Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Messy Prayers | The Writings | Ezra 9-10

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Are your prayers messy enough? Are your prayers formative or formulaic? What if messy prayer is the path to transformation? In today's episode, Jeff shows us how Ezra's prayer in Ezra 9-10 encourages us to pray honestly, humbly, and hopefully. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Ezra 9-10

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Are your prayers messy enough? When you connect with God in prayer, do you approach him with the full range of your experiences and emotions? Or has your prayer life become rigid, stale, or stagnant? Of course, there's nothing wrong with prayers that are structured or guided. those habit-forming disciplines can be vital parts to someone's spiritual formation.

They are in my life. Having a sense of rhythm and repetition in prayer can be such a gift. But if we're honest with ourselves, there's a really big difference between a prayer life that's formative and a prayer life that's formulaic. And if you're like me, it's easy to get stuck in patterns of prayer that are thoughtless, unintentional, and unemotional.

ultimately unreal. We can be trapped in the formula and miss the formation. One way to push against stagnation and prayer is to return to that first question, are your prayers messy enough? Many of us are used to nice, prepared, tidy conversations with God if we're praying at all. But what if prayer, that regular connection with our maker, what if it's meant to be messier, more real? That's the image of prayer that we get in chapters 9 through 10 of Ezra. These two chapters give us a window into the messiness of prayer, the messiness of life, but also the meaningful change that prayer can bring about in our lives and in the life of our community. As we approach God's word, let's pause and ask for his truth and his love to meet us and move through our time together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath. and thank you for the gift of your word. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with and grapple with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Ezra. And as we read these words, by your grace, would you let these words read us and restore us in every part of our lives to make us real before you? In Jesus' name, amen. Ezra's messy prayer comes after he learns about a serious pattern of sin that

remains in the life of God's people. In the first two verses of chapter 9, we find out that some of the returned exiles have been unfaithful to God by marrying non-Israelites in the land, causing them to abandon their loyalty to Yahweh and follow those false gods of their neighbors. Instead of being distinct and being a blessing to their neighbors, they're blending in with the crowd and extinguishing their call to live in God's mission. The key word that we focus on in the beginning of Ezra 9 comes up in verse 2, and that word is unfaithfulness, or faithlessness, depending on your translation. This word communicates a serious fracture in Israel's relationship with God. The Israelites and their leaders are exposed in their unfaithfulness. When Ezra responds to the

news of this unfaithfulness to the Lord, he does not hold back. Let's pick up in verse 3. When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there, appalled until the evening sacrifice. Let's just make a quick note here on Ezra's physical response to this news of Israel's unfaithfulness. His response to sin is so different from my tendency. Left to my own devices, my tendency when coming face to face with my sin is to minimize or hide or justify. But there's no hiding with Ezra here. And remember, this is not even his personal sin that's exposed. He's lamenting and mourning

the sin of God's people. Now, Ezra's example is extreme, and it doesn't mean that we need to literally tear our clothes and pull out our hair in response to our sin. But Ezra's example does show us that we need to take our sin seriously. Instead of hiding it, we have to bring it into the open. Ezra's physical posture here is further described as we get into his messy prayer before God. Let's look at that now, picking up in verse 5. Then at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement with my tunic and my cloak torn and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed.

I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings as it is today. There's a lot going on here, but let's notice. a couple of things. Ezra's messy prayer happens while he's on his knees. Now, while this certainly isn't prescriptive for every person or every prayer, it's worth noting how the posture of kneeling in

prayer communicates spiritual truth with our physical bodies. It's a way of physically, tangibly saying I'm absolutely dependent on God's grace in this moment, in my whole life. And when we're prone to forget that sense of dependence on God, kneeling in prayer cultivates a humility that helps us live into the reality, that we are always absolutely dependent on God's grace. In addition to the physical posture of Ezra, we should recognize the weight of the words that he uses here. Remember, he's not hiding sin, but he's exposing it further. He's showing it for how bad it really is. And he does that through his actions, but also his words. So he says in verse six, our sins are higher, than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. Instead of diluting the sin of God's people,

