The Mature Live Within a Praying Community—James 5:13-20

[00:00:06] Podcast.

[00:00:08] To learn more about our church, please visit Calvary.com.

[00:00:12] For additional resources from our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge, please visit NateHoldridge.com.

[00:00:19] Teaching today is our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge.

[00:00:25] Great to see you guys today and on a like Janine Siddleston to James chapter 5.

[00:00:30] And a Lord Willing, we're going to finish our study of James this morning, our 12th teaching,

[00:00:35] looking at this book together.

[00:00:37] James chapter 5 and it's a little bit, it's not a super long passage but it's not very short either.

[00:00:44] So let's read it all together kind of the through line of this passage is prayer as I'm sure you'll notice.

[00:00:51] So let's read it together starting in James chapter 5 verse 13.

[00:00:56] James writes and says, is anyone among you suffering?

[00:01:01] Let him pray.

[00:01:02] Is anyone cheerful?

[00:01:05] Let him sing praise.

[00:01:08] Is anyone among you sick?

[00:01:10] Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him,

[00:01:16] anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick

[00:01:23] and the Lord will raise him up.

[00:01:25] And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

[00:01:29] Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

[00:01:38] The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

[00:01:43] Elijah was a man with a nature like ours and he prayed,

[00:01:46] and he was a servant of the Lord, and he prayed again.

[00:01:55] And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain and the earth bore its fruit.

[00:01:59] My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back,

[00:02:06] let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death

[00:02:12] and cover a multitude of sins.

[00:02:16] Let's pray together.

[00:02:17] Lord, we thank you today for the book that you have given to us.

[00:02:22] The entire scripture, the Bible, of course.

[00:02:26] But in particular, for our purposes today, the Book of James.

[00:02:31] Lord, thank you for it.

[00:02:32] Thank you for its candor, its straightforward manner, its direct style,

[00:02:37] its highly applicable material.

[00:02:42] Lord, we thank you for it.

[00:02:43] We thank you for these last few months as we've been able to, as a church,

[00:02:48] think about the profile of maturity that James, under the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, laid out.

[00:02:55] Thank you, God, for if I could say it even this way, confronting us with such a vision.

[00:03:03] And Lord, we pray that we would not be guilty of lowering the bar but that we'd keep it.

[00:03:09] Right where James said it.

[00:03:12] Lord, that we could see you working in our lives, maturing us into deeper,

[00:03:18] Christ's likeness and so we pray for that, Lord.

[00:03:21] We ask that you would stir our faith that we be a people that are full of faith,

[00:03:27] faithfully walking the way that you'd have us to walk.

[00:03:29] So thank you, Lord, for your word.

[00:03:31] And I know we pray that you'd use it in our lives even today as we consider James one last time together as a church in this season.

[00:03:38] We thank you, Lord, and Jesus' name.

[00:03:41] Amen. Amen.

[00:03:44] Well, if you were to walk up to a campfire, at night in your camping spot,

[00:03:50] and the fire was raging, you would expect that as you approached it

[00:03:58] and as your hands reached out toward it, that you would feel its warmth.

[00:04:05] Heat is simply a natural byproduct of that fire.

[00:04:11] And here, James closes his letter on Christian maturity,

[00:04:17] profiling for us what a mature faith filled faith centered full of belief and trust

[00:04:25] and confidence in God life looks like.

[00:04:30] And it's no mystery why he would conclude with the subject of prayer.

[00:04:36] For James, faith is like the fire and prayer is like the heat.

[00:04:43] Where there is faith, where there is confidence in God,

[00:04:47] where there is expectation in God, where there is belief in God,

[00:04:51] where there is leaning on God.

[00:04:54] One would expect to find prayer.

[00:04:59] Particularly to James, not just individuals of prayer,

[00:05:05] but a community of prayer comprised of course of many individuals.

[00:05:10] I mean, all in this passage you have specific people, a cheerful person,

[00:05:16] or a suffering person, or a sick person, crying out to God.

[00:05:21] But you also have all of these prayers embedded in the community of he calls it the church,

[00:05:29] which also has elders or pastors presiding over it, leading it,

[00:05:34] willing to pray, especially for those who are sick.

[00:05:37] And it has a one to another aspect.

[00:05:41] He says, confessed your sins to one another.

[00:05:44] So in James's vision, he sees this prayer community.

[00:05:50] If it's a faith community to James, it is a prayer community.

[00:05:56] And so today I want to spend our time thinking about some of the ways

[00:06:01] or some of the ingredients to this prayer community that James describes.

[00:06:07] So we've already read the passage once, but we'll read it again as we pick through it.

[00:06:11] Together in the first thing I want to point out to you this morning is,

[00:06:16] as an ingredient of this prayer community,

[00:06:19] is their inspiration for prayers or prayer inspiration.

