In the film, The Perfect Storm, a true story about an ocean going fishing boat that went off the coast of Massachusetts, way out into a storm. They didn’t go out into a storm but a storm developed in the ocean there, the North Atlantic. And they were trying to get back through the storm. And if you’ve seen that movie, it was a confluence of a big hurricane, and another storm front coming off the coast of the United States and another cold front coming down from Canada. So, it was a terrific storm. In the movie there, they’re coming back and they’re trying to come through it and at some point the captain decides, "We’ve got to turn around." And so, they’re in the fifty foot seas and every one of them is threatening to broach the boat. The captain is up in the wheel house with one other crewman. All the other crewmen are below decks. And so, the captain says, "Now, we’ve only got one chance at this." Because they’re going to go up the face of a wave and turn, surfing back down. "We’ve only got once chance at this." And his mate says, "And if we don’t make it?" He says, "Then we pray." Isn’t that typical? Isn’t that typical?
We’d like to think it’s typical of the world. Well, I’m afraid it’s typical of us as well. Having exhausted all other remedies, all other options, having tried everything else, we pray. Well that may be normal for the world. But, we’re not the world. We’re the children of the King. And while the world may consider coming to God in prayer as a terribly, overwhelmingly powerful event and they’re shaking in their boots, the fact is that as children of the King we know that God our Heavenly Father is saying, "What can I do for you today?" And yet, too often our response to trouble is everything but prayer. Prayer is the natural response to the loving revealed character of God. He has said, "This is what I’m like. This is what I’m like. Come to me. Pray to me. Ask what you will." It is not a dead practice of religious ritual. "We will now pray." Pray; the natural response of a person who is in a loving relationship with God.
I told you last week that we were going to leave our ’guilt bags’ at home, and we are going to leave our ’guilt bags’ at home. I even hesitate to use the word ’should’ in a sermon about prayer because we all get out our little whips and say, "Yeah. I should do that." But, as we look at the passage, we realize that this is what …. This is the normal response of the transformed heart. The normal response of a person who once was the enemy of God and now is the child of God. The normal response, not the whipped response, not the guilted response, the normal, natural response is to come to God in prayer. Now, we’re going to deal with some questions in this passage. It’s a tough passage in a lot of ways, the one that Chris read for us. But just remember, let’s remember what this passage is about. And it is about that prayer instead of being our final act when we are out of options, after we’ve done everything else, we finally pray. But, rather our first.
That’s the first statement that I want to make this morning is this. Prayer should be our natural first response. We do equate first responses with instinct, don’t we? You’re in a situation and all of a sudden you’re presented with a problem and we respond instinctively to it. You’re driving down the road on one of our super streets here and all of a sudden someone pulls out of their driveway right into your way. And so we don’t think, "I wonder what I should do in this situation, now someone’s pulled out directly….?" No. We instinctively slam on the brakes.
I heard of a woman who came home to find her husband in the kitchen shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist toward the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she instinctively whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he had been happily listening to his walkman. Instinct can be dangerous. But, isn’t it true that our instinctive first response is a great indicator of what or in whom we trust? When trouble happens, "Call 911!" We trust the fire department. "Call the police!" We trust the police. You’ll see, parents, you know that if your child is far away from you and they get hurt or scared, they will run through a whole crowd of people in their hurry to get to you. "Mommy!" Their instinctive first response is who we trust in or what we trust in.
James has a suggestion here in verse 13 of who that might be. Verse 13, "Is any of you in trouble?" The word ’trouble’ here is, this is the only place, here and one other place in James where this particular Greek word is used in all of the New Testament. And it means ’trouble not related to injury or illness,’ because James deals with that later on. Trouble not related to injury or illness, so that could be financial trouble, legal trouble. It could be occupational trouble or relational trouble. All kinds of opportunities for trouble in our lives. "I’m in trouble. Things are not going well. This situation has arisen that I don’t know how to deal with." Are you in trouble?
