Pray in All Circumstances

All right, well, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning, we are at James chapter 5, 13 through 17. Nathan and I were watching a little bit of, I don't know, YouTube shorts or something the other day, and somebody had this little short. Every time you open up the book of James, and then she turns a page, and then a hand comes up out of nowhere and looks at another passage, and a hand comes up out of nowhere. It's like a smack in the face.
So, just let's go ahead and have some coffee. We'll pray, and we'll see what we get smacked in the face with by the Holy Spirit today. Want some coffee? No. Okay, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for the opportunity that you have given us to read your word. God, we pray that we would read it and understand it. We pray that your Holy Spirit would apply it to our lives in Jesus's name. Amen.
All right, James chapter 5, 13 through 17. Why don't you read 13, 14, and 15, and I'll read 16 through 18. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing songs. Is anyone among you sick? 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. And the prayer of faith will save the sick. and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain. And it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit."
Well, we need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what's this? About. B, what's the? It's supposed to summarize. And C, what are we? Called to do. All right. So what's this about? Not letting. If you're sick, if you're downtrodden and you're joyful, you should sing psalms. Okay, yeah, good. So either way, if you're in the depths of despair and sickness, you can pray to God and he'll hear. If you're doing well and things are going great, you can pray, you can sing psalms.
So in all of life, our focus, are we nasal gazing? Are we just looking at our belly buttons all the time? No. No, right? Where do we look? At heaven. We look up. We look up to God. And he gives some very specific examples, right? If you're suffering, what do you do? Pray. Pray. If you're cheerful?
I think for that. I think for both contexts, it's like really hard to just not do that. Because you're like, well, I'm like, I'm so sad. Like, I can't pray right now. Oh, when you're the most cheerful. And you might forget about God. Sometimes you just forget about it. Yeah, right. And so it's like, no, no, all of life is to be before the face of God. Right. And so, yeah. And so he says, if anyone's sick, right, call the elders, the elders, right, anoint and what should they do? Pray!
I remember just recently there was a pastor that I know who there was a baby really sick on like on the deathbed type sick and the parents just just asked very humbly right they took these words and they they called this pastor and they said hey could you just come and pray for a baby and and put oil on the baby And the pastor thought, yeah, let's do it. They got one of the other elders and they drove to the hospital and they prayed over that baby, put oil on the baby, not because of a special oil, it's just straight out of the cabinet, right? Just oil. And just prayed for the baby, pleaded with God to save the baby's life. And God was gracious enough. It was according to God's will. The baby was healed.
That's not like mystical crazy, like, you know, this isn't giving us some formula. Oh, if you're sick, we just put some oil on and pray and boom, you're going to be, right? No, that's not what this is saying. But that's what the Lord says here, right? And notice also, if we're caught in sin, what are we supposed to do? And the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses. Oh, now this is interesting. Verse 16, confess your trespasses to who?
One another. To one another. And then what are you supposed to do? Pray for one another that you may be healed. Pray for one another. Right. This is one of the things that I'll regularly do with guys, right? We'll get together and we'll meet and we'll talk and sometimes it's, hey man, I'm really struggling with this sin. And then working through it with each other and praying with one another. The Lord uses that often as a source of accountability, of integrity being built up.
Yeah. And so looking up to heaven for that and notice what he goes on here in the second half of verse 16 into verse 17. Yeah, right. So he uses Elijah as a example of a righteous man who fervently prayed to God. And was the Lord pleased to answer that prayer? Yeah, right. That was according to it as well. So this whole section, what do you think it's about?
I think it's one about kind of like the chief end of man is to love thy God and enjoy him forever. So we should always Sometimes it's hard to think like, well, like, like, sometimes you think like, well, like, mourning to God, like, is that bringing him glory? But you have to think like, sometimes you, like, when you're a father, you, your child gets hard. Normally, when they come to you, does it bring you glory, like they trust you and be cared by you. And so that's what I just like, that gets glory from if we do anything for it. Yeah, yeah, good.
Yeah, I take this as like a life filled with prayer. And so Paul would write, pray constantly and without ceasing. This is life given over to prayer in good times and in bad times. Fervently, eagerly praying, not with self-righteousness, but even confessing our sins to one another and praying with and for one another. Elijah wasn't a perfect dude. I'm not a perfect dude, but we can confess our sins to God, confess our sins to each other. When someone is sick, we can go and we can pray with them, right? So just praying, praying in the good times, singing the psalms of prayers in the good times, praying when it's hard and bad, right? Why? Because our Heavenly Father gives wisdom in the good times and in the bad. He cares for us.
Well, what do you think is the best verse to summarize this section? probably was thinking about 13 to 18 but then I thought it was too broad so now I'm thinking about 16 to 17 or maybe 16 to 18 Okay, so you like the idea of the fervent prayer and Elijah's example? Okay. Yeah, I would say 13 would be mine. But yeah, that's fine. Okay, so let's talk about C, calling. What are we called to do? But also, how does this show us Jesus Christ? We're called to pray to God.
Okay. Yeah. So I think, yeah, you're right. We're definitely prayed to call to God continually or called to pray to God continually. Yeah, absolutely. We are. Yeah. Um, so one of the things I think is beautiful, right? It's both the example of Jesus Christ, right?
I mean, he's, he's praying all the time. It seems like, uh, but also, uh, prayer is Trinitarian. Do you know what I mean by that? Um, it takes the whole Trinity to pray. Well, think about it. We pray to the Father in the name of the Son. To the Holy Spirit. Yeah, right. Or by the Holy Spirit, right? So the Holy Spirit is the one who actually takes our prayers, brings them to the Son, and the Son as our High Priest makes them perfect, mediates for us.
And so that's why we pray in the name of Jesus, right? It's very much a Trinitarian prayer. So when we're praying, it's a ministry of the Holy Spirit. We get to approach the throne of grace boldly, beyond the veil, which is Christ's flesh, right? Like the beautiful thing that Jesus has done for us. And so what a blessing we have in prayer.
It's sad. There's many people even today who will kind of poo-poo and think like, I don't know what it's doing. Some of the people I know who have gone through the hardest trials and have the deepest sense of peace and joy are filled with prayer. I wish I was more like them.
You ready to pray? God, we pray that we would be people of prayer. As we were suffering, Lord, maybe there's somebody watching today who's suffering. Lord, we pray that you would bring the perfect peace that surpasses all understanding. Lord, when we are filled with joy, we pray that we would come before you with thanksgiving. God, we thank you that you have not held us away at an arm's distance, that you are our Heavenly Father, willing and able to help us. And so God, we pray that we would follow after you, that we would trust you all of our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you enjoy the peace that surpasses all understanding by following Jesus Christ, your chief shepherd. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.