Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

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One day at school, a group of children were told to write down questions for God. Here are a few of my favorites. “Dear God, are you really invisible or is that just a trick? Lucy” “Dear God, did you mean for giraffe to look like that or was it an accident. Norma” “Dear God, I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church. Is that ok? Neil” “Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy. Joyce.”

I don’t think Joyce understood the assignment, did she? Hers doesn’t sound like a question, it sounds more like an accusation. “I wanted a puppy, but you gave me a brother instead! Why?”

Maybe you have questions for God, too. Maybe you’ve been going through a series of hard times, and you want to question Him. “Why these trials? Why this pain? Why this plan? Why have you done this to me?”

We tend to question God a lot, don’t we? We often question God not just in the sense that we ask God questions, but rather that we question Him. We doubt Him. We wonder if we can really trust Him. As we live, we tend to go our own way, because we like that way. It makes sense to us. We think it’s best for us. We know God’s Word has a higher standard for us, in terms of living for Him, and taking every thought and every moment captive for Jesus, but that just doesn’t seem like the life that we want. We question that that life is really more joyful than the life we’ve chosen for ourselves. That it’s really better.

And sometimes even when we pray, we ask for the things that we want, but we question whether God will really do anything to answer our prayers. I mean, we know that He’s sovereign, and that He can do anything. But we also know that He’s wise, much wiser than we are, so we wonder if we’re even praying for the right things.

And we wonder if God will answer our prayers.

Well, God does have a plan for your life. It’s a wonderful plan. It includes your salvation. It includes your joy. It includes peace that passes all understanding, even during the hard times, and even when we have so many questions for God that we don’t know where to begin. God is sovereign, and God is good, and we can trust His plan for us. But we need to trust it. Because even though God’s plan cannot be thwarted, our joyful participation in it will only begin when we have faith in Jesus.

Read Luke 6:12-16

I’ve heard this passage preached on at least a couple times, and it usually goes something like this.

The following day, Jesus was going to select His apostles. And that being the case, Jesus wanted to talk with God the Father to get His Father’s guidance. So Jesus prayed all night because He wanted to be sure about who He would call as His apostles.

And that message is one that resonates with us, because we also need to pray. We need to seek God’s will for us. We need God to guide us. And He will only do that if we are people of prayer. When you go to God in prayer, you’re allowing God to mold you. To direct your thoughts. To direct your life.

So when Joyce wrote to God, “thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy,” even though there’s a bit of resentment in that prayer, she’s still acknowledging the baby brother as a gift from God. So God is molding her desires. So even when you pray to God, “Why these trials,” God reminds you of His purpose for you, that you would trust Him through the trials. If we want God to impress His will for us on our lives, we need to be people of prayer.

That’s usually the sermon I hear when I hear this passage preached.

But the thing is, that sermon doesn’t apply to Jesus.

Jesus knew who He would call as His apostles even before He prayed. Because Jesus is God. And God knows everything. So Jesus didn’t need to get His Father’s guidance. He wasn’t struggling over who He would call as His disciples. Jesus already knew, even before He prayed.

So the question remains: why did Jesus need to pray all night? Well, I don’t think He did. He didn’t need to pray all night. He wanted to pray all night. Jesus, the Son of God, loved so much to talk with God the Father, that He gladly spent the whole night in prayer.

It says in verse 12 that Jesus “went out to the mountain to pray.” Jesus could have just prayed in bed. He could have prayed on the patio. He could have prayed in so many other places that would have been more convenient than climbing a mountain. But Jesus wanted intimacy with His Father. He wanted a quiet place where there would be no interruptions. Where He could simply talk with God. Prayer wasn’t a burdensome sacrifice for Him, it was a sacrifice of praise!

For Jesus, prayer was praise. It was perfect communion with His Father in heaven, in which He was in perfect harmony with His Father. It was like a song.

Sometimes we treat prayer more like a chore, don’t we? We think, “I need to pray because that’s what Christians are supposed to do!” Or we think, “I need to pray because God expects me to pray.” And while neither of these things are necessarily wrong, prayer isn’t a chore. It’s not a sacrifice.

You know, there’s a lot of sacrifices in the Bible. The Old Covenant was all about sacrifice. The Jews were to sacrifice animals for the forgiveness of their sins. And all of those sacrifices foreshadowed the coming of the Savior. Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross to put an end to all of the sacrifices commanded under the Old Covenant, so that by faith in Him, we can have forgiveness. But even still, Romans 12 urges to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and blameless to God.

