What Should We Pray For?

James 5:13-16 Prayer Questions: What Should We Pray For?

So You Had a Bad Day…
It’s amazing how many bad things can happen to people.  Here are a few stories compiled from websites like Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird:

• In Connecticut, a man driving a stolen car inadvertently stopped a police officer to ask for directions out of the city.
• In a similar story, a man in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was pursued by police after he entered the carpool lane approaching the George Washington Bridge because he appeared to be alone in his SUV. After ignoring several signals to pull over, he finally stopped and, when informed of his offense, told the officer, "I have two passengers in the back" and rolled down a window to show them (in the vehicle's third row), apparently satisfying the officer. However, as the man pulled away, one passenger began screaming and banging on the back door. The driver sped off with his hostages, but was subsequently stopped again and charged with kidnapping and criminal restraint (but no High Occupancy Vehicle violation!).
• A man in England, who sneezed several hundred times each day for 35 years, was told by health officials that he was allergic to himself.  He was cured after another doctor discovered that he was simply reacting to the oatmeal he’d been eating for breakfast since childhood.
• A miles-long traffic jam on Interstate 20 near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that began on the evening of Jan. 25 and continued on into the next morning was caused by an 18-wheeler that jackknifed and overturned when the 57-year-old driver took his hands off the wheel to pull out a tooth with his fingers. Efforts to haul the truck from the roadside required an hours-long detour of traffic off of the interstate. (The driver's mission was successful; he had the tooth in his pocket when rescued.) 
• And, finally, in Thailand, an elephant ate 110 pounds of dried rice and then drank 65 gallons of water and, within a half hour, exploded.

In our passage for today, James starts out by asking a question: “Is any one of you in trouble?” While none of us have, hopefully, ever performed home dentistry on the interstate or been sneezing for 35 years, most of us have had more than one bad day in our life.  In fact, some of you are right in the middle of some pretty tough stuff right now.

As we wrap up our series on Prayer Questions we’re going to ask: What should we pray for?  And while there are lots of ways to answer that question, I’m going to focus on one specific section of scripture: James 5:13-16.  

This is a passage that needs to be discussed whenever you are trying to develop a Biblical understanding of prayer, particularly because it touches on an area so many of us are interested in: praying for healing.

So, let’s look at the passage, James 5:13-16:

13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

4 Things to Pray For
The thing that grabs our attention in this passage is what it says about praying for the sick. We hear that “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well” and we want to know what that means. But there are actually 4 different times for prayer mentioned here. James tells us to pray when we are in trouble. Pray when we are happy. Pray when we are sick. And pray when we have sinned. We should pray for suffering, success, sickness and sin. I’d like us to consider each of these in turn before we spend a little more time thinking about prayers for healing.

In Trouble
So, first. We should pray in our suffering. Verse 13:

13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.

“Trouble” here is a broad category. It encompasses pretty much any kind of suffering you might encounter. And when you do have trouble, there is nothing wrong with praying for yourself. In fact, you should.

James uses the same word here that he uses just a few verses earlier to describe the “suffering” of the prophets (v. 10). His point there is that when suffering comes, we need patience. We shouldn’t grumble in bitter disgust (v. 9) or express ourselves in oaths (v. 12). Instead, we should “pray.”  

When we’re in a mess we should pray for wisdom, strength, and for the removal of the suffering. We have the privilege of prayer where we can go to God at any time, in any situation with whatever is on our hearts.  

I often hear people tell me in the midst of difficult times: “I don’t know how people can get through hard times without the Lord in their lives.” I usually hear this testimony when there is little indication that things will get better. But people are clinging to prayer and finding hope in the knowledge that God hears their cries.

The Westminster Catechism question and answer number 98 defines prayer:

98. 98.  What is prayer?
99. Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.

There is nothing wrong with “offering up our desires to God.” When things are difficult, when we are hurting, the Bible tells us we should go to God in prayer. We should plead with him in the midst of our struggles and trials. Tim Keller quotes a theologian who writes: “Prayer is not simply petition, but strenuous petition. It is…active pleading with God. It consists not merely in reflection on the promises of God but in taking hold of these promises.” (Prayer, p. 223, quoting Donald Bloesch)  

Whatever your struggle, God invites you to bring it to Him in prayer.

