Standing in the Need of Prayer

We're in James

chapter 5 this morning,

verses 13 through 20.

I like to know where I'm going ahead of

time.

Me too. Yeah. I, I like,

I like to have a plan.

Um, I'm that type, and so God

decided in His amazing wisdom

that I needed someone who did the opposite

to be the love of my life.

And so I never get to do my plan,

normally, whatever

my plan is,

because I have a spontaneous wife.

Um,

and it really makes things fun, actually.

By myself, I would not be very fun at all.

[laughs] But because Kristen is

in my life,

I actually know how to loosen up once in a

while.

Once in a while.

Now, that said,

when it comes to preparing sermons,

I've known

pastors that are a lot more spontaneous,

and it scares the life out of me.

And thankfully, God knows my heart

and knows how I'm made,

and allows me to see,

months ahead of time sometimes,

where we're going in sermon series.

If you've ever noticed,

I like to hang out in books and start them

and finish them. Well,

we're coming to the end of James now.

We've been in the book of James for a

while.

And a long time ago, I prayed, "Lord,

where are we gonna go when we're

done in the book of James?" And

if you look at the book of James and the

last part that we're about to start here,

it's all about prayer.

And around the same time I started this,

there was a member of our church

that contacted me

about a book that they read

that changed their life as far as

their prayer life.

And this individual said that they were

so excited about what God was doing

and revealing to them in prayer,

and that they felt

that it would be helpful in the church as

well.

And I said, "You know, that's interesting,

because the end of the book of James is

about prayer,

and we do need to cover prayer." And

so I have no idea how long we're gonna be

on prayer, but we're

starting today, and it may last a month,

it may

last two months.

We may enjoy ourselves so much it'll last

the next five months.

[laughs] It never

ends. Well, hopefully, right? [laughs]

And then,

I believe after that,

we're going to look more into

telling people about Jesus,

because those are the emphases I see at

the end of this passage.

So with that said, this morning

is about prayer.

I was reminded of a song

that I love to sing,

which the lyrics just absolutely left my

brain.

It's me. It's me, O Lord,

standing in the need of prayer.

Not my mother, not my father, but it's me,

O Lord, standing in the need of

prayer. Um,

I tried to get Kristen to sing

that this morning.

She said, "No,

we already have our songs this morning."

I had a plan.

She had a plan.

I don't get to be spontaneous to her.

It doesn't work that direction.

Um,

will you stand as we look at standing in

the need of prayer and

realize that this is not going to be the

end- Amen ...

of learning about prayer. One sermon

is not gonna cover.

In fact,

I could preach every week for the rest of

my life and never,

ever plumb the depths of prayer.

But we'll start here at least.

James chapter 5, starting in verse

13: "Is any one of you in trouble?

He should pray.

Is anyone happy?

Let him sing songs of praise.

Is any one 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;

the Lord will raise him up.

If he has sinned, he 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 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." Lord, we

pray this morning

that You would teach us what it means to

pray.

We pray this morning

that You would use this passage

that You have penned through Your Apostle

James,

that You would use this

to cut deeply into our hearts and minds

and lead us to a closer,

intimate walk with You.

We pray this in Your holy name,

Lord Jesus.

And God's people said Amen. Amen.

Will you please be seated?

So as many of you know, I

was trained in science.

As a scientist,

one of the things you learn

is what a lot of people learn

when they become journalists or a lot of

writers learn,

that there's some basic questions

that you always wanna be

asking.

Whenever you come across something,

it's good to ask the who, what, where,

why, and

when

about the situation.

It's always a good thing to do that,

and I apply that when I go to

Scripture.

When I find a passage of Scripture

that seems to have a lot of meat in it,

and it's

gonna take me a while to get through

and sort it out, I go back to the who,

what, where, when, and why,

about how, all these types of questions.

And so this morning,

I see some of those questions here,

and I wanna talk to you about

when do you pray?

