James 5 Prayer of Faith

appreciate the worship team and the efforts they put in each week. So again, my name is Zach Lloyd, and I consider it an honor and privilege to be here before you this morning.

At Recast, our feeling is that the preaching of the Word of God is central to the life of Recast, and I take that as a weight.

I'm going to be preaching from the book of James, and James also gives a warning to teachers that we're going to be judged with a stricter judgment.

So I don't take this as a light opportunity, but I do. It's an honor and a privilege. Just to put the effort in to study

God's Word is very helpful. I'm going to be in the book of James. We're going to be in James chapter 5, and we're going to be talking about the prayer of faith.

Perhaps you're thinking last time an elder besides Don preached, they preached on prayer.

Bill Smith did a two -part series on the Lord's Prayer, and now I'm talking about prayer. And it's not that our bylaws say that if you're an elder not named

Don, you must preach on prayer, but we do say that prayer is central, and it's critical.

But beyond that, it's something that God has laid on my heart, and it's not something I've just been dying to share, but it is something that has been pivotal within the last year of my walk with God.

I started, to give you a little background, how I got here. We were at family camp last year, which family camp is like a vacation area.

We have small kids, and since we've started going on family vacations with small kids, I immediately noticed that that wasn't quite a vacation as I had anticipated.

And when Greg and Jen Nitzel turned us on to this family camp called Gull Lake Family Camp in Richland, not far from here, we went to it, and we were encouraged by it, because it gives you an opportunity where they provide programs for the kids, but you also can still spend time with the kids, but you're not just doing everything with them.

But also, they are bringing in world -class speakers, well, good speakers, particularly last past year,

Dr. Jim Samra from Calvary up in Grand Rapids came in, and he talked from the book of James, and he just spent, you know, day after day, we went through James, and I had the time to meditate on it, because I was on vacation, and that was very helpful.

But what he did, James has always been kind of a book of great little nuggets of wisdom, and he went through, because it is a letter, and he interpreted and explained it to us by taking one particular passage and evaluating it based on what was just before, and what was just after.

And I just commend that to everyone, when you're going through Scripture, look at the context, because then it unfolds a lot more meaning. And he was kind of opening up James to me, so at the end of Family Camp, we may have gotten through two or three chapters, we then went,

I continued on, and I came to James chapter 5, and this passage kind of gave me a little bit of trouble.

So, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn to James, it's on page 871 in the

CPAC Bible, and again, if you're visiting, and you don't have a Bible, please take that. That's the best thing that we can give to you, in my opinion, is the

Word of God. So, if you need a Bible, please take that. And while you're turning, I just want to frame our discussion, as we walk through that passage, and in particular, by asking a couple questions, and they're questions that I've struggled with.

And it is, why don't I pray more often? And maybe you guys can relate to these. And when

I do pray, why do I drift oftentimes, and why am I not focused? And does it even make a difference when

I pray? In God's plan, I mean, He's gonna do what He's gonna do. What does He need me to pray?

But assuming that it isn't, is it effective? Or do my prayers need to be in a certain format?

Do I need to pray in the format of the Lord's Prayer? Does that make it more effective? Or if there's sin in my life, will that affect my prayer life, and how effective my prayers are?

Or maybe it's a matter of how fervently I'm praying, or if it's frequent enough, that's what's gonna decide whether or not my prayers are answered.

Or does it depend on how much faith I have? Do I have to have a certain amount of faith, and then my prayer will be answered? Or does it just depend on God alone?

So, I'm guessing that those questions are not unique to me, but if they are, you're gonna get answers either way.

As a follower of Christ, I think how we answer those is very important, and affects our satisfaction of God.

If your prayer life is, you have this faith in God, and you never seem to answer your prayers, that's gonna undermine how you pray, and how often, and ultimately, your relationship with God.

Now, I know prayer is common in our culture. Studies have shown most people, when they come across crises, regardless if they're

Christian or of any faith, find themselves praying these foxhole prayers, and it's varied.

In my career, I had the opportunity to come and contact access to a lot of medical journals, and medical studies have been done on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer.

Intercessory prayer being, one person is praying for another person, that person who's being prayed for doesn't know.

