Rough Knees
13Are any among you suffering? They should keep on praying about it. And those who have reason to be thankful should continually sing praises to the Lord.
14Are 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. 15And their prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make them well. And anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.
16Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results. 17Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for the next three and a half years! 18Then he prayed for rain, and down it poured. The grass turned green, and the crops began to grow again.
19My dear brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back again, 20you can be sure that the one who brings that person back will save that sinner from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. Jas 5:13-20 (NLT)
Henry just got a new job. But this means he’s got to go out of town a lot. Out of concern for his wife’s safety, Henry visited a pet shop to get a watchdog.
“I have just the dog for you”, said the salesman, showing him a miniature Pekingese.
“Come on” Henry protested, “That little thing couldn’t hurt a flea.”
“Ah, but he knows karate,” the salesman replied. ”Here let me show you” He pointed to a cardboard box and ordered “Karate the box” Immediately, the dog shredded it. The salesman then pointed to an old wooden chair and instructed, “Karate the chair!” The dog reduced the chair to matchsticks. Astounded, Henry bought the dog.
When he got home, Henry announced that he had purchased a watchdog, but his wife took one look at the Pekingese and was unimpressed. “That scrawny thing couldn’t fight his out of a paper bag,” she said.
“But this Pekingese is special” Henry insisted, “He’s a karate expert.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” the wife replied. “Karate my foot!”
Isn’t that how we treat prayer, with a “Now I’ve heard everything, prayer my foot?” I am glad God does not slap us silly because of all the not so nice remarks that we have made about Him.
Our text this morning from the Bible talks a lot about praying, having going down on our knees, getting rough knees. God seems to like that posture of faith. He thinks it really looks good on us, but some of us here may say “don’t sell me this,… Prayer,my foot”
Well… A couple of weeks AGO, a woman from our congregation, came up for prayer after the conclusion of our worship service, right here in this auditorium. She was deeply troubled. She poured out her heart to me. It was a big problem. She had a family to feed in another country. Apparently the family depended on her to send money home to feed the family. But financially, she was strapped, she could not give any more, she had nowhere and no one to turn to. So she came to pray, responding to the message she heard in church, she sought God in prayer, and I prayed for her as best as I know how. A week later, she came and reported this to me - That God had miraculously answered the prayers uttered from our hearts. God provided an unexpected check of $1000. God moved! She was just thrilled and excited and praising God for what He had provided for her and her family!
Is any one in trouble? The Bible says “If you are having trouble, you should pray.” If we are to have makeover in spiritual life – the thing that needs to happen and deepen is our prayer life.
Reality is we all struggle with it, don’t we? I do! We all get disheartened, discouraged, easily sidetracked. Jesus himself knew. Turn with me into Luke 18:1 ff In this passage, Jesus tells us the antidote to a weak prayer life according to Jesus is “don’t give up”
Why? Because, as Jesus explained in Luke 18, we have a good Father, not a corrupt evil Judge who does not want to be bothered! God is like a loving Papa who hears the cries of his baby and immediately comes and embrace the baby who is sobbing and crying his lungs out! Question is this - when God comes will He find faith here on earth?
Jas 1:16-17 (NIV) says clearly God desires to gives the best. “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
There is a lady who came to Pastor Jerry Cook one day screaming “I hate God! I will never serve him because I hate him.”
Pastor Jerry asked “Why would you say such a thing? You are picking a terrible fight to take on God.”
She said “I hate God; he killed my baby.”
Cook said, “God killed your baby? Tell me how he did it.”
She described how her 18 month old child had fallen victim to a freak fatal accident.
Cook said “How is God responsible for that?”
She said “At the funeral the preacher told everyone, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ When I heard that, I determined that I would never serve a God who kills babies, and I never will.”
I said, “My dear, I join you in that. I won’t either. Would you be open to questioning that conclusion? Maybe it wasn’t God who killed your baby.”
Pastor Jerry is right, for you see, The preacher who quoted the line from the book of Job in the Bible in Job 1:21 did not take into consideration that in the next verse “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” That is, Job believes that God was not responsible for the calamities that befell him, which was his property, servants and daughters and sons ( all of his babies) all were gone in matter of seconds! And this is the right on the money - Job was considered righteous by God. Job did not allow the circumstances in life to define God’s character for him, and to dictate what he believes about God. Job knows that He is good and trustworthy. The Bible says very clearly Job did not sin at all in this.
However, that does not take the pain away, it still hurts and poor Job, mourned deeply (1:20), “got up and tore his robe and shaved his head.” But in all this, we must note, not once did Job says God is responsible. Moreover, the book of Job clearly indicated that it was Satan who was the cause of Job’s troubles! If there be evil, you can bet somehow the old devil is up to his tricks. So when Job spoke “the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away” - he is expressing worship, that God is sovereign and is to be trusted in spite of troubling and deep pain he is experiencing. He does not understand it all, and He is expressing belief no matter how bad the situation looks! What Job is doing is not attributing blame at all, he did not say “you can’t be God, why do you give and take away so thoughtlessly” “can’t you see how much it hurts?” but he sought God, coming to God with his troubles, expressing faith in a moment of crisis and disaster. That’s the godly response, a Christian response to evil. The truth is God wants us to come to Him, and He really wants us to come near Him with our pain, our trials, our troubles! It is not a surprise to Him, when we are overwhelmed by the fury of this world’s anguish, He knows we will be battered by storms in this world, feeling alone, shipwrecked in a world full of hurt and disappointment. NO James tells us If we be in trouble, come and pray!
