Coronavirus: God can you hear us? - Nicky Gumbel - HTB at Home

I want to talk to you today about God can you hear us our world is shaking almost every one each in our own way facing fear grief and trauma our world has been shaken concentration is difficult sleep is broken few weeks ago our world was generally safe we who connect with those we love now all our assumptions have been shattered at 7.7 million people in the UK are living in households on their own many of them are desperately isolated and we are grieving our old life but in the midst of this Google searches for the word prayer have searched they skyrocketed as Koba 19 has searched and world leaders including the Queen of England are encouraging us to pray but I guess the question is is God listening to our prayers can he hear us God loves you and he wants to be in a close intimate loving relationship with you that's what prayer is that's why prayer is the most important activity of your life but how should we pray at a time like this there's an Old Testament passage which millions of Christians around the world including our own church are going back to at this time it's in 2 chronicles 7:14 and the verse before verse 13 has a word which is the most googled word in China because in China the same word is used for plague and pandemic and effectively what verse 13 tells us is when is a pandemic this is how you should pray God says to Solomon if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land and he goes on to say his eyes will be open and his ears will be attentive to our prayers in other words he will hear our prayers and in these verses we see four keys to prayer at a time like this the first key to prayer that we see in this passage is perspective God says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves there's something about this virus which is humbling we see that when were not omnipotent were not in control we never were in control but we had the illusion of control and now we realize we're not but not only has this virus humbled us we are called to humble ourselves that's a choice as a result of the virus we've lost some choices for example we can't choose when we leave the house but we can choose to humble ourselves and there's a lot of talk about the church rising up but perhaps the place to start is by falling on our knees personally and this is just a personal thing I found that's how I loved to start the day I actually started the day about making a cup of coffee and I often get distracted at that point what's the first thing I want to do is read the Bible but I end up by looking at social media or emails will suffer and I try and resist that temptation but usually I fail but very quickly I want to be on my knees before God reading the Bible because I find that posture is is the best one most appropriate one me because I want to get God's perspective on things I want to hear what God has to say to me and I find being on my knees is a way that I can humble myself before him and get his perspective William temple the great Archbishop of Canterbury during World War two said this the world can be saved from chaos and collapse by one thing only worship worship gives perspective it takes our eyes off ourselves and humility is not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less one of the things I find now is that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and I think oh my goodness have I got have I got the fever or I coughed in the night and I think oh if I beginning to get the virus of is this a persistent cough and then my mind starts to think if I get it then I might give it to pip and she's vulnerable and then I started to think about what would happen to her I think about the worst-case scenario I start to catastrophize so I've learnt to try and resist that and rather than thinking about my sovereign and self preoccupation so at that moment to pray for other people to intercede for other people and I find that as I do that the fear goes and this is part of getting God's perspective humbling ourselves and that is the first key to prayer the second key to prayer at a time like this is presence God says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face sometimes oscillated seek my presence God's face he says if we seek his face his presence then his eyes will be open and his ears will be attentive to our prayers God loves you he wants to hear from you I think of when son eldest son Henry and Janine and a grandson because to now we're staying with us into a few months ago they were here and I remember the very first time that they went out for the evening and left us in charge of Makar and we had a monitor to listen to him but I was so worried that the monitor might not be working it's a funny isn't it I think I was more relaxed than my own children that I am with my our grandchildren but I didn't really trust them on I thought it might be broken so I kept going up and listening at his door to hear if he was crying and I think God sometimes is like that with us he's he's listening are we praying are we are we speaking to him he wants to hear our cry and he's a seat my face seat my eyes my attention my ears but also God has a mouth God's face as a mouth and he wants to speak to us and I find he speaks to me primarily through the Bible but he also speaks as we pray so when I finished reading the Bible I like to go for a walk around our local park personally I find that if I sit to pray I just fall asleep and what I find the best way to pray is to walk and I still get very distracted but I find that's the best way and thankfully even with lockdown we're allowed to go out and exercise and walking as exercise so I talk as I walk and you know I do different things but basically it's it's time chatting to God talking with God in his presence I usually