May 3, 2020 | by Pastor Josh Tate | series: Prayer Matters
Download
(right click and choose save as)
Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, once said, “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people.” Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.” Thomas Jefferson said, “Religions are all alike…founded upon fables and mythologies.” You can find similar quotes from others like Larry Flynt, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ted Turner, Christopher Hitchens, Karl Marx and others. The view being expressed in such quotes is that Christians are weak, gullible people who look to an imaginary support to get through life. Inversely, people who make these kinds of statements seem to view themselves as strong and clear-sighted.
I wouldn’t argue with their view that I am a weak person, for that is true enough. I am. To me faith is not a crutch. It is more of a stretcher on which I lay my whole weight, and I revel in the Biblical truth that when I am weak, then I am strong. However, the insinuation that they are strong and clear-sighted strikes me as a dangerous delusion.
Prayer is, perhaps more than other form of worship, a humble confession of our weakness. So far in our study through the prison prayers of Paul it has been helpful to see how Paul prayed for his brothers and sisters that he is separated from. However, Paul also modeled some valuable things for us in what he asked others to pray for him.
I hope you can listen in as we study the prayer requests of a weak man named Paul.