[00:06:23] Look again at verse 13 and 14 with me, James,

[00:06:27] rattles off this quick fire succession of questions.

[00:06:32] Is anyone among you suffering, he said,

[00:06:35] let him pray, is anyone cheerful he then asked,

[00:06:40] let him sing praise?

[00:06:42] And is anyone among you sick?

[00:06:44] Well here's what this person is to do.

[00:06:46] Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him,

[00:06:50] annoying him with oil in the name of the Lord.

[00:06:55] It's like for James, he just thinks about a few of the situations

[00:07:00] that we will all find ourselves in at some point in life.

[00:07:04] At some point, we'll be very sick.

[00:07:07] At some point there will be something to be cheerful and joyful about.

[00:07:10] At some point, we would categorize ourselves as suffering.

[00:07:14] And in all of those points, James says,

[00:07:16] the destination when you're experiencing those experiences is prayer.

[00:07:22] I remember years ago my family,

[00:07:25] it was actually in 2019 when the church gave me a sabbatical after ten years

[00:07:30] as the lead pastor and twenty years serving on staff at the church.

[00:07:35] They gave me a sabbatical,

[00:07:37] so I got to just take a couple of months to just kind of recharge

[00:07:40] and get reloaded for the next season that was coming.

[00:07:43] It's actually really the Lord's timing.

[00:07:44] God knew what he was doing because he knew that the COVID era

[00:07:48] was about to come and half the pastors in America.

[00:07:51] We're going to quit during that season.

[00:07:53] And so he was building up my strength before that moment in time.

[00:07:57] Just looking back.

[00:07:58] But we had a great time.

[00:07:59] And one of the things we did is we went to England.

[00:08:01] And we spent a few weeks just there in England.

[00:08:04] Someone gifted us a home to be able to stay in up in the city of York.

[00:08:09] And so occasion, you know what?

[00:08:11] Our tridham was basically we would one day we'd get on a train and we'd go somewhere

[00:08:16] and then we'd come back.

[00:08:17] And then the next day we would hang out in York.

[00:08:20] And then the next day we'd go somewhere and the next day we'd go back to York.

[00:08:23] One night we went to London to watch a show.

[00:08:27] And we'd seen a couple of shows there in London before.

[00:08:31] But this one was in a smaller little venue.

[00:08:33] It was actually a fiddler on the roof if you've never ever seen that before.

[00:08:36] It was great.

[00:08:37] We got like these like $3 tickets.

[00:08:40] So that means that we were like this.

[00:08:42] It was like we were just looking down like this at the venue or at the stage.

[00:08:48] But because we'd been to a couple of other shows where we were there,

[00:08:53] our assumption after the show was that we would walk out and there'd be a bunch of taxis

[00:08:58] and we could hop in one and we could get on the train station

[00:09:02] and take the last train out of London up to York.

[00:09:08] And but we came out of this little rinky-dying theater

[00:09:11] and I guess it was too small for any taxis to be there.

[00:09:14] So we're there in the middle of the night, late at night,

[00:09:16] we're like, man, there's one last train getting up to York.

[00:09:21] And it was just a comedy of errors.

[00:09:24] Just I'm trying to flag down a taxi.

[00:09:26] One finally picks up my youngest daughter.

[00:09:29] She was really young at the time.

[00:09:31] She just crying because she's thinking like,

[00:09:33] because I had to go get luggage out of this thing

[00:09:35] and I sent them to the train station.

[00:09:37] I'm like, just get on the train.

[00:09:39] I'm coming, you know.

[00:09:40] And she's like, Dad's gonna be left in London forever.

[00:09:44] You know?

[00:09:46] It was a very emotional time.

[00:09:48] I made it, you know, I got on the train.

[00:09:50] It was just like, it was a real Jason Bourne moment in my life.

[00:09:55] But one of the things that was comforting

[00:10:01] was that I was able to tell them, hey,

[00:10:05] from London you can get anywhere in England.

[00:10:08] We're fine.

[00:10:09] I'll figure it out, you know,

[00:10:11] because they have a saying there in England all trains lead to London.

[00:10:17] It wasn't as comforting that night,

[00:10:18] because we weren't trying to get to London.

[00:10:20] We were trying to get to York and not all trains lead to York

[00:10:22] at that time.

[00:10:24] But that was kind of my way of comforting them.

[00:10:26] Don't worry, all trains lead to London.

[00:10:28] That's James's perspective about all the experiences of life.

[00:10:34] They all for a faith filled mature person.

[00:10:38] They lead to prayer.

[00:10:40] They lead to prayer.

[00:10:41] He points out the suffering person.