I wanna talk to you about what

are you supposed to be praying,

and how should we pray? Now,

this isn't going to be complete.

We're not gonna cover exhaustively all the

different aspects of these

questions, but I do believe

that we can get a good start

looking at this passage together.

So when should you pray? Now, we,

we know that

there's a Bible passage that says,

"Pray continually," in 1

Thessalonians.

Always be in prayer. We understand that,

but

when exactly are the times

that your heart should immediately say,

"I need to stop right now and pray"?

Because I don't know about you,

but I go a lot of times just going through

my

life and then realize, "You know,

I could have been praying about this.

I should have stopped to pray.

Why did I decide I should do this on my

own?"

And James gives us a little bit of a

guidance here.

He just starts out the passage,

"Is any one of you in trouble?

You should pray."

So when should I pray?

When I'm in trouble,

when I'm facing trials.

Now, let me ask you, uh,

have you ever faced a trial in your life?

I mean, I'm not the only one, right?

[laughs] It, it's not that I'm getting

picked on by God. This

is something I hear a lot as a pastor.

When someone's going through a difficult

time, a lot of times

I hear them saying that God

is picking on them.

And you know what my response usually is?

I've told you this before.

When I--

If I come to visit you in the hospital,

be prepared

because I'm gonna tell you some horrible

things.

Because what I find

is most people in the hospital have too

much time on their

hands to focus on what's wrong

and not enough time

and ability to get out of bed and go do

things to keep their minds off of it.

And so usually when I visit somebody in

the hospital,

they have thought long

and hard about how bad their

situation is

and start to go down that woe-is-me track.

Have you ever done the woe-is-me thing?

Woe is me.

No one can understand. I love...

There's a BB King song that

says, uh, "No one loves me but my mother,

and she might be jiving too."

[laughs] Woe is

me. Nobody gets it. Nobody understands.

Nobody's ever gone through this difficult

time as if I'm the

only one that's ever faced a trial.

So if that's true,

if I'm the only one that's ever gone

through something

this hard, you know what that means.

God must be picking on me.

I must be special in some way

that He put me aside to pick on me.

A lot of people say everything happens to

me. Everything happens to me.

[laughs] My favorite character in Winnie

the Pooh is Eeyore.

"Thanks for noticing."

And so many people are at that situation.

So when I go to visit you in the hospital,

I'm gonna tell you about the other people

in the hospital.

I'm gonna tell you about the people who

just got in the car wreck that you need to

be praying for.

I'm gonna tell you about the person who

just got diagnosed with

cancer so that you can pray for him.

You're stuck in the hospital.

You got nothing better to do.

Why not pray for others instead

of focusing on yourself?

Because guess what?

We're all gonna have trials.

If you are a human being,

and as far as I know,

they haven't come up with a test to make

sure we are because

we don't... You know,

we might all be aliens sitting in here.

I don't know.

I'm not. I'm not, and if you are,

I'm in trouble.

But

I know if you're a human being,

you're gonna face trials.

So when should you pray?

When you're facing that trial.

Are you in trouble?

Pray.

Notice he doesn't say worry. [laughs]

Is any one of

you in trouble? Worry.

That's gonna solve it.

When else should we pray?

Go on.

When things are going good.

When things are going bad, pray.

When things are going good,

praise God in song.

Well, you know, praise

is just another way to pray.

Singing, praising God, being joyous.

What's so great is, is think about this,

this verse, "Is anyone happy?

Let him sing songs of praise."

Think about the joy you see in a child

when they open a

birthday present,

okay?

Or when they open that present

and it's a puppy.

[laughs] You ever seen a more joyous thing

than a

child being given a puppy? Like,

like you just wanna give

your kids puppies,

except they're gonna grow up,

and they're gonna chew everything,

and you can't have that many puppies.

But man,

if you could just bottle what they have on

their face and in their heart

at that moment, that's awesome. That

is how you're supposed to be praising God.