Because I’m Happy
The Westminster definition of prayer also includes “thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.” This is the second thing James tells us to pray about: We should pray in our success. The second half of verse 13:

Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise.

When things are going well, when we feel successful, when we are experiencing blessing in our life, we should pray. As James says: we should sing songs of praise. I think he means this literally, as in, “Christians should sing.” Whether you feel like you are particularly musical or not, it is appropriate for Christians to sing in praise and gratefulness to God. The music we share together on Sunday mornings is not just a warm-up for the sermon, it is an essential part of our Christian lives as we stir one another up to recognize God’s gracious presence in our lives.

But I don’t think James is only talking about singing with other Christians or even singing by ourselves. He’s talking about making praise and thanksgiving regular features of our prayers. We should intentionally turn our prayers upward and focus on God and who He is and what He has done for us.

Tim Keller says that “praise motivates the other kinds of prayer.” The more we remind ourselves of God’s character and grace the more readily our prayers of confession and supplication will come. Keller tells of the testimony of a woman who heard him speaking on the importance of praise and the way it transformed her prayer life. The woman told him:

Before, I would run right to my prayer list and the more I went through all the problems and needs, the more anxious and burdened I would get. Now I’ve started spending time thinking about how good and wise he is, and how many prayers he’s answered of mine in the past. And when I get to my own needs—now I find I can put them in his hands and I feel the burden coming off me rather than on me. (Prayer, pgs 189-190)

Praising God and thanking Him is an essential way of reminding ourselves of why we pray in the first place. Because God is a powerful and loving Father who has been faithful in the past, we can be confident that He desires to hear our prayers and is more than capable of answering them in the future.

Forgive Us our Debts
So, pray in suffering and pray in success. A third thing to pray for is forgiveness.  We should pray in our sin. I’m skipping over what this passage says about praying in sickness for a moment—I’ll come back to it—to look at the end of verse 15 and verse 16:

If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

This is part of the Westminster definition of prayer as well. Prayer includes the “confession of our sins.”

True confession implies two things: there is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a desire to change. Without both, confession has not happened. If you merely say you are sorry but have no intention to fix your behavior, you are presuming upon grace. If you change your behavior—a form of “going along to get along”—but deep down you don’t really believe you have done anything wrong, you are being prideful and still sinning in your attitude if not your actions. Tim Keller writes:

It is possible to merely assent that something is a sin without getting the new perspective on it and experiencing the new inward aversion to it that gives you the power and freedom to change. Put another way, there is a false kind of repentance that is really self-pity. You may admit your sin, but you aren’t really sorry for the sin itself. You are sorry about the painful consequences to you. You want that pain to stop, so you end the behavior. It may be, however, that there hasn’t been any real inward alteration of the false beliefs and hopes, the inordinate desires, and the mistaken self-perceptions that caused the sin. (Prayer, p. 213)

And so real repentance contains both admitting and rejecting. By calling our sin out for what it is, and also repudiating it and turning away from it, we are truly coming before God in a posture of humble confession.

The good news is that God is always willing to answer genuine prayers of confession. Philip Yancey tells the story of Jaime Cardinal Sin, the Catholic archbishop of Manila.

[Bishop Sin] liked to tell the story of a woman who attended his weekly audience to inform him she had a message from God. He brushed her off several times, but she kept coming back. Finally he said, “We Catholics have strict rules governing visions and messages from God. I need to test your authenticity. I want you to go back and ask God about a particular sin I recently confessed in private. If you ask God and he tells you the answer, I’ll know your vision is genuine.”

The next week she returned and he quizzed her, a bit nervously, “Well, did you ask God about my sin?”

“I did”

“And did God answer?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“God said he that couldn’t remember.”  (Yancey, p. 270-271)

A prayer for pardon God will always honor. He forgives our sin, and then He remembers it no more.

Is Any One of You Sick?
So now, let’s look a little more closely at a fourth thing to pray for, a specific category of suffering: sickness. This is obviously the thing that stands out in this passage. We should pray in our sickness. Verses 14 and 15:

14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.