this prayer is distilling it, showing it with all of its real ugliness and messiness, facing it with an uncomfortable degree of clarity. Have you ever prayed about your sin that way, in a way that exposes the messiness of it, the realness of it? Why do so many of us have a hard time praying honestly about our sin? For some of us, for some of us, us is because we've become so accustomed to utilizing prayer almost as a kind of self-protection. We act like the main function of prayer is mostly therapeutic and mostly for the purpose of making us feel better about ourselves. Now, I want to be careful here. Of course, so many prayers of the Bible include prayers of comfort for times of pain. But that comfort is never meant to keep us from

true confession. Instead of self-protection, prayer is meant to lead to surrender, surrender to our creator. Another reason that we tend to struggle with praying honestly about sin is because of the way that we approach prayer and community. Remember, this raw prayer from Ezra happens in the context of a community gathering. People are around him right now. Why do we have such a hard time communicating with God like this in community? There are so many factors at play for different people, different seasons of life even. Yet at a fundamental level, many of us are conditioned to see prayer in community as performative, as a performance before other people. We want to get it right and not embarrass ourselves in front of everyone in the Bible study. And so we opt for manicured,

impressive prayers, rather than messy, honest prayers. What would it look like for you to take one step toward a different kind of prayer life, both on your own and in community, to embrace prayers that distill and clarify the reality, the messiness of sin, that distill it instead of diluting it. What would it look like to step away from manicured prayers to engage with the messiness of reality? Now again, that doesn't mean that every Bible study gathering needs to turn into some kind of hyper-emotional chaos. That honestly probably wouldn't be life-giving or real in the long run. What Ezra's example shows us, though, is that all of us can take steps toward more honesty and vulnerability as we approach God and one another in prayer. And here's a really important thing

to keep in mind as we consider Ezra's prayer of confession. We learn from the end of the book of Ezra, that having a messy, honest prayer life isn't itself the end goal. Ezra's prayer begins with messy confession, but it leads to meaningful change. And that meaningful change is 100% rooted in the power of God's grace. Let's pick up Ezra's prayer in verses 8 through 9. But now, for a brief moment, the Lord our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place or a foothold in his sanctuary. And so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage.

Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia. He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. In light of this honest encounter with sin, there's also a vital, life-giving encounter with the grace of God. Notice the words that Ezra uses here. God has been gracious.

God gives light to our eyes. God has not forsaken us. And it's this encounter with God's grace that fuels real change in the life of God's people. That's exactly what happens in chapter 10 of Ezra. As Ezra prays, confesses, and weeps, a large crowd gathers around him and weeps alongside him. They join in his messy confession.

Cling to the hope that they still have in God. and then they let that confession move them to meaningful change as they return to faithfulness before their creator and redeemer. Ezra's raw prayer sparks renewal and a new reliance on God's grace, and it creates a response to that grace, both at the individual and community level. Messy confession leads to meaningful change. Think about the way that you've been connecting with God through prayer, both as an individual and within the context of community. How can you move toward more vulnerable honesty this week? How can you recognize your need for God's grace and receive that grace in a way that leads to transformation? What kind of meaningful change do you need to experience

because of God's love? And how could you start that change by bringing the messiness of your life before your maker in prayer. Maybe for you, this day or this week, this weekend, will mark the first time that you encounter God and other people through the gift of messy prayer. But as you do so, remember that that messy prayer, that messy confession is meant to lead to meaningful change rooted in the steadfast love of our Creator.

The steadfast love that is not just talked about, but displayed and proven through Jesus' death on a cross. cross that brings us life. Heavenly Father, help us have an open, vulnerable posture toward you and all that we do. Help us embrace vulnerability and honesty as we pray both alone and together. May your grace meet us in the messiness, change us, and renew us. In Jesus' name, amen.