You happy? Ha.

Just do it.

Like, like,

like five-hour energy juice of praise.

Just keep drinking them

and just blurt out in praise.

Man, there'd be a lot more--

We'd be a lot more mentally stable

if we would do that.

Yeah. Okay? We do the opposite.

Anybody in trouble?

I worry, I complain, I blah, blah, blah,

blah. But happy?

I forget

to even be happy

and give God praise. So trouble? Pray.

Happy? Pray.

How about when you're sick?

Is any one of you sick?

Yeah, absolutely pray. And not only that,

get others to pray for you.

Sometimes-

I don't realize that somebody has

disappeared from our, from our

community for a little while.

And when it finally occurs to me, "Man,

I haven't seen so-and-so in a while,"

and I check up on them,

sometimes nobody's called me.

"Did anybody know you were

sick?

Because I'm just now finding out,

and nobody told me."

Yeah, we should have

probably tracked you down, but,

but at the same time,

if you're sick,

why don't you reach out

and get others to pray

for you?

When I'm in trouble, pray. When,

when I'm happy, praise

God. When I'm sick,

let me get ahold of those people that I

know will pray for me instead of being mad

that those people

haven't gotten ahold of me.

I'm the one in need.

It's me, O Lord,

standing in the need of prayer.

Put on my heart to reach out

and get others to join me in

prayer.

And when I'm in sin.

He says if he'd been sin--

If he's been in sin, he'll be forgiven.

We need to be praying for each other,

praying for ourselves, praying for

each other when we fall into sin.

Temptation is too great to

face it alone. That's right. You say,

"Yeah, but I was in a

church where it turned into a gossip

fest." Well, you know, that's awful.

That is truly awful,

and it breaks my heart

when I hear things like that.

And if I catch anyone in this church

deciding that prayer is a way to

gossip,

I will get to meet with you.

Because that is not what

asking people to pray for me should be

about.

Because I don't know about you,

but I'm not perfect.

Or I should say I know about you because

the scripture tells me you're not perfect

either. That's right.

I know that we're all,

all full of sin from birth. I know

that we all need the

righteousness of Christ.

We all need His forgiveness, and we're all

gonna blow it in some area. And so that

if I am struggling

with a sin that has grabbed hold of me

with

all of its teeth,

I need others praying for me, with me,

beside me.

Not blabbing it out to the world, but

taking care of their brother

and sister in Christ

in prayer.

We can't do this alone.

That's what church is, is about.

We're the body of Christ, the hands,

the feet, all

the different parts of the body working

together

to build the body up for the glory of God.

And prayer is one of the things we've been

given for that.

Therefore,

confess your sins to each other.

I know that's scary.

Find somebody you can trust,

and start with them.

And if it's a general thing

that you don't want people know the

specifics, but you

want them to pray,

let me know, and on Wednesday night,

we'll pray for you.

We don't have to know the details.

We just wanna be able to take care of each

other,

and pray for each other so

that you may be healed.

And,

and we should not only be reaching out to

others to do

that for us, but we should be doing

that for others.

He says, "My brothers,

if one of you should wander from the truth

and someone

should bring him back," what a wonderful

thing that when

I pray for someone and I see

that God answered that prayer and

brought them back into the community

again.

They were tripped up. They fell.

They wound up feeling ostracized.

They thought they couldn't reach out to

anybody, and more and more and more found

themselves in a dangerous place on the

edge of the

abyss,

and someone figured it out

and started praying for them.

And the next thing you know, their heart

started to warm. You ever seen The Grinch?

That movie The Grinch, when his heart,

little shriveled thing,

all of a sudden grew

like, what is it, five sizes

or something like that?

Ten. Ten, 10?

[laughs] Used to be my favorite show.

That can happen.

Our hearts can get so shriveled,

we can forget the power of God at work,

and we can feel so alone. And

when someone begins

to pray for us,

we feel the capacity to love again.

