How to Pray for Healing
It’s amazing how many bad things can happen to people. Bill Flick, a columnist for The Pantagraph, compiled some true stories this past week…
—In Connecticut, a man driving a stolen car inadvertently stopped a police officer to ask for directions out of the city.
—A man in England, who sneezed several hundred times each day for 35 years, was told by health officials that he was allergic to himself. He was cured after another doctor discovered that he simply had a reaction to the oatmeal he’d been eating for breakfast since childhood.
—And, in Thailand, an elephant ate 110 pounds of dried rice and then drank 65 gallons of water and, within a half hour, exploded.
In our passage for today, James starts out by asking a question: “Is any one of you in trouble?” While none of us have ever eaten that much rice or been sneezing for 35 years, most of us have had more than one bad day in our life. In fact, some of you are right in the middle of some pretty tough stuff right now.
As we wrap-up our series called Prayer Passages, we’re going to take a look at How to Pray for Healing from James 5:13-16. Please follow along with me as I read. [Read]
3 Kinds of Praying
I see three different kinds of prayer in this passage.
First, we are to pray for ourselves in verse 13: “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray…”
Second, we are to call for the elders of the church when we are really sick in verses 14-15: “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him…”
Third, we are to pray for each other in verse 16: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed…”
When to Pray
This passage not only gives us some indication of how to pray, but it also helps us determine when we are to pray. There are four distinct times that we’re to come before God. We’re to look to Him…
1. When we’re suffering. (13a)
2. When we have success. (13b)
3. When we have sickness. (14-15a)
4. And, when we’re in sin. (15b-16)
James is recognizing that life is made up of triumph and tragedy, of sorrow and joy. Illness and sickness trip us up and sin entangles us. We never know what to expect. Life is totally unpredictable. Anyone who has had an accident or has had a family member suddenly get sick, can attest that life can change radically in just a matter of seconds. In addition, we all know firsthand how sin can devastate and destroy lives and some of us are living today with the consequences of wrong choices.
Let’s take a closer look at each one of these.
1. Pray when we’re suffering. The first part of verse 13 asks a question: “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.” The word James uses here refers to suffering of any kind. It can include sickness but also covers death, disappointment, and persecution.
When we’re in trouble, we are to pray as Psalm 34:4 reminds us: “I sought the LORD, and he answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.” When we’re in a mess we should pray for wisdom, strength, and for the removal of the suffering, if it is the Lord’s will. We have the privilege of prayer where we can go to God at any time, in any situation with whatever is on our hearts. Frankly, I don’t know how people can go through hard times without the Lord in their lives.
The Bible is clear that suffering is the normal expectation for every believer. Peter puts it rather bluntly in 1 Peter 4:12: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.” But, even though we know life is never easy, we can give way to self-pity or get resentful and discouraged. When we sense that the pressures of life are greater than we can bear, James says, “Pray.”
2. Praise when we have success. Look at the last part of verse 13: “Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.” James is saying here that not everyone goes through troubles at the same time. God balances our lives and gives us hours of suffering and days of singing. Praying and singing were important elements of worship in the early church, as they are in ours.
The word “happy” means to be of good cheer, and suggests a state of mind that is free from trouble. When we’re happy we’re to sing songs of praise. In Psalm 96:1-2, David calls us to, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise His name; proclaim His salvation day after day.” We are called to sing songs of praise when we’re going through times of success because good times can lead to spiritual indifference.
And so, we’re to pray when we suffer and we’re to praise when we have success. Now, let’s look at what we’re to do when we have sickness.
3. When we have sickness. Follow along with me as I read verses 14-15: “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. 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.”
This is a difficult passage to understand. Let me state up front what the question is not.
The question is not, “Does God answer prayer?” We know He does.
The question is not, “Does God answer prayer for the sick?” Yes He does.
The question is not, “Does God sometimes answer in ways that seem miraculous? Again, the answer is yes. All these things are true.
Furthermore, the focus here is not on what God is able to do. We know that God can do anything He wants to do. As we learned last week, God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). The focus in this passage is on what the church can do. These verses tell us how a Bible-believing church responds to sickness in its midst. What should we do for the sick? The answer is both simple and profound. We should pray that God would raise them up.
