Called to pray - Inreach

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If you've got the Bible there, open up to James chapter five. It's great that Sharon was able to give that kids talk this morning. Wonderful that we didn't communicate about this, but the Lord's obviously leading us in the same direction. So we're going to be continuing our prayer series, looking at being called to pray in this season of concerted prayer together. As we, as the Kabbaltia Baptist Church, ask the Lord to reveal His will to us, that we seek Him, His will. We pray to Him, we listen to Him, and we want to be the kind of church that doesn't just make decisions about our future, but seeks the Lord for the future. If you've been following along with us over previous weeks, you'll know that these prayers over the last couple of weeks have been shaped around our four church values, being informed by the Bible, being transformed by the Spirit, growing in community that's in reach and reaching out with the hope of Jesus. And we're going to focus on that third one this morning, in reach and growing in community and what it means to pray for one another, as Sharon has helped us to see in the kids talk that we've all been commanded to do. Before we do that, one quick announcement that I better not forget. After the service today, we're going to need some help. If you're fit and able, if you're able to stack a chair, we need to move all of these chairs that we've got. We need to stack them up in stacks of eight, and just where they are. So just don't move them too far by hand. They just stack on top of each other, sort of lift up and stack. But they need to go eight high and just leave them in stacks. And we'll have some of our stewards come around with some trolleys, and we're going to line them all up over on the wall over there because we've got carpet cleaners coming in to clean the carpets for our annual carpet clean. So just makes a bit of light work if those that are able to after the service this morning, not straight away, if you need to sit and pray and do business with God, that's okay. But as we're moving out to morning tea, if you've got a few moments and the fitness, the capacity to do it, feel free to detach your chair and stack it up, but don't go any more than eight high. That's just a safety thing. But we'll have more instructions about that afterwards. Cool. Better not forget that. Cool. All right. We'll kick on. One of the signs of healthy Christian community, as we saw in our kids' talk this morning, is not just that we gather together, but that we genuinely care for one another before God. A healthy church, biblically, is a praying church. And a healthy church family is one in which we don't just pray for ourselves, but we pray for one another. I would imagine that most of us who are in the habit of praying, we're pretty comfortable with praying about our own needs. We're usually pretty comfortable with praying in a crisis. But I wonder how we're doing when it comes to praying for each other. Are we carrying one another's burdens before the Lord? Are we supporting one another spiritually? Are we truly growing as the kind of church where people know that they're prayed for? James chapter five reminds us that prayer is not just a private practice. It's not just an emergency response. It's meant to actually be part of the life of the whole church. In the passage, James particularly calls us to pray for one another. We saw that in verse 16. Have a look at the context of that verse 16. We'll read from verses 13 to 18. James writes in this way, he says, is any one of you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church and pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise them up. If they've sinned, they 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 person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being even as we are. 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. May the Lord add his understanding to our reading of his word. The first thing we see this morning as we've been so instructed with the kids is praying for each other is commanded in verse 16 there. The apostle Paul commands the believers in Ephesus to pray for all the Lord's people. James is not the first person to say that we're to pray for one another. This was the pattern and the teaching of the early church. It was the pattern and the teaching of the whole of the New Testament. In Ephesians chapter 6 verse 18, Paul writes, he says, pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for the Lord's people. We see also in the life and ministry of Jesus that prayer to God for one another was both natural and necessary. Jesus asked his disciples to pray for him, if you remember, in the Garden of Gethsemane on that night before he was arrested. He took some disciples with him and he asked them to watch and pray. Not only that, but Jesus modeled praying for one another as he prays for his disciples and for all who would come to believe his name. You can read that prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. In at least three other letters that the apostle Paul wrote to early Christian churches, he asks his readers to pray for us, talking about the other disciples, the other apostles, talking about those that were on the missionary journeys with him to share the good news of Jesus. Paul asks the believers to pray for them as they went about their gospel work. Also the writer to the Hebrews in Hebrews 13 verse 18 says, pray for us as well. So we're getting this clear picture that it's not just James, but it's the whole of the New Testament. It's actually the pattern of all believers since the beginning. Have another look at a prayer that Paul prays in Colossians chapter one. Maybe keep a finger in James and move over to Colossians chapter one and have a look at verses nine to 11. I'll put them on the screen for