“Beseech: prayer & the Divine relationship”

(Ps 32; Mtt 4:1-11) JG White ~10:30 am, Sun, Feb 22, 2026, FBC Amherst

 “Beseech.” Isn’t that a great, old-fashioned word? ‘I beseech you to listen closely to my sermon!’ I ask you fervently, urgently. I had to find a word that started with the letter B for this sermon in the series on being a practicing Christian. What B word can mean prayer and fasting and silence and spiritual practices? Beseech. 

I beseech you because the boys are playing hockey. How to be spiritually disciplined when we are distracted? Let’s seek this out. 

We could claim that a Christian is someone who prays. We relate to God. We can have many possible spiritual practices in life. In today’s scripture stories we’ve gone back to the start of Jesus' public work, as He goes out into a wilderness place, alone, for more than a month. We find Him to be a practicing Jew, of course, so He has daily and special prayer times, His whole life long. This is the parent religion of our own, Christianity. What is our prayer life like?

Jan Phillips is now a 75 year old spiritual author, musician, activist and poet. Thirty years ago she was a journalist for a Catholic newspaper, but suddenly got fired. What to do? Jan called up her psychic astrologer friend, Paula, for some wisdom. 

“It’s time for you to go to graduate school.” 

Jan took her advice, enrolled in college. But she felt she did not fit: in her forties, surrounded by students in their early twenties. They we all planning their spring break adventures. She gave it two months, but then quit. Jan called her friend Paula back.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t do anything,” [Paula] said in a panic, then left me hanging. I imagined her dialing in to her private wisdom channel. How did that work with intuitives anyway? Did they hear voices? Feel a hunch in the body? In less than a minute, she was back on the line with three questions, none of them very relevant in my opinion. 

“Okay, Jan, answer these questions.” she said, launching right into them. “Are you eating and drinking moderately?”

That was the last thing I could be accused of. I confessed immediately. “No. I’m not. I’m drinking cheap wine every night, I never cook, and all my pockets are stuffed with Almond Joy Miniatures. I do sugar like other people do supplements.” 

“Oh dear,” she said. I could just see her shaking her head at me, worrying over my bad behaviour. “What are you doing for your body? What’s your exercise routine?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Oh my, this isn’t good,” she lamented. “What about a spiritual practice? What’s your spiritual practice?”

“Paula, I don’t have a spiritual practice.”

That was it. She put her foot down. 

“Jan, your life will never work out if you don’t take care of those things. It’s a requirement. Now give yourself three weeks to make a plan, get these things handled, then call me back. And don’t call before then.” (J Phillips, Still On Fire, 2021, p. 197)

Paula’s advice then sounds like good, balanced advice to us now. Tend to your eating and drinking, your physical activity, and your spiritual practices. And sometimes it does take the voice of a friend or two to prompt us to work on our good habits, and give ourselves a better chance at having our lives ‘work out.’ We need encouragers to help us stick with praying or meditating or giving up some unhealthy habit, amid our distractions and desires. 

It is the grace of God that activities are possible like Prayer - in all its many forms. Such as Meditation. Confession and Forgiveness. Solitude and Silence. Simplicity. Fasting. Study. Submission. 

Today’s Gospel story is an intense one. We have Jesus, whom we see now as the personification of good and holiness, and evil personified in the devil. We have this lonely time of deep solitude, away from civilization. We have the three temptations. We have angelic helpers who come to Jesus.  

Primarily, this is teaching us about Jesus. It is not about us, it is about Him. This forty days of quiet, before he begins His travels, is instigated by the Spirit. Led by the Spirit into the wilderness. And to consider these temptations. So the temptations, are they distractions? The storytelling seems to make them purposeful.

Did you notice all the Bible that is quoted here? Don’t think that Jesus had a copy of the Torah on a few scrolls under his cloak. These were memorized scriptures He had with Him. Even the devil quotes the Bible in the story - so we know scripture can be both misused and well used. 

