Faith Sanctuary



THE

4% SOLUTION

THE 4% SOLUTION

Nov. 1, 2020

Sermon in a sentence: Let’s fully utilize the incredible connection we can have with God through prayer.

Congregational reading: Luke 22:39-45

Scriptures: Luke 22:39-45 (Matt. 26:40; Mark 14:37); Mark 1:35; Mark 6:46; Luke 3:21-22; Luke 5:16; Luke 6:12; Luke 9:28-29; Luke 23:43; John 11:41-44; Luke 22:32; Luke 11:1; Matt. 6:9-13; 1 Thes. 5:17; Jude 20

Luke 22:39-45 Coming out, He went to the Mount of Olives, as He was accustomed, and His disciples also followed Him. 40 When He came to the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41   And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” 43 Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. 44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45   When He rose up from prayer, and had come to His disciples, He found them sleeping from sorrow.

Not long ago, I spoke to us on the topic: “My Focal Point.” Here’s a quote from that message, referring to Peter and John going up to the temple at the “hour of prayer:”

“… [W]hen I speak of the “hour of prayer,” I’m just using the term we read in Acts 3. I totally understand that you may not actually be spending one hour in prayer every day. It may be a focused 15 or 30 minutes that you spend with the Lord, but you have identified the specific time and place where you will meet with Him every day.”

And certainly, the scripture in Acts 3 indicates that they went to the temple at the “hour of prayer,” not necessarily that they spent an hour in prayer once they got there.

That being said, after the message, I felt the Lord was quite displeased. It felt that He was saying: “Are you really trying to excuse my people from spending an hour with Me every day? Do you know what percentage of the day one hour is?” So, I did the math, as you can right now. Just open up the calculator on your phone and divide one by twenty-four. Have you gotten your answer? Do you see what it says? One hour is the grand total of 4.17% of a day. And if you apply the normal rules of rounding, you’ll round it down to 4%. That’s it. One hour is 4% of our day. So, half an hour is 2% and 15 minutes is literally 1% of our day!

If light of those numbers, if you are one who’s ever said there’s no way you could spend an hour with God in prayer, every day, you may wish to reconsider that statement.

We say (and these statements should be true for every child of God): Jesus Christ is my Lord and Master; He is the giver of life; He is my sustainer; my provider; my Saviour. The One I love; the One I adore; the One who brought me out of darkness into His marvelous light. The One who’s gone to prepare a place for me so that I can be where He is, forever in paradise…. I’m sure you get the picture.

And yet we have to think hard about whether or not we can give Him a whole 4% of our day!

Once upon a time, way back in the 20th century, I used to go to school, and there was one day of the year I always dreaded. It was report card day. I was never the sharpest pencil in the box, so I hated report card day. But I have to tell you, as bad as my grades might have been, I never descended to 4%. One year in particular, I got down to some pretty frightening numbers, and I even tried to convince myself that “F” really stood for “Fabulous.” But at no time did I ever get down to 4%!

The other day, however, I got a totally different perspective on percentages. My wife had a sore back and asked me to apply some extra strength muscle rub to the spot that hurt. After I was done, I read the label and found that its active pain-relieving agent comprised a whopping 2.32% of the ointment! Yes, you heard me right. 2.32% of the ointment does the work and the rest is filler and fragrance. And that was the extra strength version, which has literally twice as much pain killer as the regular strength version.

Another percentage that’s very important to us relates to the amount of food we eat every day. The average person consumes around four pounds of food and fluid each day.[1] And according to Dr. Google, the average Canadian adult male weighs 177 lbs.[2] So, four pounds equates to 2.3% of his body weight. Again, we see that small percentages make a big difference to our lives. Eliminate that 2.3% for even one day and see how you feel!

So, what’s the point? Just this: in some aspects of life, a little goes a long way. Even though we may give God a mere 4% of our day, the results will be life changing.

*****

Let’s take a look at what happened in the first hour Jesus spent in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before His crucifixion (Luke 22:41-44):

- He found a quiet, private place to pray, away from everyone else

- He detailed His desire and earnest prayer request to His Father in Heaven

- God sent divine help in the form of an angel to assist Him in prayer

- His prayer intensified and He “prayed more earnestly”

- His prayer was all-consuming: soul, spirit and body. He was sweating with the exertion of His prayer, and His sweat was like great drops of blood.

He was all in. It’s amazing to see all that took place in just one hour of prayer. It changed His life and it changed our destiny!

Just as an athlete’s workout includes the elements of a warmup, intense physical activity, then a cooldown period, our prayer time also has stages that shouldn’t be rushed. We need time for thanksgiving, worship, intercession, listening to God (primarily through His word), submitting our will to His, and acknowledging His lordship in our lives and in our world. We can’t just rush in and out of God’s presence as a matter of duty or obligation, thinking that somehow this will result in a loving, trusting, life-sustaining relationship with Him.