you as well, but it's good to follow along in your own Bible for yourself. Colossians chapter one verses nine to 11, Paul prays this way. He's writing to the believers there in Colossians, he says, for this reason, since the day we heard about you, we've not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience. It's a cool prayer. Paul prays that these believers would grow in their understanding of God's will, that they'd be wise, that they would walk and live their lives in a way in which pleased him, that they would bear fruit, that their knowledge of God, their strength of faith would be growing, that they would endure with patience. It's a wonderful pattern for how to pray for one another. In Acts chapter two, you can read about the beginning of the church and how the early church devoted themselves to four key things, four characteristics that defined this early church gathering as they met there. Luke, who wrote Acts, describes these key characteristics for us. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to meeting together, to the breaking of bread that's remembering and partaking of the communion meal, and finally to prayer. And so what we can see in all of this is that for the church, prayer is not a side activity. It's not something that we just do now and again, it's not something that we just do when we need to pray for something important. Prayer is actually part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian community. It's what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It's one of the defining marks of Christian discipleship. Praying for one another is not an isolated incident. It's an essential part of discipleship and Christian communities. That's the first lesson we learned from James this morning. The second one is that prayer for one another belongs in every circumstance. Have a look back in James chapter five. Have a look at the different range of circumstances that he mentions in verses 13 to 15. There's a whole wide range of circumstances that he lists as a catalyst for our prayers, for ourselves and for each other. And he touches this wide range of human experience. Trouble and suffering, joy or happiness, sickness and sin. In other words, James is saying here that whether life is good or whether life is heavy, whether life is uncertain, we're not sure what the future holds. We can pray because prayer is always appropriate. What we see here is that praying for each other is not something that we just do when it gets tough or when somebody asks us, this should be something we're doing all the time. Prayer is for the whole of life. And I reckon James tells us this to encourage us because he understands that every circumstance in our lives can bring both spiritual opportunities and spiritual dangers. There's opportunities and threats. In times of suffering, we might be tempted to doubt God, to get discouraged, maybe to neglect prayer or to withdraw from fellowship with other believers. In times of happiness or ease, we might become complacent or self-sufficient and therefore less aware of our need for God day by day. James reminds us here that in every circumstance, we need God and he is sufficient for every one of our needs. We're saying about that in one of our songs this morning. God is not just the God that we need in crisis. He's the God that we need at all times and in every season. We can rely entirely on him. His power is sufficient for all our needs. Notice too that James highlights in these verses that prayer is both personal and corporate. There's a private individual and a shared community aspect to prayer. In verse 13, we see that he's speaking about praying for ourselves. But then in verse 14, he teaches us that there are times when we should ask others to pray for us as well. These are times when we need the prayers of our brothers and sisters in the Lord, prayers of the church. They're times of serious illness or times of intense suffering and trouble. They're times of deep weakness or exhaustion. These are not times to hide away, but times to ask for prayer. I found it to be a great comfort to have brothers and sisters in Christ stand with me in prayer in some of these times as I've journeyed with Jesus. Many of you have been praying for me. You know who you are. I've shared this with you privately. You're a great encouragement to me in these times where I need your prayers. Friends, if you're here this morning and you find yourself down and exhausted, maybe deeply unwell or spiritually burdened in some way, I just want to encourage you this morning and know that you don't have to carry that alone. We're encouraged here in this letter from James to ask one another for prayer, to ask a Christian that you know that knows you to pray for you. Reach out to us in the office if you'd like a pastor to come and pray with you. If you'd like us to be praying for you, you could send your prayer requests into us to the office. We have a prayer chain. Send an email to us. There's a link on our website where you can do that as well. We have a group of about 76 people who have committed to be praying for the needs of others across our church. It's a wonderful ministry of intercessory prayer, of standing in faith before God for the needs of our faith community here. Those folk are ready to pray for you in some of these difficult times, but we can only do that if we know that you have that need. So don't be shy. Ask a brother or sister to pray. It'd be our joy to pray for you. The point that James is making here is that our prayers for one another should cover every circumstance of our lives. A third lesson we see this morning in our text is that prayer for one another doesn't rely on the power of our faith, but on the power of the God in whom our faith rests. I'll say that again. Prayer for one another doesn't rely on the power of our faith, but on the power of God