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I want to welcome you to day five of our look through James, chapter five. Our
last day, congratulations, you made it to the end of this study of this awesome
book. Chapter five is continuing James to talk about prayer.

Most people I know work hard every day. The things we do are different, but we
all work hard to keep jobs and finish school and raise families and put food on
the table. Some people, many of us, we look at our lives sometimes and we work
hard and we don't see the results that we'd like.

And one answer that some people have to that is you need to work smarter and not
harder. You need to not just be efficient, but you also need to be effective.
The key to being truly effective in life is not just working smarter.

I'm all for that, but there's much more to that. James, chapter five, the last
part of the book talks about the truth that you become effective when your
prayers become effective. So you work closer, not just smarter, you work closer
to God in more constant daily contact to him.

Faith works to make you effective and the major way that it works to make you
effective is through prayer. Prayer makes the difference between effective life
and defective life, effective relationships and defective relationships,
effective plans and defective plans, effective careers and defective careers,
effective living and defective living. Now does that mean that some prayers are
effective and some are ineffective?

Absolutely yes. We all know this to be true. So how do I pray effective prayers?

There are two simple decisions that will dramatically affect a prayer's
effectiveness, your prayer's effectiveness. See if you can hear what they are in
the last part of verse 16 in James five through verse 20. 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 a multitude of sins. The way you walk through life
has to do with the way you talk to God. Our lifestyle powerfully affects our
prayer's effectiveness.

And two things about Elijah's life encouraged effective prayer. And I say it in
these two phrases, just like God and just like us. Now when I say just like God,
I don't mean that he was God, but there was something in his character that was
like God.

And what was it? Elijah was righteous. We look at that and we think how could we
be righteous?

Isn't God alone righteous? Well in ourselves we cannot be righteous. Righteous
means I'm living in right relationship with God and with others and I'm doing
the right things in my life.

How do I become that kind of a person? How do I have that kind of character in
my life? The only way is through my relationship with Jesus Christ.

He will give his righteousness to us and the Bible says based on that
relationship and the righteousness that grows out of that relationship, I can
pray prayers that are powerful and effective. This reminds me that the way that
I live my life does affect the answers that I get in prayer. Now let me be
clear, it's not that you're bribing God with your lifestyle, like getting better
presents from Santa if you're naughty or nice.

It's just that you pray better when you live better. You know what to ask for
and you ask with greater confidence. When you're living a selfish life, you feel
like I can't even go to God, I can't even talk to him in prayer.

I've got to get this selfishness cleaned up first. But when you live the kind of
life, the kind of character that he's asking you to, you feel drawn to God. The
way I live my life affects the way that I talk to God.

And the way that I talk to God affects the way that I live my life. It's a
circle. Elijah was a righteous man.

And when I'm a righteous man, when you're a righteous man or woman, that is one
of the keys to effective prayer. He was just like God in that he was righteous,
but he was also just like us. That's the key.

He was a man just like us, verse 17 begins by saying, and that he prayed and it
didn't rain for three and a half years. Now if you're one of those people who
tells yourself, I'm never going to see a great answer to prayer in my life, you
look at Elijah and you think, I could never be that kind of person. James says
he was just like you.

He was human. He made mistakes. If you've read the story of Elijah, you know
that one time he became so depressed because his life was threatened that he ran
away, he hid in a cave and he told God he just wanted to die.

He's just like you. And yet his prayers effectively stopped the rain and started
it again. Just one man, just like you.

But his prayers affected an entire nation. How did that happen? It happened
because prayer works.

Prayer has power that's above and beyond us. Now what kind of power does it
have? Let me just share with you five words that are in these verses we just
read.

Effective, energizing, persistent, patient, and earnest. Those five words
picture a new power, a new quality of prayer. Effective.

He prayed it wouldn't rain and it didn't rain. Why was Elijah's prayer so
effective? I love what somebody on our research team wrote about this.

Praying no rain served God's purposes, not Elijah's purposes. That's why it was
effective. But also he prayed prayers that were energizing.

The word for power in these verses, powerful prayer, comes from the word for
energy. They were energizing to everyone that was around him. He also prayed
prayers that were persistent.

Elijah kept on praying. Even when he didn't see the answers, he knew that they
were coming. He was persistent in prayer.

That's the kind of prayer that's powerful and that works. I'm persistent in
prayer because I trust God to do what he said he would do and I trust him to do
it in his timing. And then the Bible says that Elijah was earnest.