We feel the joy that comes again from our

salvation.

We, we remember what praise is like

and start

to come back.

What a wonderful,

glorious thing to be part of

that in prayer.

Do trials spur you to pray?

Do good times lead you to praise?

Do you seek the Lord for healing

from illness,

from sinfulness?

That's when you should pray.

So we need to know the when to pray,

but we also need to know the what to pray.

We're gonna look at these same verses,

but I wanna look at them from the angle of

what.

When, what, how. What. Is anyone

of you in trouble?

He should pray.

So what should I be praying

if I'm in trouble?

I should pray for God to release me from

this trouble,

right? I'm in a situation

that I got myself into or somebody else

got me into. I don't know.

But I don't know what to do about this

situation.

Lord,

get me out of it, please.

Have you ever been there?

You ever been in a situation

that you felt like you had walked down

into a

box and couldn't figure out how to turn

back around?

I mean, literally that you

were boxed in and there was no room,

and you can't keep going forward?

Pray.

Pray, "Lord, show me

how to get out of this box," or, "Lord,

take me out of this box.

I can't do it."

I think... Honestly,

I think that's one of our biggest problems

in life, is that

we very seldom get to the point where we

say, "I can't do it."

We, we decide too often

that we can do almost anything.

I mean, and other people go, "Wow,

it's so awesome.

You can do anything," and you go,

[laughs] "Yes,

I can." You want to do it through

them. I--

A lot of times,

I can't even do it through God.

I just need Him to do it,

right? I mean,

there's intractable situations

that I've been in that w- there

was absolutely nothing I could do,

and every time I tried to do anything,

it made

it worse,

and I just needed God to take me out of

it. Amen.

"Do something to fix this, Lord."

Scripture says to,

to cast all my cares upon Him

because He cares for me,

and it says not to lean on my own

understanding, but in all

my ways to acknowledge Him,

and He'll make my path straight.

That means I'm gonna go down some crooked

paths sometimes that there's no way that

c-

they can be straightened except for Him.

So what do I pray? "Lord, fix it. Please

fix it,

and let me not take the credit

when you fix it, and

let me recognize that you fixed it."

You ever been in a situation where you

were praying for something so

hard and somebody finally told you God

answered that prayer already?

D- do you know what I'm talking about?

Like, you're holding on to this.

Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's resentment.

Maybe it's something that happened to you,

something you're mad about, and somebody

else says, "Oh, you know,

you shouldn't be mad about that anymore.

It was already fixed."

And you have still, six months later,

you're still so controlled by this.

You're praying, "Please, Lord,

take care of this,"

and somebody has to go, "He took

care of it."

He did.

So when I pray about a situation, "Lord,

show me

when it's fixed

so I can let go of it."

Pray for release. Pray for guidance.

In that situation

that you can't figure out, maybe He's

not gonna just fix it,

but maybe He's gonna show you how to get

out of it.

Pray for guidance.

I know as a dad, when the kids

were growing up, "Lord, I need

you to show me what to do. I don't..." I--

You know, you become a parent, you think

somebody's got it figured out

and they're gonna give you a book that's

gonna make

it work. And then,

and then during the pregnancy,

they got that, "What to Do When

Expecting," and so you think, "Oh, okay,

good. They got all this planned out.

Maybe there's something like that," you

know?

And then,

and then you get the "What to Do When"

books, what to do when they're one

year old. I th- I think we had, like,

five of them or something like that.

And then I finally got to the realize

nobody has a clue what they're talking

about

'cause they're not raising my kids.

My kids don't fit

in this thing that everybody says

is supposed to work.

"Lord, tell me what to do.

Show me how to be a dad.

Show me how to love my wife as a husband.

Show me how to be a good employee.

Show me how to be a good pastor.

Lord, show me what to do. I have no idea."

Pray for guidance.

Pray for healing. Pray for thanksgiving.

That's it. Pray from thanksgiving.

