Series: Hey God Week 3: When Can We Talk?: 5/14/06

Some of you are going to be graduating middle school in a few weeks and I’m sure some of you feel as if you just started yesterday. Where did the time go? Well, when you have a lot going on life can just fly by. You’ve been making friends, learning new things and trying new things. And now here we are, school’s almost out for summer.
And here we are, our last week of our series. But before I get into the lessons we are learning this week let me just tell you that recently I’ve been struggling with prayer. I’ve got a lot on my mind, a lot is going on and I feel as if time is just zooming by. I have a lot going on with family, with friends, with work. Some might be asking me how I’m dealing with all the pressure and work, and I would love to tell them fine, but the truth is I’ve been struggling. And it’s not that anything I’m doing is difficult, but I’m going at it all alone. I’m doing it without God. Now how stupid is that? I’ve been talking to you all for the past few weeks on the importance of prayer and here I am struggling to do what I’m telling you. On Friday I came to the realization that I’ve had enough and that it’s time that I let God in. And in a way my struggles with talking with God are relevant to what we will be talking about today.
In today’s topic we are going to shout out, “Hey God, when can we talk?” God’s answer to this questions is, “Whenever you want?” How great is that? How awesome is that? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to someone to talk and they’ve said, “In a minute.” Or someone’s come to me and I’ll say, “Let’s make an appointment.” God, He’s different, when you ask for His time, He’ll say, “I’m right here, let’s talk.” So today we are going to talk about three times where it is important to really talk with God.
One thing you have to ask yourself is, how many of us take advantage of take the time to ask God for his time, how many of us talk to God when we face an obstacle and temptation? How many of us talk to God when we need forgiveness? How many of us just talk to God today and everyday? It’s a shame that we don’t take advantage of this. So why don’t we take advantage of this? Well because of distraction. The catechism tells us:

2729 The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. It can affect words and their meaning in vocal prayer; it can concern, more profoundly, him to whom we are praying, in vocal prayer (liturgical or personal), meditation, and contemplative prayer. To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart: for a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for him and lead us resolutely to offer him our heart to be purified. Therein lies the battle, the choice of which master to serve.

The catechism tells us not to hunt down what distracts us, the catechism tells us in order to defeat the distractions from prayer we need to humble ourselves before God. Last week we talked about humbling ourselves before God and it’s important to remember this because He is the one who helps us:

1. When We Face an Obstacle and Temptations
This is the time we need to ask for His love and strength. This is the time to remember that God hears the cry of those that need Him. How many of you have ever heard the story of Jonah? Jonah was swallowed by a whale when he tried to hide from God. He tried to push God out of his life because he was afraid of what God asked him. God had asked Jonah to witness to Nineveh, which at the time was a horrible place full of sin. So this scared Jonah and because he tried to hide from God he found himself in a bit of trouble…Jonah found him self distressed and scared, so he shouted out for God’s help. God knew that Jonah needed Him and because Jonah asked for God’s help, God freed Jonah from the whale’s stomach and helped him accomplish his mission to Nineveh. Now if you read the book of Jonah you might find the whole story weird but lets focus on what Jonah says:

– Jonah 2:3 – Out of my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me; From the midst of the nether world I cried for help, and you heard my voice.

Jonah was at the bottom, he was scared about going to Nineveh and he was stuck in a whale’s stomach. He knew that only God could get him through his problems.
Now since this story I haven’t heard of too many other people who have been stuck in a whale’s stomach but we definitely have all been in some tough situations. So how do we get out of them? Some of us try to ignore them, but that doesn’t work because then they build up inside of us and we do something stupid. Some times we try to fix our problems with alcohol or drugs or even sex but all that does is cause more problems. Some times we rely on other people to fix our problems but all that does is set us up for disappointment. How often do we rely on God for all our problems? I can tell you I don’t do it enough and I’m sure most of you are the same way.
To totally rely on God with not only your problems but your whole life is freeing. When Jesus tells us to give our whole selves to God he means your whole self, your heart, mind, body, soul, problems, joys, and sins to God. When we pray to God and talk to Him about the obstacles and temptations that we face each day we are getting the perfect help, we are relying on someone who will help us.
And there will be times when we should have seek His advice but instead we do it on our own and we fail, or we mess up. There will be times where we mess up big and are afraid to face God. But it’s important to remember that when we mess up instead of running from God we need to seek Him. Because:

