January 8, 2012

Some presidential contenders are giving up. As of this past Wednesday, Michelle Bachman pulled out of the Republican primary race. She gave up. Well, she saw the handwriting on the wall. She came in sixth. I mean, if you don’t win, if you are not having success, why put in the effort. The message is loud and clear. The voters are not voting for you.

Now this is how it often is with believers and prayer. If you pray and don’t seem to get an answer, if your prayers do not seem to be effective, then after awhile, you give up. Why pray if it doesn’t make any difference? Maybe I just don’t know how to pray? I’m not praying in the right way. I don’t know the right words to say. So I’ll let the praying to others. If you are a Christian, a follower of Christ, please do not give up. Prayer is powerful. God works through the prayers of believers. In fact, from James 5 we see that every believer can have an effective life of prayer.

 

I. EFFECTIVE PRAYER IS DRIVEN BY NECESSITY. Jms.5:13,14

If you stop and consider your own prayer life, I would imagine that you would find that your prayers are driven by necessity. And this seems to agree with what James writes. In v.13 James writes, “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.” In v.14 he writes, “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the Church to pray....” In v.16 James urges us to pray for one another. The word, “trouble,” in v.13, refers to any and all kinds of difficulties. Prayer is driven by necessity.

But I want us to notice something from v.13. James seems to indicate that it is not only trouble that necessitates prayer, but even happiness. When we are happy, he tells us to sing songs of praise. Surely a song of praise is a prayer of thanks to God. Happiness also compels the necessity of prayer in our lives. In other words, we are to refer everything that comes into our lives to the Lord in prayer.

Now I’m sure everyone here would give verbal agreement with what I’ve just said, however, I’m not sure that all of us really practice this. We are a very self sufficient people. As long as things in our lives are going pretty well, our prayers are more perfunctory and routine. In fact we may not pray very much at all. And when we get sick, what do we do? We go to the doctor and get some medicine and we get better. We may not pray at all about it. But if the sickness is serious or if there is a tragedy of some kind, then we are all over it with prayer. We are praying like there’s no tomorrow. So, unless we really feel a need for prayer, prayer is not really needed. And this belies a misunderstanding on our part.

You see we fail to recognize that God is the foundation of our lives. Our self-sufficiency blinds us to the reality that we are dependent upon God for everything. The healing we receive from the doctor is not just from the doctor or a pill. It is from God. The doctor and medical science are instruments in the hands of God. What I’m trying to encourage in us is a moment by moment recognition of the fact that we live every moment of our lives by the grace and power of God. Even the most mundane events of our lives depend upon the grace of God. And no matter how proficient you are at your work, your success and achievement is a blessing of God’s grace and at least warrants, songs of praise. But how many of us really live like this? We take way too much for granted.

But this isn’t just true for our personal lives, it’s also true in the church. Many churches today are run like a business. We have budgets, projections, and business meetings. We make decisions and assume that God is just fine with what we do. But do not think I’m being critical of budgets and business meetings and decisions. Things in the church are to be done in an orderly way and not all decisions are as significant as others. What I’m criticizing is our failure to often recognize that everything in the local church is dependent upon the grace of God. And because we don’t live with this awareness, we do not regularly pray with earnestness. Our prayers tend to be routine. I mean, is there anything that we feel we really need to ask God for?

Brothers and sisters, our need is greater than we think. Our self-sufficiency is in itself an indication of our lack of dependence on God. When things go smoothly in the church, we should be grateful, but we should be no less earnest in calling out to God for his blessing and guidance. When Jacob wrestled with God, he would not let go until God blessed him. We need God’s blessing and guidance. We need God’s blessing and guidance on our congregation. We need God’s blessing and guidance on our church leaders. We need God’s blessing and guidance on our teachers. We need God’s blessing and guidance on our ministries. We need God’s blessing and guidance on our future. We must not be lax in prayer because we think things are going okay. We never really know just how things are going. We are not able to discern a big enough picture to know how things are really going.

II. EFFECTIVE PRAYER IS EXERCISED IN FAITH. Jms.5:14-15

Not everyone understands these verses in the same way. As regards the phrase, “prayer of faith,” Dr. Wayne Grudem points out that this expression is not found anywhere else in the Bible. He also points out that James does not use the normal word for prayer, but rather a word that is rarely used. He believes that James is seeking to say something special to his readers. Grudem writes, “In other words, he [James] seems to speak of faith not as commitment to the will of God, but as conviction that it is the will of God to perform this healing.” In other words, Grudem is suggesting that sometimes when a sick person requests the elders to pray, the elders upon reflection may have a sense that God specifically wants to heal this person. I don’t know if this is what James is saying, but either way, it is certainly true that all prayer must be exercised in faith, faith in the goodness and grace of God.