in whom our faith rests. Verse 15 shows us that. James says, the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise them up. If they've sinned, they'll be forgiven. Now I think a mistake that we can make when it comes to prayer, whether it's for ourselves or for others, is to think that if we are not being made well when we pray, that maybe it's because somehow the power for that prayer rests in the measure of our faith when we ask for prayer, or maybe somehow the power of that prayer rests in the faith of the person who's doing the praying for us if we're unwell, or for whatever it is, because we can pray in all circumstances, right? I think that's a mistake, to think that the power lies in us, in the faith that we have in asking for prayer, or in the faith that we have in the person who's praying for us. That's not where the power lies. James is saying that healing here depends not on how much faith that we can generate in prayer, the emphasis is not on our power, it's on the Lord's power. It's not about how much faith we can muster, but it's about faith in the God in whom our faith rests. Prayer offered in faith means trusting God, not trusting our own ability to pray, because the strength of prayer is not in us. The strength of prayer is in the God who hears and answers our prayers. Now there are times when we will pray and God doesn't heal. We're not God, we don't know why he answers in that way sometimes, but the Bible says that he hears our prayers, and he can and he does, he will answer our prayers. It may not always be the way, the answer that we were wanting him to give. I would encourage you, don't be discouraged if you don't get the answer that you had first hoped for in prayer. Persist in it. Don't be discouraged and think that the answer hasn't come because your faith is not enough. That's not what's going on. Keep your faith in the God who hears and answers your prayer. You pray for patience while you wait. I found that to be incredibly helpful in my own prayer journey. James tells us here in this verse that God hears and answers prayers for both physical needs, but also for spiritual needs. He speaks of sickness, but he also speaks of sin and forgiveness in this verse. James is again not saying that all sickness is caused by sin. I think that's another mistake that we can make. The Bible doesn't teach that at all. Sometimes sin and sickness are connected, but sometimes they're not. We just get sick. This is why James says if they've sinned, they will be forgiven. It doesn't mean they're connected. But if sin's involved, if there's some sin there, God has the power and the will to forgive. The good news of the gospel is that God is able to forgive. That's why Jesus came. There's nothing that he can't forgive. So we can bring both our physical and our spiritual needs to God. We can pray with confidence because we know that our prayers for one another don't rely on our faith, but on the power of God in whom our faith rests. So there's a challenge there, right? If we understand that truth, we don't want to limit our prayers for one another. We don't want to limit our prayers for our church. I think that can be another mistake that we can make sometimes. We get a bit timid in our asking of God. Ephesians 3.20 tells us that God can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. So as we look to the future, as we seek God's will for the future of the Kabuchah Baptist Church, we can pray big prayers because the power is not in our praying and how good our faith is, the power is in the God who hears and answers, who can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Lesson number four, prayer for each other strengthens and restores true fellowship. James 5.16 tells us that if we confess our sins to each other and pray for each other, so that we may be healed. Seems that James is concerned about the life of the church as a community, as a family of faith. And he points out here that prayer isn't just something that the pastors do. It's not just something for the church council to do or for your ministry coordinator to do. No, the verse here is telling us that prayer is for everybody, for any mature Christian. No, the prayer is for the whole family of God. James links two things together here in this little truth. He says, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other. So he's telling us to do that with one another. In other words, what he's getting at here is that honest spiritual relationships and mutual prayer in faith for one another, they go hand in hand. It's part of healthy Christian community. Now again, we need to be wise here in the way in which we apply this. James is not saying that every private sin must be publicly announced. Scripture teaches that first and foremost, we confess our sins to God and to God alone. There are many things that should remain between us and the Lord. But when we've sinned against a brother or a sister, when our sin has damaged fellowship in some way, when reconciliation is needed, then confession is necessary. We must go to the person that we've wronged. We must acknowledge the wrong. Take forgiveness and then pray together. Why? Well, because hidden sin damages Christian fellowship. Unresolved bitterness can take root in our heart and it can damage Christian fellowship. Guilt that just sits within us unresolved and not dealt with can damage Christian fellowship. And so prayer joined with this confession and repentance becomes one of the means that God uses to restore what's been broken. And this matters greatly for us as a church. If we're serious about being a people who are growing in community as our church value states, then we can't settle for polite distance. We need to foster gospel shaped relationships with one another. Relationships that are marked by humility, honesty, forgiveness and prayer. Some people can be physically well and the yet inwardly sick with bitterness or resentment, guilt or unresolved conflict. And James says, if that's you this morning, don't leave it buried. Bring it into the light in the right way. First confess it to God. But if the Holy Spirit is prompting you that there's a brother or a sister, a fellow believer in Christ that you've sinned against, then you need to go and seek their forgiveness. Pray for each other. Let God restore what sin has damaged. Because praying for one another helps to strengthen and restore true fellowship among God's people. Fifth lesson, we're getting quicker. Our prayers for each other are powerful. Verse 16, look at that there. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. If you've got the English standard version, your translation might say the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James is wanting us to feel the weight of this. Prayer is not weak. It's not pointless. It's not just words into the air. Prayer actually means something. It has power. It's not just a religious formality. It's not just something we do by tradition. Prayer is powerful because God is powerful. When we don't think of prayer in that way, it can feel a bit unimpressive at times. It can feel a little bit quiet or simple or ordinary, maybe hidden when we're just having those quiet moments of prayer with the Lord. No lights, no noise, no visible machinery. We don't understand how prayer works. It's just talking to God and somehow the God who made us, the God who holds this universe together hears and answers our prayers. It's a mystery to us. We don't know how it works. We know He invites us to do it. James says prayer is powerful and effective. I think it's a bit like stored power waiting to be released. There can be this tremendous strength available, but if it's never engaged, it remains untapped. Kelly and I head off next week for some annual leave. We're going to Sydney to celebrate a birthday with some friends of ours. I was thinking about those jet engines on the plane because we had a fly down there. There's this huge power potential on these big planes. That engine can suck a lot of air and push the big, heavy plane through the sky at crazy speeds. It's massive potential, but unless that plane is fueled and the engine is switched on, the power potential goes nowhere. The plane's just going to stay on the tarmac. It doesn't lift off. I think in the same way, if we as a family of faith, if we as a church or as individuals, as God's people, if we neglect prayer for one another, then I don't think we should be surprised if we see less spiritual vitality in our community. I don't think we should be surprised if we neglect prayer, that we see less encouragement or less restoration or less dependence on God, less fruit. If you remember our focus verse for the year from John 15, verse eight, Jesus wants us to bear fruit because this is what gives glory to God, is what shows us to be his disciples. James wants us to see this morning that praying for one another is not a small thing. It's one of the ways the living God works powerfully among his people. Maybe you think, Dave, well, that sounds pretty good, but surely that applies to those righteous Christians because the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. It's not to the ordinary people like me. Friends, the wonder of the gospel, the good news of Jesus is that because of his righteousness, all of us who put our faith and hope and trust in him, we come under that righteousness of Christ. It's not our righteousness that makes us right with God and our prayer is acceptable to him, but what Christ has done on our behalf. What this means is that prayer for each other is something everyone can do. James gives us this example of Elijah at the end of the text we looked at this morning in verses 17 to 18. James says, Elijah was a human being even as we are. Again, if you've got one of those other translations, maybe the ESV, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. I think that's wonderfully encouraging. Elijah might seem extraordinary to us, especially if you're a Christian, if you've grown up with the Bible and you know the story of Elijah from one and two kings, he seems like this hero of the faith, this amazing Christian, this righteous man of God. But James tells us something else here. James says Elijah was just a man like us. He's just a person. One commentator that I read during the week in the commentary on James that I was reading, he referenced this passage that James talks about Elijah in and the commentator had this to say. Of Elijah, he said, Elijah, he could rise to the heights of faith and commitment and fall into the depths of despair and depression. He could be brave and resolute sometimes and then fly for his life at the whiff of danger. He could be selfless in his concern for others and then filled with self-pity. That's how Elijah's described in the Bible. You go and read the story. That's exactly what he's like. Somehow in our minds, we make him into this great, amazing, righteous man of God that can do no wrong and yet he's just like us. I can relate to all of those apparent contradictions in Elijah's walk with the Lord. In his faith and fear, in his resolve and in his cowardice, in his encouragement and in his discouragement, I'm just like him. You are too. And yet James says Elijah prayed and God answered. And so the point is, if Elijah can pray, then so can I and so can you. That's the wonderful encouragement for us this morning. We don't need to be super eloquent. We don't need to have impressive words. We don't need to feel like spiritual giants in order to obey this command to pray for one another. We simply need to bring others before our great and gracious God. The one who invites us to pray, the one who hears and answers our prayers and can and does meet all our needs, whether they be needs for