Some people say they’re just too busy to pray for more than a few minutes a day. Many of us know mothers of infants and toddlers who can rightly say they have no way of setting schedules and having any time to themselves whatsoever. They are totally consumed with childcare responsibilities, literally around the clock. We certainly understand their situation, but the truth is, very few of us are mothers of newborns or even, let’s say, medical students doing 72-hour rounds.

Some of us have taken on way more responsibilities at work than we can realistically handle, and it gets us up early in the morning and keeps us up late at nights. Something has to give, and our time with God is usually one of the first things to go. But there’s more to this story…

A polling firm called Statistica tells us that in 2019, Canadians spent an average of 298 minutes with digital media each and every day. This is just under five hours a day, and this figure is expected to continue rising over time.[3]

Media Technology Monitor did similar research and came to the same conclusion. They said: “… people aged between 18 and 34 are the most likely to spend time online, with an average of 5 hours on the internet every day.”[4]

A third source, Newswire.ca, gives us a closer look into the numbers in a report from September 2019, six months before the pandemic hit. So, these stats don’t even reflect our current situation with so many more people working from home and children being educated online. They ask: “Where is all that time going?” Then they give the results of their survey: “Canadians (in 2019) say they spend the most time on computer screens with an average of 4.2 hours per day, followed by an average of 3.1 hours per day spent looking at TV screens, 2.4 hours looking at cell phone screens, and 1.5 hours looking at tablets.”[5] That’s the big picture, combining work time and discretionary time into an astounding average of 11.2 hours per day on some kind of device, most of which is discretionary time that’s totally under our control.

So, as we can see, the entertainment and social media time we spend every day on our devices far exceeds 4% of our day. In other words, there is absolutely no reason why we can’t devote an hour a day to God!

OK, by now you’re feeling guilty and saying woe is me, but, as I said a couple of minutes ago, there’s more to the story. Here it is. All of the big social media companies have hired brilliant mathematicians and behavioural scientists to devise and install algorithms into our devices to hook us and addict us to them. That’s a fact.[6]

You may decide to take a short 10-minute break from work to clear your head by watching a mindless YouTube video. Before you know it, an hour has gone by. This is not by accident. As you watch one thing, another similar suggestion pops up on your screen and you see it’s only five minutes long. Then it has a feature called “Auto-play” that takes you right into the next video without you even having to lift a finger. So, when you look at your watch ten minutes later, you see that actually, two hours have gone by. Just like that. It’s easy, it’s effortless, it’s entertaining, it’s relaxing, and it’s totally addictive. Without a thought, and with only two or three keystrokes, 20% of our day is gone! Every one of us who has a cell phone, a tablet, a laptop, a desktop computer or a TV faces this problem.

I have to work just as hard as you to stay out of the trap! As barbaric as it is, I can waste hours watching old Muhammed Ali fights or Mike Tyson knockouts. My laptop knows me and keeps bringing me stuff like that. I watched every episode of The Last Dance, just like all you other MJ fans did. And it’s not even all worldly stuff. My laptop knows I love old school choir music from the James Cleveland, Milton Brunson, Walter Hawkins era, all the way up into the Andraé Crouch, Richard Smallwood, Clark Sisters and Kirk Franklin timeline. And don’t even talk about Fred and Israel and Donnie and Martha. Yes, the fight is real!

But, in light of what we read in our text about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, may I suggest that spending an hour a day with God is our 4% solution to achieving a much more fulfilled, joyful and impactful spiritual life.

****

For Jesus, His prayer time was an obvious priority and a place and source of strength, power, wisdom, intercession, learning and acknowledgment. Let’s look at some examples:

- He would arise “a long while before daylight” to pray, alone, in a “solitary place” (Mark 1:35).

- He “departed to the mountain to pray” (Mark 6:46).

- Immediately after His baptism, He prayed, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him (Luke 3:21-22).

- Luke records that Jesus “often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed” (Luke 5:16).

- At times, He spent “all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12)

As Jesus prayed, things happened to Him, for Him and for others.

- As He prayed with His disciples, He was transfigured before their eyes (Luke 9:28-29). An amazing experience for all! This is what God did to Him.

- As He prayed in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, an angel was sent to strengthen Him (Luke 23:43). This is what God did for Him.

- Jesus’ prayer at Mary and Martha’s house was the prelude to bringing their brother back to life (John 11:41-44). This is what His prayer did for others.

- He prayed for Peter to keep the faith and strengthen his brethren (Luke 22:32). We see this prayer answered many times over in the Book of Acts.

Jesus’ prayer even inspired one of His disciples to ask Him for a lesson in prayer (Luke 11:1; Matt. 6:9-13). Jesus then taught them a model and paradigm for prayer that we still use to this day. In fact, as we employ the 4% solution, we can compartmentalize our prayer to follow the pattern Jesus established in ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. In this prayer, we

- Acknowledge God’s place and position

- We pray for God’s will to be done on Earth

- We intercede for personal needs

- We pray for God’s forgiveness, even as we forgive those who’ve wronged us

- We pray for protection from the devil’s schemes against us

- We acknowledge God’s ultimate eternal rulership

*****

So now, let’s jump to solutions. You can’t really ‘guilt’ someone into a better relationship with their parent, spouse, child or Saviour. It has to come from a deep place of desire within us, which I’m sure most of us already have. But we do have to learn how to fight through our attraction to so many other things that easily distract us. Even ‘good’ things can keep us from the ‘best’ things, and we certainly want the best for our lives.

