Prayer for Healing | Theocast

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Hi this is Justin. Today on Theocast we're going to record the first of at least two episodes dealing with the latter portion of James chapter 5.

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Beginning in James 5 13 there are some things written that cause a lot of angst and confusion for many

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Christians. We're told there that if people are sick they should call for the elders to come and pray for them and anoint them with oil and they will be healed and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the

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Lord will raise this person up if he's committed sins he will be forgiven. Simple question how are we supposed to understand that?

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The prayer for healing we're going to talk about that today on the regular episode and then over in SR John and I are going to continue that conversation and go in depth more about hermeneutics and how we go about interpreting.

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A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon smile a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

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John Moffitt who's pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill Tennessee and I'm Justin Perdue pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville North Carolina.

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We are meeting on a Wednesday morning John to do another double dip recording.

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We're starting to do a little bit more of this because we're all about efficiency these days and trying to get as much accomplished in as brief of a span of time as we can.

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Our churches are growing, the podcast is also, and we want to steward our time well.

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There's a good Christian word for everybody, steward. Today what we're hoping to do is record two episodes around the latter portion of James chapter 5.

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There's some confusing stuff in that section of Scripture, things that trip up saints left and right.

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Folks are not sure what to do with various things that are said, particularly in James 5 .13 and following.

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We're going to begin in this first episode talking about praying for healing and how the prayer of faith will heal the person who is sick, is how our

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English translations render it. We're hopeful that this is going to be helpful and clarifying for people and will help people rest in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. John, you've recently preached through James, so you can tee this up well for people and help them understand what exactly we're going to be discussing.

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James has been a fun book. We'll put the link in the notes below. We've covered some other sections of James on the podcast, but this last section,

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Justin, like chapter 2 when it's dealing with faith and works, these last few verses have caused so much confusion, heartache, and pain.

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We want to begin by saying we're here to liberate those who I think have been under the weight and the shame.

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There's a lot of shame. If I had more faith, if I would have obeyed well, then God would have healed who it is

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I was praying for. God would have healed me. Justin and I have been together for three years now doing this podcast.

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We've gotten emails from people about how they were told last week by their pastors that if they would have faith, their sickness would go away.

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It's really debilitating. I've met people who are bitter against God and who don't trust

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God because of these verses. We walk into this podcast today with very humble hearts, very soft hearts, knowing that you might be sharing this with somebody who has gone through an intense trial.

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No one goes to this section of James that's on the highlight of their life. When you're doing well, you don't read the last part of James.

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It's when you're in your Job moment that you find yourself, which is why James even mentions

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Job at the very end of the book. Justin Perdue Or at a minimum, you're trying to process those Job moments, to use your phrase.

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Jon Moffitt So we want to do what James's intention was, was to bring encouragement. Unfortunately, we have been confused by some of the translation that has happened.

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We're going to do our best to exegete this passage for you and then help you find the true meaning of the passage, which should lead you to rest and hope instead of leading you to despair.

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The whole entire letter, just to summarize in about five seconds, James is dealing with Christians who have fled

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Jerusalem under persecution, and he says to the twelve tribes. So that's the context.

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Suffering Christians. See, I did it. Five seconds. Justin Perdue It might have been ten, but it was well done. Jon Moffitt And these poor churches, man, they are eating each other alive because of fear and anxiety.

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They have forgotten the gospel. So many times, James has to remind them. I mean, James 1, 15, 16, and 17,

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God has granted to you everything according to his sovereign divine will. If you lack wisdom, let the lowly man boast in his exaltation.

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He has given them so many reasons to trust in the sufficiency of God, but still, they're trusting in their circumstances.

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So their mouths, their actions, they're devouring each other. Justin Perdue There's a lot of partiality.

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There's a lot of clearly harmful language, destructive language against which, for example, Paul would have written in Ephesians 4, don't speak this way.

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There's a lot of fighting and quarreling amongst them. James 4, what a great section that is, those early verses of James 4.

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Where do these things come from and all that stuff, and yet the Lord gives more grace. Jon Moffitt Oh, man, when he says that, he literally says, you are treating me like a whore, like a prostitute.

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He literally says, you're adulterating yourselves. His response is, James is not this angry shepherd who only understands law.

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He uses law to give grace, because what does he say? But he gives more grace. Draw near to the

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Lord and he will draw near to you. So this tender shepherd is exposing the fear and anxiety that is in their hearts, which is devouring each other.

