James 5: 13- 20

The Prayer of Faith

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is 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. And 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. Therefore 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.

Elijah 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. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

I watched Joyce Meyer today, because I was home alone, and I needed a pick me up, because I haven’t been feeling well as of late. The weather is not cooperating and it seems my body has been on overdrive for the last little while and I am just plain “Tired!” yesterday was an emotional day for me and I found that by the time dinner was on the table, that all I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and close my eyes. If you don’t listen to your body, when it speaks, it is usually already too late to do anything about it, because once you feel the pain, the damage is already done.

I guess as of late I haven’t felt very “prayerful” and yesterday was a good example of this fact, we opened the meeting with a prayer, but I guess my heart wasn’t in it because I was already looking for contention. My heart was not still and my brain was running at 60 miles per hour. And wouldn’t you know it that when I got into bed last night, my brain was still spinning and all I wanted to do was turn it off. I though that I knew where the “Off Switch” was, but I guess I was mistaken, because I must have laid there for an hour wishing that my brain would just stop running.

Joyce talked about prayer, and that we should pray a righteous prayer, and she spoke about the righteous man and how God does not listen to a “self righteous man” that prayer should be heartfelt and fervent. Fervent is defined as: having or showing great warmth or intensity of spirit, feeling, enthusiasm, etc.; ardent: a fervent admirer; a fervent plea.

I guess that lately I haven’t taken the time to fervently sit and say my prayers like I usually do, because my days have been so filled with busyness and drama. I am not complaining because how else would my days be like? I move very quickly over my daily landscape and I know that I haven’t taken time to stop and pay attention to the growing grass or the blooming flowers. A change has occurred in my weekly schedule and I have no choice but to acquiesce to it. School is as School does. Three is no way around it this term.

She also talked about the fact that if we pray, we must act on that prayer. If we sit and do nothing, then God sits and does nothing. And how easy is it for us to get up and make a decision to do something for someone else in order that God might move in some small way. She relates a story:

She went into a diner for dinner one night and she was alone at a table, close to the end of her meal a couple of ladies walked in and sat down to eat. When she got up to pay, she handed the waitress anSo  amount of money to pay for her meal and the meals of the two ladies sitting in the restaurant at the moment, and in addition she told the waitress to keep the balance of what was left. She told the waitress to tell the ladies sitting there simply that “God loved them.”

A few nights later she went to another diner, where this same waitress worked two jobs to make ends meet, and they spoke. The waitress shared that when she approached the two ladies to tell them that their meal was paid, they had recognized Joyce from the TV, and were moved. When the waitress spoke the words “God Loves You” to them they began to cry. For it had happened, they were troubled, a family member was in the hospital at that moment in critical condition, and for a moment, God had shown himself to them in the simple words that “He Loved them” and they knew in that moment that everything would be alright.

So you never know when a random act of kindness will touch another in such a powerful way. As it has been for as many years as I can remember, doing service at my home group is a ritual random act of kindness. It is a time that I take during set up to meditate on people, to pray for people. To beckon those who might show up and to remember those who have since gone from our group. Every week when I set a particular chair down, I remember “Bitter Bernadette” and I utter her name and I wonder if she is still sober to this day?

So I am home alone, as hubby is out and I heard a message today, and now I am sitting with it, and I am writing the windows are open, yet the weather is unpleasant today. I went to the grocery store to get dinner for tonight and ran my errands, instead of burying myself in my bed sheets to sleep. Because when it rains, all I want to do is stay in bed. Even when I feel shitty I can’t sit here at home and look shitty. No matter how yucky I feel. It is one thing to feel like shit, it is totally another animal to look like shit. So I took a long hot shower and cleaned myself, and shaved, so that I look presentable, not that the only person looking at me right now would be God …

Recently Scotty has written about prayer you can find that link [Here]. But I will give you a piece of his essay he wrote for his class on prayer:

Prayer is a mystery! It is an amazing gift that God bestows upon His children allowing us to communicate with Him directly—I will never comprehend how or why this is the case! I enrolled in this Prayer class because I wanted to grow in both my knowledge and my ability in the area of prayer and God has taught me several lessons over the course of this semester that have allowed me to mature in my relationship with Him.

Prayer is one of the areas of life where the human and the divine collide. It is as normal as having a conversation with a friend, yet it is deeply mystical. This mystical aspect of prayer has contained one of the biggest lessons I have learned about prayer so far. Foster describes our prayers as a “perfect soliloquy” and quotes P. T. Forsyth who calls it the “monologue of divine grace”.

I have never thought of this side of prayer before. I always think of prayer going from Earth to Heaven—from humans to God. Scripture clearly shows people calling out to God and it exhorts us to do likewise. I know that Scripture shares the wonderful truth that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express (Rom 8:26, 34), and that Jesus intercedes for us from the right hand of the Father (Heb 7:25), but I had never taken these thoughts beyond this point. It blew me away to think that God is “in communion with himself through my stumbling bumbling prayers”. I always understood prayer to be transitive between me and God, but what an amazing thing it is that God would use me in a reflective way.

When I pray, the Holy Spirit calls out to God from inside me translating my prayers to God the Father, and at the same time Jesus Christ is praying to God the Father on my behalf. Both the Spirit and the Son are praying in line with the Father’s will and so every time I open my mouth to come to God I enter into the amazing perichoretic relationship of the Trinity. This has had such a powerful impact on me, so much so that I struggle to put into words the perception of God’s grace that I have been allowed to experience. In prayer I don’t just enter the throne room and approach my Heavenly Father, I participate in the Divine Love between the Trinity.

You can click over to his site and read the entire essay. It is a really beautiful piece of writing. And so we come to the end of this post. I feel at ease, my heart is not wanting to jump out of my chest and I feel alright at the moment, so I guess I am right where I need to be at this moment.

Toodles…