Show Me: The Letter of James – No “Just” About It
Dr. Tom Pace
October 21, 2018
James 5:13-18; 1:5-8

We’re continuing our series on the Letter of James. Let me just give you some context. James was probably written by the brother of Jesus. Not James and John the two disciples that are called the “Sons of Thunder” but the other James, the James who’s the brother of Jesus. It was written at a time of great persecution and so the overall theme of the Letter of James is “Hang in there, keep being faithful, keep doing good works, keep loving one another, keep praying and keep being who God has called you to be, because Jesus is coming and will put things right again.”
With that context in mind, listen now as we hear the Scripture read from two different parts of the Letter of James.
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest. James 5:13-18
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind;for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. James 1:5-8

Before I begin to share our message this morning from the text I want to have a little family meeting for those of you who are in our church family. I want to share a bit about our “Glorifying God in Generosity” campaign. If you’re a member of St. Luke’s, you should have received in the mail a packet, or if you’ve made a commitment to St. Luke’s before, a packet that has some information as well as a commitment card. Next Sunday we will be bringing those cards here and dedicating them to the work of God in this place.
Now I want to talk to you about why I think this is important and why we do it. There are really sort of two broad reasons, or categories I think may be the best way to say it. First, we do it because we feel like it’s really good for us spiritually to make that kind of commitment, to take a look at what our giving is, and it is among the most significant ways we can begin to grow in faith.
Last week we talked about how the Scripture is really clear that our hearts are tied to our spending, to our money, and as we may wish that wasn’t the case, Jesus talks more about it more than he talks about anything. More than he talks about prayer, which we’re talking about today.
We want to be able to grow in faith. The funny thing is I have more people ask me this question: “So how much am I supposed to give? Am I supposed to give 10%? Is that off my gross or off of my net? Does that include my gifts to other charities or does it not include my gifts to other charities?”
What I always want to say is, “Let’s not be so rule-bound.” I want this to be a good experience for your spiritual life. So, the question is not as much, “How much?” as it is “How?” And here’s what I mean. We are to give intentionally.
The reason we have this time in which we ask you to make a commitment, to dedicate that commitment to God at the altar is that that decision to be intentional helps us focus on what matters to us. There are a lot of churches around the country who have moved away from these annual sorts of campaigns and continue to grow their giving as they grow as a church. I struggle with that because the whole thing is to have a time in which we re-commit ourselves to the work of Christ in which we say, “I’m going to be intentional about this. I’m going to pray about this because this matters.”
So, we are to give intentionally, we are to give first. In other words, our gifts should be our first gifts, not what’s left over. To demonstrate that the most important thing in life is our commitment to Christ, and we’re to give cheerfully. There’s nothing more joyous than giving.
I just want to invite you to be intentional, to think about this and to pray about it and to be growing in your giving. I want to encourage you to be a percentage giver. Dee and I have been percentage givers all of our lives, and to pick a percentage and try and grow that percentage as you grow in faith. It isn’t so much that there’s some number that you’re trying to hit but as you’re moving towards - if you’re giving 2 percent, then next year try to give three or four percent. If you’re giving five percent next year try to give six percent. Just continue to grow in your faith. Grow in our giving – that is really what matters.
Set aside those gifts. Some of that can be for St. Luke’s and some of that can be for other causes. Maybe missionaries you support or other charities you’re involved in. But try and say this time of the year, “Here’s how much we believe God’s called us to give in response to God’s amazing gifts to us.”
The first sort of reason has to do with your spiritual life and that’s the reason we do this.
The second reason is because we have great dreams for the things St. Luke’s can do. And we want you to be part of that. We’re going to really work in 2019 on our hospitality. We need hundreds of volunteers involved in our hospitality ministry. To draw people into the life of the church. To take them by the hand to say, “Hey, we want to be your friend” and to help them find a way into the life of the church.
We’re going to start a second campus in 2019 for The Story Houston and The Story’s going to carry most of the load on that, but we really want to help support that ministry as we grow throughout our city.
We’re not sure we’re going to get it off the ground next year, but we’ll begin all the work and all the renovations to begin an early childhood program on our Gethsemane campus in that neighborhood. That’s going to take some funds and we’ll be talking about that during our Christmas offering this year.
You know, there’s a saying in ministry that, “In every vital church there is more things you want to do than you have money to do.” And I’m here to tell you that we are a vital church, right? We always live within our means and those commitments that we make help us to make hard decisions about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it. We’ve set a goal to grow our number of commitments by ten percent for 2019, and that will be next year. We’re going to be bringing those here; if you can’t be here next week you can mail in the card. There are cards in your pew, or you can go online and make a commitment. There’s lots of ways to do it.
But I really want to encourage you to be intentional about this. This makes a difference. It will make a difference in your life and it will certainly make a difference in what St. Luke’s can do.