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He's saying, you should be unifying yourself and you're not. Well, enough persecution and enough sin can cause one to, at the end of the book, which we might get to sometime later down the road, wander from the truth.

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And so James is dealing with this whole idea at the end that those who may not have endured the trials well, they haven't really rested and trusted in the sufficiency of God.

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And they've maybe given in, as it says in chapter one, to their temptations, which is from their own sinful desires.

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I mean, chapter four, why do you bite and devour each other? Is it not because your passions are at war with you? So he uses this phrase, we'll just read this last section of James and starting in verse 13, he says, any among you suffering, let him pray.

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Is any among you cheerful? Let him sing praise. So he's closing the letter down, his sermon down.

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He's dealing with all these different types of people, which at this point we understand. He says, if you're suffering, he points you to prayer, which is what he says in the beginning of the letter.

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He says, if you lack wisdom in the midst of your suffering, ask God and he'll give you meekness and gentleness and patience. And then he says this, he gives us a different category of people, suffering, joyful.

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And then he says sick. Now, Justin, there's a struggle here and that sometimes we don't realize that every translation,

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I'll say this and you can explain what I mean to the listener. Every translation is an interpretation.

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And that's hard for us to understand because if you don't speak multiple languages, you won't understand what we mean by that.

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But when I say every translation is an interpretation, what do I mean? Justin Perdue It just means in bringing one language across into another, inevitably you're faced with decisions that you've got to make about how best to render a word or phrase or an idiom or things like this.

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Because a lot of times if you just literally bring one word over, well, this word means this, and this word means this, and this word means this, you actually lose the sense of what was communicated in the original language.

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But also, just to give an illustration of what we mean here too, in English, we can use one word to mean a number of different things.

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The same is true in other languages, for example, in this case, Koine Greek. And so one must do that kind of interpretive work.

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What was the author in the original language meaning to convey and communicate here by using this word, this phrase, in this syntax, in this context, etc.

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And so, yes, all translation is interpretation. It's not just a simple wooden one word to one word and we get the sense of it.

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That's not how it works. Right. And a good example of this, I used this in a sermon and I thought it was quite funny.

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When you have different companies trying to market in different countries, so Mercedes -Benz is marketing in China.

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And so they translated, you know, Mercedes -Benz to Benzai, B -E -N -Z -A -I, which meant rush to die, which is not the ideal name for the car of the company, right?

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So they ended up changing it to Benji. And that meant run quickly as if flying.

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But, you know, the much better image. But it still wasn't as a clean translation.

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Right. And so we have to understand that these translations aren't always as clean as we want them to be.

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And this is why sometimes looking at the context, looking at multiple translations can be helpful here.

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And a brief interjection to, like you said, context, syntax, what's being communicated by the author is a big part of this, too, because sometimes people will,

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I think, rely too heavily on concordance or word study where they'll just look at, well, here's what this word means this often.

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And it's like, yeah, that's fine and useful up to a point. But there's a lot going on in terms of how we should understand a particular word and how it's used in a particular context.

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So your concordance is one tool amongst a number that you're going to need because hermeneutics, the study of interpretation, the method of interpretation is far more involved than just simply getting out something that says, well, this word means this or it could mean this or it could mean this.

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And usually when it occurs this way, it means this. It's like, well, that's helpful, but only up to a point. So I just want to try to set some people free with that as well.

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Right. And the reason the reason why we're taking so much time with this particular word is that this word triggers how you will translate the rest of the context.

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And the word in particular is the one that's rendered sick. That's right. In James 5, 14. Right. So what we're going to do is take that particular word and ask ourselves, does he mean sick physically or how else can this be translated?

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Not just in these sections of verses, but the entire letter. If you take that same word and look how

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Paul used it. A good example of this is that it can be translated as weak or feeble or it could be without strength or powerless.

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So like in Romans 8, 3, Paul says, for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do.

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So there it's translated weak. That's great because that has a clear spiritual connotation.

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It does. Or 1 Corinthians 8, 9, but take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.

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And he means spiritually weak there. Of course he does. Because he's talking about food, sacrifice to idols in that context. So we have two contexts where we can say, okay, it has been translated as weak and spiritually weak is the context of what's being meant there.

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So when we look at what's then follows in the verses, this is what comes.

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He says in among you, and let's understand he means weak here, spiritually weak.

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Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

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Lord. Well, here again, Justin, context is really helpful. James is writing to, we've already known, he's writing to really a

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Jewish congregations who fled from Jerusalem. And the reason why we know that it's

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Jewish is that he has made one word references throughout his entire letter.

