Pray with Faith

James 5:13-16

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.  Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

It seems that everyone around me, at home, at work, at church, has been sick lately.  My son, still too young to really understand, sat crying because he was so miserable.  He kept telling me that he didn’t want to be sick and didn’t like it.  As a parent, you just want to fix things, you want to make them feel better.  Yet there are times that you really can’t do anything.  After having been up with him for hours through the night, I sat on the couch with him, just praying over him.  While there was nothing that I was really able to do, I prayed that God would give him rest.  Of course I prayed for healing as well. 

When you pray, do you have faith that your prayer will be answered?  This is one that I am not always great about.  It isn’t even so much that I don’t believe God will answer my prayers, however sometimes those answers aren’t exactly in line with what I’m hoping for so sometimes it seems like the prayer is not being answered, even though it is, just not how I had hoped. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are told to pray for one another.  We are told to pray in faith.  Each of us is sick.  We are sick with a very deadly disease called sin.  How often do you pray that God will heal you from those sins? 

Today I pray that each of you will start or will continue to pray with faith.  Know that God answers prayers, even when it’s not always the way that we had hoped for.