A while back there was an article done in The Oprah Magazine entitled, “Does Prayer REALLY heal?” The article sites a study done by Elisabeth Targ, MD, a psychiatrist with impeccable research credentials who was conducting studies that disturb some people and fascinate others: and that is the ability of prayer to heal life-threatening disease. She did prayer studies for seven years. In her first project, she enrolled 20 patients with AIDS and randomly assigned them to two groups: one that received prayers from experienced healers and one that did not. The patients and the healers never met, and neither the patients nor their doctors knew if or when they were being prayed for. To Targ’s surprise, 40% of the control group died and no one in the prayer group died during the six- month trial period.
Prayer, or distant healing, is one of the liveliest areas of research in alternative medicine. Respected scientists at major institutions such as Harvard, Duke, and the Mayo Clinic are conducting studies and publishing their findings in mainstream medical journals on the effect that prayers have on sick individuals, and the results have been conclusive that Prayer works. Daniel J. Benor, MD, a psychiatrist whose book Spiritual Healing is an encyclopedic review of healing research, says that, based on existing evidence, “if prayer were a drug, it would be approved for use.”
James says in our text, the prayers of a righteous man is powerful and effective. We know that prayer is effective, and we know that prayer is powerful, but often we neglect to tap into that resource. This morning I want us try to convince you of the effectiveness of prayers so that by doing so, you will be persuaded to pray more often, more fervently and more effectively.
Now the first issue I want us to see that out prayers are effective and they do make a difference. Often times when we pray, the results are not immediate and we don’t feel anything. There are times we do, there are times when we feel as if we have just been to the Throne room of God and our face still radiates with God’s light, but let’s be honest…there are times when we feel like our prayers are like arrows being shot into the sky, only to return to the earth to pierce out hearts. You may feel like you are wasting your time praying, but understand praying is never, I repeat never a waste of time.
James gives us the example of Elijah. He says, and I love how he says it, Elijah was a man just like us. Don’t you just love that. When Elijah prayed, the whole entire meteorological pattern for that region was altered. He prayed that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t rain, he then prayed that it would rain, and guess what…it rained.
Now in our day and age, we see the weather maps, and we see the satellite pictures, and we think that the weather patterns are already established, so what’s the purpose of praying to change the weather if it is already set? And a lot of people see that all things are like that, pre-determined and there is nothing we can do to alter that. What God has predetermined to happen will happen and there is nothing we can do to alter that. God is sovereign and what He has set will happen, and we can’t change it. We can’t effect God.
If that is the case, then why pray? If a person is sick, and God has all ready determined that the person will not get better, then why pray in the first place? In Exodus 32, there is a story where the Israelites had messed up big time. God’s command to not build any idol was disobeyed and God had determined to destroy them. But Moses interceded. He asked God to spare them, and guess what happened? It says in vs. 14 that the Lord relented. The King James Version says, “He repented.” The Living Bible says, “God changed His mind” as a result of Moses’ prayer.
God does not have everything about your life pre-programmed. You are not a puppet on a string. God made you in His image with the freedom to choose good and evil. And this passage says that you can alter the plan of God by your prayers.
Now there are some things that are coming in the future that are predestined by God. Jesus said He is going to build His church. The Church is built, and nothing could stop it. He is coming again to receive those who are faithful following Him. Even with all of Hell opposing, Christ will return. But some of the events in life can be dramatically changed by prayer.
There is a way of thinking about this that really truly blows your mind if you consider it. We know that God is omniscient, that He knows everything, including the future, so there are some who say that since God knows the future and it is set then what will happen will happen. Now to me that is limiting God, you’re saying that God has to do something. But here is something that really blows your mind. Not only does God know the future, but He knows all the contingencies of the future. We call this free-grace. God not only knows what will happen, but He knows what could happen, He knows all the possibilities and the consequences of those possibilities, and then He gives us the freedom to choose. Kind of like those “Back to the Future” movies. If you go back to the past and change one things, everything changed.
Let me explain it this way, when I was growing up, the big thing was these choose your own adventure books, and what would happen is that you would find yourself at a crossroads, and then at the bottom of the page it would say, if you want to take path A, turn to page 32, if you want to take path B, turn to page 55, and so on. Now the future is already set for both paths, but you had the ability to choose which path you took.
You see, God not only knows what the future holds, but He knows what the future could hold, and so God allows us the chance to change things, so when you pray…you can make a difference. You can make a change. Your prayers are effective, and they effect God.
So when you pray, realize that you are not wasting your time, God hears our prayers and our prayers make a difference, God answers our prayers. Here in the text, James says that if anyone is sick, he should call on the church leaders to come and anoint him with oil, and lay hand on that sick person and pray for him. Now it says that if this is done, that the person will get better. Now James doesn’t leave any lee way there. There are no if’s or but’s.
We as Methodist interpret scripture through the lens of tradition, reason, and experience. And I wish I could say that if you followed James’ formula that you would be healed 100% of the time, but I can’t because experience has taught me otherwise. There are times when we pray for a person to get better, and they don’t. Many are often disappointed when there prayers appear to go unanswered, but let me say that no prayer goes unanswered, just that the answer you receive is not the answer you want.