So, it kind of eliminates the placebo effect, which studies have shown is legitimate. So, they've done studies, and the federal government actually set up a grant, and about ten years ago, and probably with a wink, they designated $666 ,000 to study this.

So, I thought that was interesting, but what they found, when compared to other things like deep breathing, exercise, relaxation, music therapy, these other alternatives to prayer, prayer is no more effective than they are.

People use prayer a lot more, but it's no more effective. How can that be? Is that your experience?

Why aren't our prayers more effective? Now, I've asked a lot of questions here, and perhaps put more doubt in you than you wanted, and I may not answer them by God's Spirit.

I pray that we would come to a greater understanding of God's purpose. We're going to be looking in the book of James that I mentioned. I think before we jump to any applications, it's good to know the context.

James is the half -brother of Jesus, and he has written a letter. Now, he introduces himself as a servant of Jesus.

Now, if I was the half brother of Jesus, and I was writing a letter, when I wanted some credibility, I would say, I'm the brother of Jesus.

But he says, I'm a servant of Jesus, and it reminds me of Rob Knoll's message last year, when he preached from Philippians, and he said, we have the title, we, as believers in Christ, are followers of Christ, we are servants of Christ, and that's the highest calling we can have.

And I think James is emphasizing that fact, that that's the highest calling we can have, is to be a servant of Christ.

So he describes who he is, and this is a letter. I think oftentimes when we read the

Bible, we see it as chapters and verses, and we just take bits and pieces. It's really a letter, and it should be one big flow of thought.

And I think, if you come across anything, if you can pull those out, and just read the text as it is, that will be helpful.

And it's a letter to the early Christians. These are Jewish Christians, specifically, they're scattered abroad.

So these are folks that are just getting started in the Christian faith, and this letter is very practical. So we're going to go ahead and read

James chapter 5, verses 13 through 18. Hopefully you're there by now. Read along with me.

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.

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 one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. And for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

And then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. Let's just spend a moment in prayer, if you don't mind.

Our Father, God in heaven, God, we thank you for your text. We thank you for revealing yourself to us.

But God, we pray that you would give us ears to hear. Faith comes by hearing, and it is a work of you.

And God, we pray now that that would be what happens. God, that you would use your word with your Holy Spirit to enlighten us to you, and give you more glory.

And it's in Christ's name that we pray, amen. So we're just going to walk through the text, and make some observations, and hopefully some applications.

He starts off with a question that I think many of us can relate to. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.

Now I don't think anyone here, I certainly didn't stumble when things get rough, I pray. And I don't think that's particularly insightful of him to ask us to pray.

However, you look just above that, and he talks about Job in verse 11. He cites Job, behold we consider the name of the

Lord, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast, and have heard of the steadfastness of Job.

Now Job was the one, if you don't know, was the one who lost everything but the breath in his lungs. His life, or his family, his possessions, most of his health.

And James now says, you have heard of the steadfastness of Job. So when Job was suffering, he was steadfast.

And he's just now coming on the tail, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, and how the Lord was compassionate and merciful in those sufferings.

But now he's adding another directive to the people, to these early Christians. He says, let them pray.

I think that's where the majority of prayers are actually offered, is when we're in difficulty.

But then he right away goes right to the next option, is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Now I think it's in the cheerful that this is a little bit helpful, and that most oftentimes

I find myself, when things are going well, I don't often sing praise. It's my desire to, but I don't often.

So he gives some help there. And I want to clarify what he means by sing praise.

It's not that I walk outside, I just love a warm summer day, or all this song just picks me up. I love this song.

That's borderline idolatry. We're praising the object of what's making us happy. We need to be praising the object of our praise.

It needs to be our Father God in heaven, who gives us all these good gifts. And that's in James as well.

So the object of the praise is there. So he's kind of, in my opinion, given a spectrum there of suffering to cheerfulness, and in everything we should be pointing it to God.

So that's kind of what he's driving for right away. So these guys are obviously in suffering.

This is a helpful text, but when he goes right from this attitude of continual prayer, no matter what situation you find yourself up to be praying, he then asks, he said, is anyone among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church. Now I want to pay attention to some of the details in this passage to kind of help clarify.

