and renamed him with a new name, Israel.
The passage says: “Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome’” (Gen. 32:28). The name Israel means “he struggles with God”. Because Jacob struggled and wrestled with God in his prayer, God rewarded him the promise He had made earlier to Abraham.
Was Jacob perfect?
Was he flawless?
Was he sinless?
Did he do everything right?
Did he live an ideal life?
Naturally, the answer to all these questions is: “NO”.
But importantly, he realised that he was not perfect, he did not deserve what was meant for him to be. If God had plans for him, he wanted to make sure that God had put that promise into action. So, with these thoughts he asked God for His blessing. Isaac’s blessing was not enough for him. Stealing the birthright, was not sufficient for him to become the father of the nation, to become ISRAEL, the people of God.
We sometimes pray for days and weeks… even months and years for something we need to have desperately and hope that God listens and answers. And sometimes He does and sometimes not. But when it is in God’s perfect timing, God gives us what we really need. It is not necessary that we get all we ask for. We all know that saying that if you pray and ask for Rolls Royce, you may get a Mazda, Honda or VW. But let us be assured that whatever we get as an answer to our prayers, we will always get God’s blessings. Let us never underestimate God.
But then we could say: “Is it fair that some get what they want and even more, and we don’t?”. Or “IS it fair that some have plenty to live with, food, money, luxury, while many don’t even have a piece of bread?” We can go on with our questions.
It is essential that we and all people continue to pray, with the hope that “Answers are found in prayers!” And God will bless us, as He has promised. The key is for us to continue to pray and leave the rest to God.
We pray for our needs, the needs of the ones we love. We pray for the sick and the poor, for the desperate, for those who suffer because of their unbearable circumstances. We pray for peace in the world and today most of all we pray for all the world. And we should do these prayers wrestling and non-stop.
God will bless us. He has already blessed us with so many things. If we start counting them, we will not have enough space in our record books for them.
We need to be insistent on behalf of our needs and the needs of the world. We need to be thankful that the Lord is blessing us, even in these times we live in. Even when it does not look like it. Even before we obtain the blessing.
If and because we are doing our part, God will do His. David knew that God’s counsel was blessing him continually, when he said: “I will praise the Lord who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me” (Psalm 16:7). David knew that all the blessings in his life were from God, when he wrote: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; and my inmost being, praise His holy name!” (Psalm 103:1)
I invite you today to count your blessings and you will see that they are so many. But, if you think that they are not enough, and you need more, please continue to pray and say like Jacob did: “I will not let you go unless you bless me”.
Pray without ceasing until He blesses you.
And when the blessing arrives, remember always to give Him thanks.
Amen!