start with just thanking God thank it's giving helps us to focus not so much on what we've lost but on what we've still got Thank You God that we can still go out to walk thanking God for food thanking him for loo paper taking him for the things that we still have and then talking to him about whatever's going on in our lives and I love to do that I love to sense his presence with me to talk to him about my anxieties my fears the things that are troubling me and praying for things asking him for things but asking is not all of prayer that's just part of it it's a relationship it's a love relationship and it's in his presence that's the amazing thing God's presence refreshes our soul it feeds us it comforts us there's an amazing blessing of being in the presence of God that's the second key to pray the third key to prayer at a time like this is peace God says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then he promises he will forgive our sins does that mean that this virus is sent by God because of our wicked ways I don't think so I think God has allowed it but I don't think he sent it because it doesn't make sense because this is hitting the poor far more than anyone else and I don't believe that God sends these things but he does allow them and sometimes he uses them to get our attention when Jesus was asked about some kind of natural disaster that had happened and he was asked whether that was the kind of judgment from God he said no but unless you repent in other words take these moments to examine your heart if that things in your life that you need to get sorted out deal with them because God doesn't want us to have anything in our lives that interferes with our close intimate relationship with him because he loves us and he promises to forgive us in fact through Jesus he has forgiven us and He loves us when Micaiah was stay with her grandson again going back to makea when our two year old was staying with us what he'd love to do was at 4:30 4:30 this time of day I like to have fruit salad that I'm a routine person and every day I like to have a fruit salad with a bit of smoothie on top of it and Micaiah also likes fruit salad and he calls me by go bar and then he would have his hands which was mint he wants to come and sit on my knee and eat my fruit salad with me and he's sit there going juice which is his favorite bit more deuce and I try and teach him to say more juice please because I want you to have good manners and he he's so adorable but look I also has his moments like right now and when not together and we're trying to connect with our family on video some kind he likes to take take the phone and switch it off it's very hard to have a conversation with his parents but the fact that he's not perfect doesn't mean we don't adore him God loves imperfect people that's the point of the cross Jesus died for you and for me he took all of our bad stuff on himself and there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus he looks at you and he loves you with with all our imperfections he loves us just as we love our children and grandchildren in spite the fact that all of us have imperfections God loves us but he wants us to get rid of the stuff that interferes with our relationship with God that takes away our peace I find the bad stuff in my life of stuff that I lose my peace and God wants us to have that peace it's peace like the deep ocean current but beneath the waves course at the moment there are a lot of waves and wind on the surface a lot of storms but we can still experience that deep peace and as we pray we can bring our anxieties to God and he takes our anxieties and gives us his peace that's the third key to prayer the fourth key to prayer at a time like this is power because prayer not only changes us it also changes situations God hears our prayers and acts in response to our prayers so he says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land what will a healed land look like when of course were all praying for an end to this virus but interestingly and you have survey recently us whether people wanted to go back to things as they were and only 9% did we want to see change we want to see a different kind of world because our world is broken and we want to see a healed land and I think we've tasted something better we've seen the skies clear over India and China and now I've never seen the sky so blue in London I can hear the birds right now normally I'd be hearing the aeroplanes something beautiful is emerging not just in the natural world but also in human relationships there's a kind of kindness friend people much more friendly I found walking in the park people who who have passed for months and have never said hello suddenly saying hello and being friendly neighbors who've never met before are reaching out to help to bring food to deliver medicine there's an altruism a kindness something very beautiful of emerging in the Solidarity we all feel together so I noticed in our other small group we're all facing the virus there's there's a commonality and between nations the walls are coming down there's less conflict because there's a unity something beautiful is emerging and we don't want to lose that in fact we hope and pray that that a healed land will involve even more of that and less of some of the things that we had before but more kindness more love for the poor I homelessness the Pope tells the story of a policeman on the streets of Rome going up to a man and saying you can't be on the streets you need to go home to which the man replied I have no home I live on the streets in London we've put all that homeless into hostels but why can't we do that on a permanent basis surely if we're prepared to pay such a high cost as we rightly sure to save lives we could start to address some of the other issues in our