Easter 6

John 16:23-30 - Rogate Sunday - May 1, 2016
Scattered Prayers

If there is something important that you don’t know, but that you need to know, you should ask someone, right?  More specifically, you should ask someone who knows the answer.  It won’t do any good just to think about it until you suddenly come to know what you previously did not.  That’s simply not how it works; that’s not how knowledge is gained.  To ask a question is to make a request for information from someone who has it.  It’s to pray for knowledge, so to speak.   And that is why to seek instruction from God is really the highest form of prayer.  In fact, one cannot pray at all unless he first learns from God who God is, and why it is that He listens to our prayers.  This is how God’s name is hallowed. 

Easter 6 Rogate

John 16:23-30 – Rogate – May 13, 2012
Hearing, Praying, & Living in Jesus’ Name

Jesus, in Thy cross are centered
All the marvels of Thy grace;
Thou, my Savior, once hast entered
Through Thy blood the Holy Place;
Thy sacrifice holy there wrought my redemption,
From Satan’s dominion I now have exemption;
The way is no free to the Father’s high throne,
Where I may approach Him in Thy name alone.  Amen. 

We approach the Father in the name of Jesus.  We approach him in order to worship him.  Jesus said in John chapter 4, “Believe me…the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.”  The Father seeks true worshipers by sending us Jesus.  Only Jesus teaches us how to worship God because it is only through Jesus that we are able to approach God.  True worship consists of true faith.  We worship the Father in Jesus’ name, because it is Jesus who reconciles us to God—it is for Jesus’ sake that God forgives us our sins and accepts us as his children.  Jesus shows us the Father by dying.  There on the cross Jesus both satisfies the Father’s wrath against sin and reveals the Father’s love toward sinners.  By considering his great pain of body and soul, we learn not only to consider the true weight of our disobedience, but also the great love that God has toward us.  And so it is to this that the Holy Spirit testifies.  We worship the Father in spirit and truth by believing what the Spirit of truth teaches us in Holy Scripture.  The hour has come, and now is, that we Christians worship God in Jesus’ name. 

Worshiping God consists of three things.  First, we listen to God.  We gather together to hear his faith-creating word in Jesus’ name.  Second, we pray to God.  We present all of our petitions to our faithful Father in Jesus’ name.  Third, we live our lives to God.  We not only sing his praises with words, but we live our praises with deeds.  We do this in Jesus’ name.