Title Time flies
2012
In July
15th
Sermon Title
time goes by
preacher
Old Testament text
Psalm 90:10-12
New Testament text
Luke 18:31-34
sermon video
Old Testament
10. Our years are seventy, and if we are strong, we are eighty years old, but their pride is only toil and sorrow, and they go quickly and we fly away.
11. Who knows the power of your wrath, and who knows the fear of your wrath?
12. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a wise heart.
new testament
31. Jesus took the twelve and said to them, Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all that is written through the prophets will come to pass to the Son of Man.
32. The Son of Man will be handed over to the Gentiles to be mocked, to be humiliated, and to be spit on.
33. They will whip him and kill him, but on the third day he will rise.
34. The disciples did not understand any of these, because the word was hidden, and they did not know what he had said.
sermon
Prayer is the act of letting go of all wrong belongings and gaining freedom and belonging only to God. That is why there is often a strong desire to pray while at the same time a strong desire to pray. We want to get closer to God, the source and goal of our existence, but at the same time, we realize that the closer we get to God, the stronger God's demands to throw away all the "safe" structures we have built up around us. Prayer is such a revolutionary act. This is because we have to reevaluate all of our ways of living in the world, put down our old self and accept Christ as our new self.
This is what Paul meant when he said that to live with Christ, we must die with Christ. Paul confesses his experience of death and regeneration like this: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
The act of prayer frees us from the illusion of control. It is to throw away all false belongings and to come fully to God, the only object of our belonging. Therefore, prayer is the act of dying for everything you thought was yours, and the act of being born into a new being that does not belong to this world.
-Henry Nouwen, a taste of the kingdom of God
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