James 5:13-20
Why do we pray – what’s the point of it? It’s an acknowledgement of our helplessness. We find ourselves in a situation, or witnessing a situation, that we have no power in ourselves to change, like the illness in verse 14. Acts 12 is another good example: Peter was in prison, facing a death sentence. But “the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” We may not be able to do anything, but prayer connects us to the unstoppable power of Almighty God. Think of the thermostat in your hallway, the one that controls your central heating. It knows when the house is too cold, but it’s just a temperature sensor; it can’t actually do anything about it. What it can do is send a signal to an electronic relay (which is basically a kind of electrical switch) – and the relay switches the heater or the boiler on. And prayer is little bit like that; it’s been called “the key that opens and shuts heaven.” The main difference is that the effects of the relay are more predictable! Because God isn’t a component in a circuit that always does what it’s told, but a Person. A Person who’s not only much more powerful than we are but also much wiser! So we can make requests to Him, but we can’t give Him orders! We don’t know everything and can’t see what’s in the future, so we often ask for things that would be bad for us, or would do harm to other people. But our God is a loving heavenly Father who will only give His children good things. So we can go to Him in absolute confidence that He will answer our prayers in the best way possible.
But what does James mean when he says that that our prayers will be effective? How do we define effectiveness? How do we measure it? Is an effective prayer one that achieves the result that we want? What if God says “No!”, as He often does? Does that mean my prayers somehow didn’t ‘work’? Or does prayer also have other purposes – like developing our relationship with God, for example? When Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that the cup of suffering would pass Him by, and when Paul prayed for release from something he called a “thorn” in his flesh (II Corinthians 12:7-9), neither of them got what they asked for – but they did get something else. God didn’t rescue them out of these situations; instead, He gave them the strength to cope. So those prayers were worth praying, wouldn’t you say?
What kind of things should we pray about?
James mentions several types of prayer. A lot of people use the acronym ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) as a framework for their prayers. I wonder if James had something similar in mind! In verse 13, he mentions adoration and thanksgiving. If things are going well for us, we shouldn’t take that for granted but praise the God who is the source of all blessing. If He has answered our prayers and given us what we asked for, then we must thank Him! Remember the ten men with leprosy who were healed by Jesus – and only one of them bothered to come back to say thankyou!
Confession of sin comes up in verse 16. We always need to confess our sins to God, but if we’ve sinned against another person we should ideally confess to them as well and ask for their forgiveness. James has mentioned various sins in the course of his letter: discrimination against the poor and failure to help the poor in chapter 2, sins of speech in chapter 3, greed, quarrelling and slander in chapter 4. All of these affect other people, all of these damage relationships and disrupt our fellowship. They have to be dealt with.
And then of course there’s supplication, or intercession – making requests for others and for ourselves. “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray.”
James gives us two examples of people who need our prayers. First of all, someone who is physically ill. The kind of illness that he has in mind seems to be something serious, because the sick person isn’t able to go to church; the church elders have to go to him (or her). By the way, there doesn’t have to be any conflict between medication and prayer – we have to remember that when the Bible was written there was very little in the way of effective medicine. But even with modern medicine and surgical techniques, good results often can’t be guaranteed. We still need to pray!
Secondly, a person who has a spiritual sickness of some kind; they’ve fallen out of fellowship with the church for some reason. Maybe it’s a dispute with another believer that hasn’t been resolved. Maybe it’s a sin that they don’t want to repent of. Maybe the pressures of life have become too much for them. These people need our prayers too!
Discovering the Bible 