Beg and Blab

How prayer and confession are necessary to your spiritual and physical well-being.

James 5:13-18

Incredibly effective tool just lying there

Our passage today in James makes some pretty incredible claims. It claims that there is miraculous power available to us that we miss out on.

Our passage claims that through prayer and confession of sin, there is spiritual and physical healing available to God's people.

Now I am interested in that. I also know that this has been a divisive issue, and that some may have used this interest, this desperation to people in need of healing, for personal glory and profit.

So God, give us wisdom that we might understand your words through James. We ask for truth and understanding, to hear Your promises and not our own.

James 5:13-18

13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.

So James doesn't really turn from the idea of "what to do when suffering..." from the last passage, he just turns to a particular application.

In all circumstances

When you are suffering, same word as the suffering of the prophets in the last passage, Pray. Some of you aren't suffering, great, rejoice in worship! And then zeroing in on a particular kind of suffering in verse 14, if you are sick, Pray!

Wherever you are, whatever your circumstance, include God in it.

Pray for the sick

James then spends the rest of this passage talking about this whole praying for the sick. Sick is a little ambiguous: it is mostly physical sickness but also could include spiritual, emotional, mental illness. If someone is sick, Pray! But this is a special kind of prayer.

Assuming personal prayer is already covered by the "if you're suffering... pray" bit, this is a particularly severe suffering from serious illness. In that case, you need to call in the cavalry. Call in a spiritual airstrike. You need to call in the church.

The elders of the church come and pray as representatives with the authority of the whole church. Their elders are like our deacons, respected members of the church recognized for spiritual maturity and tapped for spiritual leadership.

14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.

Praying over them is primary, anointing with oil is just a symbolic anointing as part of the prayer, symbolic that it is the Holy Spirit's power at work. They pray in the name of the Lord, recognizing that it is His power by His will they are invoking.

There is no magic here. This is absolutely critical. Because the next words may make you skeptical... I hope they make you hopeful... but these words have been used and abused, so let's look carefully:

15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

"make the sick person well." Literally "saved." Physical and spiritual healing, total healing inside and out (that is how the Message translation phrases this). The spiritual aspect is clear in the latter half "If they have sinned, they will be forgiven."

The sick will be healed

But that isn't the crazy, interesting, dangerous, scandalous, hopeful part.

They will be healed.

This is where I wrestled and questioned this week. Will? I would be a whole lot more comfortable with a "might" or a "probably."

We have two extremes possible here. One says that "healing was for the Apostolic age alone, and this verse no longer applies." Well, I have seen God heal people, that isn't consistent with my experience, with church history and you would have a hard time finding Scriptural support for that. But that is one extreme.

Another extreme would be to build a theology just from this one verse. This is tempting, because this sounds great. If you follow these steps, and have "a prayer offered in faith" you absolutely will be healed. If you aren't healed, then, something is wrong with you. You lack faith, you have sin, you are doing it wrong.

Really, that is magic. If there is a special formula, you do it right, cross your fingers, and miracles happen, that is magic. Like God is forced to do your will because you "did it right."

That is another extreme, and one that holds some serious potential for abuse for profit and glory...

But this extreme says that God always, always wants to heal you, do it right, have enough faith, and you will be healed.

As tempting as that doctrine might be... this cannot be what James means. Let's look at the immediate and broader context.

The whole previous passage was all about patience in suffering. Same word as that used up in verse 13. Be patient in suffering... it may be a while... and your ultimate hope is in the coming of the Lord. The expectation of long-suffering not immediately relieved by miraculous intervention or healing is right there in the previous passage.

Further, James is certainly aware that most of the time people are not miraculously healed. 100% of the people reading James’ letter died, and they died of something God could have miraculously healed. We don't have much writing from James himself, but Paul mentions several people who are sick and have not been healed and has some long-term sicknesses and afflictions himself.

