When I was probably 11 or 12, I used to love to throw a rubber ball against the side of the house and play catch with myself. I once was visiting my cousins in Tennessee. My aunt was inside the kitchen cooking with the pressure cooker and I was outside throwing the rubber against the side of her house. On that side of the house was a storm door that led into the kitchen. I accidentally threw the rubber ball and hit the bottom of the storm door, which was made of metal. The rubber hit the storm door with a WHAM!!! Well my aunt thought the pressure cooker exploded and I could hear her scream from outside. The next thing I knew she burst out door blessing me out for nearly scaring her to death.
Life is like a pressure cooker. You remember the pressure cooker had the regulator on top and it jiggled with the release of steam and pressure. That is what prayer is for the child of God. When we do not pray and release, we explode.
James knew the value of prayer to help with the pressures of life. James didn’t just talk about prayer. He prayed. Eusebius, the church’s first historian said this about James: He used to enter alone into the temple and be found kneeling and praying for forgiveness, for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s because of his constant worship of God, kneeling and asking forgiveness for the people. So often did he pray that he was referred to as “Old Camel Knees” (Ecclesiastical History, II 23:3-9).
James was very qualified to speak about prayer. James began his letter exhorting us to pray (1:5) and he ends his letter instructing us how to pray (5:13-16).
Listen to this man of prayer teach us about prayer:
1. We should pray when we are in trouble (James 5:13a)
Notice these verses on prayer follow James’ teaching on the need of patience in our trials. In verses 7-11, James said seven times we need patience. Then in verse 12, he said, “Don’t swear.” In verses 13-18, James tells us seven times to pray. So, in trouble don’t swear, but turn to prayer.
James used the word “afflicted” in 5:13 that he also employed in 5:10 to describe the persecution the prophets endured. This is suffering or trouble inflicted by others. Paul used this word to describe his imprisonment in 2 Timothy 2:9 and to warn Timothy of the hardships of the ministry in 2 Timothy 4:5.
When we are afflicted with pain from others, we are to pray, not to complain, not feel sorry for ourselves, but pray to God. Put on you big boy pants; act like a man, and pray.
Charles Swindoll has said that heaven has a room that will surprise all of us when we see it----a room that has within it large boxes neatly package with lovely ribbons on top, bearing our names on them, and tagged with these words: Never delivered to earth because never requested from earth.
How many answers to our prayers are still in heaven unanswered because we simply did pray? Do you have unanswered prayers for your loved ones in heaven? Or unanswered prayers for your own spiritual growth still in heaven? Or forgiveness of sin still in heaven?
2. We should praise when we pray (James 5:13b)
The cheerful are not necessarily the physically well or free of trouble, but those with a good attitude in their trouble. They have prayed in their affliction and allowed God to give them a positive attitude in negative circumstances. So are we to praise God.
This word for cheer is used only one other time in the New Testament and that is in Acts 27 when Paul and the others were on board a ship in one of the worst storms ever. Paul exhorted everyone on board in the midst of crashing waves when their lives could be taken any moment, “Be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you. For there stood by me this night the angel of God saying, ‘Fear not Paul, you must be brought before Caesar.’” Like Paul, we praise the Lord in the worst storms of life.
Remember the old hymn: Count your many blessings name them one by one and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. When I was younger we used to change the word “one” to “ton” and sing: Count your many blessings name them ton by ton and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.
3. We should pray when we are suffering because of our sin (James 5:14-16)
James gives a guarantee with this kind of praying in 5:15: “The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up; and if (“since”) he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”
Now we know that this cannot be typical physical illness because God doesn’t always heal the physically sick. The Lord did not raise up even Paul who had a thorn in the flesh up after he prayed three times for healing.
This is a physical problem because of sin. That is why James wrote 5:16, “confess your sins one to another and pray for another that you may be healed.” We know all sickness is not the result of sin according to Jesus in John 9:2-3. There Jesus said the man who had been blind from birth was not blind because of his sin nor the sin of his parents.
But the sickness in James 5:15 is sickness because of sin.
An Old Testament example of this kind of praying is David in Psalm 32. When David sinned with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered, David reaped personally for his sin. When he confessed his sin, he was healed. David describes that experience in Psalm 32.
When he refused to confess his sins for 9 months, the 9 months Bathsheba carried his baby, David suffered:
a) Physically. “My bones waxed old. My roaring all the day long.”
b) Emotionally: “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.” God depressed David with guilt.
c) Spiritually: “My moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” David dried up spiritually. He was no longer like the blessed man in Psalm one who mediated day and night on God’s Word and was like a tree planted by the rivers of water.
But David in Psalm 32: 5, confessed his sin. He did not blame others nor God. He did not focus on others and their faults. He confessed his sins to God and God immediately forgave him: “and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”
What is the result of this kind of praying? James gives a great prayer promise in 5:16b: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” The continual praying of a righteous believer works powerfully.
1. What kind of praying works powerfully? Continual praying. We don’t give up praying. It always too soon to quit.
2. The continual praying of a righteous man. This believer has confessed his sins.
3. This kind of persistent, righteous praying works powerfully. Chuck Swindoll wrote about the power of prayer: “Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscles of omnipotence.”
During their agonizing imprisonment at the Nazi death camp of Ravensbruck, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie suffered from ill treatment and lack of medical care. They were treated worse than common criminals, though their only “crime” had been sheltering Jews who were seeking to escape the murderous tyranny of Nazism:
Corrie ten Boom wrote:
The prison they were confined in was overcrowded, and the living conditions in the barracks were atrocious. Disease and malnutrition were rampant, and they feared that they, like so many of the prisoners around them, would soon be languishing in death.
In their misery, they often were forced to depend wholly on God. And God heard and answered their prayers, sometimes demonstrating his miraculous protection in the times of their deepest need.
When Betsie was desperately ill on one occasion, Corrie realized that the tiny bottle of DaVita Mon was down to the very last drops. “My instinct,” she wrote, “was always to hoard---Betsie was growing so very weak! But others were ill as well. It was hard to say no to eyes that burned with fever, hands that shook with chill. I tried to save it for the very weakest---but even these soon numbered fifteen, twenty, twenty-five…” Corrie’s heart went out to them, but she desperately feared that sharing those precious drops with all the others would rob Betsie of the only chance she had for survival.
Betsie recognized her need for the medication, but she reminded Corrie of the account of the widow of Zarephath who shared with Elijah and whose handful of meal and small amount of oil lasted as long as there was a need. Betsie was convinced that God could perform a similar miracle for them. Corrie initially belittled the idea of such a miracle in modern times, but she soon was a believer. “Every time I tilted the little bottle, a drop appeared at the top of the glass stopper. It just couldn’t be! I held it up to the light, trying to see how much was left, but the dark brown glass was too thick to see through.”
Each day she continued to dispense what she thought was the very last drop, until one day when a female guard who had shown kindness to the prisoners before, smuggled a small quantity of vitamins into the barracks for the prisoners. Corrie was thrilled, but she determined to first finish the drops in the bottle. “But that night, no matter how long I held it upside down, or how hard I shook it, not another drop appeared” (David Jeremiah, James: Turning Toward Integrity, page 194).
The effective fervent prayer of a forgiven man has great power with God. Jim Elliott, the martyred missionary, said, “God is on His throne and we are on His footstool, and there is only a knees distance between.”