James 5:13 –18 March 23, 2003
The Prayer of Faith
13Is any one of you in trouble? You should pray. Is anyone happy? Sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? Call the elders of the church to pray over you and anoint you with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make you well; the Lord will raise you up. If you have sinned, you will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
17Elijah was a human just 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. 18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. 19My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, 20remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their ways will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
A few weeks ago I talked about how there is a temptation to compartmentalize our lives – we have a work compartment, a family compartment, a recreation compartment, and a faith compartment. James is once again reminding us that our faith is to flow into every area of our lives – like maple syrup flows into all the compartments of a waffle. Particularly our prayer life is to flow into every area of our life.
1. Praying at all times
I have two types of people in my life – there are the people who I never see unless there is trouble in their lives. You get used to the pattern, you don’t hear from them for months, then they show up on your doorstep, or on your phone, and as soon as you hear their voice your mind says, “Oh, what do they want now?”
On the other hand I also know some people that I worry about if I don’t see them for awhile – I only see them when life is going good. If they are going through some hardship, they disappear into themselves, not wanting to bother me or anyone else with their problems.
On the other hand, my best friends are those who are around at all times – whether times are good or bad, we go through them together. If something really good happens, they call me to share it, if something really bad happens, they call me so we can pray and cry together.
God wants us to be that kind of friend – the kind that is always around. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
So, if we are in trouble we pray. I have heard some people say that they really don’t want to bother God with their problems – as if he doesn’t already know their problems already. But the scriptures are full of people crying out to God in their troubles
Psalm 18:6
In my distress I called to the LORD ; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.
God actually invites our cries, in 1Peter 5:7, it says:
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
On the other side, God also wants to hear from us when life is going great. When are happy we would tell him through songs of praise. I love a good party were old friends gather together to share good food and good company – and often times I will saddle up beside a good friend and say to the “this is so good!” We also need to saddle up beside Jesus and say this is so good! Thank you for these good times. If I have an especially good ride on my mountain bike, there are a few friends that I will call to tell them all about it – Jesus wants to be this kind of friend that when we have a good time, we tell him all about it!
Even if the good times are a small window in a world of suffering – give him praise, even if our troubles are just a little bump in what is really a blessed life – cry out to God in prayer!
Specifically if we are sick we need to pray.
Before we do what James says, and pray for healing I want to talk a bit about what he does say.
2. Prayer for healing (14-18)
a. Healing and the church (14)
What verse 14 tells us is that, although we see people with the gift of healing, and we see healing ministries, God has also given the gift of healing to the Church through its leaders. It is not that others shouldn’t pray for healing for you, but in particular here it says that you should call the elders.
In our church we don’t call anyone “elder,” but we have a leadership team that includes the pastors and leaders from the congregation. This team would easily fall into the realm of Biblical elders
James says that when the elders pray for you they should anoint you with oil. While oil was used for medicinal purposes in Bible times, the anointing that goes on here is a physical symbol of the spiritual prayer that we are praying. It is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power to heal. Just like the bread and wine are symbols of Christ’s presence, and the baptismal water is a symbol of new birth, Oil is a sign of the Holy Spirit, and just as we meet the power and presence of God in these other symbols, we meet the power and presence of God in the anointing with oil.
What James gives us here is a model of how to pray for the sick – it is not a rule – we can pray for the sick in different ways, and God will still heal. Peter only had to allow his shadow to pass over the sick and some were healed! If we take this, or any other passage on healing in a legalistic way, we stop realizing that it is God that does the healing – it is not because we did it right, that we held our tongue just right while we prayed; and that is why they were healed. Legalism is not a faith-filled response it is a superstitious response.
This leads us to the next point…
b. Healing and faith
15And the prayer offered in faith will make you well; the Lord will raise you up.
Whose faith?
There have been people with healing ministries in the past who have told the people who have not been healed that the reason that they are not healed after prayer is that they do not have enough faith. Talk about adding insult to injury! If it wasn’t bad enough that you are sick now you are ashamed of the lack of faith in your life!
It is obvious in this passage that it is not the sick person’s faith that is important – it is the person praying that needs the faith. It would be surprising to hear some one say “you have not been healed because I don’t have enough faith.” But it would be more true to the point!
How much faith?
Even if it is the person praying that needs the faith to see healing, how much faith do they need? Do they need faith bursting out of their ears?