2. When We Need Forgiveness

It is God who is going to relieve us of our sin through His mercy and grace. And when we ask God for forgiveness we should remember last week’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector when the tax collector got down on his knee and shouted:

Luke 18:13 – “O God, be merciful to me a sinner”

We must remember to be humble. God is not going to hate you for your sins, He is going to hate your sins, but not you. God wants to forgive you but He can’t do that unless you ask for it, because God wants you to love Him as much as He loves you. For some of us it might be difficult to think about why God forgives. After all we have done so many things to dishonor Him. We use His name in vain, we disgrace our bodies, we tease and hurt His other children. Every day we do things that tell God that we don’t care about Him. But God loves you, He loves us all after all He sent down His only son to die on the cross for us:

Colossians 1:13-14 – He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

God does not want you to live a life of sin, He does not want you to suffer, He wants to pick you up when you fall. But God can’t pick you up unless you stretch out your arms back to Him. God can’t forgive you if you don’t let Him.
Fortunately as Catholics we believe in Reconciliation, we believe:

1444 In imparting to his apostles his own power to forgive sins the Lord also gives them the authority to reconcile sinners with the Church. This ecclesial dimension of their task is expressed most notably in Christ’s solemn words to Simon Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” “The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of the apostles united to its head.”

Last week we talked about how our prayers are heard only through Jesus Christ. When we go to confession and talk with a priest, it is as if we are speaking through Jesus because Jesus gave Simon Peter the power to forgive sins. And Peter was our first pope and has given priest the ability to help us get our prayers asking for forgiveness heard by God.
It is only God who can forgive our sins, and even when you can’t make it to confession it is important to always ask for God’s forgiveness, because God listens to those that love Him.
But it’s important to remember that God isn’t just a hotline where we only talk to Him about our problems. It’s important to remember that God wants to hear all the beautiful things in our life. That’s why we need to pray:

3. Today and Everyday

In order to strengthen the relationship we have with God. St Paul tells us in:

1 Thessalonians 5:17 – “Pray without ceasing.”

This point has been made each week because it is the most important point. God wants us to talk with Him. He wants us to be persistent and check in and tell Him how life is going. He wants us to thank Him for all the blessings we received. He basically wants to hear about today and everyday. But it’s important to remember to pray today and everyday because that’s how we will persevere through the tough times and how we will learn to love God more. By praying everyday we will eventually be able to notice that God is standing right there in front of us. The catechism tells us:

2742 “Pray constantly . . . always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.” St. Paul adds, “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints.” For “we have not been commanded to work, to keep watch and to fast constantly, but it has been laid down that we are to pray without ceasing.” This tireless fervor can come only from love. Against our dullness and laziness, the battle of prayer is that of humble, trusting, and persevering love. This love opens our hearts to three enlightening and life-giving facts of faith about prayer.

I like the last part of this paragraph in the catechism when it says, “This love opens our hearts to three enlightening and life giving facts of faith about prayer.” When we pray we learn how to be humble, trusting and have persevering love. And when we pray it isn’t just about how we act with God. By practicing and building a relationship with God we learn how to improve our relationship with others.
How can we respect one another when we can’t be humble in front of God who has the power to create us and destroy us? How can we trust someone when we can’t trust that God will help us through the difficult times? And how can we have unending love for someone if we can’t love God with all our mind, heart and soul? See prayer is not just about improving your relationship with God, but improving your life here on earth.
If we can’t give our life to the most perfect, loving, powerful being ever then how can we expect to have healthy and loving relationships with friends or family. It’s important to pray as much as possible because this is how we learn to live life to it’s fullest:

“It is possible to offer fervent prayer even while walking in public or strolling alone, or seated in your shop, . . . while buying or selling, . . . or even while cooking.” – St. John Chrysostom

Remember life gets busy, we get distracted but as St. John Chrysostom tells us it is possible to pray all the time. After all life is all about God, so let’s try and make the time to get to know him.