Morning all. As we come to the end of our short preaching series on the letter of James, I wanted to reflect on his final, and possibly most important words, which are about prayer.
In James 5:13-18 he mentions prayer 7 times in reference to almost every aspect of life. He says, if you’re happy – you should pray – give thanks to God. If you’re suffering – you should pray and ask God to help you. And both of these extremes in life might have reason not to pray to God. If things are going well, we might think that we don’t need God, we have all we need; if things are going badly we might blame God and not want anything to do with him. But James says we should pray – pray at all times, whether things are going well or not because God cares about all of the detail of our lives. Calvin said about this passage: “There is no time in which God does not invite us to himself.” He is a God for all seasons: either a source of comfort and help when we are in need or a focus for our joy. There is no situation we can come across in which prayer is not the appropriate response.
So what is prayer? Simply put, praying is talking to God and it is seeking to establish God’s kingdom on earth. That’s why Jesus taught his disciples to pray: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So, prayer requires faith – in God – it involves trusting Him and his will, that it is good and is the best for us and for the earth.
And it works because as we talk to God, we are his mediators on earth. We are standing in the gap between heaven and earth, just like the priests in the Old Testament. We are creating an overlap between the two (NT Wright). It’s a bit like bringing a magnifying glass and placing it over a map of the world. And we notice the things that are not right on earth, that are not God’s will for the world. We notice sickness and we notice sin. And then, as we pray we invite God’s kingdom to come, and because there is no sickness or sorrow or decay in heaven, when God’s kingdom comes these things begin to be removed.
But of course we don’t see these things being removed all the time because God’s kingdom has not come fully yet, but one day it will. And one day …
“he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev 21:4)
But you might say, why do we need to pray? If God is sovereign and in control of everything, surely he can just make everything right – heaven on earth. But God has not created a world of automatons who just do his will, regardless of themselves and their desires, even though it is the best thing to do in every situation. He has given each of us free choice (and that includes us, and all of creation including angelic beings). We are free to live lives that are in line with heaven or to live life our own way, turn our back on God and the result of that is what we call sin and why we see sickness and death in the world – because on the whole humanity has done what it wants to do. And so, God is looking for people to pray, to align their will to God’s will – to want the way it is in heaven to be the way it is on earth. And the bible is full of examples of God saying – if my people will pray, then I will heal their land. But he needs us to do this. He needs us to pray. That’s the way he has created the world to work – so that we are in relationship with God himself, involved in his creative purposes and bring about his kingdom on earth.
The theologian EM Bounds said this: “God shapes the world through prayer. The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be and the mightier the forces against evil”. Our prayers make a difference. We are literally releasing heavenly energy or power into the world. Verse 16 in the original Greek says: the energised prayer of a righteous person energizes much – in other words as we stand on that threshold of heaven and earth and are filled with God’s power to pray, we’re filled with his power through the Holy Spirit and his power is then released in the world. We are literally like a gateway for God’s kingdom. And as I said, God won’t just do it without us – he has made the earth such that he needs our help. He is a relational God and he wants us to be involved. Your prayers matter!
Earlier, in James’ letter he says that faith is perfected when we work together with God – by us praying and God working – it’s where we get the word synergy from – in other words the combination of our work and God’s work. Or in other words when our will is aligned with God’s will – faith is put into practice and heaven comes to earth. Paul Billhymer puts it like this: heaven is like a bank account which needs 2 signatures to withdraw from –God’s and ours! So, when we agree with God – his will is done on earth. So, our prayers, if they are aligned with God’s will really are powerful and really do make a difference in this world.
So we should pray. And I want to encourage you to pray and have faith that it makes a difference what you pray. And the more of us that pray, the more of God’s kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
But we need to be honest that prayer is not always answered in fact it seems that it rarely is. And the church can be less honest about unanswered prayer than the bible is – just look at the book of Psalms. Its brutally honest about the state of the world. And not only did Jesus preach that suffering will happen, (which is not God’s will), He experienced it himself and He even experienced unanswered prayer on at least 3 occasions. “Why have you forsaken me?” he prays on the cross, and there is no reply.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek. The key to Jesus’ first major piece of teaching is that in our brokenness God blesses us. He firstly acknowledges that suffering will happen but then assures us that God is with us in it. We need to trust that God understands our suffering. We might not understand our suffering, the tragic things that happen – but when they do happen our best option is to trust God and lean into Gods love because he alone understands.
As Christians we are not immune to a broken world where there is sickness and death – it affects everyone at some point – but what we do have is hope in the character of God – we can be aware of God’s will and his presence in the midst of it – he chooses to be with us in the middle of it. We must not portray a picture of God’s people who are blessed in life and somehow divinely protected because we are now on the right team. Sometimes, in fact often, our prayers do not seem to be answered in line with God’s will because there is an enemy – who opposes life – and we are not guaranteed to be shielded from battle. Evil is clearly a reality in our world – and it clearly doesn’t reflect the heart of God, if we know him – but we tend to blame God, rather than fighting with God against the enemy of our souls. But as Christians we are called to fight with God, to take ground for his kingdom and push back the darkness which is still present and that is what prayer is.
And sometimes there is a victory but sadly at others times all too often there is not (yet) but we must know that God’s will is always for life and the more we press into him in prayer, the more we will know that, know his will and know that he weeps alongside us when his will is not done on earth.
And God has promised that because of Jesus’ suffering, because He himself not only suffered the same disappointment and tragedies that we face but that he overcame them on the cross, one day all things will be renewed and his will, will be established in all the world and there will be an end to all suffering. But in the meantime, we should pray.
I encourage you to pray at all times this week, in every circumstance
Mark