He meant what he prayed. His prayers weren't just an excuse for his life. They
became the expression of his life.

His prayers weren't just a way of saying, "Well, I fulfilled my spiritual duty
today. " No, he earnestly, sincerely went to God and said, "God, I trust you
with my life. " He truly trusted him.

Now I want to come back to prayer in a minute, but these verses at the end cause
a lot of questions I know. They talk about somebody who prays for a sinner and
if you turn a sinner, you've saved him from death. What does that mean?

Does that mean that if I pray for somebody, somehow I can get them forgiven?
That's not what this is talking about. This is talking about a Christian who has
gotten their lives involved in sin.

And if you pray for that person and they turn to God in a fresh new way or pray
for somebody who's not a believer and they turn to God and come to know him, you
can save them not from spiritual death but from physical death. You see, there's
a couple reasons that I can die because I'm sinning. One is just the natural
consequences of sin.

If I allow certain sins into my life, I'm going to die earlier because of the
natural consequences of that sin. Another reason I can die earlier because of my
sin, and John talks about this in his letter, is that sometimes God will say to
a believer, "Why don't you come home a little bit early? Because you're not
living the life I gave you to live, so why don't you just come home early?

" And that may cause more questions for you than answers, but God does do that
sometimes. Why? Because he loves us.

He's not going to let his children stay in a situation that he knows is just
going to get worse and worse and worse. But if I can pray, if I can encourage,
if I can turn someone from going in a wrong direction in life, I can save them
from all that. It's not me who's doing the saving, it's God, but I can be a part
of what God is doing.

And then James ends by saying, once again, it's through prayer that our lives
become effective. You become effective when your prayers become effective. God
challenges us here in James to make a fresh commitment to prayer in our lives.

And I don't know about you, I've got to make that fresh commitment regularly.
I'll begin a habit of talking to God and try to talk to him more regularly as a
part of my life, and then I'll get caught up in what I'm doing, and all of a
sudden I realize I've gone through most of the day without thinking about him,
talking to him. And I'll get back to talking to him more, and then I'll get back
to doing my thing more and more.

This is a day to make a fresh commitment. Now, if you're a person who's
thinking, "I've never really talked to God. Oh, maybe a few times when I was in
real trouble, how do I start?

" The greatest need any of us have in our lives is a fresh and real relationship
with the God who loves us. And if you've never said to Jesus Christ, "I want a
relationship with you. I want to begin a relationship with you," that's where
you start.

You start by saying, "Jesus, thank you that you accept me. You forgive me. You
want to guide me based on what you've done for me on the cross and the new life
you've shown me in the resurrection.

Give that new life to me. Help me to live the life you want me to live. " And
then based on that new relationship that you have with him, you begin to live
out the life that he's given you to live.

One of the many evidences of how powerful prayer is, is in the fact that when I
pray, this need for salvation is met in my life. And that when this need of
salvation is met, then I feel a sense, a closeness to God that's a part of my
everyday life. We've been talking about prayer, studying prayer, listening to
what James had to say about effective prayer.

Let's pray. Let's talk to him. And in prayer, I encourage you to say, "God, here
I am.

You know the needs of my life. I bring them to you. And I pray that you would
meet those needs, that instead of depending on myself, you would help me to
depend on you.

You know the direction of my life. You know your plans for my life. So I bring
my life to you.

And I pray that today, the steps that I take would be in the direction of your
plan for my life. Help me to know what to do. Just the next step to take.

I may not know it all. Help me to know the next step. Jesus, you know me.

You see my life. And I pray for my heart, that you bring me closer to you,
remind me throughout the day that you're there, that I can talk to you. I want
to pray effective prayers, energizing, persistent, patient, earnest prayers.

God, I know that all begins with you, with the fact that you love me. You've
given yourself for me. So I start there.

Thank you for loving me. Thank you for your gift to me. And let my life be a
reflection of what you've done for me, Jesus, I pray.

In your name, amen. I'm so glad you joined us for this study of the book of
James and how faith works to make a difference in our lives. As we finish this
study, I want to encourage you to stay with us for our next study, whether you
download it through our website or through iTunes, to begin our next study in a
few weeks.

Or you might want to choose one of our other great studies at saddlebackfamily.
com/mediacenter. You can just go to Saddleback Family and you'll find it there
and choose to study one of the other great books of God's Word that change, that
fashion, that form our lives.

I'm grateful for God's Word and I'm grateful that we get to study it together.
I'll see you for the next book.