[00:10:43] So the suffering person,

[00:10:46] whether they're dealing with an external emotional or spiritual distress

[00:10:52] should cry out to God.

[00:10:56] What are we looking for when we're suffering?

[00:10:58] And we go to God in prayer.

[00:11:00] Well, of course there's that part of our hearts

[00:11:02] as human beings that is looking for relief.

[00:11:07] But we, as mature prayers,

[00:11:10] should be looking for more than just simple relief.

[00:11:14] We should be looking for wisdom.

[00:11:16] We should be looking for lessons from God.

[00:11:18] What are you trying to teach me here in the midst of this trial?

[00:11:21] This pain that I'm going through,

[00:11:23] what ways are you trying to shape my character?

[00:11:26] So we should be looking for relief.

[00:11:28] We should be looking for wisdom.

[00:11:30] We should be looking for God to give us more endurance.

[00:11:33] Strengthen me.

[00:11:34] I can't get out of this right now.

[00:11:36] I gotta go through this time of suffering.

[00:11:38] And so I need your endurance.

[00:11:40] And your strength build that character within me.

[00:11:43] And I need your grace as I pass through the hardships of life.

[00:11:47] But then James says that the cheerful person,

[00:11:50] their form of prayer he says is praise.

[00:11:54] You know,

[00:11:55] I tend to be a little bit of a melancholy person.

[00:11:58] So I'm sure from the pulpit sometimes I can make Christianity sound like it's just always a rugged,

[00:12:03] hard, difficult experience.

[00:12:05] And I'm sorry if I've misled some of you because there are beautiful joyful, wonderful experiences attached to being a believer.

[00:12:15] I truly believe it is the best life that you can possibly live.

[00:12:19] There are difficulties attached to it, of course.

[00:12:22] And there are difficulties that as Christians we choose, of course.

[00:12:25] Just like Jesus chose the cross.

[00:12:27] We choose to pick up our cross daily follow after him.

[00:12:30] So those hardships are there.

[00:12:32] But there are deep joys in walking with the Lord.

[00:12:37] Sometimes it's just life victories, things that he's doing in our lives.

[00:12:40] Little successes that we get to celebrate before him.

[00:12:45] Sometimes it's the sense of relief or forgiveness or the removal of shame.

[00:12:49] It can be a million different things that God will do and produce in our lives.

[00:12:55] But there are times where we have a reason to cheer and celebrate and be joyful.

[00:13:01] And we need to turn that into praise of God.

[00:13:05] Praise of God.

[00:13:07] Not in some paranoid kind of way, like if I don't do that then I won't.

[00:13:11] He won't give me other reasons to be cheerful.

[00:13:14] But because we recognize that every good and perfect gift flows from our father above.

[00:13:22] I think a great template or illustration of this is found in the Old Testament when the people of Israel

[00:13:27] finally were released from their Egyptian captivity and crossed miraculously the Red Sea.

[00:13:34] When the sea closed behind them and their victory was complete, what did they do?

[00:13:40] They sang the song of the sea.

[00:13:43] They got out their tambourines and their instruments and myriam Moses' sister led them in a beautiful song

[00:13:50] where they recounted the faithfulness of God and in that praise trusted what God was going to do.

[00:13:57] But to do for them in the future, praise is a real faith builder and James said when anyone is cheerful let them praise.

[00:14:06] But then he said in this third category that the person who is sick should also pray.

[00:14:15] Now this term for sickness from James it indicates something really serious.

[00:14:20] This is affecting life to a serious degree.

[00:14:27] It could be a word that indicates physical sickness.

[00:14:31] It was used that way all throughout the Bible, especially in the gospels.

[00:14:36] Same word that was used to describe people that Jesus healed.

[00:14:40] They were sick. This is the word that James uses right here.

[00:14:44] But it's also a word that is sometimes used in the ancient Greek language to describe spiritual or emotional weakness and weariness of some kind.

[00:14:55] So because of that, people have approached this passage from James in a couple of different ways.

[00:15:02] Either they say James is alluding to spiritual weakness.

[00:15:07] A person is just in a moment of deep despair. It's the opposite of cheer.

[00:15:14] There's an agony, there's a spiritual depression that has come upon them.

[00:15:20] They should James say call for the elders of the church to anoint them with oil which we'll talk about in a moment and pray for them.

[00:15:27] Either James is talking about that kind of person or he's talking about a person who just come up against some massive physical ailment

[00:15:36] that they have nothing, no power to control. Nothing they can do. They've got to turn to God in the midst of that or James is allowing for either situation.

[00:15:50] It's one of the other or both as far as the various interpretations go.

[00:15:55] Now in favor of the spiritual weakness view is that James promised some big promises.

[00:16:02] He said that the sick would be saved, so where do you use this?

