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The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Theilman, entitled "Primary Prayer Prerequisites." Let us continue in worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Psalm 139.

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I begin the reading at verse 1. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me; thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar; thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

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Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

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If I ascend to heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness

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is not dark to thee. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with thee. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Amen.

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This morning we begin the 219th year of our congregational history, and the session has decided that the principal theme for our year will be the life of prayer. So at various times and in various ways across the next months, we will be thinking together about this very precious discipline of the Christian faith, the life of prayer.

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And it is appropriate, of course, that we think of this theme from this pulpit. And so each month for the next nine months, I shall be seeking to bring to you one message which relates to the practice of prayer. And because first things must come first, we begin today by talking about the primary

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prayer prerequisites. There are three of them. The first is a sense of the holiness of God. The scriptures say, "This is the message which we have heard from him and proclaimed to you,

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that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." Some of you will remember back in 1954 when our government exploded the first hydrogen bomb. It was done at a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean called Bikini.

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Now special cameras were used to photograph the explosion. They were ultra high speed cameras, and they were placed behind leaded and tinted glass. Still, at the moment of the explosion, the picture taken by those cameras, so specially designed and so carefully protected, was nothing but white.

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When the film was projected, nothing was seen but an aching white, a blinding light. Now I relate this because the holiness of God is most often described in the scriptures in terms of brilliance, in terms of light. Notice the passage to which we just referred, "God is light and in him there is no darkness

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at all." Or think of these words from 1 Timothy, "Oh God, King of kings and Lord of lords, who dwells in unapproachable light." It was back in the early 1960s that astronomers discovered for the first time quasars.

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Now quasars are understood to be the most energetic objects in all of the universe. Great conflagrations far out in space, which are incredibly brilliant. One quasar brighter than a hundred galaxies, one quasar brighter than ten trillion stars. Yet God is the maker of quasars, and the creator is always greater than that which he has created,

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which means that the brilliance of God is beyond anything that we can think of, even when we think of quasars. H.G. Wells has a little story called "The Soul of a Bishop," and there's one scene in the story when the bishop is talking to an angel, and he says, "Will you tell me the

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whole truth about God? Can you do that?" And the angel says, "The whole truth? Yes, I could tell you that.

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But," and with this he reached over and put his hands on the bishop's head, "but could this hold it? Not this little box of brains. You haven't the things to hold it with inside of this."

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You see what our problem is? We speak of the holiness of God, and even that we have to illustrate by saying that it is light. And when we try to think of light, we talk about hydrogen bombs and galaxies and quasars,

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but even after we have spoken of those things, they are so much less because our brains are so insufficient to magnify and to grasp the magnitude of the greatness and the holiness of God. Even here, you see, we find ourselves caught up in inadequacy.

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So we cannot measure or understand the holiness of God. But this does not mean that we cannot fall on our knees in awe before it. That's what the Bible calls us to, you know. It speaks of the fear of the Lord.

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Now when it speaks of fear, it's not talking of a phobia. When we read in the book of Proverbs, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," we're not talking about dread. We're talking about reverence and regard and respect.

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We're talking about surrender to the absolute authority of God. When you come into the presence of God, you see, and you begin to think about the majesty of His holiness, your soul is shaken. That's as old as Adam and Eve.

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When God came to confront them in the garden, they ran and hid. When God came down on Mount Sinai to reveal the Ten Commandments in thunder and lightning, it is said that the people fell on their faces. When the angels flew above Bethlehem's fields there to announce the birth of the Prince

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of Peace, what does it say happened to the shepherds? They were sore afraid. You see, when you contemplate the glory of God, you confront the poverty of yourself. When you think about the perfection of God, you recognize the sin in yourself.

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When you focus your mind upon the splendor of God, you're immediately reminded of the splintered nature of your own soul. The paradigm for the confrontation with the holiness of God is seen in Scripture in the experience of Isaiah.

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He goes into the temple and he sees the Lord high and lifted up. And what does he say? He says, "Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts."