This whole scene includes a big fast. Christian traditions have created a forty-day season (not counting Sundays) called Lent. It can be a season for fasting. Fasting from some food, perhaps. Or fasting from other things, so we can focus a bit more upon spirituality. Maybe you feel the need to take a break from YouTube or Facebook. Take a fast from complaining about the weather, if that is your habit. Or fast from watching so much news, if that is an overwhelming pattern. We brought out our prayer tree, and in this season you could take a card and put on it a prayer request, a fast you plan to make, a new step you want to take, a question for God, or something else. The cards are at the back; fill one out and hang it upon the tree, this week, or later in Lent.

The life of prayer, the cultivation of the inner life, does need to make use of prayer in many forms. It is going to be about finding guidance for our lives, but it is more than guidance. It is about development, inner growth. Resilience, love, faith, peace - the increase of such things in us, and for the sake of those we meet. It is about knowing Christ. Amid distractions, Christ is with us.

I was so happy to hear the present mission statement of Camp Pagweak, last Sunday here. Director Alex Hisey shared that it is: “To serve communities & further Christ’s Church by developing the whole person through set-apart, transformational experiences.” By developing the whole person. 

The prayer-filled life, in the broadest sense of prayer, is about the development of the whole person. I think back immediately to a guest speaker at Oasis, fifteen years ago. Reggie McNeal talked of Churches being about ‘developing people.’ Create a ‘people development culture’ he taught. Indeed. Amen to that!

Often, at the root of our personal development are the basics. Praying to God for help (beseeching!), praying our confession and finding forgiveness, praying against trouble and evil around us. Psalm 32 today is an amazing sacred lyric of forgiveness and joy. What basic needs! We began rejoicing in the blessing of God. Before forgiveness, we were miserable. Only way to describe it is physical symptoms. Bones felt limp, groaned all day long, God’s hand was heaven upon me. 

One day last week, I was saying to Sharon, “Are you and I simply resilient, with good emotional intelligence?” I was thinking about several stresses, including the challenges and medical leave of Rev. Marlene, the recent notices of motion from the Atlantic Baptists that could ‘kick me out’ in eighteen months, the world with Trump in it, and one or two personal matters. I was calm and OK. 

The next afternoon I came down with a bothersome headache and a fatigue that got me yawning widely during a Zoom meeting. Maybe I was finally manifesting the complex pressures inside me. 

Not facing up to our problems can go on for a long time. Then, then, the psalmist says, “I’ll tell the Lord each one of my sins." 

Then you forgave me and took away my guilt. 

I certainly have paused to pray during my days, and had passing prayer thoughts when wandering around, and while out for a run. 

In the Psalm, forgiveness came after the relationship with God was kept up. Then the pray-er rejoiced that God was their safe place, they sang, they were shown the right road, they were taught, they felt watched over. Your good people should celebrate and shout!

Jesus, in His own situation in the wilderness, received some of the same. Angels came and cared for him, whatever that means. Prayer, solitude, silence, worship, meditation - these things are for us in our distracted lives, our lives of stresses or anxieties. Our lives of wandering and wondering. Our lives of pain and problems. The patterns of prayerfulness we find can bring real grace and mercy. 

We will celebrate and shout!

Oh, did Jan Phillips take her friend’s advice, forty years ago? 

Yes. Her spiritual practice was simply to get up early, light a candle, and be silent, for twenty minutes. She tried it. Tried for two weeks. Then she upped it to thirty minutes. This is what she says:

Every morning I woke up happy, eager to see what the Silence brought. Some days ideas arrived out of nowhere, curiously connected to questions bubbling up on the inside. Other days came with lavish litanies of distracting thoughts. It was always like that–back and forth. Something, then nothing. Predictably unpredictable. …My meditations were a constantly changing weather system of events. 

When three weeks had elapsed and I called Paula back, I was like a new person. I’d been biking to school, eating mostly plant-based meals, drinking only a couple glasses of Chardonnay on the weekends. “Paula, you’re not going to believe what happened!? I said when I heard her voice. 

“Oh yeah? What happened?” 

“Everybody on campus has changed dramatically!”

We had a good laugh, knowing that no one had changed but me, and that change made all the difference. (ibid, p 201)