Makin' It Happen -- Face Time With The Father -- Luke 6:6-16

Introduction
One of the current phrases that I hear used for having a conversation with someone is having “face time” with that person. It means that you are talking to someone in person as opposed by IM, text message, or mobile phone. The Bible admonishes us repeatedly to pray or to talk to God in person. This would be our face time with the Father.

Describing the Biblical Text
In this text, we see a lesson.
It is okay to do good deeds on the Sabbath.
Isn’t it funny that a bunch of religious men wanted to harm Jesus for doing the deeds that God sent Him to do?
The scribes and Pharisees became torqued with Jesus and began to plot against Him.
Then Jesus did something extraordinary.
He prayed all night long.
He had some extended face time with the Father.
And then went to work choosing his ministry team.

Narrate the Contextual application
The problem with those scribes and Pharisees was that Jesus was coming in and threatening their status quo.
He was doing something different, introducing good deeds into the worship of God.
They did not want good deeds; they wanted old deeds.
They did not want different no matter how beneficial it might be.
They wanted the same old same old.
After all, healing people just did not feel like worship to them.
So they got hot.
They started the Jesus roast and began their plotting to do Him in.
So Jesus responded.
He pointed His finger and BOOM lightning fell from heaven and consumed them.
Not really
He responded by prayer and sought God’s face.

Life Application (thesis)
What a great picture we see of what we should do when we are confronted by problems.
We should pray.
We should seek our face time with the Father
Instead of dwelling on our problems, we need to dwell on the Lord.
We are a self-absorbed people and we have a tough time looking beyond our own sphere of occupancy.

SO WHAT!! (Outline)
This passage holds for us two things that should comfort us so that we will look to the Father in heaven instead of ourselves.
Prayer is important and we will see why.
What are the two comforts of prayer we see here?
The first is this.
Through Prayer we can handle the difficulties of life.
Think about what Jesus was facing here.
What had Jesus come to do?
He had come to do the will of God who sent Him.
He had done a good deed and healed a man with a withered hand.
He is doing everything that He was supposed to do and still the scribes and the Pharisees, the very people who should have recognized Jesus as the Son of God, were critical, gossipy and wanted to do him harm.
I want you to understand something.
That is just real life.

How often do those same types of things happen to us?
We go to work and perform to the very best of our ability and as best as we can see, we do a good job.
Then those ugly office politics come into play and you are submarined.
Or you plan something at home like a nice meal or you buy what you consider to be a great gift only to have it received with criticism or without very much enthusiasm.
“Salt Herring for breakfast is perfectly normal, you could at least try it.”
How do we respond?
Do we get mad?
Are we disappointed?
Do we become whiners against the system or against the people in the system?
Or do we handle it like Jesus did?
Do we simply seek face time with the Father?

Life is going to send difficulties our way and there is no avoiding it but we can handle it.
We can handle because God can handle and we are called to spend time with Him in prayer.
Can you imagine what Jesus was praying?
I think I can because of what he taught on prayer.
He was praying for the scribes and the Pharisees.
How often do we pray for the people who hurt and use us?
Jesus said in Matthew 5, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven”
One thing that I have found to be true is that it is very hard if not impossible to stay angry or embittered against people for whom you are praying.
You will find that your face time with the Father will give you a capacity to forgive others like you have never known because the more time you spend with Him in prayer, the acutely aware of His forgiveness you become.

Something else that we see here is that Jesus did not just utter a couple of words stick a formula “In My name, Amen” at the end.
He spent considerable time in prayer.
It was a prayer without ceasing.
I remember being in cottage prayer meetings as a very young follower of Jesus and someone would begin to pray and they would pray and pray and pray. I was impatient and immature that I would begin to grow weary of the length of their prayers.
You know what though, they just wanted to see revival come to that little church.
They were praying without ceasing.
Jesus shared a parable in Luke 18 where a woman sought protection from an unrighteous judge. The judge got tired of the woman coming to him all the time so he granted her plea. Then Jesus contrasted the unrighteous judge to God and said that God will work quickly for justice for those who beseech Him continually.
Injustices will always be a part of life as will mistreatment.
These are two of the primary difficulties that we face in life.
They can be handled in prayer

A second comfort is through prayer we can handle the decisions of life.
How often do the difficulties of life lead us to the point of having to make serious decisions in life?
Probably, most of the time.
Jesus needed to make a decision.
Who would His team be?
Who would He train to keep things going when He was gone?
At this point, the possibility that Jesus’ ministry would be ended became very real.
These scribes and Pharisees wanted to do harm to Him.
He had angered them and they were seeking to do Him in.
So, the time had come to plan for the future.
He needed a team to continue the work and he chose 12 men that became known as apostles or those sent away.

Jesus was so intent on seeing His ministry continue through then that one of them was even the traitor who turned Jesus over to the Jews who wanted to kill Him.
But, He did not face the decision lightly.
He prayed all night over it.
We can look for man’s wisdom in everything we do but we will never make the decision that truly honors God until we seek His wisdom.
We face small decisions every day and none of them, in and of themselves, amount to very much but all the small decisions that we make, when seen as a whole, define who we are.
So, we need to bathe all of our decisions in prayer from the smallest to the greatest.
Alyson came home the other night discussing how one of her leaders explained that he prays for the spouses of his children even though they are years away from marriage.
I do the same thing.
Decisions like marriage, careers, financial planning, our kids’ futures, our church, and our own calling in the service of Christ are things that we should take seriously enough to make sure that we earnestly pray about them.

There was another time that Jesus prayed earnestly and that was as he faced the cross.
We are told that he prayed so hard that he was sweating drops of blood.
He was looking for the will of the Father.
He even asked that if it was possible that the cup of wrath would be taken from Him.
Yet, he yielded to will of God and the eternal purpose of God in His death.

He yielded to the cross to pay the price for our sins so that we would have life with the Father in heaven.
This was His biggest decision and He made it, as difficult as it was, through prayer.
Are you facing hardship right now?
Are you facing huge decisions?
Don’t face them without serious face time with the Father.
Paul wrote in Philippians that we should be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be known to God and the peace of God which passes understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
The difficulties of life, the decisions of life faced with peace that passes understanding.That is what face time with the Father is all about.