But God was never interested in sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. God is interested in hearts that want to sacrifice. God isn’t interested in prayer for the sake of prayer. God is interested in hearts that want to pray. That see prayer as more than a chore. That see prayer as a song.

Psalm 144:9 says, “I will sing a new song to you, O God, upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you.” And there’s an excitement about playing music to God. About singing a new song, or maybe even an old song, to God, but then when we come to prayer, it doesn’t feel alive. But maybe God wants us to see prayer not as a lifeless chore, not as a sacrifice, not as another work of the law, but as a song. And maybe while we pray, we, like Jesus, can be in perfect harmony with God, not because we’re praying, but because we’re trusting.

Isn’t that what faith does to us? Faith in Jesus takes us from being at enmity with God to being forgiven by God. Faith takes us from being enemies of God to being members of His family. So when we have faith in Jesus Christ, we’re in perfect harmony with Him. And prayer is an extension of that. Prayer is rejoicing that we have a perfect relationship with God, not because we’re earning it by our prayer, but because God gave us His grace. So we pray. So we praise.

So then, after a night of prayer, after a night of praise, Jesus chose His apostles. But why these? I mean, it says in verse 13 that Jesus had other disciples. So He didn’t just call His twelve disciples to Himself and say, “Well, looks like you’re it!” No, Jesus chose each one, out of many people who wanted to be in Jesus’s inner circle, because Jesus had a purpose for each one.

Peter would preach on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit would descend, and 3,000 would be saved. Matthew would write the gospel according to Matthew. John would write the gospel of John, and 1, 2, and 3, John, and the book of Revelation. Thomas, even though he would forever be labelled “Doubting Thomas” because he didn’t believe the resurrection at first, he would actually make the first post-resurrection confession of the divinity of Jesus, crying out to Him, “My Lord, and my God!”

And we could study church history to find how each of the other apostles likely contributed to the rise of Christianity. Philip, Bartholomew, Andrew, Judas, son of James, and Simon the Zealot would start and lead many churches all over the region. James, the son of Alphaeus, would minister in obscurity, but would give his whole life to Jesus. James, the brother of John, became the first apostle to become a martyr for his bold faith in Jesus around 44 A.D.

And Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus.

Now wait a minute! Why would Jesus chose Judas Iscariot? I mean, if we understand the apostles as people Jesus chose because they would go on to demonstrate great faith, and they would go on to spread the gospel and lay the foundation of the church, then why select one who would betray Jesus?

Because, ultimately, the apostles were not chosen based on their faith, or their merit, but based solely on God’s sovereign will. Verse 13 makes it clear that Jesus chose them. And He named them apostles. It does not say that Jesus interviewed each one to determine who had the most faith. Who would do the best job. Who would be most faithful. No, because it really wasn’t about them. It was about Jesus and His will. His choice. His purpose for each one. And part of Jesus’s plan, a crucial part, in fact, was to go to the cross. And in order for Jesus to go to the cross, Jesus chose one apostle, Judas Iscariot, who would betray Him. That was his purpose. That’s made clear to us even from the moment when Judas Iscariot was selected as an apostle, as it says in verse 16, he became a traitor. That was his purpose.

Now, Judas Iscariot didn’t know that plan going in, and in retrospect may have questioned Jesus about that plan, saying, “Why this plan? Why have you done this to me?” But the reality is that Judas Iscariot also chose that path for himself. He couldn’t blame God. He chose to betray Christ.

You see, God doesn’t fight with us in order to force us to follow His purpose for us. We freely choose Christ, or we freely reject Him. Don’t go the path of Judas Iscariot. Go the path of the other eleven. Follow Christ.

You see, God has a purpose for you as well. Because the answer the the question of “Why were these men selected to be apostles?” is the same answer to the question of why God wants you to have faith in Jesus. God has a purpose for you. And, the answer to “Why these trials?” is that God has a purpose for you through the trials. God wants to use you in very specific ways. He doesn’t call you to merely come to church, but to be the church. God calls you to serve the church, and to serve in the church. And God calls you to go out from here to serve Him in other ways as well.

And, since we’re not Jesus, we do need to pray. We need cry out to God for Him to guide us. But don’t just pray because you think you need to. Pray, like Jesus, because you want to. Pray because God is good, and God is your Father. Pray because through Jesus, you have a relationship with God. It’s not based on your efforts, but on Christ, who died for you.

So have faith in Him. And follow Him, even, or maybe especially, through the trials.