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When you see the holiness of God, you are immediately struck with the inadequacy of yourself, which leads us immediately to the second pillar, the second prerequisite on which the palace of prayer is built, and that's this, the centrality of confession. You see, the single reason that many prayers are not answered is this, God does not listen

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to unrepentant people. Let me share with you some verses from Scripture. They're not the kind that most people underline, but they're there and they're important. From Hebrews, for example, God does not look on wickedness with favor.

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Or from Proverbs, the Lord detests the thoughts of the wicked. Or from Psalm 66, if we cherish sin, the Lord does not listen. Or from John chapter 9, we know that God does not listen to sinners. Now most Christians think that those words apply to unbelievers, to those who have not

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come to God through Jesus Christ, but that's not what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures say that God does not hear the prayers of the unrepentant, and Christians are many times not repentant. Christians sin just as those who do not believe sin, and that means that Christians need confession

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just as the unbelieving need confession. We have developed a remarkable ability to be tolerant about our own sins. You say to most Christians, "What about your sins?" And they say in a breathy voice, "Oh, Jesus died to pay for my sins," as if that somehow

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closed the matter. The fact of the matter is that we still sin, and we must confess those sins. I've thought a lot about why it is that we as sinful Christians so often neglect confession in our devotional lives.

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I think it's so principally for three reasons. First of all, because we forget the holiness of God. In the book of Job, Job says, "I have seen God and I despise myself." But we talk about God as the man upstairs or somebody up there likes me, or we sing

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music which truly doesn't honor him, or we give ourselves to acts of devotion which are petty and paltry. We act as if somehow if we come to church, we're doing God a favor. If we sign a pledge card, we're going above and beyond the call of duty.

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We have made God into such an acquiescent, grandfatherly, long, white-bearded figure or someone ready to jump at our beck and call when what we ought to be saying to God is, "Oh, Lord, we fail you so utterly, and we fail you so often." And another reason we do not confess is that we have forgotten the destructive nature of

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sin. How often do we think about judgment? Oh, we quite frequently think about judgment in terms of others, but how often do we think of it in terms of ourselves?

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I don't know whether this is true or not, but it's been repeated many times. Supposedly, John Fitzgerald Kennedy asked Nikita Khrushchev in one of their summit meetings, "Do you ever admit mistakes?" And Khrushchev replied, "Absolutely.

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Why just last week in a speech before the Supreme Soviet, I admitted the mistakes of Joseph Stalin." And that's what many of us are ready to do, to admit other people's mistakes. I have heard Christians pray very passionately and genuinely for the repentance of other

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people and never utter a word in prayer about their own evil or the immense harm that it does in the world. And the other reason that we do not confess is that we forget the cost of our redemption. We forget the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf.

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Hanging on the wall in my office in a dark and shadowed corner, I have a crucifix. Most people have never noticed it. Some have, and they have asked me why I have it there. And my reply is that every day that I am in the office, I stand before that crucifix and

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I remind myself of what Jesus bore for me. I remind myself that there is blood on my hands, that he was pierced and crushed and punished and wounded for me. We do not often think of the horrendous cost of our redemption.

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The fact is, my friends, that any place in our lives where we are on the throne and God is not at precisely those places, we are given over to evil. And that must be repented of. You parents know how difficult it is to deal with a child who will steadfastly claim to

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be innocent even while he is surrounded with the evidence of what he's done wrong. How do you deal with such a child? Some of you older folks will remember how frustrating it was to look at those prisoners as they sat in the dock at the Nuremberg war trials, or more recently, as those who were

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on trial for the Watergate conspiracy, and sat there steadfastly maintaining their innocence and justifying their behavior on the grounds that we were following orders. I think part of our national anguish over this whole Pete Rose affair is that we wish that at least the man would have enough courage to own up to it.