It says if any one of you among you is sick, call for the elders. I think we can conclude on this text that this is not someone that has a head cold.

This is not someone that's feeling a little bit under the weather. This is someone that has to have the elders come to them. They can't go to the elders.

So I think that narrows the scope of who we're thinking of, and that doesn't often come in our lives, that we're actually in that situation we have to come in.

And furthermore, they're asked to pray over them, even to the extent that they're probably prostrating, they're laying down.

But why do you think that James mentions that they should call specifically for the elders?

Is it that when you are in the hospital on your deathbed, so be it, that you can't have family and friends come and pray with you?

Is that the key factor for your healing? I would say certainly not. Please have them come.

But I think what James is doing is affirming the role of an elder. We are here as elders, our job is to shepherd the people.

We are concerned about another service, concerned about another building, and those things matter, and the business of the church is important, but our primary goal is to care for the flock, to care for the people.

So when you find yourself in a situation where you are on your deathbed, I think it's entirely we desire to be involved.

We want to pray, we want to reach out to you, and that our primary purpose, it says in Scripture, is ministry of the

Word as an elder, proclaiming the gospel in prayer. So please involve us in that.

We desire that, and I've been convicted on that this point in Scripture, that prayer was a part of my life, but I don't think it had this highest seat that it should have, and I think for all of us that prayer should be critical.

But now it's easy when I pay attention to the details of a passage to get a little too hung up on the details. It seemed like whenever you go through Scripture, it's one pendulum or the other, and it's striking a balance.

He then says, let them pray over him, in verse 14, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. So what's the deal with the oil? Is that what our prayers are dependent on?

Do we need oil to be healed? And some would say yes. We see throughout Scripture in the

New Testament, healing is associated with oil. Mark 6 13 and Luke 10 34 both give examples of the use of oil.

Now while I might concede that, you know, it was common, I've seen in some commentaries, it was common in those days for healing to be accompanied with oil,

I would not say that oil has any pharmacological activity that would help you on your deathbed.

If you have dry skin, you're out of calories, maybe oil is helpful then, but clearly

I don't think it has some kind of medicinal property that is what James is referring to. And I also,

I don't think it's too much of a stretch for us to be, because we really should be getting a lot more oil if it's depending on oil.

I think what this is talking about is oil is symbolic, and we see in the Old Testament, probably a familiar passage of Psalm 23, where he anoints my head with oil in the valley of the shadow of death, there in that suffering, that oil represents

God's hand of blessing on that purpose. I think that's what's going on here, it's not that the hopes that God would bless, we put oil on someone, please do something

God, it's that when you know God's going to do something, we see that also in texts where a king is being anointed, the hand of God is on them, that's symbolized by the oil.

So this oil, I have no problem using oil, but it's meant to be a symbolic of God, God's hand on their life.

So most of your Bibles, mine does, has a little indentation starting with verse 13 saying the prayer of faith, kind of titling this section, and that comes about in verse 15.

What is this prayer of faith? Well clearly it's remarkable, if you look at it, it says, "...and

the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up."

It's a hundred percent. You pray that prayer, that person gets healed, and the Lord raises him up. Is that your experience?

You pray for someone that's sick, and they're healed? It's not mine. So what is going on here, and how do we have that?

And I think, in my opinion, based on my study, that it is a unique gifting of God.

God can heal whoever He wants, whenever He wants, but this is a unique gift. We see that we are a body of Christ.

Those that trust in Christ, we are assembled in a body. This is the body of Christ. And in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, he talks about how we've all been given the

Holy Spirit, but we've all been given specific gifts for the edification of the body. So we have gifts from the

Spirit that we can use to build one another up. And they're not all the same, and they're not all permanent. We can have gifts, and they can come and go as God sees fit.

And I think that's what's going on here. This is a unique gift of faith. In 1 Corinthians 12, and even through 14, it talks about the gift of faith.

That is what's going... the gift of healing, I'm sorry. That's what's going on here, is it's a gift of faith, a unique gifting.

But what's overwhelming to me is that God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, that He would choose to use sinners like us to build up one another.

And that's what we see throughout Scripture. He's frequently using us to intervene on one other's behalf, to show His glory through one another.