Faith is confidence in God. Now this is not the only place where James mentions faith. In Jms.1:5-6 James writes, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” When we pray to God for wisdom we must trust fully that God will give what is needed. If we doubt that God will give wisdom, we are double-minded and unstable. We don’t really believe. In Jms.4:2-3, James writes, “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Obviously, prayer that is rooted in selfishness and not in wanting God’s will is ineffective. So when we pray we must pray with confidence in God, that he is good and gives good gifts to his children.

But maybe you feel as if your faith is weak. And so you try to drum up more faith. You try to get that big-faith feeling. You put more fervency into your prayers. You pray loud or extra long. You use more words. Surely that is not what James is writing about. I think it is interesting to note that when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed with such intensity that he sweat drops of blood, and yet the only recorded words we have are, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” When Jesus prayed for healing we don’t get the sense that he was like the faith healers on television. He wasn’t shouting and knocking people over. I’m not saying that earnest prayer cannot be passionate and loud. I’m just saying that we don’t have to try to drum up more faith in these ways.

Effective prayer simply takes God according to his word. And when we do that, our prayer is effective. According to James there is physical and even spiritual healing that takes place when we pray in faith. O I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Wait a minute, I’ve never seen anyone healed.” That’s okay. Many have been healed. Frankly, I think we pray for healing too little. In fact, as I have been thinking about this, I am inclined to want to pray for healing more often. We all must think that God desires to heal, because we all go to the doctor. Healing is a good thing. Jesus was a healer. God wants to heal us. When James writes in v.15 that the “prayer of faith will make the sick person well,” I believe we must view that statement in the same way that we view the other statements that Jesus makes about prayer. In Mt.21:22 Jesus says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Well I have prayed for things that I did not receive. When we pray, we always pray in accordance with God’s will. We want God’s will to be done and so often we don’t know what God’s will might be in any given situation. So when we pray, we try to pray for what we believe would be good and honoring to God, trusting that God will do what is best.

It is not a cop-out to pray, “Your will be done.” Likewise, praying, “Your will be done,” doesn’t rule out making bold requests of the Lord. When James writes, “You have not because you ask not,” that is an invitation to ask boldly in faith.

 

III. EFFECTIVE PRAYER IS BASED ON THE FOUNDATION OF A RIGHTEOUS LIFE. Jms.5:16c

I don’t know about you, but when I read this it makes me wonder just how effective my prayers are going to be. A righteous life! Who would claim to have a righteous life?

It is helpful that James points us to the life of Elijah the prophet. We read about Elijah in 1Kgs.17-19. Of course, Elijah was a powerful prophet, who prayed bold prayers. He prayed down fire on Mt. Carmel. He prayed that it would not rain for three years. And then he prayed that it would rain. He prayed and saw a boy come back from the dead. But the point James wants to make is that Elijah was like us. In what way? Well, Elijah was a pretty ordinary guy. He had ups and downs. He was courageous at one moment, confronting the wicked, King Ahab, and fearful in the next, fleeing for his life from Queen Jezebel. He could outrun a chariot and sink into the lows of depression and self-pity, at one point even asking God to take his life. He was not always on the mountain top of righteousness, that’s for sure.

We’re all like this. Some days we feel on top of our game. Some days we feel like our Christian life is going well. Other days, we feel unspiritual, in a bad mood, and don’t feel like praying. And then there are days that feel just kind of normal.

When James writes about being righteous he’s talking about being right with God. He’s talking about faith that is connected with works. In other words, the life we live matches our profession of faith in Christ. This is not about perfection. Rather it’s about faithful living through the ups and downs of life. Will we sin? Yes. But we keep short accounts with God, confessing our sin regularly. We seek to keep our eyes on Jesus. We seek to cultivate a dependence upon Jesus. We surrender our lives to the Holy Spirit. We seek to serve the Lord with gladness, even when we do not feel very glad. If you know Christ as your savior, you are righteous in the sight of God. This is the kind of life that is blessed by God. This is the kind of life that learns to pray effectively.

 

This week is our annual week of prayer. It is one of the most important weeks in-life of our church. We come together to ask for God’s blessing and guidance upon our congregation. It is an opportunity for each of us to get a fresh start with prayer in the new year. Some of you need to evaluate your prayer life. What role does prayer play in your life? In Lk.18 Jesus taught that we should always pray and not give up. Have you given up? Every believer can have an effective life of prayer. Amen