In the Walt Disney animated movie The Emperor's New Groove, we
meet Emperor Kusco. And Emperor Kusco is an arrogant, young,
17-year-old emperor on the eve of his 18th birthday who thinks he's
got it all figured out. And what he's figured out is that everything
is about him, and he has this vision of building KuscoTopia.
And Kusco -- his name -- Topia is his summer home/ vacation getaway,
and he's found the perfect spot. It's on a beautiful green hill, and
the only thing standing in the way of KuscoTopia is some peasant
village that he needs to do is get rid of.
But before he is ready to build KuscoTopia, he wants to check with
somebody who would really know if these hills in this peasants' area
is what he wants. So he invites in a peasant named Pacha, and Pacha
comes in and all Kusco does is say, "Could you describe this
hill for me?" And Pacha just loves it. He describes that his
family has lived there for six generations, and that it is a
wonderful place. Well Kusco decides this must be a sign that this is
the perfect place for his vacation summer home, and he decides that
he's going to wipe out the entire village and build his KuscoTopia.
And Pacha the peasant is completely powerless against anything that
Kusco would decide to do.
Now in first-century Palestine, a widow basically has no power. When
her husband dies, all of the inheritance, all of the land, the home,
anything, goes either to his sons or his brother. And they choose
whether or not they involve his wife in the estate or not. And so we
find the widow in our story in a very similar position to Pacha the
peasant from The Emperor's New Groove. All she can do is
turn to somebody with power and say, "Please help me. I know you
don't have to, but please help me."
In our story, we find the widow going to a judge much like Emperor
Kusco who is totally unfit for his job. He doesn't care about people,
and he has no fear of God, which leaves only one thing left to care
about - - himself. Pacha the peasant is left to say to the emperor,
"Please spare my home." And the widow can only say,
"Grant me justice, please." In the Old Testament, the
standards are very clear for what a judge is to do and how a judge is
to act. In Deuteronomy 24:17 it says the job of a judge is to protect
the fatherless, the alien, and the widow. In 2 Chronicles 19:7 God
says to judges, "Let the fear of the Lord be upon you." And
for those of you keeping score out in the pew, that means he's 0 for
2. We also find in Psalm 68, Verse 5 that God is a judge who is the
defender of widows. And lastly, to top it off, Proverbs 1:7 says that
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
So here we have a judge with no qualifications. He is uncaring, and
he doesn't even have the beginning of knowledge because he doesn't
fear the Lord. Everything in this parable points to a judge that's
going to say, "You're just a widow. I don't care. You have no
power. You can't do anything to hurt me. Helping you doesn't do
anything for me." Why would he help her?
And yet, despite all we're led to believe, he grants justice. Why?
Well, maybe he is convicted of what is right, and he really just
should do that. But that's not the judge we hear about. And maybe he
decided that he is concerned for his reputation and what other people
might think of him, but he doesn't care about people. Maybe he is
concerned with eternal consequences of not doing a good job with his
job. But he doesn't fear the Lord. The reason that this judge grants
justice is because the woman was bothering him. That's it. He says,
"Hmm. I better grant this widow justice or she might wear me out
with her coming." In other words, this woman was annoying him so
much, he decided, "All right, all right, all right. Take your
justice. Go away."
Probably the most interesting thing that I learned about this passage
is that the Greek word for "to wear someone out" in this
way is the same word as to give someone a black eye. Wouldn't that be
a twist on the story? "I better grant her justice, or she'll
give me a black eye." But all we learn is that this guy grants
justice because he doesn't want to get any more irritated.
So then we find, as we start thinking about the parable, and you may
find yourself in the position I tend to find myself in like the
disciples, and ask "What was he talking about?" You might
figure out that the judge is kind of like God in this story, right?
And the widow only has one place to go to ask for help, so that's
kind of like praying. But this is an unjust judge who doesn't care
about people and doesn't fear God. Where is the connection?
In Verse 7, in the New Robby Translation, it would say, "God is
everything this judge isn't, and so much more." In other words,
if this evil judge who doesn't care about people and doesn't care
about God will grant justice because somebody keeps coming to him
seeking justice, how much more will God grant that justice.
Fair enough. So we should all pray persistently, right? The End. No
problem. But unfortunately, the service isn't over, so we need to
keep going. Is it that easy? Well, that makes sense. We should
pray a lot. Let's do it.
I'm left with three questions when it comes to prayer. The first one
is, will my prayers really change the will of God? The second one, a
little scarier, what if what I want for my life and what God wants
for my life don't line up? And the third question is, what happens
when I don't understand what God's doing even after it's happened?
What happens when I don't get God?
Now if any of you have never wondered these things, and they don't
seem particularly important to you, you're free to just quietly slip
out the back. The ushers won't bother you. But the rest of us are
going to sit here and think a little bit about these three questions.