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He will just say Job or he will just say Elijah or he'll just mention things without giving any context.

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Well, you can't do that in a letter. If you don't think these people are going to understand what you mean, right.

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So throughout the entire letter, James has been writing to a congregation that he knows because he'll even say liberated by the law of liberty.

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Well, they have to know what the law is in order for him to say the law of liberty. So they would understand that oil has always in the

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Old Testament been a symbol of the Holy Spirit, a symbol of God's presence. So I don't think there's a healing nature here physically.

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And I don't even think there's a spiritual nature here. I do believe for this particular culture, these people in this church, they would understand that, hey, as the elders come and they're praying for them and you put the oil on this to remind them, this is the power of the spirit through prayer that's going to bring whatever the result is we're going to get to here in just a minute.

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And I mean, I know the word anointing is in verse 14, but that's what is really associated with oil in the

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Old Testament context. It is the anointing, the blessing, the presence of God's spirit in a benevolent, good, empowering way is what oil is representative of in the

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Old Testament. So yeah, I'm agreeing with you, just kind of maybe saying it. Yeah, no, and I think that's a helpful observation.

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So the result is, let's keep reading. He says that in the prayer of faith, we'll save the one who is sick and the

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Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. So we have to kind of, then the result is this.

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So they're weak, they call for the elders, then they use oil in prayer, but a specific thing in prayer.

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So we're going to kind of unpack everything and then I think we're going to work our way backwards because there's so many things that James is doing here.

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He says the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick. It's interesting that he says specifically the prayer of faith, because,

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I mean, Justin, did the children of Israel always pray to God? No, they prayed to other gods.

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I'm sorry, that was a trick question. I'm sorry. That was a trick question. Sorry. But yeah, the point of it was, is that the act of prayer wasn't necessarily only for Yahweh.

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And so I think, James, what he's saying is, when you come... I was reading the text and I kind of partly heard what you said and I just heard, yes, my bad.

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I got that. So what James is saying is that he's saying, when you realize this person is weak in their faith, they're weak in their strength in trusting the

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Lord, if you go on their behalf, trusting by faith, and what he means by this, the faith in the

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God to whom they are trusting weaken. Sure. I mean, yeah, faith in the

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Lord, the promise -making, promise -keeping covenant God, right. So it's interesting that he says that because the point of it is not, because I want you to notice where the healing power comes from, the point of it is not in the prayer, it's not the prayer that does it, right?

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It's God, because it's the prayer of faith. So their faith is in God's power to heal this person.

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Justin, so many times people put it in the healing nature of the individual's prayer. It's not.

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It's not the healing individual nature of that person's prayer. It's the prayer, because what is it saying?

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Why would it say faith? What are you trusting in? You have to be putting your faith in something, and that faith is in God.

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And so this person is weak in faith. This person on their behalf comes and prays in faith for that individual, and just to unpack it, and then we'll go backwards, it says the one who was weak or the one who was sick will be saved.

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I think what he means by that is what does weak in faith normally lead one to,

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Justin? It normally leads someone to doubt what? Doubt their salvation, doubt whether they're truly of God.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. Sure. I mean, yeah, difficulty, whether it is circumstantial or whether it is just something that's more internal in terms of mind and heart weakness,

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I mean, there's a number of different things that could be meant here, but yeah, those things cause us to doubt and wrestle with all kinds of things, including our identity as a child of God, because so often we may, on the one hand, say, okay,

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God, you've told me that I'm your kid and you've said a lot of good things, but then my life and the world

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I live in and everything I'm going through is speaking a very different word to me, and so now I'm not so sure and I'm questioning things.

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I know that I'm to live by faith, but everything that I'm seeing and perceiving is just not resonating with what you've said to me, and so yeah, a hundred percent.

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I would just make a brief comment, too. Whenever we talk about faith, I think it's important to discuss what faith even is in the first place.

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By definition, it is a looking away from oneself to the object of your faith, and so that matters here, just like we talk about all the time when it pertains to our justification, the

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Lord declaring us just in His sight, it has everything to do not with the quality of our faith, but with the object of our faith, who is

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Christ for us, the same would be true here. The emphasis is not on the quality of the individual's faith, the emphasis is on the object of the individual's faith, who is the

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Lord, who is the one who restores and raises up. That's really good.

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So, the final promise and hope he gives them is, and the Lord will raise him up. Well, that's our greatest desire, right, is that on the last day, we will be raised to newness of life.

