Life 101: Lessons for a Practical Christian Life  
A study in the book of James
lesson #9: Pray … because prayer can affect everything.
James 5:13-20

Scripture:

Is any among you suffering? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing praises. Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months. He prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit.

Brothers, if any among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins.

James 5:13-20      (World English Bible)

[.]

Life 101: Lessons for a Practical Christian Life  
A study in the book of James
lesson #9: Pray … because prayer can affect everything.
James 5:13-20

Bible Study:

In case you haven’t read the story, there was a time, long ago, when one man took it upon himself to change the course of his country. He prayed. And the sky dried up.

There was no rain for a long, long time.

Crops failed. Food was scarce.

You can find the story in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of First Kings, and if you read those chapters sometime, you can find the reason the whole drought thing happened in the first place.

Times were difficult then. And I don’t mean the economy was bad. I mean the government was bad, and the society was bad, and the people were bad.

God wanted to catch their attention, and so he sent a man named Elijah. And Elijah dried up the sky.

Maybe when you read a story like Elijah’s, you think that it could never happen again. That’s what we do. We find reasons why God can’t do the same thing today.

We say: Elijah was a really cool dude, but that’s something that only the really, really spiritual people can do. Not everyone can pray and stop the rain.

But James brings that story back, and he reminds us that Elijah wasn’t the exception.

He was the rule.

People should be able to do more with their prayers.

That whole stopping-the-rain incident wasn’t about Elijah.

It was about God.

God is the one who stops the rain, and God is the one who heals and forgives, and God is the one who wants us to pray.

Elijah just did what he was told.

So let’s put a theme or a title on this little snippet of scripture. These are the last few verses of the letter, so this is the final point, the last blow of the hammer, the big exclamation point at the end of the book of James.

And the message of it all is: Pray!

He says it over and over again. Pray for this. Pray for that. So he must have wanted his friends in the church to—well, pray. And since the letter comes to us, also, we get the same advice.

Pray.

Let’s start at the beginning.

This is cool. This is a three-part statement, and from Old Testament poetry and style and such, the use of three parallel statements adds some punch to the whole point.

Assuming that the three statements say the same thing, and they do.

Let’s look at it.

Is anyone suffering? Pray.

Is anyone cheerful? Pray.

Actually, it says praise, but praise is a kind of prayer. Remember that prayer is talking to God, so these are simply two examples of what to do with our situation, depending on whether the situation is good or bad.

If our situation is bad, talk to God about it. Go ahead and complain, if you want. He doesn’t say we can’t complain. I get the feeling that whatever we want to say is fine, as long as we go to the right place.

And if our situation is good, talk to God about it. It’s okay to thank him for the good things that come to us. Praise is just saying the truth about how great God is, so praise flows naturally out of a good situation.

So these are two parallel statements, but they also reach out wide in both directions so pretty much every part of life is covered. Good or bad, talk to God.

And is anyone sick? Pray.

But this time, bring in some friends. It’s okay to let the church pray for you. In this example, the leaders of the church come to pray. These are the people who know how to pray, who have practiced prayer. They come with a purpose in mind.

And they pray because prayers are answered. Notice that James says that God will raise up the sick when people pray.

And more. But before we talk about more, let’s talk about prayer.

The prayer of faith will heal the sick. That’s a particular kind of prayer. The words that we say don’t always make a difference in our prayers, but our heart does.

James tells us to call in the elders of the church, because they are the ones who know what God can do.

Have you ever started a car on a cold morning? Sometimes it’s an iffy situation. Bad battery, old oil, tired engine—sometimes a car just isn’t dependable.

And sometimes we pray like we’re trying to start an old engine on a cold morning.

I don’t know if this is going to work, and probably not, but I’m here praying, just in case I get something from God, but I probably won’t, so here goes nothin’.

But when you know, you turn the key and off you go. You know the car will start, because it always does, even in the cold.

And you know that God will provide, because he promised. And he has provided in the past. You’ve proven that. This is just one more illness, and one more request.

I mentioned before that this is a different kind of life. A life of faith. A life of trusting God for what he can give. It isn’t easy. It’s the opposite of easy.

So how do you do it?

God gives grace to the humble. God gives wisdom to those who ask. Remember that from earlier in the book?