Some one has said that God will answer prayer one of four ways: Yes, no, wait, and you got to be kidding me! Sometimes He says yes. You pray for healing and then you are healed. Sometimes God does this dramatically. Dr. Fred Craddock tells about a preacher who visited a critically ill woman in the hospital. She was so weak that she was unable to get out of bed. The minister talked with the woman for a while and then offered a prayer to God that she would be healed.
The sick woman thanked him and said, "You know, I’m beginning to feel better already. I haven’t felt this good in months!" She sat up and started to get out of bed, but the preacher objected. "Maybe you’d better lie back down."
The woman insisted on getting up, and she proceeded to put on her slippers and walk around the room, saying, "Preacher, your prayer worked! Hallelujah! I’ve been healed!" She started laughing and praising God. She threw her arms around the stunned preacher and gave him a big hug.
When the minister left, he walked to his car, sat in the car and said, “Lord, don’t ever do that to me again!” Sometimes God answers prayers like that.
Other times God will answer your prayers with yes but work in a less dramatic way. If you are in pain, you ask God to take it away, and then the doctor comes in and gives you a pain pill, and guess what? The pain goes away. Did God answer your prayer? Yes, He did, just in a less dramatic fashion.
But God doesn’t always say yes. Sometimes the answer we receive is no. Paul prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to be taken from him, and three times the answer that came back was no. Why? Well sometime it because we are asking for something for the wrong reason. James 4:3 says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Sometimes God says no for our benefit. Ten years ago Wayne Smith, a preacher from Lexington, KY failed a stress test. There was a blockage in the arteries leading to his heart. 52 friends started praying for him. They prayed first that Wayne would be healed through medication. If that wasn’t God’s will, they prayed that he would be healed by balloon angioplasty. Finally they prayed that as a last resort by-pass surgery could take care of the problem. They were praying hard that he wouldn’t have to have surgery because they didn’t know how well his body could handle it.
It ended up that he had to have a triple by-pass. God said no to their deepest request. During the surgery the doctors found a hole in the sac around Wayne’s heart and they were able to repair it. Prior to his surgery there had been 363 known cases like his. All were fatal. All were discovered in an autopsy. If the doctors had treated Wayne in the way the people prayed, with medication rather than surgery, he would have died within a year from the hole in his heart. Had they tried the balloon surgery, Wayne would have died on the table. The by-pass not only cleared the blockage, but also alerted doctors to the hole, and saved his life. God sometimes says “No” for our best.
If you view prayer simply as God giving you what you want when you want, then you will be disappointed. But if you view prayer as a means of communication between you and your Heavenly Father, who loves you and wants to give you good things, but also a Father who knows what you need even before you ask, and who loves you enough to say no to you for the benefit of you and also of His kingdom, then you will not be disappointed.
Prayer works, it is effective, but the answer is not always yes. In the case of Elisabeth Targ, the prayer researcher we mentioned at the beginning of this message, she decided to do a study of healing prayer on a very aggressive form of cancer of the brain, glioblastoma, that in most cases quickly leads to death. Unbelievably, shortly after making that decision she was diagnosed with that very form of cancer. Even though this woman had many people praying for her, and even though she had documented the results of prayer, she fell victim to the disease even though many, many people were praying for her. Why? I can’t tell you. But I’m sure that God knows, and I will trust in Him.
You may never understand why God doesn’t answer all of vour prayers. But rest assured, in your darkest hour, he will be there with you to comfort you and see you through.
In the fall of 2001 Tom Wortham and his wife, Tammy, discovered that their two-year-old son, Taylor, had a brain tumor. A risky thirteen-hour emergency neuro-surgery was required to remove the tumor and give Taylor any hope of living. Tom and Tammy’s family members and dozens of lifelong friends and members of their Bible Fellowship class camped out at the hospital to pray for Taylor and to support the family.
The surgery was somewhat successful, and we all thanked God for answered prayer. But a year of chemotherapy followed to attempt to remove the rest of the tumor. Friends and family held a yearlong prayer chain for the Worthams as they endured the side effects, blood count irregularities, financial burdens, and quarantines from other children. I can t think of anything that would test your faith more than a prolonged, severe illness in one of your small children. Taylor is now finished with his chemotherapy, and God h answered a lot of prayers, but the long-term prognosis is still unknown. In spite of uncertainties about Taylor’s future Tom and Tammy continue to hold out hope that God will answer their prayers, and remarkably, they continue to trust in the goodness of God. Tammy wrote about how she has attempted to overcome the temptation to become bitter:
I picture us in a boat in the middle of a storm. Though you’re surrounded by the storm, you know that God is in the front of the boat. And you know He never abandons the ship. We know God has been in this boat with us from the beginning. He’s not jumping out now. And when I cuddle Taylor in my lap, I picture Jesus holding all of us. We don’t like what we’ve been through this year, and there have been times when we just sit in our Father’s lap and cry, but we don’t lose faith in our Father.
With all they have been through, if that family can continue to trust God’s goodness when he denies their request for healing, surely I, too, can trust him when I don’t get my way.
If this morning, you feel like there is a problem in your life, or as James says, are you in trouble, or are you happy? The response is the same, go to the Lord in prayer. Have we trials and temptations, burdened with the load of care. Jesus is still our rescue, take it to the Lord in prayer.