Most of all, James is following Jesus around in the greatest healing tour of all. Jesus did not heal every sick person he met. Sometimes he said "your faith healed you" and sometimes he acted to instill or spark faith in someone with little or none. Sometimes he healed everybody, Oprah style: "You get a healing and you get a healing... everybody gets a healing!" Sometimes, one guy is healed surrounded by a crowd of sick and injured people.

Miraculous healing is a sneak preview of ultimate healing to come. It is the Kingdom of God breaking out, both here and not-yet.

It is temporary. It is partial. It is rare, perhaps in our experience. But it is real.

Have you ever known someone to be miraculously healed? Brother Paul is a miracle with us today, had a scare, the church prayed, and the "maybe" medical procedure was a fantastically successful one. I think God worked there.

But even miraculous healing is partial. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead... but Lazarus isn't alive today. He died again. That was temporary.

So the larger testimony of Scripture, of church history, and of our own experience is this:

Miraculous healing is a sneak preview of ultimate healing to come.

It is temporary. It is partial. It is rare. But it is real.

So we zero in on this phrase "prayer offered in faith" or "prayer of faith" in verse 15. This phrase shows up nowhere else in the Bible. Not the faith of the sick person, they are implied to be laid out probably unconscious. The faith of those praying... but not faith in the prayer. The oil and the name are both symbols that this is God's doing, faith in the God who wills to heal and acts to heal. My best understanding after studying this Scripture is that this phrase describes a prayer in response to knowledge of God's will to heal. That is, they are not willing themselves to believe God will heal the person, as if their ability to imagine well enough would force divine action. Rather, in this case they are responding in faith to what God has expressed He will do: healing the sick.

Faith is not you willing yourselves to imagine harder to believe something mentally by flexing your brain muscles and squeezing. Faith is something God build in you and you respond with and cooperate with.

As our discernment grows, as our faith grows, we seek God's will in healing. And so our prayers often look like this: "if it is Your will, God, heal this person." If it is revealed to me, or to you, that God does in fact will this sneak preview of ultimate healing to come: then we can pray in faith, God heal this person as You have said you would.

Prayer has power, power to unleash heaven. At the least, this verse is pushing our comfort envelope on how often healing for the sick can be expected. There is, perhaps, more power in prayer than we realize.

This is a crazy thing, theologically. God has apparently decided He will wait to act in certain situations until His people participate in the process. God wills a healing. God waits for His people to ask. Then boom goes the dynamite.

Intercessory prayer is our participation in the divine process

Sin blocks healing

And this intercessory prayer is a powerful thing, it heals outside and in. It heals the body and... if there is sin, the power of a church praying, represented by the elders with spiritual authority, the sins are healed to.

This alludes to an understood phenomenon in Judaism: sin is incredibly dangerous.

Sin, un-confessed sin, can lead to physical damage and illness as well as spiritual. The medical community would call this psychosomatic: involving mind and body. It is all connected.

The Pharisees made the mistake, Job's friends made the mistake, of thinking that because sin can lead to illness, illness means there must be some hidden sin. That is a logical flaw.

But there is no question: Sin is incredibly dangerous. Secret sin is all the more so. Sin festers, thrives and grows in shadow.

A secret sin is like a splinter, the longer it’s there, the worse it is.

In this case, the prayer of the elders, representing the church body, deals with the sin too. That is a starting place, but I love where this text goes next:

Therefore, confess and pray

16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Ridiculously practical. These things are effective, so just do them. They are powerful, why miss out on them.

Prayer is powerful. Confession is cleansing. It is silly not to practice both.

It reminds me of James 4:2-3 because you do not ask…”

We have these two incredibly powerful tools at our disposal. To open the way for God's blessings to flow by confessing sin in our lives, like removing a blockage, and simply asking for them. His healing inside and out to come pouring down on us.

James just says, do these things. All the times. The upside is awesome "you may be healed." You connect with God and with each other. It is all win here.

Prayer is powerful. Confession is cleansing. It is silly not to practice both.