This is a passage that will perk up our ears. What does it mean? Is there a special way to pray that will always result in physical healing? And if so, how can we do it? I’ll admit up front that there is some mystery here. I don’t completely understand everything this passage is saying.  But let’s walk through it…

It says that if you are sick, you should call the “elders of the church.” The elders represent the church. They are the “under shepherds” of the “Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:1-4). This doesn’t mean that people ordained to the office of elder are the only ones authorized to pray for healing. Not at all. We already saw in verse 13 that when a person is in trouble he should pray for himself. And verse 16 says we should pray for each other. So anybody can be, and should be, engaged in praying for the sick—whether that is you saying a prayer on your own behalf or praying in response to an email request or praying over a prayer quilt.

But I think this verse, by directing us to call the elders, is a reminder to ask the church to be involved.

This also doesn’t mean that elders, upon being ordained, are somehow endowed with special healing powers. Rather, I think elders, because of the spiritual qualifications expected of them, should fit into the category of the “righteous man” that James talks about in verse 16. Consider:

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. 17Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

The point in the Elijah illustration seems to be that Elijah “was a man just like us.” A special gifting is not required to pray for healing. Any of us can do it.

The passage also talks about anointing with oil. Oil in the Bible was often used as a symbol of health and vitality. It was believed to have some medicinal qualities to it. For example, when the Good Samaritan helped the injured traveler he poured oil upon his wounds.

Oil was also symbolic of the Holy Spirit. When Kings and Priests were installed into office they were anointed with oil as a visible symbol of God’s presence. The word “messiah” literally means “the anointed one.” There is nothing magical or supernatural about the application of oil, but it is a humble reminder that we are looking to God as the source of healing.

And so, this passage is very clear that it is neither the elders who pray nor the application of the oil that will effect healing, but only the Lord. The oil is applied “in the name of the Lord.”  It is “the Lord [who] will raise him up.” The power is not in the elders, in the oil, or even in the prayers -- but in the name of the Lord. 

So, verse 15 makes a rather bold promise: “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well…” Is this some sort of guarantee that prayers offered by elders and accompanied by oil will always result in physical healing? And if it doesn’t lead to healing, does that mean we are doing something wrong?

Obviously, we want answers to these questions, because we all know plenty of instances where prayers for healing have been offered, but physical healing never came.

It seems to me that James is modeling the kind of confidence in God we should all take to our prayers. By saying that “the Lord will raise him up” James is manifestly not hedging his bets. He doesn’t say “maybe the Lord will raise him up” or even “if it is the Lord’s will, he will raise him up” because he is praying with confident expectation. If you don’t really think God will do anything, why pray at all? 

So James is not making a guarantee of healing, but he is encouraging us to pray toward the goal of healing. We should pray with the confidence that good health is right and good and that God wants what is right and good for us.

Wayne Grudem points out that we should keep in mind the “already/not yet” nature of God’s kingdom. We know that in God’s heavenly kingdom there will be no more sickness or sorrow (Rev. 21:4). We also know that God’s kingdom has already been established in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And so Christians can expect to receive healing and other answers to prayer.  

But we also know that God’s kingdom has not yet been fully realized. The new heaven and the new earth have not yet begun. So Christians will continue to experience illness and death. Even if God heals you of one disease, or many, eventually we will all still die unless Jesus comes again.

Grudem writes:

The emphasis of the New Testament, both in Jesus’ ministry and in the ministry of the disciples in Acts, seems to be one that encourages us in most cases eagerly and earnestly to seek God for healing, and then to continue to trust him to bring good out of the situation, whether he grants the physical healing or not. The point is that in everything God should receive glory and our joy and trust in him should increase. (Systematic Theology, p. 1069)

So whatever else we take from this passage, we should see that praying for those who are sick is very Biblical. Sickness is not the way the world should be, it is not the way the world will be. As Philip Yancey often writes, the miracles of healing Jesus performed while on earth are a reminder of how the world should be and previews of what is to come.

I believe this passage is here to encourage us to pray for healing.  And to pray with far more expectation of positive results than most of us normally do.