[00:16:08] Then he talks about them being raised up and then a little later when he talks about someone who in that process they discover other sin in my life.

[00:16:19] He says when they confess and they're prayed for they will be healed.

[00:16:24] So saved raised up, healed. Those are big promises.

[00:16:28] And so for some people those promises are just too big to attach to the physical dimension.

[00:16:36] You read the rest of the New Testament and there's no guarantee that every single time a Christian is sick they can go to God and be healed of that sickness.

[00:16:45] And Christianity's been around for a couple thousand years now, no, no, no, no, no if you've noticed but we don't have any like two thousand year old Christians walking around.

[00:16:52] You know, who just like every time I got sick, I just went to the Lord and he healed me and here I am. I'm still here. Eventually we recognize all of us.

[00:17:00] We succumb to some kind of sickness, we die and then we meet the Lord.

[00:17:06] So because of that some have leaned towards the spiritual weakness view.

[00:17:11] But as I already said in favor of the physical illness view is the reality that James,

[00:17:19] who is very closely connected to Jesus and the Gospels and writes and a very like the Gospels manner in the Gospels.

[00:17:29] This word for physical illness was used for just that physical maladies or sickness.

[00:17:37] So I'll talk more about that in a little bit, but James here is saying something and I think you've got to wrestle with that and I'll talk about it in a couple of minutes.

[00:17:45] But then lastly, not only the suffering and joyful and sick but then he says in verse 15, the person entangled in sins should also pray to God.

[00:17:57] They should cry out to Him. Confess their sins to someone else, but they should be crying out to God. The prayer of faith will heal this person.

[00:18:06] They'll experience a time of refreshing from the Lord. The point that I'm trying to make is that James saw everything, even our failures, our sins as a ticket into some form of conversation with our Father in Heaven.

[00:18:28] You saw everything as driving us into times of prayer. Which, of course, makes all of us kind of inspect our own lives, our own faith, our own walk with God.

[00:18:39] Is that how I respond? Am I reflexively a prayerful person? We should ask ourselves that question. Am I reflexively in all of the experiences of life crying out to God in one way or another?

[00:18:54] And for you, if for you at all the answer is like sometimes or no, not really, then the homework that I would give to you, the prescription I would give to you.

[00:19:05] That's better than homework. Nobody wants to do homework. The prescription that I would give to you is I prescribe the songs to you. Just regularly have a little diet of the Psalms.

[00:19:18] Because the Psalms will show you this kind of all roads lead to prayer. All experiences lead to prayer kind of life. You'll see people who in times of joy cry out to God times of suffering cry out to God times of persecution cry out to God times of confusion cry out to God times of spiritual depression absolutely cry out to God times of doubt and wondering what God is doing crying out to God.

[00:19:45] You'll see all the experiences of life driving someone to prayer there in the Psalms. So I'd encourage you to do that.

[00:19:54] That's the first little section or motivations to pray kind of just like everything. Everything in life can drive us to cry out to the Lord.

[00:20:01] The second thing I want to talk to you about though is ingredient to prayer. What are the results? Prayer results here.

[00:20:13] And let's look at verse 15 and the first part of verse 16 again together.

[00:20:18] Says on the prayer of faith, will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up.

[00:20:27] And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

[00:20:32] Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

[00:20:38] Okay. Now we got to take a second and we got to just think about some of the results that James said will be attached to prayer.

[00:20:48] It's very clear. James did not think that prayer was just like a, I don't know, a spiritual exercise.

[00:20:55] He definitely did not think of prayer or something that you know if you're just like kind of anxious and you don't have peace.

[00:21:01] You just pray and that's really what prayer is. It just kind of calms you down. It settles you down. It can do that. James would say,

[00:21:10] But James's view is that prayer somehow calls down a living God who will actively work in your life,

[00:21:30] and because of his conviction that God responds to prayer, James spoke with certainty when he talked about the results of prayer,

[00:21:38] especially when he got into this portion about praying for those who are sick.

[00:21:44] He doesn't say what's going to happen to the suffering person who prays or the cheerful person who prays is,

[00:21:50] but he does talk here about what will happen for the sick person, very sick, who initiates with the elders.

[00:21:58] That's important. They need to be the one asking the pastoral group or the elders in the church to pray for them,

[00:22:07] to anoint them with oil as well in that prayer time. And James said,

[00:22:10] It's big promise the prayer faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up.

[00:22:16] If there's a sin connected to that sickness, James said, they'll be forgiven.

[00:22:22] And we should all as a result confess our sins he said to one another.

[00:22:26] And if we do, we'll be healed. So in some, what are the words that James uses to describe the results of prayer?

[00:22:31] He uses big words, saved, raised up, forgiven, healed.