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Can I briefly interject this, too? Because obviously what we're saying is that James 5, 13, 14, 15 should be understood in a spiritual way, that there are spiritual things going on here, and that the word rendered sick should be rendered, we think, as weakness, and it would be a better representation of what's going on.

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We're going to talk about that in the context of James on the whole probably here in just a second. But I think the fact that at the end of verse 15, you have the talk of forgiveness of sins is a dead giveaway, that what we're talking about here is a spiritual matter.

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Yeah, because if he's committed sins, he'll be forgiven. So, okay, well, now we're talking about the forgiveness of sins, and that clearly is a spiritual matter.

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That's right. And lest we immediately draw straight lines from sin to sickness, because some people might say, well, yeah, because the sin in that person's life has made them sick.

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It's like, well, we've got to be really careful biblically in doing that. Sometimes particular sins do lead to particular suffering and discipline in the hands of God, but not always.

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Because Jesus, for example, blows that notion up in Luke 13, talking about the

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Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate, talking about the people on whom the Tower of Siloam fell. He also blows it up in John 9.

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You know, why is this man blind? Who sinned? Him or his parents? Neither one, actually. So, we just have to be thoughtful.

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So that, again, I think the best understanding of the second part of verse 15 is that we've got spiritual matters going on here, and the weakness and the healing that's in view is of a spiritual nature.

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That's right. And it's a guaranteed. So this is where we're going to reverse and go back up to the top and kind of look at the negative, and then

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I have got some thoughts about even the community. Like those of you who are weak aren't supposed to figure this out on your own.

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James' conclusion is, no, your restoration happens outside of yourself. But we'll get to that probably in the SR. But for the next 10 minutes or so,

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Justin, one of the issues here is that I find great confidence in this interpretation because I can say, wow,

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God is the one who guarantees the salvation and restoration of His children. And that's what is meant here.

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But if you mean this to be physical, all right, so those of you who are sick physically with cancer or some kind of a sickness and you call for the elders, they put oil on your head and they pray for you, you will be healed.

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Well, that's a massive problem because how many people haven't been healed? Well, then whose fault is it?

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It's not the faith of the person sick. It's the faith of the elders. I can't tell you how many times

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I've heard of elders who do this and then like nothing happens. I mean, there's a few examples of where people have seen some kind of a temporal healing, but let me ask you this,

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Justin, I mean, how many people have been healed in the Bible and they still died? That's not ultimate healing because James says they will be raised up on the last day.

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That's a guarantee, right? Well, I was going to say, even the language of being raised up also in verse 15, my mind immediately goes to John chapter six, for example, where Jesus talks about,

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I will raise them up and on the last day to be raised up in the vernacular of the

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New Testament is also a spiritual term. It has everything to do with,

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I mean, sometimes regeneration, but more often than not, it has to do with resurrection and final salvation, and so I think even that is helpful to us as well, to say that God will raise up this person and if he's committed sins, he'll be forgiven.

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Again, we're clearly talking about salvation realities and spiritual realities, forgiveness realities.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, and so I have to go back and just think through the whole of the

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New Testament, and then we're going to go back and look at James, but as an example, Paul himself, I think

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Paul had enough faith and enough godly men around him, and yet God said, no, my grace is sufficient to get you through whatever it is, this trial that he endured.

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Justin Perdue Briefly, you're talking about 2 Corinthians 12, great passage. I agree. Paul didn't lack faith and Paul cried out multiple times that this thorn in the flesh would be removed, and the

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Lord said, no. Justin Perdue That's right. Paul left a dear brother in a city and moved on because that brother was sick, and he asked people to pray for him that he might be restored, but if this is common practice and should be done, it's like, well, why wouldn't have

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Paul known to do this, right? So that's where things get a little complicated because you have people who are dying, and Justin, think about it this way too,

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I mean, just from a healing standpoint, when Jesus went to the pool of Siloam, he didn't heal everybody at the pool.

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I mean, people don't stop and think about that. Well, it was only that man who had faith, you know, that's why he only healed them.

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And we just forget, and I think James, I'm going to go back to the beginning of James, James is a great example of what life is in a broken, fallen, sinful world, right?

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James is saying, you are going to suffer trial, and trial is not like a short period of time.

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Your trial might be your entire life, might be this trial, and how does he start? James starts with the promise of God is not going to abandon you.

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He is only going to use this trial to strengthen and steady your faith. Agree. The hundred percent,

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I have several comments, and I hope I can remember all of them because I've got a lot of stuff popcorned around in my head. Thinking about the

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New Testament and somewhat, James, back really quickly to 2 Corinthians 12. If we think that faith and then praying to God in faith is going to necessarily change our circumstances in this life, we have all kinds of problems, biblically speaking.