Jesus says to his disciples “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ’Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." - Matthew 17:20
Healing of epileptic Boy
17One of the men in the crowd spoke up and said, "Teacher, I brought my son for you to heal him. He can’t speak because he is possessed by an evil spirit that won’t let him talk. 18And whenever this evil spirit seizes him, it throws him violently to the ground and makes him foam at the mouth and grind his teeth and become rigid.[2] So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it."
19Jesus said to them, "You faithless people! How long must I be with you until you believe? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy to me." 20So they brought the boy. But when the evil spirit saw Jesus, it threw the child into a violent convulsion, and he fell to the ground, writhing and foaming at the mouth. 21"How long has this been happening?" Jesus asked the boy’s father.
He replied, "Since he was very small. 22The evil spirit often makes him fall into the fire or into water, trying to kill him. Have mercy on us and help us. Do something if you can."
23"What do you mean, `If I can’?" Jesus asked. "Anything is possible if a person believes."
24The father instantly replied, "I do believe, but help me not to doubt!"
25When Jesus saw that the crowd of onlookers was growing, he rebuked the evil spirit. "Spirit of deafness and muteness," he said, "I command you to come out of this child and never enter him again!" 26Then the spirit screamed and threw the boy into another violent convulsion and left him. The boy lay there motionless, and he appeared to be dead. A murmur ran through the crowd, "He’s dead." 27But Jesus took him by the hand and helped him to his feet, and he stood up.
Mark 9
“Help thou my unbelief” – what this story tells me is that all we need is enough faith to ask and expect a response.
When the scriptures talk about Jesus not be able to heal because of a people’s lack of faith, it is not to little faith, but none at all that he is talking about – it is complete unbelief. I truly believe that if you honestly ask God for healing, that is enough faith (by “honestly” I mean that we can ask God for things that we have no faith for just to show that God isn’t able)
Faith in Whom?
You might say that this prayer for healing thing is okay for super Christians, like the apostles, or people with healing ministries like Benny Hinn, but I am just a regular Christian! I’m not so sure God can work through me. James counters that by pointing to Elijah – this might not be to convincing since you might place Elijah up there with the super saints, but he says that Elijah was a human just 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. 18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
Elijah was a human just as we are! It is not the source of the prayer that is important, but the source of the power! The source of the power is God!
James also says that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective – we might think that that is our "out" – “my prayers are not effective because I am not righteous, like these other people are.“ The truth is that none of us are righteous in and of ourselves. The only reason that God considers us righteous is because we have come to Jesus and accepted his death on the cross to forgive us from our sins. It is Jesus who makes us righteous and cleanses us from all unrighteousness so that our prayers will be heard. It is not that God made people who have healing ministries more clean – he makes all of us completely clean, so all of our prayers can be powerful and effective.
You might say, okay, Mike, I have faith enough to ask, I understand that it is God who heals and it is not about me, I know that God made me righteous enough for my prayers to be powerful and effective, but I prayed hard for so and so to be healed, and they weren’t. What do you say to that?
I know that there are some people who say that it is always God’s will to heal, and that if we pray and healing doesn’t happen, there must be something wrong with our prayers. But that just doesn’t stand up to the Biblical record or our experience. If it was true that it is always God’s will to heal, and we just had to figure out the right way to pray, you would think that we would have it right fairly quickly and most of the Christians from the time of Jesus onward would still be with us! Sooner or later people get sick and die.
Paul had some physical ailment that caused him great pain, but God would not heal because he had other purposes. This is what he says in 2 Corinthians 12 “7even though I have received wonderful revelations from God. But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from getting proud.
8Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9Each time he said, "My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. 10Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
There are time that, even though we pray ferverently for a healing, it is not God’s timing for that person to be healed, or it is God’s timing for them to be taken home.
John gives us this promise in 1 John 5:14-15 “we can be confident that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will. And if we know he is listening when we make our requests, we can be sure that he will give us what we ask for.”
We are called to pray for healing, but it is God in his good wisdom who decides whether healing will occur. I think that it is likely that it is his will to heal more often than we think!
Building your faith
How do we build our faith for healing?
Stories of Healings
Periodically, I will put my back out, and be in a great deal of pain for a time. One of these times, I was in so much pain I couldn’t even sit down, I came home from church and Pam and a friend of ours were praying together in the house, they asked to pray for me, and I knelt down on the floor –(it was the most comfortable position), and they laid their hands on me and prayed for healing. While they prayed I could actually feel my back shifting, like it was getting a divine chiropractic adjustment. The pain lessened greatly that day, and within a few days it was completely gone!