And God gives maturity to those who endure challenges. When we trust God in the little challenges, we discover that he is able to conquer little challenges.

When we trust God in the bigger challenges, we discover that he is able to conquer the bigger challenges.

So when we call in the elders, the people who have trusted God in the really big challenges, what do we get? We get people who have been there, done that, experienced the power of God in their lives.

So a sickness is just one more thing that God can handle.

And there is more. Sickness is just one aspect of our problem. Sin is another.

Prayer heals both.

In fact, James moves quickly from one to another. Pray for the sick. And confess your sins to one another, so that prayer can work its miracle in your life. You can actually pray for one another. You can actually help your friend grow in Christ.

In some churches, this confession has become a ritual of sorts. But there is no mention of confession to a pastor, necessarily. Just to one another.

I think we don’t have to do this.

Let me say that very carefully.

The one person who can hear our confession is Jesus. He is the only mediator between us and God.

And the way it works, if we ask God to forgive us, Jesus is right there in the mix. We don’t have to say the right words or ask the right person. We just ask God, and he forgives.

First John 1:9—God is faithful to forgive, will always forgive.  

Here in James, we have something different. We can also share the things that burden us with our friends in the church. Sickness, weakness—they are all things that we can share with others, and when our friends pray for us, we grow.

So living a Christian life isn’t something we have to do alone. We have resources from God, and one of those resources is—

(drum roll, please)

One of those resources is each other!

We can talk to each other about spiritual things!

Go ahead! Pray for each other!

It works. You can grow together with your friends.

So this isn’t some dark, secret confession. This is the normal honest conversation about how difficult the world is and how tough it is to live for Jesus.

Get two friends together, if they are willing to look out for each other and pray for each other, and you get honesty.

Disappointment. Anger. Bitterness. Pain.

That’s what friends share. After all, confession is just another word for telling the truth.

That’s all.

We’ve added a Perry Mason element to it. Or if you are too young to remember Perry Mason, substitute Law and Order. Either way, the murderer sometimes confesses in a dramatic moment at the end of the show.

Big confession. Big drama.

But this is not the confession of the Bible. The simple truth will do. Small things, honest things, between friends who care for each other, friends who will pray.

And speaking of prayer, let’s return to the matter of Elijah. You can do the same that Elijah did, according to James, because he just followed a simple rule.

The bold prayer of a righteous heart will be amazingly effective.

Doesn’t have to be Elijah.

But it has to be bold. The people who accomplish great things in prayer are those who will ask for great things from God.

And it has to be right. We need another word here, because righteousness is so out of date these days. But it means a person who does what God says. They do the right thing. They keep their relationship with God close.

Maybe that’s a good comparison here. The prayer of a person who stays close to God, who does the right thing, who keeps their heart pure.

Boldness isn’t enough. It comes with a price. God gives the biggest answers to his closest friends.

You can have what Elijah had. You can pray like Elijah prayed. But you have to know God like Elijah knew God.

That’s the choice.

And James leaves us with that choice, and with one reminder. It’s important, he says. Think of what’s at stake.

If you pray or speak or do something to turn someone back to the truth, you save a soul from death.

Maybe someone has a terrible life with horrible mistakes, a real bad person, a real mess, but that’s no problem. God will forgive a multitude of sins.

If they will only turn to the truth.

You can have a part in that.

It starts with the challenges that come to you today. Face them in the strength that God provides. Pray. Experience God.

Before you know it, you’ll be learning what Elijah learned.

And then when you pray—

You might just open up the sky.

Or better yet—

You might just turn a soul from death to life.

[.]

Life 101: Lessons for a Practical Christian Life  
A study in the book of James
lesson #9: Pray … because prayer can affect everything.
James 5:13-20

Paraphrase:

Are you in trouble in some way? Tell God what you need. Are you happy? Tell God how great his gifts are.

Are you sick? Let the strongest members of the church come and pray for you and soothe your forehead with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will raise you up as God heals your sins and your sickness.

Share your weaknesses with each other and pray for each other so that you can be healed. The bold prayer of a righteous heart will accomplish amazing things.

Look at Elijah. He was no different from us, but he prayed that the rain would stop. And it stopped! After three and a half years, he prayed that it would rain again, and it rained, and the crops grew once more in the fields.