If you’re wondering how to get started, here’s an example of something we can do: Last Wednesday, Bishop Bernard published a call to prayer and fasting regarding the great and obvious needs in the United States and Canada. The prayer points are listed as an Appendix to my notes on our website (Resources/Sermon notes). Why don’t we take the time this Wednesday to pray and fast as we apply our 4% solution to praying for our nation?

Do you love nature? Does it increase your wonder and appreciation for the works of God? Then maybe you can apply your 4% solution to prayer walks with God, with a Bible app or worship music playing in your ears as part of your prayer time. In His humanity, Jesus loved His time alone with God in the mountains or in the wilderness (Mark 6:46; Luke 5:16). If that’s your thing, do it.

Do you find you’re easily distracted, or maybe you simply don’t have a lot of time free at any given time? Maybe you can be like David or Daniel and pray three times a day if that fits better with your preference, lifestyle or personality (Ps. 55:17; Daniel 6:10).

Are you like the apostles and saints in the early church? They loved to pray together as a community of faith (Acts 1:14; 2:1,42; 3:1; 4:23-31; 13:2-3). Maybe an online prayer group would be the preferred option for you. You can get onto Facebook and search for “We Pray,” our own Faith Sanctuary prayer group. Or get onto our Zoom prayer meetings at 7:30pm on Friday nights. If you have trouble getting up in the morning, you can have one of your prayer group members call to get you up and online. As we’ve seen, just about everyone is online anyway, so why not use your screen time to your spiritual advantage?

You can start a blog or a vlog to testify about the goodness of God in your life and create a forum for others to share similar experiences. “3D Youth” is already up and running and it’s an excellent place to go for that kind of content.

If you know you’re not where you want to be right now, I know it’s going to take a real effort just to get started. Many of us know what it’s like to begin an exercise program and stop – even for a short while. When you decide to get back into it, you feel the pain! But the trick is, start small and don’t try to run a marathon today if you didn’t even walk around the block yesterday. As Jude 20 tells us, we need to be engaged in “building [ourselves] up on [our] most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.”

And 1 Thessalonians 5:17 is another critical verse for us to live by. It has a very simple message. “Pray without ceasing.” If communion with God is indeed top of mind for us, we’ll be applying our 4% solution as an ointment and anointing on our lives all day long. He deserves so much more of our time and attention, so let’s not allow a screen, a book, a game, a mall, or a relationship to steal our time with Him. May God help us!

APPENDIX:

From Bishop David Bernard and the World Network of Prayer (Oct. 28, 2020):

Prayers For Canada

- Pray for Bishop Raymond Woodward and the UPC of Canada.

- Pray for the best overall welfare of all spiritual leaders and churches.

- Pray that God would bring healing to the land, as well as healing to people who are suffering from COVID-19. (II Chronicles 7:14)

- Pray that the Lord would protect Canada and the Church from all adverse pandemic spiritual, physical, economic, civil effects, etc.

- Pray for the Church to greater unite for God’s cause, and for His hand to rest upon Canada and His great sovereign plan to be fulfilled.

- Pray for God’s way and will regarding the seven centers of power: government, church, education, media, family, business, and military.

- Pray for the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Parliament, and for all elected officials across the country: federal, provincial, municipal.

- Pray that God would help every leader to lead effectively and for His blessings to be upon all current and future generations of Canadians.

- Pray that national leaders in every province implement God’s plan in their efforts for Canada and it be manifested in their speech and actions.

- Pray that God would grant wisdom to those presiding in the courts of justice, and all in the system would render godly, impartial judgement.

- Pray for all who make public policies, that each would allow Biblical views and principles to influence the public discourse and pass such laws.

- Pray that God prohibits the passage of laws on the local and federal levels for anything that would be contrary to the Word of God.

- Pray that the government would freely permit religious freedoms, provide economic opportunities, and embrace godly national values.

- Pray for what is beneficial to society in line with Biblical mandates regarding civil rights; the sanctity of human life; morality; racial equality; judicial appointments; Israel’s right to exist; fair immigration; accountable law-enforcement; family values; human needs; etc.

- Pray that God would pour out His Spirit upon all national leaders and make His word known to them so that each one will do what is right in God’s sight.

- Pray for a great spiritual awakening, revival and outpouring of the Holy Spirit to sweep across Canada and the nations – to the glory of God!

-----------------------

[1], accessed Oct. 24, 2020.

[2] , accessed Oct. 24, 2020

[3] , accessed Oct. 19, 2020.

[4] . Accessed Oct. 19, 2020.

[5] , accessed Oct. 19, 2020.

[6] See Netflix documentary: “The Social Dilemma.”

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download