Power of Prayer
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Once there was a little girl, and she was about to turn 8 years old and she really wanted to get a bike for her birthday. She asked and asked her mom for a bike and she said no, but why don’t you pray and ask God for a bike and the little girl did. So the day of her birthday was coming up and her mom did not get her a bike, but that night the mom walked outside and saw the girl playing and trying to ride a bike. The mom asked how did you get that bike? The girl said you told me to pray for a bike and I got tired of waiting, so I stole this bike from the neighbors and prayed to God for forgiveness instead.
Pray Always
Pray Always
Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.
This passage starts off in this first verse by giving two examples.
First is the one who is suffering.
Second is the one who is cheerful.
So we see here that both groups are to either pray or sing praises.
So they are to their go to him in prayer, or thank and praise him for what he has done.
But no matter if we are in the high or the low season, God should be at the center of everything.
Both through prayer and praise.
Prayer is not limited to a time of crisis, but is instead for every season of life.
This passage tells us to pray in a time of crisis, and we should.
When life gets hard, where do we turn.
I know that I am a problem solver, so something goes wrong my mind goes to how can I fix it? What can I do?
but generally I can exhaust my own efforts before going to God.
but James is saying hey if you are going through something, you should be spending so much time in prayer.
Rejoice always,
pray constantly,
give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
We should pray constantly or without ceasing.
Prayer should be our first resort, not our last response.
God should be on the forefront of our minds, we should be drenched in him that when good or bad happens we start praying.
Guys you will never regret praying too much.
I know that we know this, but praying is talking to God himself.
We need God in our hard times because without it we will fail.
When suffering comes…
When life comes, whatever might happen to you in the future,
Where are you going to turn?
We can either turn to God or to this world, so why not turn to God?
The world is going to be full of emptiness
Full of things that they will say will cure your suffering.
And there are things in this world that will numb the pain, but they do not fix the pain.
Only God can fix the pain.
The things that the world tells you will fix the pain makes the pain worse in the long run.
We have to run to God.
He hears us when we call out.
Guys the disciples did not ask Jesus how to preach, or how to break down the ancient text of the Hebrew Bible, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray!
Why?
Because Jesus went and prayed.
They saw it as an example and saw how it changed his life.
He went to God all of the time. We just talked about Easter and him praying in the garden.
Jesus would withdraw from the crowd, find a quiet space and pray.
but what about the praise?
Prayer should not only be asking.
So many times we go to God in prayer and we ask, ask, and ask.
but there are not many times that we thank him, we praise him, we cry out because of what he has done.
Pray with Community
Pray with Community
Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
So we see here that someone in the church is sick.
So they call on the church, they call on the Pastors to pray over them.
They anoint them in the name of the Lord.
And they are healed.
But what does this tell us…
Reach out to others for prayer.
Guys, if you ever need anything tell me, go tell Joel, go find Brandi, so we can know and be praying over the situation.
But the limitation does not stop there, why do we not want more people to be praying over a situation.
It is okay to rally in prayer!
We should be coming together to pray.
As a church, the adults on Wednesday nights spend close to 30 minutes in prayer, they go over prayer requests, and pray for people.
My college campus Pastor would always say be ready to preach, pray, or die.
Because if we are always ready to preach and pray, we are not afraid of death.
but we must be willing to talk to God.
but what about them oils.
Has anyone here every been anointed with oil?
Like at hospital visits does Joel bring a vial of oil?
Should he?
There are many different views of what other Bible nerds think that the oils represent or what they mean, but I totally believe that it is a symbol the represents Christianity.
Back in that time there would have been people who believed in magic, witch craft, just other weird things that they would try to do to heal people.
so James says that they used oil, and it marks it as a Christian thing.
But we know that the power of it all comes from God.
There is ultimately no power in the oil either way, it comes from God.
God heals.
We do this all the time, we pray for a person to be healed.
I can think of several times in the last months, and years that I have prayed for someone to get better.
I remember praying for my grandpa to be healed, our Pastor came and prayed over him, just like this text says, but yet he still passed.
Guys it does not say that the person will be healed, it says that they will be saved.