Is anyone happy?

Ha.

What do I pray? "Thank you, Lord.

Thank you."

In fact, let me break out in song.

Act like you're in a Disney movie.

[laughs] You ever notice in a Disney

movie,

whenever they're excited,

they start to sing?

Start to sing to God.

Let your heart sing at least.

Pray for healing.

And the prayer offered in faith will make

the sick person well.

You know, sometimes, um...

Not sometimes.

Most of the time, if an unbeliever,

someone who rejects

Jesus,

will actually talk to you about faith,

they will talk to you about healing.

They will talk to you about illness.

They will ask you to pray for them,

even if they don't believe in God,

which is always amazing to me.

When somebody who says they don't believe

in God

asks me to pray for them,

I ask them who they want me to pray to,

'cause they don't

believe in God.

I'll pray for you,

but I just want you to know

when you do get well,

that's because God answered the prayer,

okay?

Not because I sent some feelings towards

you.

You know, uh, that whole thing. What,

what are the, what do people say, um-

Well wishes. Yeah, sending well wishes.

I say, "Keep your well wishes.

Just pray for me."

Well wishes aren't gonna do anything to my

psyche,

but God may heal me

from your prayers.

So pray for healing from sickness.

Pray for healing from sinfulness.

If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.

What do I pray for others? I pray

that God would heal

them from whatever sin

has entangled itself in their lives.

Verse sixteen,

"Therefore confess your sins to one

another and pray for each other

so that you may be healed."

Do you pray for guidance and release

when you're in the middle of trouble?

Do you pray for healing from sickness

and sin,

for yourself and others?

And then how to pray.

I can tell you how not to pray.

Don't memorize one prayer

and say it for everything.

I've never understood that.

I've never understood that.

I've never understood how somebody can

take

the disciples prayer

that Jesus gave to them,

the Lord's Prayer as

it's called,

and only pray those words

as if it was the only thing

that Jesus ever prayed

or told us how to pray.

He-- the disciples came to Jesus, say,

"Lord, teach us how to pray." And He says,

"Okay,

this then is how you should pray." He

didn't say, "This is

what you should pray," He said, "This

is how you should pray."

And He gave us some really...

And we're gonna study it at some point,

gave us some

really good guidance on what should be

included in prayer.

Hallowed be Your name, Lord.

We should have praise and honor to God

starting off in our prayer time. Okay?

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive

others who have trespassed

a-against us.

We should be praying for our needs.

We should be praying for forgiveness

and praying

to be able to forgive others and,

and being reminded of that.

All those are aspects of what should be in

prayer, but there is

nothing in scripture that-- in fact,

there's no

examples in scripture of everyone praying

the same prayer.

I once heard a radio show.

It was supposed to be an hour of prayer,

and I thought, "Oh, well, let me

hear this."

And the person on the radio show said,

"Okay, Lord,

now we are praying for world peace."

And he prayed,

"Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name," and he, he

prayed the Lord's Prayer.

And then he said, "Now, Lord,

we're praying for our school teachers."

I don't remember w-exactly what it was.

And he prayed the exact same words again.

And I thought,

when I look through scripture,

everyone who prays in scripture,

and there are a lot of prayers in

scripture,

they're all different.

There's a wide variety of things that

are prayed for and

ways that people pray.

And I also thought,

if my kids came to me and said,

"Dad, this is my request for a car.

I love you, Dad.

I want to see you glorified.

I'm happy to be your child."

And the next week, the kid came up

and said, "Dad, this is my

request for a puppy.

I love you, Dad.

I wanna see you glorified.

I'm happy to be in this family,"

what would be wrong with that?

Right. What's wrong with that

is I have an intimate relationship with my

child.

I wanna know my child's heart.

I want them to come up and talk to me,

and I wanna be able to talk to them,

and I wanna have

communion with that child.

I don't wanna just be the

giver of stuff if you say the right words.

