When you Pray - Do you pass this prayer test?
James 5.13-20
What’s your prayer life like? Have you seen mountains moved in your life? We see little when we ask little. As James closes hi writing He challenges the scattered church to pray in faith.
Share a personal story of answered pray or one from history.
1. Pray when we are Suffering. (13) KJV afflicted. In trouble would be a good translation) From ANY source not just sickness.
So, pray when you are in trouble. Most of us are pretty good at this. But we wait till we are in a lot of trouble.
Paul was there - 2 Timothy 2:9 (CSBBible)
9 for which I suffer to the point of being bound like a criminal. But the word of God is not bound.
In life we go through difficulties that are not of sin or even God’s testing and teaching.
ASK: What should we do when we find ourselves in these circumstances? Grumble and complain?
Prayer can remove affliction if it is God’s will. The church today fails to pray and praise most often.
2. Pray when you are cheerful. (13) Sing out and let others know you are Blessed. Colossians 3:16 (CSB) Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
3. Pray for the sick (14-16) This is not James’s blanket way of healing the sick. The tie between praying and sinning is most often missed here.
We most often think of this as physical sickness.
This may not be a blanket suggestion to pray and anoint the sick of the church that request it.
That is always the way I have understood this, and my pastors have practiced it.
In other places in the NT this same work (kamnonta) refers to weak in the faith: IN Acts 20.35, Rom. 6:19, 14:1 & 1 Cor. 8:9-12. Look them up today.
(sick) literally means to be weary. Read vs 16
There is a tie to the last half of the sentence and the next sentence. “IF” He confesses his sins he may be healed “IF” it is God’s will.
I have arrived at the conclusion James was not so much talking about those that were sick and dying as he was referring to those who were weak in their faith and failing in the Christian walk Maybe because they are burdened down by sin.
Before you get upset with me I have participated in many anointing and praying for the sick and if you request it I will do it based on your belief and faith.
Let me read this from KJV changing the word sick to weary in the faith and see what you think. James 5:14 (KJV) Are any weary in the faith among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
Pray when you are hurting, in all kinds of trouble pray – spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, whatever your trouble.
This may help explain why people remain sick, But we know that we are always to pray for God’s will to be done.
4. Pray and confess your sins. (16) Only here in all of God’s word are the people told to confess their sins to one another.
Confessing is very important in at least one denomination (they practice it anonymously) and accountability groups and small discipleship groups are all I hear talked about in our denomination.
Your faults, trespasses, or sins.
I think this verse drags each of us out of our comfort zone, doesn’t it?
We may be comfortable talking to God in prayer, asking Him to forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, but confessing to each other, that’s a little too risky. What will people think if I told them THAT about ME.
We feel comfortable asking others to pray for our sickness or the healing of a foot or back.
BUT??? Praying for my #1 sin problem???
The confession of sins certainly is not to turn into a time of storytelling.
I have taken guys to AA and celebrate Recovery meetings that confessions seem to become like children again. Each person sharing seem to be trying to have a “better” story or “one up” the last confession.
5. Pray for your Nation: Pray for God’s Children
Recount the story of the Prophet Elijah when he told king Ahab and his foreign wife that seemed to be ending all worship of God our Father there would be no rain. Three and a half years later he prayed for rain, and it came.
If righteous people will pray for God’s people (the church) or the nation their prayer is powerful and will be effective.
Yes but Elijah was a GREAT man. Sort of the way this world looks at TV stars or sports stars. BUT, (17) Elijah was a man just like we are. God used him to drive out false god worship and bring revival to His people.
But first Elijah had to be a righteous person. 2 Chronicles 7:14 (CSBBible) and my people, who bear my name, humble themselves, pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
6. Pray for the Straying (19-20)
Who are you praying for? Who is your one? Are you praying for someone to return or come back to God’s family? We have in various translations describing these people as those that…
• Err from the truth
• Stray from the truth
• Wander from the truth
The verb errs mean “to wander” and suggests a gradual moving away from God. Sin and its stain led to a slow gradual moving away from the will of God. The Old Testament term here is backsliding. Covid 19 has brought the greatest backsliding from the church in a short time that has ever happened in history.
Sin can overtake even God’s children to the point of “sin unto death” talked about in 1 John 5.16-17. God may even take one’s life early and take them to heaven because they are hurting the work other members of God’s family are doing for the Kingdom of Heaven.
One sinner can destroy much good. Ecclesiastes 9:18 (CSBBible) Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy much good.
1 Corinthians 5:5, CSB: hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
If you have a bushel basket of apples and one is very rotten if you leave them in the same basket what happens over time to the rest of the apples?
We are told not to Stray or wander from the truth.
ASK: What is THE TRUTH? The word of God
We have in our hands the written word of God and in it tells the witness of God in the life of the Living Word of God - Jesus.
Our life truth today is found in the title of this message. When do you Pray? Do you past the prayer test?
Conclusion:
Like Elijah: “Elijah was a human being, even as we are.
He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.
Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”
The thing James wants us to know about Elijah is this: He was only human, just like us. BUT he prayed and miracles happened.
Do you pass the prayer test?