At another time we had an Alpha course in our home for our neighbours. One of our neighbour women showed up in great pain – she had some sort of ovarian infection. At the end of the evening she was still in pain, and I knew that we had to pray for her. I was nervous asking her because I didn’t know how she would respond. She said yes, we placed our hands on her sholders, and prayed for healing. After we were finished she said thanks and walked home. As she walked the three doors down, the pain completely left her, and stayed gone! She came back the next week and said “You healed me.” I had to explain that I just prayed, it was God who did the healing.
How many of you have experienced some form of divine healing in your life?
How many have prayed for others and seen healing?
How many have a close friend or relative that has told you about divine healing in their life?
I hope that after today we see more hands lifted.
The prayer of faith
15And the prayer offered in faith will make you well;
There are times when God gives us great faith for healing. I believe that that faith is a gift – it is not something that we can work up within ourselves. Paul tells the Ephesians that the faith through which we are saved is a gift from God and not of ourselves, so I would say that the faith for healing is also a gift. The way that this gift works is that the person praying gets a divine revelation for God’s will in that situation. So if God wants to heal them, the person prating knows it so well, that they are actually able to do more than just ask for healing – they can proclaim healing over the person. We should be careful of using the words of proclaimation without the gift though, we can end up proclaiming things in God’s name that He is not about to do – that can mess us up, as well as the person for whom we are praying and their loved ones.
This gift of faith is a hard one to discern, because we are trying to hear the voice of God in the midst of our extreme desire to see the person healed. There are times when our hope for healing is so intense that we mistake it for God’s voice. All I can say is to learn to listen to God’s voice when life is not so intense, and you’ll be better able to hear him in the midst of healing prayer.
c. Healing and sin
Finally, I want to deal with the issue of healing and sin (the things that we have done wrong in our lives). I want to talk about this because James makes the connection.
“ the Lord will raise you up. If you have sinned, you will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed”
We also often make the connection when we are sick, we ask the question “What did I do to deserve this?”
In the minds of New testament Jews and Christians, sickness was always connected to sin – that is why the disciples ask Jesus about a man born blind “who sinned, this man, or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answer is “neither.”
There are times when sickness is connected with sin – there are many examples in the Bible. Gehazi receives Naman’s leprosy after he deceitfully receives payment for Naman’s healing. The Corinthians were receiving the Lord’s supper in selfish and discourteous ways with no regard to the poored members of the body and Paul says “That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.” (1Cor. 11:30)
Sometimes sickness is not a punishment for sin, simply a consequence – if you touch a hot stove, you get burnt, it is not a punishment, just a consequence. In the same way, if you are sexually promisquous, you put yourself at risk of STDs as a consequence, if you drink to much, you put yourself at risk of cirrhosis of the liver as a consequence. These things are not punishment from God, but consequences of our behavior.
Most illnesses are not connected to sin in a direct way – they are a product of a fallen world.
We need to be careful not to make the immediate connection: “because I’m sick, I must have sinned” Or the abusive statement that some people with healing ministers use – “you are not healed because you have unrepented sin in you life.”
If you are sick you might ask God if there is sin in your life that is connected with this sickness – if there is, He will tell you – repent, turn from the sin and you’ll be healed, if there is no connection, you won’t get an answer, so stop beating yourself up over unrepented sin that isn’t there. God is not like the spouse who says “Well if you don’t know what you did, then I’m not telling you!” He wants us to be forgiven – he wants us to come to him and be washed clean, he is not about to hide the dirt from us.
Jesus often uses physical healing as a way to prove that he has the power to forgive sin.
Ministry
I want to give you the opportunity to do what this passage says – if you are sick, to call the elders…
I’m going to ask Don to come and lead us in worship as we pray. And the members of the leadership team are going to come to the front in teams of two. If there is anything in your life that you want healing for, whether it be physical healing, emotional, spiritual healing, come forward, and we’ll anoint you with oil and pray for you. If God is bringing to mind some sin in your life that you need to confess, come and confess and we will pray with you. And God will forgive you.
Sometimes we need a little push from God to come and receive prayer. Sometimes that push comes from a word of knowledge – a message from God that he wants to heal a certain ailment or a certain person. If you think you have a word of knowledge to share, please come and share it with me first.
If you can’t come to the front, send someone up to get us and we’ll come to you, (if it gets too crowded up here, just get 4 friends to dig a hole in the roof and let you down on a pallet!)
or if you don’t like this public venue, call the church during the week and we can set up a time when members of the team can come and pray for you.
If you are not coming forward, please add your prayers to ours, pray for increased faith for the team, and worship God.
Lets begin with prayer.
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