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Admission, you see, must come before forgiveness. And the reason many prayers are unheard is because they are prayed out of wicked and unrepentant hearts. But if we confess, then listen to what Scripture says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful

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and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness." Seeing the holiness of God leads to a sense of sin and to confession, and the result of that confession is forgiveness. No one stands so tall as he does when he's on his knees.

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And the third prayer prerequisite is closely related to the first two. For you see, we don't live out our lives on our knees. We're not intended to be crawling around all the time. We are to be marching in the service of God.

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And so after repentance and confession and forgiveness comes the requirement of righteousness. We are to honor God in what we do with our lives. In one of Jesus' shorter parables, he tells about a man who was inhabited by a demonic attitude and that demon was driven out of him.

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And the insides of this man were cleaned up. But nothing new entered into the man. He was clean, but he was empty. So in this story of Jesus, another demonic attitude passes by and sees this nice place

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to live and moves in with seven of his friends and their maids and their butlers and their chauffeurs. Now I'm exaggerating a bit. But the point is that when we cleanse ourselves through confession, it's insufficient if we

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stop there. The emptiness must be replaced with an active and aggressive righteousness. That's the reason the scripture says, "Shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with all those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart."

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Or think of the way James puts it, "The prayers of the righteous have great effect." Now what does it mean to be righteous? Well there seem to be no end to definitions of the word. It is a profound and a deep word.

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Recently, a man by the name of Robert Fulgham wrote a book in which he defended the thesis, among other things, that everything he really needed to know about life he learned in kindergarten. And when you think about it, the rules that are given to children in kindergarten are basic to our human experience.

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He sums those rules. Here are the things he was taught. Share everything. Play fair.

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Don't hit people. Wash your hands before you eat. Put things back where you find them. Clean up your own mess.

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Don't take things that belong to other people. Say you are sorry when you hurt someone. Live a balanced life, play and work. Naps are good for you.

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Warm cookies and cold milk are nice. Never lose your sense of wonder. Flush. Go out into the world, but watch out for traffic.

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Hold hands and stick together. That's righteousness. I know it's simplistic to say that and it lacks the definitude of what scripture has to say on the subject, but righteousness, when you get right down to it, is right living.

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It's loving God and loving others and loving yourself because you're loved of God. I read about a man who was on his deathbed and his pastor was visiting and asked him if he had anything he wanted to share. And the man said, "You know, I've been thinking very much today of something that happened

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in my childhood. A bunch of youngsters and I were playing by the side of a road and there was an old rickety signpost there. And I took that signpost and I twisted it in its socket so that it pointed in the wrong

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direction. And I've been thinking today, I wonder how many people have gone the wrong way because of me." Righteousness is when you live in such a way that people who look at you will be led to

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go in the right way. It is hard to be righteous. It takes courage and patience. It takes zeal.

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It takes forgiveness. It takes discipline. And it's something that we will never achieve perfectly in life. That's the reason we must continue to confess.

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But it is to be our lifelong goal. So as we begin the 219th year of our congregational life and as we think especially in that year about the importance of prayer, let's begin by remembering that the edifice of prayer rests on three pillars.

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First, the holiness of God, the purity of his light. Second, the necessity of confession. When the purity of that light shines upon you, the ugliness within you is revealed and must be repented of.

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And third, the requirement of righteousness. When we repent, then God's light enters into us and we live righteously. And that righteousness is radiated from us. The little six-year-old had it exactly right.

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His Sunday school class was taken on a tour of the church, and they were shown all the stained-glass windows in which there were representations of the greatest saints. And when they got back to the Sunday school room, the teacher said to the youngsters, "Now tell me, what is a saint?"

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And the little boy replied, "Saints are folks the light shines through." And so they are. And to such ones, God's power is made evident when they pray. Let us pray.

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Our Father, deliver us from casual devotion. Lead us into disciplined discipleship. Make thyself so evident in our lives that we rejoice in the presence of thy purity, that we repent of our own failure to be what we ought to be, and that we seek to live righteously,

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thus honoring thee and all that is good in us. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

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