And that is a privilege, and I would commend all of us to be seeking that gift, to be used by God in that situation.

What a privilege it would certainly to heal someone like that. I'll confess, I've had an opportunity to pray with a number of you in the hospital, and I've never known 100 % that you were going to be healed.

I haven't. I just haven't. Whether it was cancer, or whether or not that baby was gonna be delivered healthy, or that illness was gonna pass.

But one thing I did know was that I didn't catch God by surprise, and I was able to pray that God would be glorified in all that, because I knew

I do know that for a fact. So I want to caution against praying for someone's healing definitively.

I've noticed a tendency, even within Recast, and certainly the evangelical community, for an emphasis on praying for healing.

I think too much we ask for God to heal, where in the name of Jesus we rebuke a sickness, as if we know

God's will for one another. We're all appointed to die. We all have a certain point that God's already has it planned out.

I mean, we know to die is gain. Now, I'm not saying we should be praying for one another to die, but at the same time, who are we to know what

God's will is for that person? In fact, God often doesn't answer that prayer. We see it in the obituary every day.

But I'll tell you why he doesn't answer it. Frequently, in James chapter 4 verse 3, probably on the opposite page, you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.

We're asking for this to be what we think is a good thing for this person, when really it could be the worst thing.

I had an opportunity this past week to go down with a couple of folks from Recast, as well as my father, to a conference in Louisville called

Together for the Gospel, and one particular gentleman preached on 1 Kings and Elijah and his story, and the point of his whole sermon was that God uses suffering to pull the idols out of our life.

And I think for us to pray that God would remove that suffering, because God's dealing with you and your idols, would be a grave mistake.

And that's why in God's sovereignty, he doesn't answer that prayer. And just a side note, it was

Ligon Duncan. We can link to it on our website. It was a message. It's t4g .org.

You can go look it up. It was extremely helpful and can elaborate that point that I just made in great detail, and perhaps it will devastate you like it did me.

So we ask according to our passions, we ask for what we want. And so I caution against demanding

God, in the name of Jesus Christ, to heal someone unless it's been supernaturally revealed to you.

Now I'm opening the door for that. That certainly happens. God can use you to heal someone. I'm not saying that we don't, but the theological assertion that we can take the authority of God and wield it as we see fit, is not biblical.

And furthermore, it can be devastating to your faith if you think that, I now have authority over everything, and because I'm in Christ and I can ask anything of Christ and he'll do it.

It's not going to happen, and your faith is going to begin to unravel. So I want to caution you against that.

But note also with me, in this text, that apart from calling for prayer by the person that gets healed, they didn't do anything.

They just called for prayer. In fact, they're healed by the faith of the person doing the praying. I know perhaps you've seen or heard someone say that you just need to have enough faith to be healed.

And that's a lie. How did you get your faith to start with?

Did you just believe? Did you just hunker down and focus? The Bible says in Ephesians 2, 8, for by grace we are saved through faith and it is a gift.

Our faith that we have is a gift. When you say, in James 1, he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask

God who gives generosity to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. That's talking about wisdom, and I'll get to that.

We can ask God, but we can't increase our own faith. We can't.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul is talking and he says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase, and talking about spiritual growth of the believers.

So if it's depending on your faith and you can't control it, that argument isn't going to go well for you. But we can cry out to God for more faith.

We see it in Mark 9, 24 with a man who cries out to God, God, I believe, but help my belief, help my unbelief.

So he wants more faith, and God will answer that prayer. And believe it or not, the very effect of trials and suffering in our lives is more faith.

So when someone is suffering and struggling, pray for them to have more faith. Your healing is not dependent on your faith.

And in fact, when you are in that trial, that is where James 1, 5, it says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask

God who gives generously to all without finding fault. And I've clung to that, but in that context, it's talking about suffering. Suffering comes your way.

God will give you wisdom to understand, what do I need to know? He will reveal to you his will in that matter.

He's less interested in healing us than he is in transforming us to reflect him by increasing his faith.

If we do anything apart from faith, it's sin, Romans 14, 23. We'll just move on in the text, you see that I'll bring sin into the discussion in verse 15, and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

So there's a chance that that suffering, that sickness, is the result of sin, and I think that we can kind of relate to that.

