Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this beautiful day a gift from the Lord. I trust that you had a blessed and beautiful weekend. One of the blessings of this past weekend was the a visit of Doyle and Caroline Valentine, a pastoral couple from Louisiana. They, along with few others, went to India with us on a short term mission in July, 1996. That was the year our whole family went to India. My wife, Alice, and our daughter, Laureen, came down with malaria after returning back the States. One of the team members was a young man Joshua. When he returned back to the States, he came down with malaria and nearly died. Thanks be to Jesus, the Lord, who restored him back to health. He is currently an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church, serving in Louisiana. The whole team stayed in the house where I was born, which was burned down last year by Hindu Radicals. The Rev.'s Valentine drove up here to see us. It has been great blessing to see them and converse with them again. Praise the Lord for the communion of saints.
The Lord blessed us wonderfully in His House yesterday. One of the readings for yesterday was taken from James 5: 13ff. This is a portion of the message I shared yesterday. The whole of the Christian life is to be lived in communion with God, the good and the bad, manifested by prayer. In verse 13 we see the praying Christian. It gets harder later on but James' message here is very clear: in every circumstance of life, pray. The whole of the Christian life is to be lived in the communion with God. The good and the bad in the Christian life is to be lived in communion with God. The joyful and the heartbreaking in the Christian life is to be lived in communion with God. That communion with God in good times and in bad times is to be manifested by prayer. It is written, “Is anyone among you suffering?” (What do you suppose is the response to that?) "Then let him pray." “Is anyone cheerful", (are things going well, has God blessed you beyond you imagination? What’s the proper response?) “Let him sing praises.” The Christian life is to be consecrated to God by prayer so that every pleasure is hallowed and every pain is sanctified. We are to so live the Christian life that every pleasure is made holy by our acknowledging that it comes from the hand of our loving heavenly Father. In every season of rejoicing it is to be hallowed with praise.
James clearly doesn't indicate that praise and prayer are to be reserved for seasons of rejoicing. He says that we are to pray to the Lord in those seasons of suffering. Calvin said it beautifully, “There is no time in which God does not invite us to Himself.” This is exactly the point that James is making. Even in the extremes of life, whether in cheerfulness and in unbearable sorrow, we are to go to the Lord in prayer. God wants us to talk to Him at all times. In trouble He is our comforter; in joy He is the giver of all joy, and in going to Him in prayer we hallow every pleasure and we sanctify every pain.
Alec Motyer beautifully wrote, “Our whole life should be so angled towards God that whatever strikes upon us, whether sorrow or joy, should be deflected upwards at once into His presence.”
James is further reminding us in verses 14 and 15 that the Christian life is a life of community. It's about believers who help one another, who assist one another, who encourage one another to love and good deeds, who pray with and for one another and who are seeking to live together as heirs of the grace of life. Since the Christian life is one of community it makes sense that there are certain times when you don't simply need another Christian to pray with you, but you need the communion of saints to be represented, praying with and for you.
Furthermore, the Christian life is dependent upon the Lord and upon the work of the Spirit. What better way to manifest that reliance on the one hand in the communion of the saints, and on the other hand on the Lord, than to call the elders together to pray for you in a very serious circumstance. James' word is in verse 14. If you are seriously ill, what should you do? You are to call for the elders to pray for you. He links this healing, prayer, the elders, and God's divine intervention. The Christian must believe that God is able and that prayer is his instrument.
Finally, James knows that praying in times of suffering, remembering to praise God in good times, praying when we are gravely ill, and praying in the case of a broken personal relationship, can tax our faith in God, and so in verses 16 through 18 he gives a picture of the praying prophet Elijah. Elijah was a fallible person, even as we are, and that fallibility is very apparent in Scripture. Yet, when Elijah prayed, it didn't rain in the country where he was for three and a half years. Then, when he prayed again, it poured. The point James makes is this, “Don't ever discount prayer, don't ever underestimate the power of prayer.”
Tony Campolo tells a story about being in a church in Oregon where he was asked to pray for a man who had cancer. 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." Campolo thought when he heard her use the past tense verb that his cancer had been eradicated! But before he could think much about it she said, "He died." Campolo 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 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 everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence.
The lady continued, “After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We’ve sung. We’ve laughed. We’ve read Scripture. We 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."
Jesus answers prayers of His people.
In Him,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1FQqSGxBso
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