9/27/20 James 5:13-20 “Pray It and Believe It”

25 Sep 9/27/20 James 5:13-20 “Pray It and Believe It”

9/27/20      James 5:13-20        “Pray It and Believe It” 

I have talked with quite a few pastors in the last few years and many of them will tell me about writers’ block, pastor style.  This happens when we just cannot think of a thing to say.  Now you all know that shouldn’t be a problem for me and for the most part it is not and I praise the Lord for that.  This is why I generally use what we call the lectionary for guidance.  This helps me to choose a Scripture and topic a lot easier.  After I have chosen what I will talk about, then it generally comes pretty easy after that.  I have noticed that I do struggle sometimes to get the right things said in the right way.  And most people are usually very forgiving of my mistakes.  Isn’t it just great how God works through all of us?  Anyway, I think what makes it so much easier to write sermons is that most of you are like preaching to the choir.  And this is a good thing that you have such a strong faith.  But do you know what I have always noticed about choirs?  They need practice.  We need practice being Christians.  And one of the best ways to do this is through prayer.  This is what James is talking about in our passage today as he gives us some pointers on prayer.  This will be a sermon about prayer.   

In the last 20 years or so we sure have changed greatly as a society.  We can get a hold of just about anybody at any time through the internet and cell phones.  We can just about look anywhere and we will see wars, or the threat of wars or where wars have torn people apart.  And this is all as it happens.  We see diseases that seem to have no cures like AIDS and Ebola.  We are now facing an epidemic of coronavirus which has no cure.  Our economy has taken a dive because of this virus so we have many more people struggling in this country just to eat.  Our country is no longer at peace with itself as we get polarized during this election and no one wants to compromise.  Congress has become useless.  One might think that we are doomed.  Others will tell us that if we just hang in there, soon things will be all right again.  If you watch TV or the internet, there will always be someone who is perfectly willing take your money and make all things good again.  There are others who would say to have another drink or take some more drugs and all will be fine.    

But God has a far better plan than all of these things put together.  He wants us to come to Him.  James begins with the question, “Is any one of you in trouble?  He should pray.”  We are all in trouble at one time or another or most of the time and prayer is the backbone of our faith.  This is something that we should be doing all the time.    

Before we begin to look at this passage, I would like to point out part of verse 14 that I think is very important.  It basically says that if you are sick you should call on the elders to pray for you.  The sick person should be calling to others to pray for them.  I think that this is very key to successful prayer.  We have to initiate it.  We have to ask others to pray for us.  Now I know that it works also to just be praying for others.  But it would seem to me that it would work a lot better if we, meaning those who are sick, would ask for the prayers.  This would get everyone including the sick person on the same page.  There are many places in the Gospels that tell us to do this very thing.  We also need to remember that we are all sick.  We are all sick with sin.   

I think that one of the problems we think we have with prayer is that many times our prayers seem to go unanswered.  People often think like this in times of extreme crisis.  We seem to think that God doesn’t answer our prayers.  This is understandable during these times.  But we are sitting here on a fairly normal day and we are not in crisis.  I should say that for the most part we are probably not in crisis.  But whether we are in crisis or not, I will tell you that God answers all prayers.  Every prayer that you pray gets answered.  He may answer with ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘later.’  And God will always answer in a way that we help out the kingdom, His kingdom.  

Here are a couple of examples.  When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked that this cup be taken from Him.  He was asking not to have to go through with what was ahead.  The answer was no.  Jesus had to go to the cross, die, be resurrected and ascended back to heaven so that we could all live.  This was for the good of the kingdom.  Paul had some sort of affliction that he asked to have taken away.  Again, the answer was no.  Whatever was wrong with Paul, God knew that he needed this affliction in order to keep going in the ways of God.  The kingdom was furthered as we see all the books that Paul wrote for us in the New Testament. 

I recently read a story of a man who had a bad heart condition.  His doctors gave him 3 choices.  He could go on medicine, he could have an angioplasty, or he could have bypass surgery.  Everyone tried to tell him to take the medicine route which was by far the easiest.  But for some reason he knew that he had to have the bypass surgery and they went ahead and did it.  Maybe this feeling he had was Jesus telling him to have surgery.  Anyway, while they were doing this, they found another hole that was unseen in all of the tests.  They patched that one also.  If he hadn’t had the surgery, this hole would have killed him in less than a year no matter what he would have done.  This was an answered prayer in a way that we don’t know why or understand.  Please understand that God knows all at all times.   

James begins by telling us to pray when we need help and to praise God when things are going well.  So here I go talking to the choir again.  There probably isn’t a person listening that doesn’t know this much.  This is kind of like Christianity 101.  We all know this but there is one little catch.  How many of us actually do this?  Oops!  I wasn’t supposed to ask that.  But I did because it is only for your own good that you pray and praise.   

This is really an extension of the last chapter where James says in verse 2, “You do not have because you do not ask God.”  This may seem very basic but this is where many people fall.  They don’t ask God.  They can do it themselves.  They are not going to bother God with such small stuff.  They aren’t going to ask God because what they want is too big.  Do you see what is starting to happen here?  We think like this and then we are putting God in a box.  We are trying to limit what God can and can’t do by our own worldly experience.  Any time we are thinking in terms of worldly things, then we are thinking wrong.  There is nothing that God cannot do.  God can do anything.  We talked of this last week when we said that we had to use heavenly wisdom.  