world that will require cost but perhaps not as great a cost as we're paying right now to deal with issues of sanitation and clean water and poverty rather than allowing 25,000 people every day and eight and a half thousand children to die from lack of food when there's plenty of food there's enough food in the world to go around perhaps we'll start to address these issues to address address the issues in relation to our climate our environment to give these our attention that's what a healed world will look like but maybe it will start and it should start with healed lives individual lives coming into healed relationships with God the word for healing and salvation are the same word in the in the New Testament and as people it's a relationship with God that is healing and that's why I'm just so thrilled to see what's happening with outfit right now all around the world people are doing alpha unlined thousands of courses in this country thousands of churches and on our own course we have never had so many people coming or already at this stage we weren't due to start for another three weeks we've had fourteen hundred guests registering seeking God and in our small group only one person in the small group said they would have been there anywhere all the others are coming because of the virus that's giving them more time or more desire or it's just easier for them to do it online and so that God willing they'll experience a relationship with him an intimate loving relationship with him that will bring amazing spirit like healing and then he'll into marriages and Families again it so needed in our society and the leaves marriage of course at this stage it's running all over the country and all around the world but on our own course here they'd normally have 80 to 100 couples right now they have over four thousand couples coming and hopefully their marriages will be just improved enriched and in some cases healed and restored and then to see what's happening out on the streets not only are we clapping the NHS but our friend Pat Allison and actually many like him around the country he's the vicar of a church in Notting Hill he's going around and he is I'll sticking to social distancing he's leading people in the singing of Amazing Grace and praying the Lord's proud people popping out the front doors and coming on to their balconies and there see on the streets you have to go back to 1954 when Billy Graham came to London to see that kind of thing happening but it seems like it like God is answering the prayers that many of us been praying for years for a kind of spiritual revival to take place it's not happy how we would have wanted it to happen but it is happening in an amazing way it's beginning to happen and that's what we're praying for when we're praying that God will heal our land and we can all be involved with this every single person can be involved in it yeah we can all be involved in serving as so encourage to see an 80 year old couple who are like almost full-time rain people to encourage them that they're serving we can all be involved in volunteering in like in some kind of way in serving in giving the church these resources at this time and all of us can give and perhaps most important of all all of us can pray and God says if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land in Jesus name Amen let's take a moment now to respond what the Holy Spirit may have been saying to you today we're gonna pray a prayer which we always pray every Sunday at HTP come Holy Spirit and I'd love to encourage you wherever you are you're sitting or standing whatever simply to hold out your hands as a way of saying to god lord please come and fill me today with your spirit come Holy Spirit come and fill each person right now now allow the Holy Spirit to fill you the Holy Spirit brings us into the presence of God it may be in his presence something comes to mind that you need to ask forgiveness for and I encourage you right now to ask God to forgive you and then receive his forgiveness Jesus died for you so that you can be totally forgiven now receive his forgiveness and now his presence with you his eyes are upon you he's watching over you to protect you to guard you his ears are attentive to your prayers whatever it is you want to ask him for bring to him any fears or anxieties or grief and receive his love the Holy Spirit always gives us an experience of God's love the love of God is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit know today that God loves you more than any parent loves their child or grandparent loves their grandchildren allow his love you are loved that knowledge of his love to fill your heart today and receive his peace says have no anxiety about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God and then the peace of God will fill you peace of God beyond all understanding fill your heart right now in Jesus name Amen as we come to the end of our service right now may I remind you that on Thursday night we have a whole evening of prayer and worship kingdom come said 7:14 2 Chronicles 7:14 you'll find the details on the website and if you're part of another church may I encourage you to give generously at this time to your church the church is rarely need resources so we can help as many people as possible at this moment if your member of HC be the details of how you can give will come up on the screen and now the blessing the blessing of God Almighty the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit be with you and remain with you always I mean you [Music] you

Channel: HTB Church

Views: 25,351

Rating: 4.8357291 out of 5

Keywords: prayer, God, answer, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Faith, Forgiveness, Repentance, Thankfulness

Id: DXePe_EZXno

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020