One of the main characteristics of this church, I was told by the committee that brought me here, was that this is a praying church. I have found that to be very true. This is a church centered on prayer, that finds itself in prayer before the Lord. Not all churches are like that, of course. Many churches and church leaders depend on their own wisdom, on their own skills and intuition whenever making plans. This church is not like that. Several times a week we all get prayer requests because this is a community of believers that knows prayer works. We know there are going to times when the only thing we can do to effect a situation is to pray. And yet, so often prayer seems to be our last resort. It is what we try when nothing else has worked.
When my friend Moses was at school, he always encouraged everyone to pray when they had problems. So it was odd, when Moses had financial problems, that he forgot to. Moses had neglected to pray some sort of a bill to the school, he had let it slide until the school said, look, you have to give us a thousand dollars today before 5pm, or you have to leave school. So he was justifiably panicking. His friend reminded him to pray. So they did; they prayed together that God might intervene and that Moses would be able to stay in school. Then the phone rang. The person asked for Moses. The caller asked him if he had purchased a ticket for a fundraiser a local high school was doing, called cow chip bingo. And he remembered that he had purchased a ticket from one of the kids in his youth group. So the caller, who turned out to be the principal of that school, told him to come down right away to the school.
Cow chip bingo is where rural school take a cow and put it in a field that has been segmented off into little sections. Then they put the cow within the confines of the field and wait until the cow does its’ business. When that happens, whoever owns the section where the chips have landed, wins the money. If it lands half way, like on a line between two sections, then the prize money is split. It turned out that the cow pooped right, completely, into the section that Moses had purchased from the kid in the youth group-first prize winner of one thousand dollars. He went down, had them make out the check to Whitworth college, came back, handed the cashier the check and was able to stay in school. God and cow chip bingo saved the day. The power, both dramatic and funny, of prayer, has always been linked in my mind, since Moses told me that story, with cow chip bingo. Today we get to think about prayer in James last word to the churches he wrote to so long ago, but words that still speak to us. James 5:13ff
Is any one of you in
trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14 Is any one of you sick? He should
call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the
name of the Lord. 15 And the
prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him
up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for
each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful
and effective.
17 Elijah
was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did
not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and the heavens
gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
19 My brothers, if one of you should wander from the
truth and someone should bring him back, 20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of
his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. [1]
Let’s pray.
Today
is the final sermon in our series on James. So I get to remind you, one last
time until the next time, that James was Jesus half brother, and one of the
leaders of the early church in Jerusalem. It is recorded in Scripture that
initially Jesus brothers and sisters were skeptical of Him actually being the
Messiah, but they came around to where they finally believed. Jesus brother
James, perhaps convinced by his mom and dad, perhaps convinced by Jesus
teachings or resurrection, became an important leader in the early church. It
was from his authority as a church leader that James wrote to encourage, to
correct, exhort the other early churches. James letter was copied by hand and
traveled from church to church, authenticated through its value to the Church
as scripture. It is an extremely practical letter about life together as
Christians, about life as a Christian. James speaks clearly that the Christian
life is an active one, an active following of Christ rather than an academic
assent to a set of propositions about God. What we do as followers of Christ
matters to the church, it matters to our community, it matters to each other.
Our passage today is the last
little section of James. These are the last words James has for the early
church that he wrote to so long ago. They are words of hope, comfort and
encouragement. James perhaps has some insight into what is coming for the early
church; the persecutions of the Church by Rome are nearly upon the Church. Not
only will they be persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, but they are about to be
severely persecuted by Rome. It will not be an easy go for the early church.
Satan did his worst against them, but Jesus promised that the gates of Hell
would never prevail against His bride, the church. We are the recipients of
that promise, but the church survived because of the blood of many martyrs. I
wonder if James hadn’t seen what was coming, either from God or just simply
reading the signs of the times that it was going to be a rough road for the
church. In either case, James was preparing the early church, telling them how
to get through the tough times that were coming, and were coming quickly. Last
week we looked at suffering, this week we look at personal trials and troubles.
Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him
sing songs of praise. 14 Is
any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him
and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will
make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he
will be forgiven. 16 Therefore
confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be
healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
We have been given a gift. Through our relationship with Christ, we have been given the gift of prayer. Unfortunately we don’t utilize this gift, or perhaps just as bad, we see prayer as a last resort when the thing’s we’ve tried to do have not worked out. But James is also talking about more than prayer. He is talking about a relationship with God; when times are tough, we go to God in prayer, a prayer of “God please help”. When times are good, we go to God in prayer, a “Thank you God” prayer. We call out to God when we are in trouble and we praise God in the good times. It is a relationship; like calling a friend and complaining when times are tough, and calling to express joy when something good has happened. We have this line to God, who wants to talk with us, wants to hear from us for some reason…He seems to like us very much despite all the things we do… We have this gift and we don’t use it as we should, as it was intended by the Giver.
My pastor growing up illustrated prayer like this…and you have to understand he wasn’t very electronically sophisticated. And could never really figure out his television. His television got a couple channels, very unclearly. And that was about it. So whenever he wanted to see a game on tv, he’d have to invite himself over to different people’s houses. It was kind of a pain, but that was the tv he had, it was the reception in the town I grew up in. And then one day his daughter’s boyfriend wanted to watch the game. My pastor said, we don’t get that channel, its not possible. The young man poked around the back of the tv, found the tv cable, plugged it in, and the tv got perfect reception. My pastor had the cable necessary for perfect tv reception. He already had everything he needed. He just failed to plug in the cable. You see the analogy, I hope. In the same way as the tv reception, we have a prayer cable connecting us to God, and we fail to use it. We think the reception is bad, or that this is just the way it is, when in reality we fail to use the gift of prayer we have been given. We fail to plug into God.