But Pastor John, you say, I don’t get the things that I asked for.  Maybe it is time that you take an internal inventory of your life and your habits.  Is everything that you think worthy of Jesus?  Is everything that you do going to better the Kingdom of God?  Are you praying for things that will help you out or are you praying that the Kingdom of God will grow?  These are questions you need to ask of yourselves.  Who is number one in your life?  Is it yourself, your wife, your children, your job or is it Jesus?  If you don’t have Jesus Christ as the number one person in your life, then you will never be able to take care of any of these other things that you call number 1.  This is one of the things that really go against our logic but this is what Jesus does for you if you ask.  You are to love Jesus first and then He will help you to love your families first, or your wife first or whatever you want first.  This is because we don’t know how to love, we don’t know what love is unless we love Jesus first.  All else is just some sort of worldly infatuation.  

James then tells us to anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the Lord.  This was something that was done in those days.  We read about anointing in the Bible.  Kings were anointed along with sick people.  It was a way of prayer for many things. 

Today we don’t use anointing as much.  We have many other ways to pray and they are all good.  The only bad prayer that you can have is the prayer not prayed.  You can go to God with anything and everything and you should.  But we probably should use anointing much more than we do in today’s world.  In the same sense we should fast more.  For several years our youth group did this.  We had people pray for us as we fasted for 30 hours.  Anyway, all of these ways of prayer are suggestions for us.  We can use any of them as long as we are sincere about it.  There are no hard and fast rules about prayer. 

There is the only one real key to prayer and that is sincerity.  You can go to just about any book store and find many books on how to pray.  There are authors who will tell you that the only prayer that God hears is if you follow these steps. Others will tell us that we have to be alone, or we have to do this or we have to do that.   

I want to tell you a little story.  I was down and out when I finally was broken enough to come to Jesus for help.  I also came to Christ on my own without the help of anyone to guide me.  This is also a big no-no to many who feel that you cannot accept Jesus unless you are in front of a crowd or at least with someone to lead the way.  Well here is what I found.  Jesus will accept you any time and at any place, with or without people around.  Anyway, I was a new Christian and I really didn’t know how to pray.  So, I sat in my chair in the living room and I prayed to God to tell me how to pray.  And do you know the answer I got?  Jesus told me that I was doing a pretty good job right then.   

All you have to do is go to God in prayer.  There are no special formulas or anything else that will get you into a rightful way of praying.  It is your heart that naturally seeks God.  If you follow your heart to God then you will be in a state of prayer.  All these other ways are good.  You can anoint.  You can fast.  You can read books.  But none of these will work unless you have your heart in the right place.  

People have asked me and I’m sure that there might be someone listening today who wonders what it means to pray unceasingly.  Young Christians who are just beginning to know Jesus will say something like this.  It seems impossible to be able to drive down the road and be in prayer with God.  How can we drive with our eyes closed?  I don’t remember reading anywhere that we have to have our eyes closed to pray.  It just helps as it shuts out distractions.  When we pray unceasingly, no matter where it is, all we have to do is keep our minds on Jesus.  Christian music will help when we are doing things like driving.  Once again, this type of prayer depends on where your heart is.   

The last thing I want to bring out about prayer is that we are to be confessing to each other and also praying for each other.  I don’t think we need a lot of reminders about the second part of this.  However, I think that confessing, unless you are Catholic, has almost become forgotten, something like fasting has been all but forgotten.   

This is really an important aspect of being a Christian.  John Wesley, who founded Methodism, knew this when he began almost 300 years ago.  His small groups were accountability groups that met between the church services on Sunday.  They would meet several times a week.  These were groups of three or four.  They would discuss his three rules.  They would talk about the evil that they had done since the last meeting.  In other words, they would confess their sins to each other.  Then they would discuss doing all the good that they could do.  This was the beginning of his prison and hospital ministries to name a couple.  Then they would talk about the love they had for Jesus.  These are Wesley’s three rules and this is what the Methodist Church was founded upon.  Do no harm and avoid evil.  Do good all that you can.  And finally stay in love with God. 

I think that often times we have a hard time talking about God and praising God in public.  But it is something that we need to do.  I would like you to try a little experiment.  The next time you are talking with someone who you know is a Christian and you are talking about God, try telling this person about how you have failed God.  Start with something small.  Then tell them about how you are going to do a better in the future.  Tell them about how you have loved everything that God has done for you.  Try this and see what happens.  I think that as our faith matures and we get more comfortable with being with other Christians, we are more ready to accept this kind of conversation as normal.  Have these conversations with a pure heart for God.    

I think that one of the most powerful verses we read earlier comes from verse 17 where James says “Elijah was a man just like us.”  Elijah was one of the greatest of all the prophets and he was just like us.  He had troubles.  He had misery.  He had many things go wrong in his life.  He was a troubled man who wanted to give up but God wasn’t done yet.   

And the good news is that you are just like him.  You have these same issues that Elijah had.  But God isn’t done with you yet, either.  Elijah prayed for no rain and it didn’t rain until he prayed for rain, 3½ years later.  And you can do the same types of things if you would only decide to do what Jesus wants you to do.  When you are obedient, good things will follow.  Pray unceasingly.  Pray and mean it.  Pray and believe it.  And thank you, Jesus, for hearing our prayers and first loving us.  Let’s pray.