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2 Corinthians 12 is a great example because you have a man who has a vision of the third heaven. You've got a man who is an apostle of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, incredibly instrumental in the founding of the church, wrote a significant portion of the

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New Testament, who clearly has faith. We would understand him to be a godly man, all of these kinds of things.

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He's upright and he has faith, and he's pleading with the Lord, take this away. The Lord says, no, because my grace is sufficient for you and my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Paul says, therefore, I will boast all the more in my weakness. He talks about trials, calamities, all kinds of things.

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I'm going to rejoice in these things because the Lord is with me and his grace is with me in all of this.

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That's the perspective that we're called to have. That's significant. Another observation from the

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New Testament regarding faith and circumstances, Hebrews chapter 11, where we are told that all of the individuals in question had faith, but then there's a section of Hebrews 11 where the writer makes very plain that some people were delivered from persecution and suffering and pain, and others were sawn into and eaten by lions and all kinds of other things, but they all were of faith.

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So again, you can't say, biblically speaking, if you have faith, then that will mean

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A, B, or C for your circumstance because it does not work like that. And we're going here, I'm just going to go ahead and say it because it seems stupid not to.

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We are called ultimately, our faith and our trust in the Lord is not ultimately for this life.

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It is ultimately for the next one. Yes, we have hope and we have peace and we have rest and we have all those kinds of things in our souls now because of Christ and the promises of God to us in Him, but ultimately, these things are going to be realized in the life to come, and this is how we're to live and think, and when we make such an emphasis on this life and temporal healing and all of these kinds of things or even just temporal circumstance, we're just becoming earthbound in our theology, which we have talked about so many times on this show before, and we're all prone to do that.

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I mean, just quoting James 5, 8, a few verses before 13, he says,

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Be patient, establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. So the point of it is that he starts the ending of his letter with, listen, the trial is coming to an end.

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Keep your focus there. Establish your heart in Christ because just before that, he talks about,

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I'll just go back up and read it. He's giving an example. He says, be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the

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Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient. So he's using all these examples of being patient.

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Well, why would he do that and then go to healing after that? I think what he's dealing with is no matter what circumstance you find yourself in, the hope of it is that we will be finally restored, but not now.

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We are looking to that resurrection and that final day of resurrection. So for those of you that have been struggling and thinking to yourself, well,

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I could be liberated. I could be set free if I just simply had enough faith or if I believed longer or harder, whatever circumstance you want to put yourself into.

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I don't think the entire letter of James has ever was intended to do that. He is always giving examples of, this is why he even says, in the midst of your trial, and I think trial literally means of any kind, because a trial means to go without if you're lacking something.

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So no matter what your trial might be, God is there faithfully sustaining you and keeping you strong.

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And then what I love what James does is he's like, listen, you can pray for wisdom and he'll give that to you in the midst of a trial.

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And you can pray for grace and you can pray for mercy. And when you stumble and you fall, you can realize there's more grace and you can go and ask, you can draw near to God and he will draw.

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I mean, there's so much that's happening here. And then he's like, by the way, when you are selfish and in the flesh, you bite and devour each other.

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And so what's so encouraging here is that James doesn't leave us without hope. He doesn't just say, hey, toughen it up, bucko, you know, deal with it.

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He gives us power, supernatural power. I love this. When someone finds,

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I'm going to back up to the beginning, Justin. When someone finds themselves in the deepest, darkest, like they are bitter at God, they're weak in faith, they just feel cold and distant.

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You know what James says? All right, here's your list of things you need to do. Call the elders.

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Here's your list of things to do. Call for help. But what do we do to the weak and frail?

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We yell at them and we scream at them and we cast judgment upon them. And I just love that James is saying, listen, if you find yourself in this place, what you need is the power of prayer.

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What you need are godly people to come and pray the gospel for you. Call for the people who have been entrusted with the care of your soul and have them pray for you.

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Yeah, I agree. Really quick, I want to observe something from James one, you touched on it too, that also should help us in thinking about this section.

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When James talks about considering it joy when we encounter trials of various kinds, we've made this clear before.

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What is the Lord doing through all of those trials? He's producing steadfastness in us. Well, what is steadfastness?

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It's trusting Christ and the promises of God in spite of circumstance. And then we're told James 1 .12

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that the Lord will give the crown of life to those whom he loves, right?

