One Church in Prayer
Feb 23 2024 - Eric Buresh
One Church. A healthy, strong body. This is more than a unity or an alignment of beliefs; it is beautifully living as one interconnected unit. Joined together by joints and sinews. The metaphor of the body as One Church is meant to signify a wholistic connectedness through Christ for our good and His glory. The challenge – why it is so hard for a group of people to form a single body -- is that true connectedness is hard. It requires a continual, ongoing, sacrificial investment by giving to others the one resource most of us in our flesh guard the most – our time. Without the sacrificial investment of personal time with others in the body, the linkages that join the body together will be weak. The body will be atrophied.
Prayer not only is critical to our relationship with God, but our Father has also always intended prayer to be a communal activity that is among the most significant sinews that joins the body together. It is a hugely important way to join as one in sharing both burdens and victories. I love the book of James. There are parts of it that can be tough to understand with a casual read, but with time and teaching by the Holy Spirit, it is a gold mine of Truth. In James 5:13-18, we find three types of prayer, all focused primarily on healing sickness (physical and spiritual).
First, “is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms.” (vs. 13). This is describing our personal prayer time with our Father. Communal prayer does not obviate the need for personal prayer. Each of our individual relationships with God comes first before our relationships with others in the body (the greatest “love God” comes before the second greatest commandment “love others”).
Second, “is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” (vs. 14). This form of communal prayer (for more, see the p.s. regarding vs. 15 below) requires sacrificing time. To pray over some one, to anoint them, to lay hands on them, you must be with them. It is a two-way investment. The person needing prayer must call and ask for elders to come (no shortcuts), and the elders must come (no shortcuts). This mutual sacrifice is how sinews form and joints strengthen.
Third, “confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” This is a call to all of us for sacrificial investment of time in each other. A body knows itself well. Similarly, we should know each other well -- our sins as well as our needs, fervently praying for both, and watching God work in those fervent prayers to great avail for spiritual and physical healing. There is no shortcut to having this type of relationship with one another. It takes a whole lot of time and commitment.
But it is worth it! A healthy, strong body in Christ is an amazing thing. It is beautiful and it is a beacon of light to the failing world around us. No group of people will ever perfectly live out this oneness this side of heaven, but even the attempt brings greater life and joy!
p.s. – This next section goes well past the 3-5 minute read time, but I get asked about James 5:15 regularly so I wanted to share where the Holy Spirit has led me with respect to this passage so far. I say “so far” intentionally because this is one of those areas that is hard to totally nail down with the express revelation God has given us in His Word, and in such areas, it is important to acknowledge the possibility that our own experiences, personality, desires, fears, or biases (our flesh) may be obscuring some part of the Truth and that the Holy Spirit may illuminate more for us at some point. So, with that caveat . . .
James 5:14-15: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”
First off, I do not believe there is any “healer” among us. James doesn’t say, when you’re sick, call the healer, he says to call the elders (plural) of the church, and to pray for each other. Healing can be the result of the prayers of any believer (the righteous in Christ). While I don’t think anyone has a perpetual “gift of healing,” I do believe that God delights to give “gifts of healing” and that His provision of such gifts is alive and well today. 1 Corinthians 12:9 and 28. I also believe we should “earnestly desire” these “gifts of healing” as well as all other spiritual gifts. 1 Corinthians 14:1.
Some argue that James 5:15 gives a guarantee that the Lord will heal the sick when an elder that has great faith prays for them, and this verse is often used as authority for so called “healing ministries” or “name it and claim it” theology in the context of healing.
I agree that there is a guarantee of healing given in verse 15, but there is an important condition that precedes that guarantee – specifically, “the prayer of faith.” Faith is the fully dependent belief that God will do everything He has promised to do, including our salvation in Christ and His working of all things for our ultimate, eternal good. It is not faith to believe that God will do for us everything that we want or everything that we think is good for us. Such a belief makes us god by forcing God to act as we see fit, and that is the exact opposite of faith. When it comes to illness or physical malady, God has not promised us anywhere in Scripture that He would provide physical healing in this life, or that such healing would be for our ultimate good. We thus have no basis as humans to claim something God didn’t promise. We are not and never will be in control of God or His gifts.
So, what is the “prayer of faith?” There are times when the Holy Spirit will give a Spirit-filled person an assured sense (generally via the spiritual gift of prophecy) that God is going to move powerfully to give a gift of healing. When the Spirit-filled person receives that confident assurance from the Lord that a gift of healing is coming, that person is then able to offer a “prayer of faith” that the Lord will heal as He has already indicated to them, and the Lord will, in that circumstance, follow through consistent with the Spirit’s prompting. When God says
He will heal, it is guaranteed He will heal. In this circumstance, the Lord names the gift He is going to give, and the person who received that assurance simply claims that gift by expressing “the prayer of faith” that God can and will do what He said. James 5:15 does not put any human in control of healing decisions. God is in control of the outcome. He makes the decision; we do not force His hand by some unilateral “prayer of faith.” It is not our will, but His being done.
Another important thing to remember is that, even when there is no guarantee from the Lord, we should always fervently ask the Lord to physically heal one another. That is a primary point of the “fervent request” of James 5:16. Our fervent prayers avail much with God but the result of our fervent prayers is that the ailing person “may be healed.” God may heal. I’ve seen “fervent prayers” lead to God’s healing many times, but it is not guaranteed. If not, we can be totally confident that God has something better than healing for us. And that is a promise from God that is totally guaranteed!