What will my prayers really do? Will they really change God's mind?
What if what I want and what God wants doesn't line up? I'm not sure
I want that. And the third one, what happens when I just don't get
what God's doing? So will my prayers really change God? Why bother?
What am I going to do to change God Almighty?
I'm reminded of Genesis 18. In Genesis 18 you find Abraham, the
father of the nation of Israel, praying for the deliverance of the
city of Sodom after God has told him that he was going to destroy it.
And Abraham knows that his nephew Lot and Lot's family live in the
town, and Abraham begins praying for the town. And he's been told by
God that it's going to be destroyed. So Abraham, if you really
want to get down to it, starts bartering with God. It's a lot like
being at the San Diego/Tijuana border where they tell you, "Oh
yeah, this costs $20." But you can probably get them down to
about $5.00.
So Abraham says, "Well, now God, what if you found 50 righteous
men here, just 50 righteous men in this entire city. Would you spare
the city?
God says, "Well, sure. Okay. If I find 50 righteous men."
And then Abraham says to himself, "Okay. That went pretty well.
Here we go."
"How about 45?"
God says, "All right. 45."
40? 30? 20? 10? He gets down to 10. "If you find 10 righteous
men, would you spare the city?"-
God says, "Okay. For 10 righteous men, I'll spare the city."
Now, Abraham begins praying, convinced that what he's praying for is
right and just and compassionate. And so he begins praying to God,
"Please spare the city. Spare my nephew and his family."
And basically he goes to wear God out with his praying. He goes
continually. "How about 45? How about 40? 30? 20? 10?" He
goes to wear God out with his praying.
This really reminds me of another real life story from one of my
students, and we'll call her Gwendolyn because I like that name.
Gwendolyn had a friend named Billy. And she and Billy were
friends. A couple of years ago, Billy's dad had a stroke.
Billy was really hurt by this, and it really sent him in a different
direction. He began using drugs; he began hanging out with a
different crowd of people, and basically he began to just cash in,
and say, "You know, I don't want to deal with this anymore. This
isn't fair. This isn't right. I'll just see what I can do to make
myself feel better." And this went on for a year, hanging out
with the wrong crowd.
Things got and worse. And Gwen continued to pray for Billy, though
they saw each other less and their friendship probably weakened a
fair amount. A year later, Gwen finds out that Billy had been
arrested for breaking and entering to steal money to buy drugs. And
at this point, I know that I would have been questioning, "Why
do I bother praying for this kid? He's never going to get it."
Well, his parents send him off to Rehab somewhere in the Midwest and
Gwen doesn't hear from him. She sent him notes at Rehab -- no
response. About five months later, she gets a call, not to say thank
for praying for me, thank you for just continuing to be my friend.
But she gets a call to say, "I'm moving. Just wanted you to
know." So now he's moving to Tennessee. And Gwen feels stuck.
And then she hears from him another 15 months later. Everything in
this guy's life points downhill. She hears from him 15 months later.
"Just wanted you to know that I'm in town for a little while,
and I've been clean for a year." Nothing about this kid's life
tells me that I should expect him to be clean ever again, much less
out of jail, but he's been clean for a year. Now did Gwen's prayers
change God's mind? Did that change the outcome? I don't know. I
wasn't told what the original plan was. But I'll tell you what. I
wouldn't want to take my chances as Billy without the prayers of Gwen.
So we get ready to move on to our second question. The second
question is: What if what I want for my life and what God wants don't
really line up? Like the question that was asked in the drama: What
if God makes me marry somebody weird and sends me off to a foreign
country? I've thought that. What do you do? What if we don't want
what God wants? What if we don't really agree?
In Spring of 1998, I was coming to the end of my junior year at Cal.
The summer before I had worked at a church and I loved it. Things
weren't perfect because no job is going to be perfect all the time,
happy, but I loved being in ministry, and I loved what I was doing.
It was great. And so coming up on next summer, I thought, "I
would really like to have another internship at this church."
And I was looking at their ministry, and I saw a need in the
ministry, and it was something that my passion fit and my experience
fit, and I thought, "This is a great place for me to have a
three-month internship over the summer." And so I talked to the
pastor and I said, "Here's the need I see. I would love to work
for you again." And through a string of circumstances, I
basically realized that I wasn't going to get that job. It just
wasn't going to happen. And everything seemed right. I wanted to be
serving God; I saw this need; I was excited about it; I was praying
about it; I wanted to be there. But apparently, what God wanted and
what I wanted didn't line up. And so here I am a month or so before
the end of school and my parents are probably wondering, "So
Robby, you got a job yet?"
"No. Should I?"