Think of what you can accomplish. If anyone wanders away from the truth, turn them back, if you can. You may save that person from death and cover over more sins than you can count.

James 5:13-20

[.]

Life 101: Lessons for a Practical Christian Life  
A study in the book of James
lesson #9: Pray … because prayer can affect everything.
James 5:13-20

Story:

Like Elijah

by Bob Freye

“Please,” Elaine begged. “He won’t listen to me any more, and I just don’t know what to do!”

Lydia closed her eyes to help relieve the tension in her forehead. But she kept the telephone pressed against her ear, even as another oncoming headache made itself known.  

“I know it must be difficult for you,” she told her friend. “You’ve been so good for him, all these years.”

Elaine had kept her cousin, Dennis, out of one problem after another. She had driven him to treatment and stood up for him in court. But the legal system was growing impatient with his repeated failures to stay away from alcohol.  

“I’m just asking you to pray for him,” Elaine said. Her voice was growing dim on the phone as she shrank deeper and deeper into herself.

The words cut through Lydia. She felt them in the pit of her stomach. Dennis was a good man, when he was sober. But that was seldom. Lydia had sat with Elaine in the past, and they had wept over Bill’s wasted life.

“You can do that yourself,” Lydia explained. Her voice was patient and soothing, quite out of character with Lydia’s mood at the moment. She had her own problems, after all. She needed her own miracle.

“I’ve tried,” Elaine said, nearly weeping into the phone. “I just can’t.”

“I know you’ve tried,” Lydia said. “I know you have.”

It was supposed to be simple, this prayer thing. Just talk to God. And for Elaine, that meant weeping in prayer over her cousin, or her daughter, or her parents.

Lydia wasn’t much better. They prayed together sometimes, but it always dissolved into tears. After a season with no words, someone would sob a final “amen,” and they would sit with a box of tissues, too consumed to talk for minutes at a time.

“Please—“ Elaine pleaded. “Don’t say no.”

But there were reasons to refuse. The headaches, for one. Lydia felt every problem as if it was her own. She didn’t just pray for little things, like lost keys or the success of the bake sale that the ladies were planning for the middle of the month.

They came to her when the problems were overwhelming. They asked her to pray for the crisis, the lost child, the suffering marriage, the terminal illness.

And it was getting to her. More than usual.

She made a promise to Elaine, a promise that she felt she couldn’t keep, and they hung up the phone to go back to their lives.

Lydia stood for a moment and looked out at the small feeder where birds flitted from perch to ground and back up again. Finches, mostly. Some drab and brown, some yellow-topped and splashy. All zipping around the source of their food, filling up on tiny seed in the relative safety of the front yard.

They received their food in season and out. They didn’t work, they probably didn’t worry, but they were always fed.

The headache was beginning to throb. Lydia closed her eyes and leaned against the frame of the arch that separated the living room from the dining room.

The effects of the accident were still with her, months later. Behind her, the bills sat on the kitchen table. Bills for the car, the hospital stay, her therapy, the lawyer. The pile was getting bigger.

The lawyer told her to be patient. But she always paid her bills on time.

Before.

Not now.

She even struggled to stand upright every now and then. Not anything serious. Just stress, she thought.

It grew worse as the days went on. She was unable to find an answer, unable to pray an answer for herself.

So how could she pray for Elaine?

Besides, Elaine could pray just as easily as Lydia could.

Correction—not easily. It wasn’t ever easy.

But Elaine had the same promises, and the same divine ear heard her prayer.

Lydia opened her eyes and walked slowly to the rocking chair near the window, steadying herself as she went with one hand against the wall, and the bookcase, and the sofa. As she settled into the rocker, her hand rested naturally on top of her Bible, which sat ready for her on a small table. 

The birds had their little plastic feeder stuffed with seed, and she had her moments in the morning with her Bible, or later in the day, if she needed something more.

Lydia smiled and closed her eyes again, this time to renew an old conversation.

“God, I was just reminded once more of how you provide for the smallest creatures,” she began, “and I just wanted to say thank you.”

In the back of her mind, the stack of bills called for her attention.

“And I have some things to talk to you about—“

Some things were important, after all.

“But first, I want to talk to you about Dennis.”  

[.]