[00:22:38] These are, I mean, James is not coming in light here. Like,

[00:22:42] Wow, you know, if you pray, like maybe he's not soft pedaling. He's like,

[00:22:46] I got us, I got something real strong to say about what will happen in prayer.

[00:22:51] Saving, raising, forgiving, healing.

[00:22:55] And I realize that for a lot of us, our first instincts in reading the passage like this,

[00:23:00] especially because there are strains of Christianity that just, you know,

[00:23:04] frankly, are just kind of get weird. And so we're worried, like,

[00:23:08] Oh, I don't want to be, I don't want to be weird. I don't want to be a weird Christian.

[00:23:12] And so we start looking for the qualifiers to a passage like this.

[00:23:18] And there are some qualifiers, like, for instance, James said that the prayer of faith on the part of the elders would what?

[00:23:27] It would save the sick. He saved the word heal for later,

[00:23:32] but the word he used was the word saved. Save is a broad word.

[00:23:35] It's a, it's a word that can mean heal or rescue or deliver.

[00:23:41] So perhaps James is alluding to the spiritual work that God does inside of a sick person when they cry out to God in this way.

[00:23:52] Another qualifier might be, as I already mentioned, to you, that the sick are not people who are necessarily physically sick,

[00:24:00] who are under some kind of spiritual depression, they're weary, they're exhausted in life,

[00:24:06] and elder prayer can lift them up. There are some qualifiers,

[00:24:10] but for the purposes of our church, I wonder if finding qualifiers and explainers is really what we need to be doing.

[00:24:17] Maybe what we need to be doing is, if you get really sick, you should ask the pastors of the church

[00:24:23] to annoy you with oil, and we should pray for you, and the prayer of faith will do something in your life as a result of those prayers.

[00:24:32] Maybe that's what we should be doing, and by the way, that's what we have been doing for like 45 years here in this church.

[00:24:39] This has been our view that if you come into real serious illness, the pastors would love to annoy you with oil and pray for you.

[00:24:48] Don't get the wrong idea, it's not going to be like a good, good, good, good kind of situation.

[00:24:53] It's not going to be super old testament, there's no like horn, animal horn, rams horn of oil that we uncork and like pour out on you.

[00:25:01] I got a little oil right here in my pocket. It looks like a chapstick, you know, we'll just do a little dabble do you?

[00:25:07] And then we will pray for you, and trust that God is going to do something in your life as a result of this elder pastoral prayer.

[00:25:18] In your life and heart. Now, I will admit that the intellectual, you know, that side of me, I'm uncomfortable with this kind of idea.

[00:25:31] I don't know what the oil is for instance, like what's up with that? I don't understand that really.

[00:25:36] You know it's like, I get that there's an interpretation that James is saying, oh, the oil, you know, it's the symbol of the Holy Spirit.

[00:25:42] We're asking the Spirit to be involved in this person's life, to lift them out of either their sickness or their spiritual maylays.

[00:25:49] That's what we want to have happened in their lives like maybe it was just like the best medicine James had at that time.

[00:25:57] And this is some kind of like encouragement. Like also go to the doctor too because we have that, you know, I maybe it's that and I would encourage you in that direction.

[00:26:08] But my hunch is that James was talking about physical sicknesses, local church elders and anointing oil that symbolized God's Spirit.

[00:26:18] And I also suspect that he thought something powerful would happen sometimes physical healing but always spiritual strengthening whenever the prayer of faith is uttered.

[00:26:30] And look, if our outward man is perishing as the Bible says it is and our inner man is being renewed day by day, which it is if we're walking with him.

[00:26:41] Then as our outward man is going through real serious decay and perishing doesn't it make sense that we would want to bolster what's happening inwardly at the very least.

[00:26:54] Yes, we might want to be physically touched ultimately that's our desire but not our will but your will be done, oh Lord.

[00:27:02] But we definitely know that we would want to see a spiritual strengthening occur as we're going through the cancers and the diseases and the injuries and the depressions and the major relational catastrophes of life.

[00:27:19] Right, so I think James is saying, hey, be a people who are ready to pray in this kind of way and I could just say like this, maybe believers in our modern world.

[00:27:31] Like we are, we need a little nudging this direction.

[00:27:34] My James is writing in the first century people, you know they didn't have, you know, emergency rooms and you know, docking a box, you know they didn't have telehealth.

[00:27:46] They didn't have all this kind of stuff and you know for us like we praise the Lord for that.

[00:27:52] I mean what we have to remember as Christians is that ultimately God is the author of all healing.

[00:27:58] First of all he made the human body so that it can heal.

[00:28:02] Secondly, he put the raw ingredients that were required for our healing and various medicines and vaccines and things like that in the material of the earth so that we would as you said in Genesis go out, subdue the earth.