What's the difference between that

and a magic incantation?

You see,

a lot of people approach our relationship

with God

as if there's some magic words

that you're supposed to

say, and then God is bound to them,

and He will definitely answer that

prayer. Instead of approach, uh,

approaching our relationship with God

as if He is our heavenly Father,

and He wants to have an intimate

relationship with us, and

prayer is that way that I understand

that,

'cause He already knows it,

and I get to spend time with Him.

Our youngest son,

son came home for the weekend,

and I got to spend a lot of time with him

the last two days.

And before he left yesterday, he said,

"Dad, I had a really good time

with you this weekend."

And I said, "I did too."

I don't care about anything else.

If that's someone I love,

I want to spend time with them.

Why doesn't it occur to us

that that's what our heavenly Father wants

too?

How do you pray?

By spending time with your heavenly Father

in desperation.

If anyone is in trouble, he should pray.

What kind of prayers should those be?

Lord, help me.

Daddy, I can't do this. I need You so

badly.

Now, it doesn't have to be

that you're at the end of your rope,

but you

know you need your Father to be there for

you.

There have been times in my life

that all I could do is choke out a,

"I need You."

I c- I,

I couldn't even put the rest of the words

together.

Lord, I just need You.

So yeah, pray in desperation,

but pray in hope

as well. Is any one of you in trouble?

He should pray.

Why am I praying?

Not just to tell God my problems,

but because I really believe He can do

something about it.

That's right. Right? So this is some--

I've told people before,

stop worrying for God.

You say you're praying,

but all you're doing is worrying to God.

Instead,

go to him knowing he's going to do

something

about it,

believing he's going to do something about

it, remembering what he's

done in the past and reading what he's

done in Scripture and

applying it to your future.

Chris and I have these conversations all

the time. We have to remind each other.

Surely God can handle this.

Remember what he did last year?

Remember what he did two years ago?

Remember the amazing things he did last

week? Of course he can do this.

Stop being an idiot.

We actually don't say those words to each

other,

but it's implied sometimes.

Enjoy.

Enjoy. I go to the Lord in joy,

wrapping my arms around him

and giving him a big hug. Lord, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

I really knew that you could do this,

but for some reason

I didn't think you would.

And I know, Lord,

please give me more faith.

Pray in honesty.

Confess your sins.

He already knows them.

You may think you're hiding it from

somebody,

but you're not hiding it from him, so

you might as well confess up to it.

Greatest thing when I was a kid was I

was a terrible liar.

It probably saved my life,

to be honest with you.

To be honest.

Probably saved my life that I

was a terrible liar

because I tried to lie to my family

when I did something that

was worth lying about, you know,

that I was going to get in a lot of

trouble, and

it caught me every single time.

And so every time,

and I got arrested three times by the time

I was 18,

okay? So I got in trouble.

I knew how to get in trouble,

but I never got in really serious trouble

because every time I

would go down that road to trouble,

I'd get caught.

I mean,

I'd get nailed the very first time,

and then I couldn't talk my way out of it.

I just had to confess up.

We should have that idea with God.

Yeah, I got myself in trouble.

I'm fallen in sin.

I'm not going to be able to hide it.

He already knows.

So let me go ahead and confess it.

Let me be honest about who I am

and who he is and the fact

that he deserves my honesty

and how to pray in intercession for

others.

Therefore,

confess your sins to each other and pray

for each other.

Are you faithful in prayer?

Do you cry out to God

with all your heart, your soul, your mind,

allowing him

access to places

that you won't even let yourself have

access to?

Hurts and pains, joys

and sin,

and just laying it bare before him.

He created you.

He knows everything about you.

In fact, he knows

how you will be the most fulfilled,

and he already has that planned out,

and he's waiting for you to join him on

that path.

Standing in the need of prayer.

We need to remember when to pray,

what to pray,

how to pray.

In fact, let's do that now.

Let's go to him in prayer.