And so I thought, "Oh, great. What am I going to do?" So I
send a letter to Pastor Mary. I had known Pastor Mary because
my home church was also Pastor Mary's church before FPCC. In
this letter I said, "Mary. Congratulations on your first six
months or so at First Pres Concord. I'm looking for an internship. Do
you have one? I'll give you a call in a week." So I call her up
in a week, "Hi, Mary. How are you doing? Good to talk to you. So
do you have an internship?"
"Nope. But pray about it." Pray about what? You don't have
anything. "Okay. All right. I'll pray about it. Got it. Okay.
Talk to you later. Bye." Through a string of circumstances, it
turns out that Tom, the last youth pastor here, was going to be going
to Africa for the summer after I graduated. And it lined up so that I
might be able to have an internship where I'd be at First Pres for a
summer, volunteer for the year, and then work for one more summer,
and that's it. See ya. That sounded pretty good to me, so we thought
we'd try that. I found out the night before my last final that the
job had officially gone through. So that was a nice little added
stress taking finals. Oh, finals are not that bad.
But here I am, three years later. Who would have thought? This was not
my plan for my life. I had a good one. It was going to be a
three-month internship at another church. What I didn't realize is
that God didn't give me what I thought was best; He gave me so much
more. It remind me of the passage in Isaiah 55 Verses 8 and 9. It
says that God's thoughts and God's ways aren't our ways, and God's
thoughts and ways are higher than ours. I can look back at that part
of my life and say, "Yeah, you know what? Somehow I'm here, and
it's so much more than I ever could have imagined to plan for."
And the third question to me is the toughest one. The toughest
question to me is: What happens when we just don't get what God is
doing? My family and I have experienced this in a big way lately. In
November of '98, my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer. That
didn't make sense. She was too young to be diagnosed with uterine cancer.
I began praying for that. She had surgery, and they thought they got
it all, but just in case, she was going to do chemotherapy and
radiation treatment, really being aggressive to make sure she'd be
okay. And by Spring of '99, she was pronounced clean. What an amazing
answer to prayer that was. It definitely changed my perspective on my
family, my life, and my mom.
But then in January of 2000, she was found to have cancer again. It
had come back. And we knew that if it came back, that was bad news.
And again I began praying for her health, and that God would spare
her. I spent a lot of time with my mom. I fortunately have the best
boss in the world and a great job where I could drive her to all kind
of doctor's appointments and spend a lot of time with her and talk
with her and pray with her. I spent all that time that I probably
should have been spending before she was sick. We talked basically
every day. And over about two years she had five rounds of
chemotherapy, two long rounds of radiation, and in seven weeks, it
will be one year since she died. And I don't know why. I have no idea
what good comes of this.
And I'm stuck. Where could God be leading in this? I don't know. And
I'm left to trust that God is good. And one of the most confusing
verses to me in the Bible is Romans 8:28, which says, "And we
know that in all things God works for the good for those who love
him, who are called according to his purpose." And that is when
I have to remind myself that God working for my good God isn't always
God working for my happy.
I'm not going to understand why my mom died this side of eternity. I
don't see myself understanding that. And in a lot of ways God is
good. I got a lot of time to spend with my mom. I got a lot of
chances to pray for her and pray with her and talk about the faith
that we shared.
God has given me two things that I don't understand in this. One is
the strange peace, and the second one is he has given me an assurance
of her salvation. I don't why I haven't felt the need to question
that, but I haven't. God's done an amazing thing in that. But I don't
see why she died.
So we're stuck with three questions, or three possibilities.
Yeah, you know, sometimes God does change for our prayers. And
sometimes we don't align with what God knows is right, and he changes
us. And sometimes we don't know. And if you're like me, you find it
hard enough to pray at all, much less pray persistently. I'm not
going to stand up here and kid you and say, "Jesus says 'Pray
persistently,' so do it. It'll be easy." But he does want us to
stay connected with him.
I'll give you three final thoughts before I'll sit down. The first
one, strangely enough, is this: The more you pray, the more you want
to pray. I can't tell you why. Try it.
The 2nd one is this: Do you want to know what God's up to? Do you
want to have an idea of where God is going and what he's doing with
your life? Try and find out. Ask him. I don't know what he's going to
tell you, but you're not going to know unless you're connected him.
And the third thing is, you may be sitting here thinking, "You
know Robby, those are nice stories, and it's a nice Bible passage,
but I'm pretty lost at where God would send me. What would God be
doing in my life?" Do you want some idea of God's will for your
life, I can offer you this: 1 Thessalonians 5:16 through 18 says
this: "Be joyful always, pray continually, and give thanks in
all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ
Jesus." If you want a place to start, there it is.
So like the widow in our story, we're pretty powerless, and our only
hope is to go to somebody with power to act on our behalf. But unlike
the widow, we seek a loving, holy, and just God who has a plan for
our lives.
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