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.