Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekday podcast of Sugar Hill Church, where we desire to help you know God and discover your purpose, whether you're exercising, driving, meditating, or just hanging out while you tune in with us today. Thanks. We hope these next five minutes help you feel encouraged and inspired for your day.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hi everybody. This is Pastor Chuck Allen, and thanks so much for joining me on today's weekday podcast where I want to take a little look at how do we respond to God's speech. Now, when you read the 19th Psalm and I encourage you to read the whole thing, but for the sake of time on our podcast, I'll just go to verse two. The Scripture says, day to day pours forth speech. Now that's S P E E C H and night to night declares knowledge. Now think about this. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. Prayer, my friend, is everywhere and always answering speech. It's never initiating speech. And to suppose that it is, well, it's kind of presumptuous. The Hebrew word in the Bible, mikra m I q r a properly means calling out, the calling out of God. To us, God became a person in the form of the Lord Jesus. But in order for us to speak in answer to him, he must make us into persons.
We become ourselves as we answer, sometimes angularly, sometimes we dispute with him about how he rules the world. We get frustrated that he doesn't answer when we want and how we want it. Sometimes he's humbling us right in front of our face and we find grateful trust. Prayer is language used to respond to the most that has been said to us. I want to say that again. Prayer is language used to respond to the most that has been said to us with the potential for saying all that is in us. That's a quote from Eugene Peterson. I love that. Let me read it to you one more time. Prayer is language used to respond to the most that's been said to us, with the potential for saying all that is in us. You see, my friend, prayer is the development of speech into maturity, the language that is adequate to answering the one who has spoken so eloquently, comprehensively and lovingly to us. Prayer is not a narrow use of language for specialty occasions like we tend to make it, but it is a language embracing the totality of everything and everyone, everywhere. This conversation, it's bold, I would dare say it's devout, the utterly inferior, responding to the utterly superior God. And in this exchange, we become the person that God intends us to be.
What would you like to discuss with God today.
I say all that to say it's so healthy for us to recognize that God is constantly communicating with us.
The question is, why do we not respond? Why do we not have that conversation? Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge. God is constantly seeking to pour himself into us and one of the ways that we can sharpen that is Lord, I want to respond to your day to day speech with me and I want to talk about this life because I need you. So today, my friend, I encourage you. Just even right now, if you're riding down the road or you're on a treadmill somewhere, possibly maybe you're sitting in your favorite chair in the morning, whatever that is, take the time right now to simply have a chat with your creator. And that chat could be something as simple as God, I want to hear you when you speak to me. Would you make it so plain that I couldn't miss it today? Would you kind of raise my antenna of awareness of what you're doing in my life so that I could be more aware that it's happening and receive it with graciousness and love and trust?
Friend, don't overthink prayer. Just open up a conversation with the divine. He is always waiting to chat with you. So today, have that conversation and go in peace. Thanks so much for listening to today's Weekday podcast.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Thanks so much for joining us today for the weekday podcast. Our prayer is that the encouragement you just heard would help you live more like Jesus today. We would love to see you at Sugar Hill Church for one of our gatherings each Sunday at 9, 15 and 11, and we're always streaming live at Live Sugarhill Church. Thanks again for joining us today. As always, if today's message encouraged you, share it with friends and family by tapping the share button. Have an awesome day.