It is definitely a twisting of the truth of the Bible to blame God for evil. The Bible clearly teaches us as James 1:13,16 (CEV) “Don’t blame God when you are tempted! God cannot be tempted by evil, and he doesn’t use evil to tempt others… Don’t be fooled, my dear friends.” 1 John 1:5 (CEV) “God is light and doesn’t have any darkness in him” So to say that God has a dark side is to say what is contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible. God is morally pure otherwise He is not a God you or I want to serve!
Old Testament scholar, Walter Kaiser Jr. (1988,p.196) in the book “Hard Sayings of the Old Testament” very empathically concludes in a section where he dealt with a seemingly contradictory notion that God can have a dark side, “What we can be sure of, however, is the fact that God is never, ever, the originator and author of evil. It would be just plain contrary to his whole nature and being as consistently revealed in Scripture.”
Hence, for us here, we need to have faith and believe in spite of troubling circumstances that God can be trusted because the Bible says God is good. What can we do when we are faced with gut wrenching suffering? God tells us to come to Him!
13Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. 14Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. 15Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven--healed inside and out.
I like the fact the Bible tells us “And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven.” This phrase tells me that troubles come not necessarily as a result of sin and even if you did sin, it is still not a barrier to come to God! Because God is in the business of forgiving sin. That is why Jesus died on the cross, He paid the price for sin, and what a terrible cost it was. But because of Jesus, all of us can come, no matter what the sin is. Look even those who have betrayed God, as our text this morning revealed, those who “wandered away from the truth” can be forgiven! Read Jas 5:19-20
19My dear brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back again, 20you can be sure that the one who brings that person back will save that sinner from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. Jas 5:19-20 (NLT)
So there is no need to fear that God will reject our prayers, He will hear them, but we need to be humble enough, and real enuff with God instead of saying “karate my foot!” or “prayer my foot,”
Hence there is encouragement and an invitation to confess our sins, to get real, because we all stumble, no one is perfect, we need God, we need a Savior, who’ll understand out limitations, weakness, failures, and still loves us. God loves to dole out mercy. Sow e are encourage to be merciful to bring a person back to experience grace of forgiveness of sins. What a God we have in Jesus, whose name means He will save His people from their names, who is also called Emmanuel, “God is with us”, who promises He will never leave us nor forsake us.
God does not leave us hanging; He tells us there is a response we can make. He does not offer us a useless solution. He offers us the best hope there is, the best plan there is, the best deal there is, and we’ve got to be pretty rebellious and awfully crazy to reject a good deal like this! So he says to us, today, believe that praying is not a useless exercise.
There was a balloonist who landed in a field and realizing he was lost, asked a passer-by where he was. The man replied, “You are in the middle of a field in a hot air balloon.”
“You must be an accountant,” said the balloonist.
“How did you know that?” inquired the disconcerted passerby.
Quickly the balloonist replied, “Because your information is totally accurate and absolutely useless.”
God is never like that accountant, giving totally accurate information. He tells us to get rough knees, don’t give up, confess every known sin,
Want a spiritual makeover that will really look good to God? Troubled? Pray. Happy? Praise. Sick? Pray with others and get the leaders of the church to pray for you. Feeling guilty? Confess it, make it practice to do so, be humble enough to confess it to another…
In order to do this we have to get rid of the idea of “prayer my foot”, God can’t possibly hear me. well, remember Elijah, he prayed for no rain and there was no rain, not a drop of it for 3 and half years. Then he prayed for rain, and down comes the wet stuff! There are numerous stories I can tell you, of amazing things God has done in response to people praying, but not enuff time to do so. Got to get rid of idea that God does not care. Got to allow God to work His will, be patient and let Him call the shots. The was a time when I had no job, EI had just about run out and God heard prayer and on the last day of my EI payments, I started on my new job. Got get rid of idea that God kills babies or causes evil, is he too busy, too unconcerned. He loves you! Did He not die on the cross, to tell us He cares?
Perhaps, there are folks who have said “prayer my foot” and gave up on God and wandered away. Today, God says come back and have faith in Him. Perhaps you know of others who are not here to day and have given up because of some trouble, tragedy, or are sick, pray for them, help them perhaps in their grief to see God is no monster, and that He is reachable and very close to us. He will forgive…
Some here lack experience… give it a try. Some here about to give up… don’t! Some here feel too feeble a faith, remember faith as small as a mustard seed, Jesus says is enuff! Got to come back to believe
Call - June 25 prayer summit – come, pray believing He will come and hear us pray. God promises wonderful results if righteous humble people will pray. Pray for Canada, as we go to vote, pray for GIBC to grow and become a place where we build the church of God’s dreams. Let’s pray…