It's conceivable in my mind that you get on your deathbed and things become more clear to you that you've offended people, and this is an opportunity for you to make amends and ask for forgiveness, and I think that's what

James has in view here. But I'll also caution that as an elder, if I'm called to the hospital room, my first question is not, well, what did you do?

What's your sin? That's not what he has in view. In fact, that's what Job's friends do when they come visit him, and they were not helpful.

So there's no license there, but when sin and suffering and sickness come into your life,

I think it is an opportunity to evaluate. I think he leaves that door open. The main point here in verse 15 is that God is the one that heals, and He works in the lives of sinners.

He uses us as sinners to bring repentance, and He usually uses other sinful men to carry out

His will, rather than just simply doing the miraculous. Now, He still does the miraculous. I'm great with that. That does happen, and we can pray for that.

But on this point, the fact that he's using sinful men, James then makes the argument in verse 16 that we should be regularly confessing our sins to one another.

So I think in verse 16 there's a little bit of a transition. He's building upon that argument with the elders, the elder in mind and the sick person.

Now he's saying, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. This is talking about us at large, the church.

These are believers he's talking about. But why should we be praying for one another?

It gives you great news there. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

I think if we believed that our prayers had great power, we'd be praying more.

It would take care of any of our issues that we have regarding our frequency or fervency and dedication, if we truly believe what we just read.

So James again is writing to Jewish Christians, and they're again under persecution, but they also have a strong working knowledge of their history.

And it was commonly taught, I imagine, in Sunday school to young Jewish about Moses and Elijah.

So he brings to mind Elijah, and throughout James he does that a lot. And he talks, he says,

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain. So he's using

Elijah, and Elijah's given an example of praying fervently. And I've always read this text as that's what's missing in my life.

I need to pray more fervently. If I prayed like Elijah, fervently, then God would probably answer me, and I could stop the rain and call the rain to come back.

But I'm gonna have to ask you to turn to 1 Kings 17, because I didn't know the story, and perhaps some of you don't know the story as well either.

So if you don't mind turning to page 257 in your Bible, I just want you to see exactly why this is not necessarily fervency, and to understand who

Elijah is. And I'll just back up actually to 1

Kings 16, verse 33, to kind of give you a little background of who Ahab is. And Ahab made an

Asherah, an idol. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

So obviously he's in some rare class there, and in the wrong way. Now you go to 17, we see

Elijah for the first time enters Scripture, and we see something about Elijah. Now Elijah, chapter 17, verse 1.

Now Elijah, the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, as the

Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word.

You see the fervency there? Me neither. Chapter 18, verse 1.

This is the end of this rain. After many days the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year saying, go show yourself to Ahab and I will send rain upon the earth.

Where is the fervency? How are we to pray fervently like Elijah when it's the word of Lord just coming to him? And what's astounding to me is what we've just skipped is what happens in Elijah's life.

They enter a three and a half year drought and he goes to stay with a widow, and the widow has a son, and the miraculous things are happening.

They have infinite oil and bread, and the son ends up dying. And in verse 19, you see what happens with Elijah.

And he said to her, give me your son. And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged.

And he laid him on his bed, and he cried to the Lord, O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom

I am I sojourned by killing her son? And then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the

Lord, O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again. And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.

How could Elijah not refer to that? If he wants us to have power over healing and heal sickness, why would he not bring that to mind if he wants us to pray more fervently?

That's simply him, an example, three times praying over this not even sick but dead child. And God's using him to raise this man, to raise this boy to life.

But furthermore, that word translated fervently in the New Testament is used 38 times in the

New Testament, and every other time it's translated prayer. Literally what it's saying, we should be praying, we should pray prayingly like Elijah.

The emphasis is not on fervent. If James, James is a

Jewish, I mean he could have referenced Jacob who wrestled with God all night long, but he didn't. He could have used

Jesus who sweated drops of blood in the garden the night before he's gonna be crucified, and certainly that would have been right in their minds recently.

But he cites this drought and rain episode, and I'm saying that it's this point, the point he's making is not that we should be praying more earnestly as Elijah.