today, physical or spiritual. Praying for one another is something every Christian can do. I'd encourage you to do that this week. How? How do we do it? Three quick encouragements. Number one, pray scripture. When you pray, pray the Bible. Get to know the Bible. Read it. Open it. Pray according to God's word. If we want to be obedient to God's will, if we want to pray for his will to be done, one of the best things we can do is pray the things that God has already revealed are in his will for us to do. And so we pray the prayers of scripture. We pray his word back to him. There's an example in Ephesians chapter one, verses 15 to 19. Paul prays that the believers would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation so they'd know God better, that the eyes of their heart might be enlightened, that they'd know the hope to which he's called them. They'd know the riches of the glorious inheritance that he's given to them, that they'd know the great power that God has for us who believe. That's the power of his Holy Spirit at work in us. Pray the scriptures. Get to know the scriptures. There's another one in Ephesians chapter three, verses 14 to 19. Won't read it. You can read it during the week. It's about being strengthened and rooted in love and filled with the knowledge and fullness of God. What if we prayed these prayers regularly for Kabuchah Baptist Church? What if we prayed that God would strengthen us by his spirit, that he'd establish us in this way? We can pray scripture because it helps us to pray with confidence that we're praying in line with what God delights to do in his people. There's a bunch more up there. Get them from the slide. Get them from the website, from the notes during the week, a bunch of passages you could with prayers in them. Ephesians chapter one and three, Philippians chapter one, Colossians chapter one, Thessalonians chapter three, Second Thessalonians chapter one. The whole book of Psalms is songs and prayers that you could pray. The Lord's Prayer, which we've taught through earlier this year. Jesus' High Priestly Prayer in John chapter 17, I mentioned that earlier. All good prayers that you could pray. If we pray scripture, we know that we're praying in a way that honors God and is in accordance with his will. In practical way, we pray specifically and regularly. Praying for one another doesn't happen by accident. It helps to build a rhythm, to cultivate a disciple, a discipleship, a discipline of prayer. Now this is not a legalism. It's not a religious ritual. It's faithful and faith-filled intentional prayer. To do that, I found I need to set a time and a place for prayer. I need to make lists because my brain's not great and I forget stuff. It's helpful if you use prayer tools or resources that are available. There's many out there. If you want some help with that, have a chat to me after the service. Give me a hoi during the week in the office on email and I can reply back to you. There's a bunch. There's apps you can get for your phones. There's notes that are just simple. You can use reminder lists, whatever you want to do. If it's a tool and if it's a resource that helps, then I'd say use it. Don't pick a tool that's too complex and get caught up in the nuts and bolts of the tool and don't ever do any praying. That's not helpful. But if it's something that works for you, use it. Let it help fuel this discipline of prayer. Finally, how do you do it? You've just got to start somewhere. At some point, we've just got to begin. I think we tend to overthink it. We tend to make it harder than it needs to be. Sometimes we give up before we even make a good start. My experience is don't wait until you feel ready to pray because you might never feel ready. Just pray. Remember that the power is not in polished words. The power is in the God who hears and answers our prayers. That little line that James adds about Elijah being a human being, he says he prayed earnestly that it wouldn't rain. It's interesting. When you look at that in the original language, the word there in the original language just means that with prayer he prayed. It's not really talking about the intensity or the frequency of which he prayed, but just that with prayer he prayed for three and a half years and it didn't rain. He had this discipline of faithful and faith-filled intentional prayer, and that's all we need. A little bit of faith in the loving and all-powerful God who's waiting to answer the prayers of his people, and we just make a start. The church, if we want to grow in community, we got to learn to pray for one another in every circumstance, for physical and spiritual needs, for healing, for forgiveness, for restoration and strength. When we pray, we do so believing that prayer is powerful and that it's something that every believer can do. May God make us a church family that not only says we care for one another, but that shows it regularly by bringing one another before the throne of grace in our prayers for each other. Let's pray now. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this gift of prayer and for the privilege of bringing one another before you. Lord, would you teach us to be a church that prays for each other well? Help us to grow in community through love and humility, honesty and faithfulness in prayer. Help us to pray according to your word and in accordance with your will for us as your people here in the Kabuchah and Moorayfield region. Father, would you show us anything that we need to stop doing, or maybe some things that we need to start doing as a church in order to be more effective in our gospel witness in this community? Lord, would you help us to pray regularly and specifically for one another? Help us to cultivate a healthy discipline of prayer. Help us, Lord, to not overthink it, but to simply begin. And we ask this in Jesus' name by the power of His Holy Spirit.