Checklist
But, at the same time, great damage can result when we presume upon God. The Bible gives examples of prayers answered, but also examples of prayers unanswered (for example, Paul’s thorn in the flesh, 2 Cor. 12:7-10). We shouldn’t raise expectations so high that we virtually guarantee disappointment. So, drawing on Philip Yancey, let me offer the following checklist of questions to ask ourselves when praying for healing:  

1. Am I putting my faith in faith or in God?

Sometimes, we are tempted to think that if we simply believe hard enough, or want something to happen badly enough, then God is obligated to grant our request. Our hope then, is based upon how much faith we are able to generate. Bingham Hunter writes:

Christians have been led to believe that faith is something they must generate themselves (almost out of nothing) if God is to respond to their prayers. They see faith as a commodity they exchange for answers to prayer. Christians talk as if faith were something God measures in centimeters or weighs in ounces. If you have enough you are heard. If you don’t have enough right now, you can probably bank enough eventually through persistence (fasting adds six per cent a month), or get a loan from two or three others (who gather and agree on your behalf). There is, of course, always the possibility that you might convince some righteous man (one just full of faith) to offer some effective fervent intercession on your behalf. That kind has more faith than they need themselves. (The God Who Hears, pg. 155)

The problem with putting your faith in faith is that when God does answer your prayers, you may be tempted to claim credit. And when God doesn’t answer your prayers, you are tempted to blame yourself. Attention is centered on prayer techniques. The emphasis is on us.

But when we put our faith in God we understand, as we heard last week, that “someone else does the answering.” When we receive no answer, we still have questions, but we also still have God. Hunter writes: 

Prayer is seen as a means of communication between personal beings, and faith is an expression of commitment to the relationship. We are important, but God is more important—so we don’t try to manipulate him by means of faith. (p. 162)

2. 2. Have I confessed my sin?

It’s interesting to note that James connects healing and the confession of sin. When James says: “If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.” He’s talking about the sick person who is being prayed for.

This is not saying that every illness is the direct result of sin…but some illnesses may be. Sin can be a contributing factor in physical health. In Psalm 32 David describes his bones wasting away and his body groaning all day long as a direct result of unconfessed sin.  (cf Psalm 32:3-5)

As I said last week, I’m not terribly comfortable telling you that God is not answering your prayer for this reason or that reason, but the Bible does not share my discomfort. If you are praying for healing that is not coming, it’s probably a good idea to do a fearless moral inventory and see if there are any sins that might be blocking your prayers.

3. Am I using the benefits of common grace?

In other words, are you open to the possibility that God may want to answer your prayer for healing through “ordinary” means like visits to doctors and the intake of medicine. In my opinion, it is just as much a miracle to say that God has healed a cancer patient through the wonders of MRIs and radiation and chemotherapy (all of which have been developed through the brilliant minds of people made in His image) as it is a miracle if the tumor would spontaneously disappear.

Every now and then we will hear news reports of a family that has refused medical care for a sick child for religious reasons. They believe in God’s power to heal, and they feel it is a lack of faith to go to a doctor. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is totally unbiblical behavior and paints Christianity in a terrible light.

When medicine is available, and we refuse it, then it seems that we are “forcing a test” on God, similar to what Satan tempted Jesus to do when he told him to jump off the temple and let the angels rescue Him (cf. Luke 4:12). Believing God can heal without the use of medicine does not mean we should attempt to force His hand. Who are we to say that He shouldn’t heal through a wise doctor or even the “inbuilt miracles” of our own immune systems?

4. Am I willing to accept what God gives?

If I can take you back, for a moment, to the Westminster Catechism’s definition of prayer, you may remember that it included the line “things agreeable to His will.” J.I. Packer writes that we must always remember that when we come to God in prayer, we are implicitly telling him that “if he wills something different [than what we are asking] we know it will be better and it is that (rather than the best we could think of) that we really want him to do.” (quoted by Keller, p. 227)

We must trust, as we’ve been saying throughout this series, that God is the general standing over the battle map. That He has a big picture view that we do not have. We need to remember that He is a loving Father, and like any good Dad He sometimes gives us what we need rather than what we think we want.

Tim Keller says: 

We can leave our concerns with God, knowing that he will hear them and act on them when and as is best. There is a peace and confidence that comes from such praying that cannot be experienced any other way. (227-228)

Conclusion
So, what should we pray for? We should pray in our suffering. We should pray in our success.  We should pray in our sin. And we should pray in our sickness.

There is a lot of mystery to how prayers for healing work (or don’t work) but it is clear in the Bible that it is something we should do.