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Welcome to day four of our Look Through James chapter five in Daily Drive Time
Devotions. We've been talking this week about riches and how God has a different
way for us to live. Not identified by our riches, but identified by our faith.

Last couple days we talked about patience and perseverance and how God works it
into our lives through his truth, his love, his care, through an example that we
read in daily life and in the Old Testament. And today, as we turn towards the
end of the book of James, we're going to be talking the next two days about
prayer. James ends his book talking about prayer.

In James chapter five, verses 13 to 16, he talks about prayer for those who are
in trouble. Prayer for those who are sick. Let me read what he has to say,
beginning in verse 13.

James talks about prayer in several areas of life. First he talks about if
you're in trouble, something's going bad in your life, feel no, no hesitation at
all to talk to God. You should talk to God all the time.

But I found that when we don't, when we feel guilty about that, I'm not talking
to God enough, and then we get in trouble, we feel even more guilty. Some of us
think, well, I'm not going to go to him now because, hey, I've been talking to
him in the good times, I feel guilty to talk to him in the bad times. No, talk
to him when you're in trouble.

I found you're not going to talk to God in the good times unless you talk to him
in the bad times. In fact, oftentimes our prayer life grows in the bad times.
You want to become a person of daily prayer?

Start by talking to him when you have a need. Anybody in trouble, pray right
now. In your mind right now, talk to God about it.

Now James goes on and he says, is anybody happy? Let them pray too. Let them
sing songs of praise.

Express that to God as well. Tell him when there's joy in your life. In fact, if
something great has happened in your life today or recently, right now, say,
God, I am so grateful.

You may have told him already, but tell him again. And then in verse 14, he
begins to talk about anyone who's sick. Is anyone 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, and the Lord will raise him up. Now what is this about? There's a
lot of questions in these verses that people have.

First it says, if somebody's sick, they should call the elders of the church to
pray over him. That says, if I'm the one who's sick, I don't wait for somebody
to come and pray for me. Hope that they know about it.

No, I tell them, I'm sick. I need somebody to pray for me. I've known of people
that they had a need in their life or a sickness in their life, and no one came
and prayed for them, but they never asked anyone to come and pray for them.

And they felt like, well, nobody cares about me. Well, the Bible here says, you
need to have the faith to call people to come and pray for you. Call the elders
of the church, it says here.

Who is that? Is that like the old guys, the people 80 years of age and older?
No, the term elders in the New Testament is used interchangeably with the term
pastor.

Call the leaders of the church, the spiritual leaders of the church, to pray
over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. We do this all the
time at Saddleback Church. You may not know about it because you've never seen
it happen if you happen to be a part of our church, but we do it all the time.

If somebody is sick, they'll call up the church office and they'll say, I want
somebody to pray for me. We'll go to their house sometimes, oftentimes people
want to come to the church office. They'll come in, we'll get a group of
spiritual leaders in the church around that person and we'll pray for them.

And we'll actually do exactly what the Bible says here, anoint them with oil in
the name of the Lord. We have some olive oil in a little jar, we'll put it on
our finger, we'll put it on their forehead and we'll pray for them. Does
anointing the person with oil in the name of the Lord have some special power of
healing?

Did somehow that make God do something he wasn't going to do in the first place?
Of course not. The idea of oil here is a sign of our fellowship together in
God's spirit.

There's no special power in the oil, but there is a symbol, there's a picture in
it that we're one in the body of Christ and we're praying for each other in the
body of Christ. In that day, people would often be anointed with oil as a
medical procedure to bring soothing. And anointing them with oil in the name of
the Lord here is a fellowship expression to bring an encouragement to the heart
of the person who is sick.

And then the Bible says the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person
well. Now what does that mean? It's tempting to read here that God will heal
anyone who just does exactly what this says.

If they'll just do this, then they'll automatically be healed. But I'll never
forget a man who wrote me once who prayed for a sick pastor who eventually died.
Their pastor died.

And he wrote at the end about his church, "I guess we just didn't have enough
faith. " That breaks my heart to read a sentence like that. Does God have some
kind of a faith scale that he measures us by?

And if I don't measure quite up to that amount of faith when somebody is sick,
they're going to die. But if I can measure up to it, then they won't. Of course
not.

That makes no biblical sense, does it? Jesus said you just have to have a
mustard seed of faith. That's all you have to have.

And you know God's compassion for that person. When somebody is sick, our desire
is to seek God's help. And that is a natural desire, but it's also a biblical
desire and a right desire.

And I should offer a prayer in faith. And the Bible says often that prayer in
faith will make the sick person well and will raise that person up. The Bible
nowhere promises that this prayer will always make the sick person well.

In fact, I don't know about you, but I don't want that. There's a certain point
in my life where I don't want people to pray for me that I'm going to be made
well. I'm ready to go on and be in heaven.