Let’s take finances as an example. I’m going to guess that at some point in our lives all of us can relate to the idea of financial trouble. Many of us, at the first sign of financial trouble, maybe we think, "Let’s get a loan." Or maybe we think, "Let’s liquidate an asset. We have all these children. Certainly we can get at least a couple thousand dollars for one of them." Or maybe we will turn the thermostat up to 85*, or if you live in Minnesota down to 60*. Or we will put our children to work, if nobody will buy them, give them a paper route and have them bring the money home. Or maybe we will play the lottery or something. But, we will do something when we get in financial trouble. Lower costs, raise income. And James has this really simple response, "You’re in financial trouble?" He says, "You should pray." Ah. James, isn’t he being simplistic here? Yeah. Sometimes simplistic is the best. It’s interesting that he doesn’t list other options. "Are you in trouble? Call your lawyer. Call your doctor. Call your homeowners association president. Call your pastor." Well, no. He says, "Pray." That doesn’t mean you can’t do those other things. But the first response to pray.
And, he says, "Is anyone happy?" Are things going well for you? Well, remember where that came from. Remember that there is a sovereign God who is allowing these things into your life and praise Him for it. Thank Him for it. The thing that is important for us to realize is that we don’t just make these our rules and tack them up on the wall. "When I’m in trouble, pray. When I’m happy, I give praise. There. Two more rules to live by." That’s not the idea. The idea here is of a relationship in which prayer, thanksgiving, coming to God with our needs, coming to God with our thanks, is just a natural outflow of our relationship with Him. This is not as much a chronological command, that being flowchart, trouble, first thing, pray. That’s not what he’s doing here.
This is a call to let our reconciled relationship with God, the fact that we are His children, invade every part of our life. There is no part of our life, "Well, that’s something I can’t pray about. I’ve got to do something about that." As if prayer isn’t doing something. Isn’t it strange, we have somehow made the act of inviting God into every area of our life a somber, sorrowful, serious, go down the sawdust trail kind of decision. "Oh, I’m giving my whole life to God." As if, "Oh, it’s a terrible thing that I’m doing, but I must." Man. Where do we get that? Where do we get that idea that it’s this terribly wrenching, "Oh, I’m going to turn my life over to this capricious person that I’m not quite sure about." If we’re not sure about God, let’s read what He says about Himself and then let’s test Him to see what He is like. And we will find this gracious Heavenly Father. The truth is that inviting God to come alongside of us in our troubles, our joys, our areas of struggle, our relationships, our finances, is to invite this intimately loving and gracious Friend of unlimited power and wisdom to apply that character to our particular need.
Look at what it says in Romans 8, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." Did you know that God is praying for you all the time? God the Holy Spirit is praying for you all the time. All James is inviting us to do is to join with the Holy Spirit in praying and to experience that communication that takes place between ourselves and God. How do we do this? How do we get past this saving-prayer-for-when-we’re-really-really-in-trouble-and-nothing-else-has-worked mentality? I think we need maybe to develop in our lives what I’ll call prayer triggers. Years ago, someone told me this. Whenever they’d hear a siren of an emergency vehicle, they pray for the person who is perhaps hurt in an accident or maybe someone had a heart attack or maybe a child has drowned. They pray for the person in trouble. They also pray for the emergency personnel that they would have wisdom. Well, that’s just a prayer trigger. We can develop other kinds of prayer triggers in our lives. Maybe when someone comes to us with a concern and tells us that they’re having this particular difficulty, instead of saying, "I’ll pray for you.," and then, guilt-ridden, forget about it. But instead, to say, "Let’s pray right now about that. Let’s just stop and pray." There really is no time like the present. This person’s in trouble, aren’t they? Well, then, let’s pray. Let’s pray because it’s a natural part of our life with God. Bad news? Pray. Good news? Pray. We’re getting news all the time. News is a trigger to begin to develop the habit of praying.
The second thing I want to talk about this morning is that prayer is the result of relationship. Prayer is the result of relationship. How many of you have seen this commercial where this guy runs up to perfect strangers and says, "Guess what? I lowered my cholesterol." Have you seen that one? The thing that’s funny about that commercial is that he’s talking to people that really don’t care that he lowered his cholesterol. They may be generally happy that he’s healthier. But frankly, they could really care less that he’s lowered his cholesterol. Why? Because there’s no relationship with that person. The people that you ride from the first floor to the third floor on the elevator are not going to be your lifelong friends. They’re partners, they’re colleagues on an elevator for fifteen seconds. But, some people are interested, aren’t they? Sometimes when us men go to the doctor for our fifty thousand mile check up, we come home and our wives ask us, "What did he say your cholesterol was?" They’re not just being nosy, though we might think so. They’re concerned because they love us and they want us to stay around, which is a nice thing. The deeper our relationship is with someone, the more intimate that communication will be. We will share deeper things.