A Four-Step Process
There are at least 4 steps in the process of praying for the sick.
Step #1: The sick person calls for the elders. The word “sick” is very broad. It includes any serious physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or relational problem that has become too heavy to bear. The elders are called because they represent the church and because they know how to get in touch with God.
Step #2: The elders go to the sick person. They go together because there is strength in numbers. And, by going in person, their prayers can be much more fervent, heartfelt and earnest. In addition, by going to the sick person, the elders communicate the message that the church has not forgotten those who are sick.
Step #3: The elders pray and anoint with oil. When the elders come to pray, James tells them to anoint the sick person with oil. The word literally means to “rub” oil on him. The type of oil in not specified but it was probably not Pennzoil! More than likely it was olive oil.
Oil in the Bible was often used as a symbol of health and vitality. Kings were anointed with it as a visible symbol of God’s presence. The same is true here. There’s nothing magical or supernatural about it. By anointing with oil, we are giving a humble reminder that all healing must come from God. It builds faith and says to the sick person, “God is here and He is able to heal you.”
Notice that the anointing is to be done “in the name of the Lord.” This is very important because it reminds us that God is the ultimate source of all blessing and healing. The power is not in the elders, in the oil, or even in the prayers -- but in the name of the Lord.
Step #4: There is healing. Verse 15 makes a rather bold promise: “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well…” This fourth step is simply the expected result of steps 1-3: The sick person is healed. James uses an unusual expression to describe the elders’ prayer. He calls it “the prayer offered in faith.” This particular phrase is used nowhere else in the New Testament. In one sense every sincere prayer must be offered in faith or it can hardly be called prayer at all. When the elders pray, they are to come to God with an attitude of complete trust that He can and will do what is needed in every situation.
I believe that the “prayer of faith” is similar to the gift of faith mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:9. Since faith itself is the gift of God, perhaps James means to say that when God wants to heal someone, he gives the elders the boldness to pray a prayer of faith with great confidence.
The text says nothing about how the healing will come, nor does it rule out medical care. In fact, oil also had a medicinal property to it and may have communicated to James’ first century readers that God heals through prayer and medicine. Whether quickly or slowly, by miracle or by medicine, or by some combination of the two, God is able to heal His children.
And so, we are to pray when we suffer, we are to praise when we have success, and we are to call the elders when we have sickness. There’s one more significant factor in this text: we are to pray when we’re in sin.
4. When we have sin. Notice the last part of verse 15 and verse 16: “If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 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.”
Do you see the close relationship between the physical and the spiritual here? The Greek construction of the “if” clause suggests that sin may be a contributing factor in the sickness.
David, after committing some pretty bad sins, started to feel the effects in his body. Listen to how he describes the link between his walk with God and his physical health in Psalm 32:3-5: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
Friend, it’s extremely important that you confess your sins to God and to others. Sin can work its way into our bodies, causing us to feel like we’re wasting away.
This happened to me recently. I’ve known for quite some time that I needed to make something right. I justified, rationalized, and talked myself into thinking that I could just ignore it. I said to myself, “It’s no big deal. No one will know. I’m not really doing anything wrong.”
But then the conviction came. My heart would start racing when I thought about it. Beth and I both agreed that we needed to make it right. And so, this week I went into the cable company office and said, “I have a confession to make. We’ve been using cable without paying for it.” This was hard to do because the manager knows who I am. I explained to her that the cable was already hooked up when we moved in and that we’ve never said anything. We first thought that the previous owners must have paid for a couple extra months, and then we thought the cable company would eventually send us a bill, or disconnect the service, but it never happened.
I told her that I wanted to make it right and she processed all the paperwork. When I walked out of the office, my conscience was clear and my stomach was no longer in knots.
Friends, we need to own our sins don’t we? If you can think of something right now that you’ve done, or are still doing, confess it to someone. The word “confess” in this verse means, “to say the same thing out.” Find a fellow believer and agree with what God says about your sin.
Not all sickness is caused by a particular sin, but some illnesses stem directly from our sinful actions and attitudes. Until those things are confronted and confessed, it is pointless to pray for healing. Whenever I am asked to anoint the sick with oil, I always inquire as to their spiritual condition and I ask if they are conscious of any sin that is standing between them and God, blocking His healing power. Sometimes they make a confession, sometimes they don’t.