[00:28:16] Bring it into subjections so when we're, you know, when a surgeon is doing his or her thing that's like,

[00:28:23] God made our body to be able to do that. It just took a long time for us to discover that we could do that but God is the originator of that's where to thank God for all of that.

[00:28:33] But at the same time, maybe we need to mix in a little bit of just that direct like I'm going direct to God.

[00:28:40] I need his help and as our modern healthcare system and the bureaucracy attached should just get more complicated.

[00:28:48] I think there's going to be more Christians that this is like option A who are just saying,

[00:28:54] I don't know how to get the help that I need. I reached out and it was nine months later I could get my introductory appointment.

[00:29:01] I need to cry out to God. I need to cry out to God.

[00:29:05] Okay so the elders will get you in earlier than that. All right. It's when I'm trying to say.

[00:29:11] All right. So a praying people, a praying people. But again, I'm not here simply to say and highlight the results of prayer in the realm regarding the sick.

[00:29:24] It's just clear James thought that's powerful things happen when we crowd to God.

[00:29:28] Powerful things happen when we pray. And God loves it when we pray. He loves it when we pray. He loves us sound of our prayers.

[00:29:37] I was talking to Christina recently and she told me the super interesting thing. She said that our little dog is named as Max.

[00:29:46] One of her favorite sounds is when he's drinking water out of his bull.

[00:29:52] I was like, why do you like that sound? She's like, he's just it makes I think it's just the mom in her.

[00:29:58] She's like, he's getting what he needs. He's getting what he needs. It just makes me so happy that it's just a sound that I like.

[00:30:05] He's getting what he needs. And a sound that our father in heaven loves is when we cry out to him, when we pray.

[00:30:16] I wanted to mention at this point of the teaching and give you a little preview that the pastors this October are going to be inviting you into a month of seeking the Lord for something very specific for our church family.

[00:30:31] We are going to talk about it in the next few weeks, but on October 6th on which is a Sunday for Sunday at the month that night we'd love to invite all of you to come back out and hear a little bit more about just what it is that we need to seek him about.

[00:30:46] But I was with a mentor of mine recently. We meet online once a month, he lives up in Washington and I just was sharing with him. I said, you know, one of the big pressures for me as the pastor of this particular church is that we're really blessed in that here we are in the middle of the Monari Peninsula and we have all this land.

[00:31:08] And this land has water attached to it. The water has to be used by certain dates so it does create a little bit of a pressure.

[00:31:17] But we have all this land, we have all this water and there are things that we could do with that land and could do with that water that we've been investigating for many years.

[00:31:27] And I just was kind of sharing with him, like this is one of those things for me. It's like I'm always praying about it. I'm always thinking about it and I was kind of saying it to him and like a frankly, a wish it wasn't there kind of thing.

[00:31:40] What I was telling him was like what God is doing in our church is so amazing and I'm so thankful for it.

[00:31:46] And if we just had like a city block right next to us and there was no more land and no more water I'd be so happy with the platform from which we get to declare the gospel to this community.

[00:32:00] But we have to be good stewards of what God has entrusted into our care so we're just praying about this thing and so I'm like, I just was telling him it's stressful at times. I don't know what to do.

[00:32:10] And he was like, he just kind of said he's like why don't you call for a month of prayer to pray about that?

[00:32:17] With the people in the church, just tell them some of the options that are out there. You don't have to give a big plan.

[00:32:23] You just pray about it and he's like, you know, it's their church too and so let, you know, pray. Call for a time of fasting, you know.

[00:32:39] Do that or consume that instead I'm going to pray for that situation, pray for the church, pray for its future.

[00:32:48] And I'm embarrassed to say but I told him I was like, I never thought of that.

[00:32:53] I mean like praying together with the church. I was like, I thought of that. He's like what did you think?

[00:32:58] I was like, I thought I had to have the big master plan and then tell them this is what we could do. Now let's pray about it and he's like, oh no you don't have to do that.

[00:33:08] So I was that really relieved me. So that's what we're going to do in October. We're going to cry out to God together for because I believe that, you know, it's huge that God has given this to us but we have to ask the question, Lord, what do you want for the future?

[00:33:22] What do you want for the future of this church and communities? So we need to be a praying people. Now for all this, James gives us a prayer example. An example of prayer.

[00:33:37] A righteous person has great power as it's working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He prayed for it.

[00:33:44] And he prayed again and again and he gave rain and the earth for its fruit.

[00:33:54] James wants to really double down on this lesson. Prayer from mature believers leads to amazing things.

[00:34:02] The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working and he pulls out an illustration from the Old Testament of this.

[00:34:10] A man named Elijah, prophet named Elijah. Elijah had an amazing prophetic career but James doesn't get into all the details of it. He just gives us a highlight.