So think of the word love in english, if I say hey I love you bro, like that means one thing.
But if I look at Mikaela and say, I love you sweetie, that means a different thing.
So the word can have more than one meaning.
It is the same with this word.
It can mean physical healing, but it can also mean Spiritual salvation.
Meaning if they are crying out in faith, truly meaning what they say, that God can heal, and they are placing their trust in him, then that type of faith will save them.
We have to know that God has the power to save us from both our sin and our sickness.
Power in Prayer
Power in Prayer
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.
Elijah was a human being as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the land.
Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the land produced its fruit.
Yall, one of my favorite verses in the Bible right here.
This is the only place in the New Testament where we are told to confess sins to each other.
yes we are to take them to God, but here we bring them to other people.
why would be do this?
We confess our sins so we can be healed.
Guys I know this seems like such a hard thing. Like James is saying here that sin that you no one knows about… that you have kept in for so long, that if someone knew you did that it would change how they think about you… confess it.
When you bring this to the light and you are getting prayers from other people, you are getting accountability, brothers and sisters in Christ are surrounding you helping you in your sin, then it says there is healing because they are all praying for you.
Stay awake and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
It allows for nothing to slip through the cracks. When you are confessing sins, both big and small, it allows you to find forgiveness and get out of addiction so much faster.
A sinning man will stop praying. A praying man will stop sinning.
Leonard Ravenhill
It is great to be praying to God, but just like we talked about with healing, why not have more people praying.
Now in saying all of this, make sure it is someone that is a believer, someone you trust, and someone who will not gossip about what you are going through.
But if this is done correctly, then it will cause so much growth.
It can just be so hard.
but it works so well because…
There is power in righteous prayer.
The Bible points us to Elijah in the book of 1 Kings who prayed for the rain to stop and it did, then he prayed for rain and it came back.
He did this because there were people worshipping Baal who is the God of rain and storms.
So to prove that God is the one true God and not Baal he prayed for it to not rain.
He waited for 3 1/2 years to prove his point, then prayed again and it started raining.
We have to know for this, that there is no request that is too big for God.
If it is in his will, then he will make it happen.
We can ask big.
There is nothing too big for God.
You can ask him anything. It might not be in his will, but if it is, then he can make it happen.
So nows the time where you go okay… I know I should pray, but praying is hard.
Guys I know it is, some people prayer is there thing, for others it is really hard.
We talked about this some at d-now, but I love talking about driving and parked prayers.
Driving is when you are on the move, you know small little prayers throughout the day.
Maybe you see an ambulance drive by and you pray for them, a short prayer before you eat a meal.
Parked prayers are when you sit down and you have that time set aside with you and God.
But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
This is generally a longer prayer. A lot of people do this along with their quiet time when they read the Bible.
Then I was told about the accrynmn pray.
P - Praise
R - Repent
A - Ask
Y - Yield
These are some tips and tricks to prayer!
I know that it can be a challenge for some of us, but we are called to live a life in prayer.
Conclusion of James
Conclusion of James
My brothers and sisters, if any among you strays from the truth, and someone turns him back,
let that person know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
Throughout the last 12 weeks the book of James has shown a lot of wisdom.
it has really hammered in the fact the real faith causes works.
but James ends his book and says point people to truth.
Just like we talked about with account ability when it comes to confessing sins we are to point other to Jesus.
Guys we must
Love others and point them to Jesus.
when someone is questioning their faith, point them to Jesus.
When someone does not know what they believe, point them to Jesus.
In times of doubt, point people to Jesus.
Jesus is the truth.
He is the only truth.
But as we talked about today we have the power of prayer, we have God on our side.
You guys might have noticed today’s message was a wee bit shorter, that is because prayer is powerful, so I want each of us to just spend some time praying.
If that is 30 seconds or 5 minutes, just spend some time with God.
Praise - How have you seen God move in your life recently? Thank him for that.
Repeat - Is there sin in my life, both big or small.
Ask - What can you ask God for to grow his kingdom? Are you struggling with something and need to ask for help?
Yield - Listen for God, does he want you to yield to his will for anything.
Pray for an unbeliever?
Pray for wisdom?
Just talk to God