And there is a day when we're going to die and be with him. Now how do you
handle the fact that he doesn't always heal? I handle it by realizing it's God's
will.

It's in his hands and not my hand. You see, for me to say I'm going to pray and
I'm going to know when and where and how this person should be healed is for me
to take it into my hands. That's not how I pray.

That's not how we pray when we pray for a sick person to be made well. We pray,
"God, here's our desire. Our desire is for him to be made well.

" But we're not praying for our desire. We are praying for your desire, for your
will in this person's life. And you know what's best.

You know whether to take them home to be with you in heaven right now or you
know whether to wait. You know what they have to do. You know things that we do
not know.

And so God, we come to you and we put this person in your hands and we pray for
their healing. As you read these verses about healing, there are three aspects
of healing prayer in these verses. Christian love, medical care, and God's will.

Christian love. The sick person is to take the initiative and call. That's a
good thing to do.

But then the expression of Christian love is to come. The elders of the church
pray over him. You don't go through a sickness alone.

You go through it together in God's family. You don't hide it from other people.
You don't hide your weakness and your sickness from others.

No, you go through it together. You express Christian love to each other in your
sickness. There's also an expression of medical care here.

The oil certainly is a spiritual symbol. But there's also an idea of medical
care that's behind this. Because there is the personal healing touch.

And in a day when nursing staffs are overloaded and many people are without
families, people need a healing touch in their life. People need medicine. But
they also need personal care.

And it's amazing how a healing touch can make a difference in somebody's life.
Christian love, medical care, and God's will. You pray in Jesus' name.

In the name of the Lord. That's the key here. That means in his purpose, in his
will, and that which is fitting with his character and his plan.

God's will. The prayer of faith recognizes the will of God. That's the key to
the whole process here.

The will of God. If you miss that point in these verses, you're going to end up
with great distress. But if you get that point in these verses, they are verses
of great comfort.

At the end, he talks about if he's sinned, he will be forgiven. James is not
saying that all sickness is the result of sin. The Bible does not teach that.

In fact, Jesus taught the exact opposite of that. But James is reminding us here
that some are sick because of illness. And there are others, some, who are sick
because of sin in their lives.

When it's a human physical weakness, the match is to request prayer for that
person, to pray for them that they'll be healed. When the reason for the
sickness is some sin in a person's life, then confession is what needs to
happen. Telling God earnestly that you're sorry.

Now, how do I know? How do I know if it's a sin? Should I feel guilty every time
I have a cold, every time I have a sneeze, and wonder, "Is there some great sin
in my life?

" How do I know? Ask God. God will tell you.

Here's what I've learned about conviction of sin in my life. If I've just got
some shadowy, sort of a foggy feeling that maybe I've done something wrong, I
don't know what it is, but I just feel bad about myself, that's Satan trying to
make you feel guilty. Because that's not how God puts the spotlight on sin.

When you sin, and it's causing consequences in your life, and you say, "God, is
there something I've done that's causing this? " Boom, the spotlight goes right
on it. God shows you in your heart.

He shows you through His Word. Every sermon that you hear is about that thing
that you've done in your life. Every song you hear on the radio when you turn it
on is about that thing.

God puts the spotlight of truth on it. You cannot miss it. It's clear and it's
specific.

That's how you know. If it's not clear and specific, then it's Satan trying to
make you feel guilty. If it is clear and specific, what do you do?

You confess your sins. The Bible here says, "Confess your sins to each other. "
What does that mean?

You meet on the street to every Christian that you see in church this next week?
No. You confess your sins to one trusted person, to two or three trusted people.

Verse 16, the middle of the verse says, "Confess your sins to each other and
pray for each other. " Find somebody who will pray for you, and that's the
person that you talk to. You ask them, "Pray for me, not only that I will
confess this sin, but that God will give me the strength to live the new kind of
life He wants me to live.

" As we pray today, I know as I've talked about sickness and healing, you may
very well have somebody in your life who's sick, or you may be sick yourself.
And I want to pray for you, pray for that person that you love. And Lord, I pray
as we talked about just a moment ago, for the sick person who's listening to
this, or that we care about, that we love.

God, first of all, we tell you our desire. You've told us to pray as children,
to come to you as our Father. So we come to you and we say, "God, our desire is
that this person would be healed.

" We know you hear our heart, but God, we also come to you humbly, and we ask
for your will. And we ask that in your will, healing could happen. We ask that
in your will, new strength could be brought to this person, so they could serve
you in new and fresh ways.

But we also bow to your will, because we know, God, that this world is not all
there is, that we look forward to the hope of heaven. We're able to pray, not
with desperation, but we're able to pray with hope. So we come to you in hope,
and we pray for ourselves, we pray for this sick person that we love, putting
them, putting ourselves in your hand, trusting you.

In Jesus' name, amen.