Our greatest problem with this entire passage comes in verse 15. It seems too confident and too dogmatic for us. James states without any qualification that the sick person will be healed. Period. We would prefer to read it as “the prayer of faith may save the sick.”
It is an undeniable fact that not everyone we pray for and not everyone we anoint is healed. There are various ways of dealing with this reality and none of them satisfy me completely. There is a mystery here that I cannot fully explain. I do think it helps to compare this passage with other statements about prayer in the New Testament where similar sweeping promises are made. Those statements are meant to encourage us about the boundless possibilities of prayer. They encourage us to believe that no situation is hopeless with God. Just because the doctors have lost hope doesn’t mean the Great Physician has given up.
This happened to me several years ago when I was pastoring in Rockford. One of the men in our church got really sick. He was rushed to the hospital and was put on a ventilator. After a couple days, his kidneys shut down and he went into a coma. The doctors told me to help prepare the family for his death.
Do you know what I did? I’m a little ashamed to admit that instead of praying for Mike at that point, I told the family what the doctors had told me. When I met with Mike’s son, he said, “No, I’m not going to believe that. He’s going to get better.” I tried to help him see that there was no hope. Later that night I got a call from his son. Mike had come out of his coma, his kidneys were working and he was breathing on his own. A few days later he was released from the hospital and is doing fine today.
That experience taught me that God can do anything He wants to. He wanted Mike to live. I also learned that I should always pray in faith for God to heal someone, and not give up until God makes it clear. F.B. Meyer writes, “The greatest tragedy is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.”
How, then, should we pray for the sick? Three words come to mind. We should pray…
Aggressively because God can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.
Fervently because the fervent prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective.
Submissively because God’s understanding of the total situation is much greater than ours. Just because we think physical healing would be best doesn’t mean that God agrees with us. We should ask for what we want without telling God how to answer our prayers.
Biblical Healing
Most of us think of healing as “getting rid of the disease.” It’s like running the clock of life backwards and restoring the person to their previous state. But healing is a very broad concept that involves coming into a right relationship with God first and foremost. Then it touches every part of life -- body, soul, and spirit. It involves the healing of all broken relationships and brings us to a place where we can receive God’s blessings in a new and powerful way.
Someone has said that, “Healing in the Bible is not becoming what we were but becoming all that God intends us to be.” When we pray for healing, we should not focus on the physical to the exclusion of the spiritual, emotional, and relational sides of life. We are not healed until we are made whole on every level of our existence.
As I survey this text in light of the whole Bible, the following two statements seems absolutely true:
It is not always God’s will to heal physically or no sick believer would ever die.
It is often God’s will to heal that’s why this passage is in the Bible.
Sometimes we focus on one statement to the exclusion of the other but both are true, aren’t they? Part of our problem is that is we have lost our faith in God’s will to heal, and the role of the elders in the healing process.
Our elders are to be men of prayer. In order for their prayers to make a difference, they must be men of vital, living faith, ready to pray even in desperate circumstances. On a personal note, let me add that I thank God for every one of PBC’s elders. They are all godly men of great faith. If I were sick, I would call on any and all of them to pray for me and so should you.
Conclusion
When Hudson Taylor first went to China, he made the voyage on a sailing ship. As it neared the channel between the southern Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, the missionary heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door. He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship.
“Mr. Taylor,” he said, “We have no wind. We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals.”
“What can I do?” asked Taylor.
“I understand that you believe in God. I want you to pray for wind.”
Taylor responded, “All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail.”
The captain was agitated and said, “Why, that’s ridiculous! There’s not even the slightest breeze. Besides, the sailors will think I’m crazy.” Nevertheless, the captain finally agreed. Forty-five minutes later he returned and found the missionary still on his knees.
“You can stop praying now,” said the captain. “We’ve got more wind than we know what to do with!”
Friends, God is willing to answer when we pray with faith. He will heal and He will lead through times of suffering, during times of success, in times of sickness, and even when we’re trapped in sin.
Brothers and sisters, let’s pray and set the sails!