Verse 14, "Is anyone of you sick? Does any of you have an ailment? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord." Now the word that’s translated here, ’sick’ is actually the word for weak. But in the context, it’s clear that it means physically sick or physically weak. And you know what? It’s not always easy, is it, to share with each other physical weakness? It’s not always easy for us to say, "You know I’ve got this problem. I’ve got this illness. I’ve got this pain." But, James’ instructions are clear and they work on two levels.
We’re going to deal with the results of this prayer later, but let’s just look at the two levels of prayer that are being offered here. "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church." Now, here’s a thing that’s used very rarely, very rarely. I’ve been a pastor now for I think it’s almost twenty-five years and I think I’ve probably prayed for people in this kind of a context when they come and ask for prayer maybe three times. That’s not because myself and the elders are unwilling to do so, it’s because basically people don’t ask to be prayed for by the elders. But, this is easy to forget when we are sick, that God has provided for us people of spiritual maturity, who have a demonstrated walk with God, who can be the people in our lives who can be the hands and feet and touch and voice of God. I love this children’s sermon that Maureen gave here with the puppet, talking about fear. And giving the very appropriate response of when you’re fearful, you should pray. In fact, I’ve got a story here about somebody who did just that.
There was a child. His name was Timmy. And he was very afraid of what some of the children referred to, lightning and thunder. Very scary. And his mom and dad went into his room during a thunderstorm and said, "Now, Timmy, don’t be afraid. God is right here in the room with you." And he said, "Okay, okay. I won’t be afraid." But then his mommy and daddy went into their room and started to get ready for bed. The lightning clapped, the thunder rolled and Timmy screamed bloody murder. Timmy’s daddy and mommy went back to the room and said, "Honey, we thought we told you you didn’t need to be afraid. God is right here in the room with you." To which Timmy responded, "I know that God is right here in the room with me, but I needed someone with skin on." The worst thing in the world is to be alone. Some people seek it, but by and large, for 99.9% of us, being alone is a drag. And being alone when you’re sick is tough. And so, one of the things James says is, "Call in the troops. Get with people who can comfort you and can give you hope and can pray for you."
I remember a story of a lady in my first church up in Minnesota. This lovely woman, she was a single gal, she’d been single all of her life. She was probably about 65 when we were there. She had taught the 2s and 3s Sunday School class in that church for like a hundred years. When she was a young teenage girl, she had been engaged to one of the young men in the community, one of the young men in the church. And the night before her wedding, her fiancé hung himself in the barn. And nobody ever said a word to her. No one prayed with her. No one talked to her. It happened, they buried him and they got on with life. Brothers and sisters, we need each other. God has made the Church for a reason. God made the Church to be an organism to take care of the needs. And also to, in this situation of illness, "He should call on the elders to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord." He called them together so that they would pray so that there could be the compounding interest of their faith. Have there been times in your life when you didn’t have much faith? When you couldn’t come to God and say, "Lord, I prayed in faith that you would do something." It just wasn’t there. That’s another reason we need our Christian brothers and sisters to come and bring their faith into a situation that needs God’s help so desperately.
Communication is the result of relationship. We bring these things to God. We practice relationship with each other and we bring these needs to God. When we have a loving relationship with God, it’s natural to share our minds and our hearts and our fears and our hopes and our joys and our dreams and our needs. Why is that natural to do with God? Because we know that what is a concern for us is also a concern for the one who loves us. We come home from work or from other situations and something has happened that’s bad. When we come home, what do we do? Well, I know what I do. I go find my wife. Chase around the house looking for Jan. We do because we have something on our heart and we know that there’s someone who wants to hear that. Our concerns are their concerns, and their concerns are ours. So, it’s a natural thing. When James says, "If you’re sick, get some help from your friends and get some help from your Father." Marriages thrive where there is communication on a deep level.
God wants us to bring Him our concerns and our needs and our praises. And when we do we glorify Him as the one that we trust. Is God glorified when we run off in every different direction when there’s trouble? When He’s standing there saying, "I can help you. I can help you." And His children run by Him or run away from Him on the way to find someone else, something else to help. God says, "I’m here with all the money in the bank, all the riches in the world, all the power, all the love."
