Praying Earnestly

James 5:14-18

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: [15]And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. [17]Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. [18]And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

Did you know that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a ‘Healing Church’? We can trace backwards through Church History and see how many thousands of people, saints and sinners alike, found healing and restoration in the Church, from its beginning to present day. This fact alone should make us want to be a part this ‘God-Ordained’ institution. Notice, James begins this passage with a general call to the sick, whether it be in mind or body; “Are there any who are sick among you?” Of the many things we have come to realize about our human race, we know sickness is a part of our life while here on Earth. I love the following passage concerning the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Matthew 9:35

“…Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

This capsulizes the ministry of the Lord Jesus during His 3 ½ year ministry while on earth. And at the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the 120 who were praying in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, they were baptized of the Holy Spirit and received the power to go into all the world to preach the gospel, they were also anointed of God to fulfill the same type of ministry of the Lord Jesus throughout the world; this was the ministry of teaching (explaining) the Gospel of Christ; preaching [proclaiming] the Gospel of Christ and healing ‘every sickness and every disease’ among the people. The ministry of teaching, preaching and healing has been replicated throughout the centuries by the church up to present day.

The Lord wants you to be healed, happy and well! And this condition of well being is for you, if you meet the condition that James has expressed in our opening passage. God loves you and wants you to enjoy His very best for you – He is on your side – even though bad things often happen, the Lord has always been by you to help you get through it by fully trusting in Him.

If you are contemplating ending your life because of a momentary grief seems too much for you to bear, I want you to know first, before you take drastic action, that God is existing in your past; He was always there to help you, and, He is by your side now, and will be by your side in your tomorrow’s, and we can learn to depend upon Him in our tomorrow’s by learning to draw near unto him today.

James tells us, Are you sick? Or going through a test and a trial that seems to want to overwhelm you to the point where you don’t believe you’ll ever get over it? Are your wounds so deep you don’t think you will ever heal? In such a case, James says there is something you will have to do; that is to call for the elders of the church and let them ‘pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord Jesus’. Then James says, “And the ‘prayer of faith’ shall save [comes from the Greek ‘Sozo’{verb form ‘sosei’ “I save, I heal, I deliver}] the sick and God shall raise him up, and if he has committed [any] sins, they shall be forgiven him.” Through this process, James writes that God will restore you, or anyone who is willing to trust Him, to health.

This is a process that all of us, no matter what we are going through, should consider. After all, will doing what James has exhorted us to do hurt us, or damage us anymore than what we are already damaged? No matter what capacity we hold our thoughts and feelings in our heart toward the Lord Jesus, one thing we can all agree on is this; He has our best interest at heart, after all, He was willing to die on an old rugged cross for each and every one of us, and He ‘knows the feelings of our infirmities’ and took them unto Himself, bearing them while upon a crucifix, not for Himself, but for us. It is true; He loves you and me; to a depth that neither of us can comprehend, but if we are willing to trust Him, I do not believe for a second that He will disappoint us.

Blessings – PJ (rbtc86@gmail.com)

What Christians Should Know to Do

Isn’t it wonderful to be a born-again believer? There are times when the experience of friendship and closeness of the Spirit of God seems like heaven, if, it wasn’t for our continual dealing with the lower nature. If our life on earth was like heaven all the time, then going to heaven wouldn’t be much of an expectation. To me, it would be like a wealthy person living in Europe, being waited upon hand and foot there, to move to another country to be waited on hand and foot. Where is the exception? Or the expectation? I think that kind of life would seem to me to be boring. After all, what kind of expectations would we have of going to heaven when we already had the continual experience of heaven now?

But the plain fact is we are not in heaven, but down here in the real world where life can be good and the next moment turn bad and even ugly at times; where there is a regular pull upon us by the dark forces that surround us. For example, I am a usually happy person until I pull up my favorite news sights and begin reading about the dark sinfulness that is going on in our nation and the insanity of wickedness that is occurring. My heart becomes grieved and angry and I find myself very put off by what others are committing that is so contrary to what we, as believers, know is not of God.

There is the contention every day with the ‘elemental spirits’ of this age that we, as believers, are having to deal with, whether we are in the privacy of own home or out in the public square. This conflict is an every day event and can wear us down if we don’t seek for and receive the daily replenishment of spending time in the presence of God. We are like an automobile that only goes as far as there is gas in the fuel tank. Life itself can be a spiritual drain if we are not ‘connected’ to the power source which is the word of God and the Spirit of God.