[00:34:21] He says, Elijah prayed that it wouldn't rain and it didn't rain. Then he prayed that it would rain and it did rain.

[00:34:30] Three and a half years of drought is a result of Elijah's prayer. He was a powerful prayer.

[00:34:37] That's what James is drawing now. How did a man like Elijah pray such powerful prayers?

[00:34:44] How did Elijah pray such powerful prayers? The first thing is that Elijah was praying very biblical prayers.

[00:34:54] The thing about the prophets that you need to know is that the prophets were connected to the heart of God.

[00:35:00] They spent time with God, they knew God, they got to the point that they felt what God felt.

[00:35:11] They were stand-ins so to speak for God's feelings, for the nations. How does God feel? Let's go look at the prophet. How is he feeling?

[00:35:22] They were connected to the heart of God.

[00:35:25] During Elijah's day, he looked around and what he saw was a wicked king, a guy named Ahab leading God's people.

[00:35:32] That king had married a woman named Jezebel and she had introduced the worship of a false god named Baal to the entire Northern Kingdom.

[00:35:42] The populist went along with her boy and they were worshiping Baal left and right. Baal was the worship of the weather which meant we want rain so we can have good crops so we can be prosperous.

[00:35:59] At the end of the day, he's a God of prosperity. We're shipping money.

[00:36:06] Elijah basically looked in the Bible. One of the things he would have discovered in Deuteronomy for instance is God saying to the people of Israel,

[00:36:17] if you worship other gods persistently, I'm going to have to do all these different things and one of the things I will do is make the heavens bronze and the dust of the earth dry.

[00:36:31] There will be a drought in the land as a result of your rebellion against me. Elijah read that and I think he just started in faith praying that God would do that.

[00:36:43] It was a biblical prayer is what I'm trying to say connected to the very heart of God but not only was it a biblical prayer, it was a tough prayer to pray.

[00:36:52] I mean this is not the kind of prayer that you would even really be proud to announce that you are praying.

[00:37:01] What are you praying for? A revival for people to get reached. What are you praying for?

[00:37:07] I'm praying that it won't rain for three and a half years so that we all suffer.

[00:37:12] That's what Elijah was praying for but he understood that the rebellion was so firm that something really hard had to happen in order to shake people loose from their sleep, their slumber.

[00:37:27] And so he was willing to pray right along with the heart of God. But James is highlighting Elijah prayed as a normal man. He says he was a man with a nature like ours.

[00:37:43] Now I admit that's a tough one to concede. I've read, I've studied the life of Elijah. He doesn't have first glance appear to be a normal man.

[00:37:54] John the Baptist rolled out with his camel skin and his leather belt eating bugs.

[00:37:59] He was imitating Elijah. He was imitating Elijah. He was coming in the spirit and power of Elijah. That's how Elijah dressed. That's what Elijah did.

[00:38:10] He seemingly came out of thin air into A-haps courts, rebuking him and promising drought.

[00:38:19] For a season in his life he lived by a brick where ravens brought him food each day. That's how he survived.

[00:38:29] He multiplied flour and oil for a widow and her son. He raised a widow's son back to life.

[00:38:39] He called down fire from heaven. He parted the Jordan River. He did not die. He was caught up into heaven in a whirlwind of a chariot of fire.

[00:38:52] And here comes James Roland and he's a man with a nature like ours.

[00:39:01] But even though the biblical record presents him like that it also presents him as an ordinary person.

[00:39:08] He fell weakness. He succumbed at times to fear and doubt and discouragement.

[00:39:14] He battled emotional struggles of isolation and loneliness. He grew tired of the constant war with Jezebel and her campaign for people to worship.

[00:39:27] He needed God's intervention. He needed God's strength to continue on.

[00:39:33] Even though he was a wild man, he was a man with a nature like ours.

[00:39:38] I think what James is trying to do is say even this heavy weight in Israel, he was not the one responsible for the outcomes that occurred when he cried out to God.

[00:39:54] James would say it like this, Elijah did not defeat Baal. God defeated Baal.

[00:40:02] God is the one. Elijah was just the instrument, just the man who was willing to call down these incredible prayers to God.

[00:40:13] And I want to encourage you to be a person. There are going to be people in your life situations in your life that you will be the only one who will pray big in that situation or for that person.

[00:40:29] No one else knows, no one else sees, no other person of faith is exposed to it by you are.

[00:40:35] And I would encourage you to be a person who goes big before God in prayer, trusting that it's not about you, it's about him.

[00:40:44] When we were in Tahoe this last summer there was this one day where we were leaving the beach and there are all these trees.

[00:40:52] And I looked inside of this little wooded area and I saw what I thought was a small little bear.