God wants us to be in relationship with Him. That’s why He sent Jesus, so that our sinful lives would not isolate us away from God, but that through Jesus we might be brought into relationship with God. God wants to hear about the tough times in our lives. He wants to hear about the good times. Not because He isn’t aware or doesn’t somehow know, but because He wants to hear it from us. Prayer is fundamentally about our relationship with God. Prayers that are simply repeated without thinking have nothing to do with a relationship with God. It is our relationship with God through Jesus that sets us apart from other world religions. There are prayer spindles in Bhuddism where worshippers simply spin the big spindle, and the prayer written on the spindle counts as having prayed the prayer on it. So they spin the spindle a couple of times, and that’s what they consider praying. In reality, God wants not prayers repeated without thought, without a connection to Him, but He wants to be connected to us. Jesus opened the way for that to happen, and it happens in and through prayer.
Here
in the text James gives us a number of different prayers. We have first a
prayer of supplication, praying for ourselves. Perhaps the most common type of
prayer, which is fine. Humans get into trouble, and need to pray for help, and
God is pleased that we turn in prayer to Him first. Then James mentions a
prayer of praise, praising God for the good that has happened. Thank you Lord,
for bringing Eric home safely. Praise your name Lord. In a prayer of praise we
offer up our praise and thanks for who God is, and what He has done. Then James
mentions a prayer of intercession, where we pray for someone else. We don’t
seem to lay hands on people and pray as often as we should, but we have done it
in the past, and probably should do it in the future. Then James mentions a
prayer of confession, like we had earlier in the service, where we bring our
sins before God and ask for forgiveness, forgiveness He is happy to give
because it brings us back into right relationship with God. Our sins block our
relationship with God, but repentance and forgiveness brings us back to God.
The prayer of a righteous person is indeed effective. Prayer works, not because
we make it work, but because God is good, kind and gracious. Prayer can even make a cow drop its load in
a particular space. Clearly the prayers of a righteous man, my friend Moses,
availed much.
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not
rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and the heavens
gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
19 My brothers, if one of you should wander from the
truth and someone should bring him back, 20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of
his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
James
gives an example out of the history of the Jewish people. We probably should be
reminded that the early church was composed largely of completed Jews, rather
than Greek converts. So James reference wouldn’t have been lost on most of the
people he was writing to. James is refering to 1 Kings 17:1. It says this: “Now
Elijah the Tishbite in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel,
lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years
except at my word.” And there was no rain for 3 and ½ years. So this is what
James uses as his example that prayer works. Which we affirm through Scripture
and through our experience, yes absolutely, prayer works. And his last comment
is directed at the church as a whole; instead of cursing those who wander off,
who get distracted by the enticements of the world…James says keep on them.
Keep proclaiming the truth so that maybe they come back. And when they come
back, just like a lost sheep, there is much rejoicing.
But
as the early church heads into the difficult times ahead; persecutions, fellow
believers wandering away, gossip and slander from within the church and the
temptations of the world pressing in on the church from the outside, James
continually says pray. Pray when times are good, pray when times are hard. When
the tough times come, and they will if they aren't already here, remember that
you have a connection to God that works; prayer is effective. Depend on your
connection to God through Jesus Christ, who died so that our prayers might be
heard. Once we have given our lives to Christ, then it is through Jesus’
sacrifice that our prayers are heard. And prayer is so important, that
Scripture tells us that even now Jesus sits at the right hand of God,
interceeding, praying, for us.
End
One of Moses’ mentors was a teacher at Whitworth College in Spokane, one of the
top Christian schools in the country. He teaches every so often at the
conference I attend after Easter each year. He’s a little bit nutty, so that
makes him a lot of fun for all these pastors he is teaching. One year when he
was teaching on prayer he mentioned that he never had a nickname and always
wanted one. That will work into the story. In any case, his main point about
prayer was that it should be brief, intense, and frequent. Prayers should be
concise, not these long prayers that are often prayed by important people doing
important things. Prayers should also be intense; meaning that they are from
the heart, they are about things that matter to us, and therefore, matter to
God. And lastly, prayer should be frequent. We are called to live lives of
communication with God. When a thought about someone enters our head, we can
lift it up to God. When we see someone who we know is having trouble, lift them
up in prayer. If we see someone who is trouble to us, we can immediately pray
for them. I think what brief, intense and frequent prayer leads to is a life of
prayer, a life centered on God through prayer. And so I work to make that my
habit. And I’m not there yet. But I suspect I’m heading in the right direction.
And that is available to you all as well.
Brief,
intense, and frequent; so the pastors started calling him Bif. Good nickname;
and they still call him Bif when he teaches or they see him. They also had a
sweat shirt made with the words “Brief Intense and Frequent” on it, but because
he was a college teacher, he thought it might be misinterpreted (which was what
all the pastors wanted of course) by his students.
We
are still called to be a people of prayer. Continually, always. If you have
something you'd like to share with God, go for it. God loves to hear from us.
He doesn’t always answer prayers the way we’d like because He knows the outcome
of every rabbit trails through time, and I hopeful that when we get to Heaven
certain things will be answered. But do pray nonetheless. Prayer is a tool for
encouragement, for strength, for endurance, for life.
Let’s
pray.