13 Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 14 Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17 Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
19 My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, 20 you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
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Three Prayer Answers
One day, three men were hiking and unexpectedly came upon a large raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do so. The first man prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me the strength to cross this river."
Poof!
God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across
the river in about two hours, after almost drowning a couple of times.
Seeing this, the second man prayed to God, saying, "Please God, give me
the strength ..and the tools to cross this river."
Poof!
God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times.
The third man had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, "Please God, give me the strength and the tools... and the intelligence ... to cross this river."
And Poof!
God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge.
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The passage from James the morning talks about prayer, and particularly he emphasizes 3 important situations that we must exercise our gift of prayer. Paul taught us to pray unceasingly, but in these particular situations the power of prayer is the most evident, and that it is a must that we pray.
First, I must
1. Pray When I am Suffering
"Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise."
Life is a not a bed of roses, there are good times and there bad times. Christians are not excluded, but the differences it that we go through suffering in a different way.
The day after 9/11, Emil Brandes came to the presbytery office and I ran into him at the front door. We talked about the tragedy, and he commented as we walked away, "I don’t know how people are dealing with it. For us we have the Lord’s shoulder to lean on." That’s the difference.
Every now and then, when I saw a new Christian and I asked him or her, "Why do you become a Christians? What had drawn you to Christianity?" The majority of times, they answer was, "I came to know this group of Christians and I sensed an indescribable cheerfulness in them."
On the surface, James seems to be talking about two different conditions "if you are suffering, pray, and if you are cheerful sing songs of praise." But, if you look into the context of the entire Bible, a Christian can be cheerful during suffering, if you pray and unload your burden to God. I believe what James was trying to say is, "When anyone is suffering, they should pray, and then if they become cheerful, you should sing songs."
A good example is Paul and Silas’s story in the book of Acts:
Acts 16:25, "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."
According to the Book of Acts, they were beat up and thrown in to the innermost cell of the prison, and have their feet fastened in the stocks. They must be in a lot of pain. But they were praying and singing. So pray when you are suffering and sing when you are cheered up by the prayer.
The second situation is that I must
2. Pray for the sick
14 "Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord."
If someone is sick, the Bible never asks us to call a faith healer to pray for the sick. It says that we must call for the elders of the church and have them pray over the sick. An elder in here means a mature Christian or a spiritual leader.
Someone asked me, when her husband was sick, why didn’t we have a group of elders came to pray for him. She is referring to this passage. God says, whenever two or three gather together in my name, I am with you. When we pray for the sick we need the power of a body of mature Christians to come together around the sick and pray.
It also says that we must anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord. In the Gospel of Mark chapter 6, we see that disciples also used oil to anoint the sick as they prayed for them and healed them. They must have learned from Jesus. Anointing with oil is a symbolic enactment of prayer, so their prayer is not only heard, but physically felt. Just like today we are going to have communion, which is a symbolic enactment of our union with Christ as forgiven people through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Our spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ is physically felt by celebrating this meal with him. We eat his body and drink his blood to symbolize that each and every one of us here is part of the body of Christ and inside us is flowing the blood of Jesus Christ, which means we are related to one another through the blood line of Jesus Christ.
In the same way the anointing with oil is the physical symbol of a healing prayer. James pointed out an important fact that we need to know by saying we must anoint them with oil "in the name of the Lord. The prayer is to the Lord and the anointing is done in the name of the Lord. It is the Lord, not the power of the prayer or the oil, who will heal them.
Robert Law said, “Prayer is not getting man’s will done in heaven. It’s getting God’s will done on earth.”
The third situation for prayer is that we must
3. Pray for the sinners—one another
Every human being is a sinner, that’s why James says in verse16, "Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective."
He didn’t say confess your sins to the priests; he didn’t say confess your sins to the pastors or elders; but he says to one another. Every believer is a priest!
Some of you reading this verse would say, I am not righteous, I don’t think my prayers are powerful an effective. You need to understand what it means to be righteous in Christian term. In the Old Testament, a righteous person is someone who is obedient and trusts the Lord. In the New Testament, every believer is deemed righteous in God’s eyes because Jesus has died in our place for our sins. So if you are a follower of Jesus Christ and are obedient to his great commandments and great commission, you are a righteous person and your prayer is powerful and effective.
The next situation James mentioned is that we must
4. Pray fervently for the nation
James uses Elijah as an example of an ordinary human being with a fervent prayer in verse 17, "Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest."
The background of this incident is found in 1 Kings 17–18. Wicked King Ahab and Jezebel, his queen, had led Israel away from the Lord and into the worship of Baal. God punished the nation by holding back the rain that they needed (see Deut. 28:12, 23). For three and one half years, the heavens were as brass and the earth unable to produce the crops so necessary for life.
Elijah went to the top of Carmel and fell down before the Lord in prayer. He prayed and sent his servant seven times to see if there was evidence of rain; and the seventh time his servant saw a little cloud. Before long, there was a great rain, and the nation was saved.
Does our nation needs a shower of God’s blessing today? Definitely! So pray for the nation.
History shows how mankind has progressed from manpower to horsepower, and then to dynamite power to atomic power, and now nuclear power. But greater than nuclear power is prayer power. Elijah prayed for his nation, and God answered prayer. We need to pray for our nation today, that “showers of blessing” will come to the land. One of the first responsibilities of the church, according to 1st Timothy 2:1-3, is to pray for government leaders.
Since prayer is greater than nuclear power, I urge you today to commit ourselves a the disciples of Jesus Christ and pray unceasingly. Let us commit to
1. Pray When I am Suffering
2. Pray for the sick
3. Pray for the sinners—one another
4. Pray fervently for the nation