First, confession

Confess to God, that’s step 1. But there is more for you in the body of Christ.

"Confess yours sins to each other" or "to one another."

This can be done in a way that is awkward or even harmful. I don't think everyone should stand up now and yell out their sins. That isn't the way Jesus taught us to go about it and that isn't really implied here. If you have hurt someone, confess, or just tell the person you’ve hurt. If it’s a habit no one knows about, tell someone who can help you: a brother, a sister, someone who can pray for you and, in the name of Jesus, forgive your sins.

God has placed us in each other's lives for this reason.

Confession is cleansing. Do it.

Prayer: when it is exercised

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

That last word has a lot of translation options. I dug into this week, and I think the best one grammatically is actually "when it is exercised." I checked with one of the translators of the NIV and he agrees, by the way.

Prayer is powerful... when it is exercised.

The final clause has lots of great translation options. “effective prayer.” I like best “when it is exercised.” So often the prayer of a righteous man is not exercised at all.

Prayer is powerful. Confession is cleansing. It is silly not to practice both.

Example of Elijah

But we look back on the New Testament church and think “they had all the power, the Apostolic age, etc…”

Especially with miraculous healing prayer right. Easy for them to say...

This is what I love about James' last illustration. It anticipates this same argument from the first century church he is writing to. As in, the people we look back to with admiration for all their healing miracles... they were looking back centuries with admiration to the prophets for all their healing miracles.

17 Elijah was a human being, even as we are. 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.

A man just like us.

He was a human being, a righteous man, through whom God desired to work. The Spirit that came upon Elijah is the Spirit that resides in us.

Why this miracle? In between these two miracles, during the drought, Elijah prayed and raised a boy to life! That would be a good example!

But I think James chose this one because it captures both aspects. Elijah prayed for drought to bring the people of Israel, especially its king, to confession and repentance. Elijah prayed for healing inside and out. The long lasting outer suffering was for a purpose, to bring inner healing... then Elijah prayed for rain, and the land was healed. Healing inside and out.

God has healing inside and out for us. For our land. For our bodies. For our hearts and minds.

God has blessing he won't give until we ask for them in prayer. God may have blessing to give you that are blocked by un-confessed sin.

Prayer is powerful. Confession is cleansing. It is silly not to practice both.

Application

Prayer has no power when it is not exercised. God sometimes heals miraculously without any prayer. God sometimes (apparently) waits for prayer to heal miraculously. We do not always pray. Conclusion: some suffer from illness and even die because we do not faithfully pray for one another. “We do not have because we do not ask…”

It is silly not to practice prayer. This is a praying church. We pray for one another: here at church, throughout the week via email chain. There are 120 prayer chain emails this year so far. That is a lot.

Take advantage of the power of prayer.

Get on the prayer list and pray. Shoot an email to Pastor Rod or myself, we will get the church praying. Send up a prayer request card Sabbath morning, we will pray. It is a mystery, it's kind of funny, but sometimes God is just waiting for His people to pray and cooperate in His miraculous healing.

Prayer is powerful.

And confession. There are blessings and healing in your life blocked by sin. If you are living in or with secret sin, don’t be fooled that it remains in its little shadowy corner. It colors through your emotional, mental, spiritual and physical well-being. Confess your sins to one another. Look around, find someone you trust. Tap them on the shoulder and find a quiet spot after the service. Shoot them an email. Call them on the phone. Make a time and place and confess your sins. If you make a wise choice, choose a mature Christian brother or sister, they will be thrilled to be the conduit of God's grace, love and forgiveness to you in your need.

Prayer is powerful. Confession is cleansing. It is silly not to practice both.

But the healing is God's. By His will, by His power, by His word, in His timing, in His way, in His moment.

We worship and celebrate together His promise of healing. Temporary momentary flashings of it in this world, ultimate full forever healing at the coming of the Lord. Let's worship and thank Him together for His healing.