[00:41:01] And he was kind of looking over my direction and I was like, I think that's a bear right there.

[00:41:06] I kind of stopped the family and I'm like let's not walk over there where the bear is.

[00:41:10] And so we're looking at it and then I was like, no I think it might be a dog.

[00:41:15] And then it was confirmed that it was a bear because it started running through this big dirt field away from us.

[00:41:24] And it's like, oh that's a little bear. Like a teenager bear, you know, still you don't want to mess with a teenager bear.

[00:41:30] Mama's around somewhere, you know, but you don't want to mess with that. But here's the reason this is what was so great about this moment.

[00:41:36] The reason the bear started running is because as I'm standing there with my cooler and my backpack and stuff just waiting and kind of eyeballing this bear.

[00:41:45] This group of like three or four little boys on scooters they start yelling and screaming and chasing the bear.

[00:41:52] They saw the bear there like, ah and they're racing trying to catch up with it. I'm like that's really not a great idea.

[00:41:59] But this is I want to picture of this too, you know, get your camera out. We got it. Who knows what's going to happen right now?

[00:42:09] That's the kind of courage I want you to have in prayer.

[00:42:16] Just saying like, you know, this doesn't make sense. I can't do this. I'm not big enough for this. I'm not strong enough for this.

[00:42:21] But I'm praying to God. I'm going to the living God. I'm asking him to do these things.

[00:42:29] All right, let's wrap it up together.

[00:42:33] I had a feeling this one would be a little long to get through just because of the enormity of it.

[00:42:38] But let's conclude by just thinking about this last little exhortation from James.

[00:42:41] I want to call this a prayer community. We'll do this one quickly. He says, this is how he ends his letter.

[00:42:47] No, you know, so and so greet him. greet them. You know, blessed to you. He says, my brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back,

[00:42:56] let him know that whoever brings back a center from his wandering will save his soul from death and we'll cover a multitude of sins.

[00:43:03] That end. Okay. That's James's end to his letter.

[00:43:08] Interesting exhortation.

[00:43:09] This is what I'll say about this is not an evangelistic couple of verses. What I mean by that is James would have loved the idea of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth and preaching it to people who don't know him.

[00:43:23] But that's not what these verses are about. He says, if any of you talking to the church, if any of you wanders from the truth,

[00:43:32] the one who rescues them, pulls them out of that. It's like they have saved their soul from death and covered a multitude of sins.

[00:43:44] Okay. James, right here at the end, what's he doing? Why does he say this?

[00:43:49] I kind of wonder if what he's doing here is he saying, I have just described, I have just profiled what a mature believer looks like.

[00:43:58] At the end of the day, not everybody is going to be that and we will fall into times of immaturity.

[00:44:05] And those of you who are mature, you need to be the rescuer in that situation.

[00:44:12] You don't need to be a coward who says, I don't want to get involved. You don't need to be a legalist who just behind the scenes,

[00:44:20] ridicules someone who is wandering. You don't need to be in a complex who affirms the direction that they're headed,

[00:44:29] need to be a rescuer. And here's what I want to say. We all could be either one of these characters.

[00:44:35] We have that potential in us, the wanderer or the rescuer.

[00:44:39] And what I would want to say to our churches, well you're in a good mode and not in need of rescue.

[00:44:48] I think it would be good for you to tell the healthy mature godly people around you if I ever go there,

[00:44:56] I give you permission to try a rescue operation on me.

[00:45:02] You know, you've heard of an advanced directive medically.

[00:45:04] Like if this happens to me, this is what I want you to do for me, given advanced directive to the godly people in your life.

[00:45:13] If there's like three weeks in a row that I'm not there, I'm not at the house of God on Sunday,

[00:45:18] where should I be in him? I'm expecting you to reach out to me.

[00:45:24] If I'm starting to take liberties and take them a little too far and I'm slipping back into the old life,

[00:45:31] I'm asking you to ask me about that. You know, I think that's what James would say is a best practice for us.

[00:45:38] So give that permission to the godly people in your life before they're left asking the question,

[00:45:45] is this something that they would invite or something that they want?

[00:45:49] Give them that permission in advance.

[00:45:52] And so James closes out his little letter on Christian maturity.

[00:45:59] And he describes a group of people who are so mature that life is not curved in on itself,

[00:46:05] all about me, me, me, me, me, me, but they're thinking about how can I be a blessing?

[00:46:10] How can I rescue? How can I reach out? How can I help other people?

[00:46:19] Thank you for listening. If you would like more teachings and information about Calvary Monore,

[00:46:24] please visit Calvary.com. You can also find books, teaching students through the Bible,

[00:46:29] and articles from our lead pastor at natchordridge.com.

[00:46:34] Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next week.