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Jude: 20-21

Just like an automobile, if left in a field unshielded from the harsh elements of nature and not operated, will, over time, rust and decay and eventually become unfunctional. We, as natural human beings, and as believers, will eventually become unfunctional if we do not continually keep ourselves supplied with the spiritual life and power that comes from living and walking in the Spirit of God. This was the main problem with the group of people, believers in Christ, who James was writing to in his letter to them. Because this group refused to fully surrender to God and His Spirit and failed to daily refresh themselves through the Spirit that comes from God, this group of believers had become hard and calloused fighting and quarrelling with one another; being envious and hateful toward one another, and were continually doing so. James, in his letter, plainly told them they were becoming enemies of God. So, James exhorted them to first, repent, then begin to seek the Lord, submitting to Him so they would have the power to ‘resist the devil’ and have him flee.

There is no substitute for daily walking and talking with the Lord in true humility before Him and affection for Him. Life becomes a joy instead of a bore when we daily include Him in everything we do. After all, if Jesus Christ truly is our Lord, then we give Him the right to have His say in everything we do or say wouldn’t we?

Blessings – PJ

Taming the Tongue

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.  Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.  All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. [James 3:3-8, KJV]

This is quite an indictment of James, the brother of Lord, upon the tongue. How many times have we spoken words out of our mouth, then later wished we would have kept our mouth shut? I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had to repent for the things I’ve said more so than the things in the past I have done. Speech is the single most important part of our daily life. Without communication life becomes a distant, uninhabited island, or a vast desert. Someone has said that the average person speaks over 30,000 words per day. It makes me wonder what I’ve actually said in those 30,000 words, don’t you?

James tells us that the tongue, left undisciplined, is a ‘deadly poison’. Why is that so? Every human being is born spiritually separated from God; our fallen, human nature is inherited from our fathers, and our father’s natures from their fathers, and so on going all the way back to Adam. Evil is in the world because of our fallen nature; we just don’t do the things we should, but we wind up doing the things we shouldn’t do. It seems we have an inherent ability to destroy others and to self-destruct ourselves. How in the world do we extricate ourselves from this melee? Through Jesus Christ and the New Birth! This God offers to every person born of a woman. The Lord Jesus, when we are drawn to Him and place faith and trust in Him, gives us a new heart and a new pattern of life. This life is called ‘zoe’ life; Life as God lives it; a higher life; a Spirit-Controlled life; an Eternal Life. This life is placed at the very center of our being, and being life, in an absolute sense, begins to permeate through our outer being, transforming our mind and the thoughts and intents of our heart. And this life, if looked and yielded to, will teach our lips and change our speech into a pattern of blessing God, and others, instead of cursing Him and those who are made in His image.

We can tame our tongues! I didn’t say it is easy, and taming our tongue will not happen overnight, but the more time and attention we give ourselves to the things of the Spirit, the more rapid our transformation into a well of sweet water will be, instead of remaining a bitter well that tastes sour to ourselves, and to those around us.

PJ

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to him.
James 1:5

I am sure all of us have been in situations in the past where we were faced with a problem or a test and had no idea how to solve the problem or what to do. We can be perplexed, frustrated, maybe even depressed and the more we ponder the issue at hand the more frustrated we become; it’s just not a good thing to be facing trouble and not know how to make it better. James, who was the older brother of the Lord Jesus, says that if are in a test, a trial, but we don’t understand what to do about it, we are to ask the Lord for the wisdom and understanding of what to do in order make it through the test. Tests and trials are always intense in the middle of them but it is always satisfying when we pass through them and overcome them.

Let’s examine this passage of scripture for a moment. First, James tells us that we will face tests where we don’t know how get through them. There are some tests in life that we are not prepared for and it is natural for us to be shaken or to be surprised by them and thrown off guard. Anyone who has lived long on this earth knows exactly what we are talking about; there are times when we just don’t know what to do, and these times can be disheartening and depressing. The tests of life can rob us of our joy and steal away happiness. So, what do we do when we don’t know what to do? We ask of God. We pray and ask of God about the situation we find ourselves in because He is the One who knows all about it. There is nothing that the Lord does not see or know and He is the One Who, already as a fact in His mind, has a solution.

No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
–1 Corinthians 10:13

Oftentimes, while we are facing the trials of life, we have a tendency to get our eyes off of the One to whom we have to do, and focus on self. Self can not always solve his or her problem. So, what we do is expend a lot of useless energy and, instead, build up a lot of anxiety and frustration, running around in our mind wondering what we are going to do or how we are going to fix this problem and, going nowhere, we usually wind up taking our frustrations out on the people we are nearest and dearest to, like our wife or our husband. James says, “ask of God’; this means stop what we are doing, jump in our prayer closet and begin to ask the Lord for the wisdom from Him that will show us what we are to do and how we are to solve our problem and get through the test or trial, but, James also tells us to do something else;

 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
–James 1:6

Faith is the grease that fixes the squeaking wheel! So, in times of testing, Ask the Lord for the wisdom necessary to pass the test, and ask in faith without doubting and come out on the other end successfully. It may take a little time to get an answer but this is what the Lord wants us to do anyway, He just allowed the trial to come our way to prove to us that we can make it through the trial and overcome.