I want to be clear, we know that it's right to strive for one another in prayer. Romans 15 30 gives us, as he closes out his letter,

Paul, to the Romans, he urges the brothers to strive for one another. He says, I appeal to you brothers by our

Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.

And that word there in Greek is agonizma. It's not the one used in James, it's to just be an agony for one another. That's still there, but that's not what

James is talking about. I think the reason for giving Elijah as an example is that James wants us to see that Elijah, and he says it in the text, is a man just like us.

And you think, how is he a man just like us? I mean, he's one of these, that's like, we're just like Moses or something, but Elijah was a man.

He's just like us. And in fact, God uses him in miraculous ways, and you should just read the classic, if you have any church background, where he goes into Ahab and just says, you know, you and your

Baal prophets were gonna have a duel, and they set up an altar, and they put the sacrifice, and he's like, whoever can get it to light on fire, whichever

God, that's the true God. And he has hundreds of his, Ahab has hundreds of his prophets chanting all morning long, and Elijah even then starts talking trash and says to them, well, maybe he's taking a nap.

Maybe you should try talking louder. Or he says, maybe he's relieving himself, just embarrassing them.

And then Elijah says, go ahead, in the middle of, at the end of a drought, go ahead and soak it in water three times. And he prays, and God lights it on fire, and they all fall down and worship

God. That's what Elijah's doing, and we have that same power, is what James is saying, but it's not because of our fervency.

He uses Elijah as an example, because you see the next day from when Elijah just represented

Christ and God, that Jezebel says to Elijah, it's like I killed all the other prophets of your

God, I'm gonna kill you within the next 24 hours, and he flees to the wilderness, and he finds himself in a

God, kill me. Isn't that, I can relate to that. I feel so strong for God, within a moment

I can be brought to my knees saying, just bring me out of this. I can relate to Elijah. And yet Elijah did these great things.

The point of this passage that I want you to hear is that God, through prayer, all things are possible.

God answers prayers, and he does so mightily, remarkably, beyond what we can even ask or think.

We think we know what we want, and he can, he won't give us exactly what we want, but in the end he'll give us more than we ever thought to even ask of.

The strength and effectiveness of our prayers is not in us, it's not in our faith, the effectiveness is not based on how fervent we are, or our technique, is that we serve an

Almighty God, the true God of Israel, who acts for us, Isaiah 64, for we are sinners and God uses us.

Praise God. He wants us to be in constant relationship with us, whether or not it's the little things, or the big things, from being cheerful, or being on our deathbed, nothing is too small for God.

So I'll give a little illustration to wrap up. I really enjoy running. Maybe you have something in your life that kind of gives you joy just to go doing it, to go do it.

Now, I know if I run, my day goes better. I have more energy,

I have a better attitude, my disposition's improved, and perhaps my appearance is better, but not always.

Now maybe you have something like that, but knowing that that's the result of it is of no value.

Knowing that prayer has this effect is nothing unless we're doing it. Knowing that you should pray more, or that my life would somehow be better if I were praying, is not motivation for us.

My desire this morning is that Recast would be a church of prayer. Not because you know you should, not because you want a better life, or that you want

God to provide something for you, but you desire a relationship with God. That's the motivation. You serve an infinite

God who died for you. I want us to surrender ourselves to Him, and that's what prayer is.

We come, we recognize who God is, we have nothing, we are completely dependent on Him, and that's what happens with prayer.

And that by His Spirit, we would be the body of Christ through His Holy Spirit's gifting, that we would build each other up.

And if we're truly acting as the body of Christ, the manifold wisdom of God is revealed to the world, so that we're proclaiming the gospel with our mouths, and our actions towards one another are revealing what the church really is.

So to wrap up, I know I've given a caution against praying this prayer of faith for someone, unless God has uniquely revealed it to you that God was going to heal that person.

And that probably makes some of you uncomfortable. But there is another prayer that I know

God answers 100 % of the time, that if you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved. If any of you here don't know

Jesus Christ as your Savior, He will answer that prayer. If you cry out to Him, God, I cannot do this on my own,

I need your forgiveness for my sins. If you call out to Him, He will answer that prayer. If you're in here, and you're breathing, you're a sinner like we all are.