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And the crown of life obviously is an eternal thing. You know, that's a salvific reality too.

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And so we are really, really misguided if we then all of a sudden, when James has been talking about all of these eternal realities, you're going through really hard things in this life, but here's why you can consider it joy.

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Because God's at work in you producing steadfastness. He's going to give you the crown of life. And now we're talking about all,

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I guess, you know, some say we're talking about physical sickness in James 5. When we've got all this language of forgiveness and being raised up in here.

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And that coupled with the fact that the word rendered sick is often rendered weak to me is kind of open and shut, brother.

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And I've been encouraged even just talking about it today with you. I hope the listener has too, but I want you to give the thought that's on your mind.

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Well, yeah, I just as kind of a closing thought and concluding, preparing for our conversation that Lord willing, we might have next week.

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Well, in a few minutes. Now I'm thinking about it. We're not recording. The listener shall understand.

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James, right after this, he says, therefore, and right. You always have to ask what's the therefore, therefore.

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So he's concluding this section. He says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you might be healed.

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Well, this again, I think is a huge red flag, throwing it up in the air, saying this is not dealing with physical healing because sin, what does sin causes?

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Sin causes fractures between not only our relationship between God, but each other. The whole letter,

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James is dealing with fractures against each other. They are, they are showing partiality.

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They're lying to each other. They're literally taking each other to court. It's horrible what they're doing to each other. And James is saying, you need to confess what you have done, not only before God, but to each other, and then use this power of prayer.

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So I want you to understand it's not just the elders that are praying for each other, but we ourselves, the congregation, which is why the church,

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I believe for 2000 years has practiced prayer of confession because we need that healing nature in our church.

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I know, does Justin, I know your church does it where every Sunday we stand collectively, all of our voices together, and we confess to God and to each other, we have failed and we need forgiveness so that we might be not only healed in our soul to receive that guilt and shame that we often feel.

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That's the healing he's talking about. We can feel the relationship that we have wandered from God. We feel that restoring nature, but also with each other.

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No, you bet brother. A lot of good things to consider here. And yeah, I just, maybe some closing thoughts.

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I think we mentioned this earlier. We're so prone to think about our faith and its value in this life, and we shouldn't do that.

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Romans 8 is very clear that we hope for something that we can't see, that we're awaiting our final redemption, the redemption of our bodies.

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This is what we believe, and this is what we are looking to. First Corinthians 15, if we believe in Christ for this life only, if our faith in him is for this life only, we are above all people most to be pitied.

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Because it's clear that the Christian life, the promises are not that this life is going to be great, or that this life is going to be epic, or that you won't suffer here, it's that the next life is going to be perfect.

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And may the Lord give us grace to trust in the promises he's made and to hope for things that are unseen.

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It's supernatural. We don't need to gorge ourselves because this is all we get.

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We are clearly just sustaining ourselves in Christ because the best is yet to come. So, don't waste our time with this.

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And so much of a godly perspective is tethered to this. We're going to continue the conversation over in SR, as we like to call it.

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SR stands for Semper Reformanda, which is an additional ministry kind of thing that we have going on, and it's an additional podcast that we record each week,

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John and I, for people who have partnered with Theocast. So, to be a Semper Reformanda member means that you've partnered with Theocast to support us in various ways, including financially, but praying for us and praying with us and working alongside us to see this message spread as far and wide as possible.

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And so, John and I are headed that direction to record this additional podcast to go perhaps a little bit more in -depth, maybe just talk a little bit more personally.

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We're not quite sure where this particular SR episode is going to go. If you would like to be able to listen to this additional content, you can find out more information about our membership over on our website,

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Theocast .org. If you become an SR member too, you get to be a part of the SR community, and we even have an app.

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How cool is that? I mean, if you don't have an app, is it even legitimate, John, in our day and age? Let's be real. And so, we have an app where people can interact with one another.

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There's all kinds of great content being posted. It's a really sweet community. There's not a lot of nonsense going on.

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People are not shock jocks over there. They don't ridicule each other, but just trying to help one another trust and rest in Christ.

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So, if that sounds good to you, become an SR member. So, we'll talk with many of you over there on the SR podcast.

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If you're not going to listen to that one, sorry for that. We'll talk with you in the regular format again next week.

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Grace and peace. Well, and just let them know next week, hopefully, Lord willing, we'll be covering the prayer required, or what was it, prayer requires righteousness.

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The prayer of a righteous man. What does that mean? The prayer of a righteous man. How much righteousness do you need for God to hear you and answer your prayers?