Prayer, finally, unleashes omniscient power. Prayer unleashes omniscient power. Notice I say omniscient power. We sometimes think that prayer is something, "I pray a prayer and whatever I want God has to do or else He’s breaking promises." This passage is one of those tough ones. Verse 15, "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. Therefore, confess your sins to each other. Pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." Now, the language here is very specific, very specific. Because it sounds like the minute we pray that person will just pop up and everything will be great. How many of you have experienced in your life a time when you’ve prayed for somebody and nothing happened? Me, too. I remember seeing the movie about the life of Joni Earikson Tada. When she was first quadriplegic, had broken her neck and she had gone through this long period of depression and somebody wanted to marry her and he also wanted to pray for her healing, claiming this verse. And so he took her in a wheelchair to a church, and he prayed according to this prayer, and he opened his eyes expecting something miraculous to happen and nothing happened. And he left that relationship and was never heard from again. It’s tough. It’s tough.
Paul is an example of a man of great faith who was used to heal others. Good grief, Paul even raised someone from the dead who had fallen out of a window during one of his long sermons. He died on the pavement. Paul went down and prayed for him and he came back to life. And if Paul could do that, why does Paul say in 2 Corinthians about this thorn in the flesh, "Three times I pleaded with God to take it away from me [whatever it was] and he said to me, ’My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me." That’s why I’m talking about omniscient power, all-knowing power, because ultimately the prayer of faith says, "This is what I want to happen, but I’m coming to You God because I know that You know better than I do what should happen and what You want to happen. And I will come to You in faith, believing that You will respond to this prayer in the way that is ultimately the best for me." The prayer of faith is a prayer that recognizes both God’s power to heal and His infinite wisdom to perhaps not heal. God is sovereign. God is sovereign.
I read this story this week and it’s an amazing one. Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. And so Tony Campolo prayed boldly for the man’s healing. That next week he got a telephone call from the man’s wife. She said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." And Campolo thought, when he heard her use the past tense about his cancer, that it had been eradicated. But before he could think much about it, she said, "He died." Of course, he felt terrible. But she continued, "Don’t feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday, he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time and he hated God. He was 58 years old and he wanted to see his children and his grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn’t take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everyone around him. It was an awful thing. It was an awful thing to be in his presence." But she went on to say, "After you prayed for him, the peace had come over him and the joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our life. We’ve sung. We’ve laughed. We’ve read Scripture. We’ve prayed. Oh, they’ve been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing." And then she said something incredibly profound. She said, "He wasn’t cured, but he was healed."
God knows. God knows. And we don’t, do we? We pray and ask God for something. Do we really want a God who’s not quite as smart as us, for us to tell Him what to do and He does it? "God do this. God do that." No, He says, "Come and ask. Ask. And let’s see what good things I have for you." We might feel like actors on a stage sometimes, reading a script. A fatalistic approach, "God is going to do what He’s going to do and I’m just kind of walking through my lines." Well, God is sovereign. Well, part of that sovereignty is for us to pray. He has said, "I’m going to do some things. But, I’m going put this little human kicker in here. I’m going to do some… I have a plan. And I’m going to call you, as part of that plan, to pray and act. Because the plan is not only to accomplish certain things, but it’s also to accomplish things in your life and in our relationship. And so, I’m going to invite you to pray and trust that the answer to that prayer is going to be the best thing that I’ve got for you." You know what? This is going to sound simplistic, but that’s okay. With all the mystery that surrounds prayer, and all the mystery that surrounds God, you know what sometimes we need to do is put down the question and pray, "I don’t get it, God. But I can do the one thing You call me to do. I can pray and I will pray."
I’m going to propose an experiment. I would like some people, I’m not going to do it right now. I’m not going to embarrass you. I would like to ask if there are some people who would join me in a month long prayer. Our church has a financial need. We’re squeaking by. This is not a fundraising experiment. This is a prayer experiment. I’m going to ask people to volunteer to join me to pray for the finances of our church everyday. From September 14th to October 14th. And I want us to pray everyday for God’s provision for the finances of our church. I’m not going to give you a reminder, but I will remind you next week. I’ll remind myself. Pray every day. Go to our Father and ask Him if He will supply our needs. Okay? Sometimes we just have to fish or cut bait, you know? Sometimes we have to just say, "I’ve got these questions, but here’s what I know for sure." And what we know for sure, brothers and sisters, is that God has asked us to act out our relationship with Him and act on our relationship to Him by praying, by bring our little problems, by bringing our praises, by bringing our illnesses, by praying together, by praying for specific things and asking for specific things, believing that God is a great God and a loving God, our Father.