Okay, let’s pray together as we move into our message this morning. Gracious God, open us up, open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel, and then O God, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a friend who used to be a member here at St. Luke’s and who’s moved away now. He was sharing that he and his wife were not getting along well and were moving toward a divorce. That was heartbreaking. I responded to him and said, “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?” And he responded, “I really wish there was. Just pray.”
I thought about that and certainly I’m going to pray, but there’s no just about it. It’s not just pray. That happens all the time when there’s something that feels like we can’t make an impact on we say, “Just pray.” Like it’s a token. Like we put it right there along with thoughts. We say, “Oh, you have our thoughts and prayers.” Well, friends, those aren’t in the same category. Prayers are something we’re actually doing. Let me remind you of the theme of James. The overall theme of the Letter of James is that our faith, our relationship with Christ, is tied to our actions, to the way we live, and that as our faith grows, the way we live changes. And as we change the way we live our faith grows. The two are linked together.
Three weeks ago, on Impact Sunday, we looked at all the ways we serve, and we saw how James said, that faith without works is dead. Without service, without doing something for someone else is dead. So that as our faith grows our servanthood grows, and as our servanthood grows our faith grows.
Two weeks ago, we talked about how we treat one another. As our love for one another grows, our faith grows, as our faith grows, our love grows. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians: “And I pray that your faith is growing more and more and your love for one another is increasing.” Those are both together.
Last week we talked about how our faith is tied to our money. I talked about that just a minute ago. That what we do with our money impacts our faith and as our faith grows how we spend our money changes.
Well, prayer falls in that same category. It’s not different, it’s an action. When James talks about works prayer is part of that.
Sid Davis shared a quotation with me a number of years ago and it’s from John Bunyan and has always stuck in my head. He wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan said, “You can do more than pray after you’ve prayed but you can’t do more than pray until you’ve prayed.” Prayer is such an important part of what we do as Christians. It’s not secondary, or tertiary, it’s primary.
So, if that’s the case, what does this Scripture teach us about prayer? These two Scriptures, what does James say? I want to lift up three things.
The first is that we are to pray honestly because God wants to hear. Listen to James 5:13 and 14: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.”
So, this is what in Biblical scholarship they call a list that is illustrative but not exhaustive. In other words, it’s got a rhythm to it; it’s designed to help us see that we are always to pray. Do any of you have children? If you do, then you should pray. Do you not have any children? You should pray. Are any of you married? Then you should pray. If you’re not married, you should pray. Are any of you tired when you go to work? You should pray. Are any of you excited about your work? You should pray. Are any of you not able to get along with your boss? You should pray. Are any of you having trouble with your friendships? You should pray. You could go on and on? Are any of you hoping to win $1.6 billion next week in the lottery? I see a whole lot of “yesses.” We’re all together joining in the prayer. I’m counting on a $160,000,000 tithe showing up. Just coming on in.
Here’s the point. We’re to share our whole lives with God, everything. The whole enchilada, the good, the bad, the parts we’re ashamed of, the parts we’re excited about, our hopes, our dreams, our regrets, our fears, the whole deal. The primary purpose of prayer, the first purpose of prayer, is intimacy with God. Just that close relationship.
Now if we’re intimate with God, if we’re trying to build a relationship that’s intimate then that means we need to be honest with God, why we pray honestly. We don’t pray the things we think God wants to hear – we tell the truth. If you want to have a close relationship with someone then you have to be honest, you have to tell the truth.
One of the most influential, significant experiences of my ministry was here at St. Luke’s when I was the youth pastor. Joe Zink was the Director of Christian Education. I know I’ve shared this with you over the years because it was so important to me. He was so much fun. He was a solid guy who would go on all the youth ski trips with us and walk around the hotel in his red underwear. Those one-pieces. I’d say, “That’s underwear, man!” And he’d say, “It covers my whole body, what do you want?” Had that flap in the back.
Anyway, I loved Joe. He got cancer and when he was dying we took some of our youth leaders and youth counselors over to visit and pray with him. We couldn’t stay long because he wasn’t doing well, but we gathered around and had a prayer together.
I prayed, “God, make Joe well. Take away his cancer. Cure him of this cancer. Help him to go on our next youth ski trip with us.” And when it was done, after we left one of the youth counselors took me aside and said, “I wish you hadn’t prayed that way. You’re going to disappoint these kids. These youngsters think he’s going to get healed and both you and I know that’s not going to happen.”
I said, “Well, first of all we don’t know that. And second, what do you want me to pray? That’s what I want. I’m not going to fool God by saying, ‘Hey, God, whatever you say.’” God knows what’s in our hearts and it’s the expression of the reality in our hearts that is so powerful. What binds us together is telling the truth. I’m not presumptuous enough that I’m going to say something, and God is going to say, “Well, okay!” You have to tell the truth.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says, “I don’t want to do this. Lord, take this cup away from me.” The cup is a symbol of suffering or joy. It’s a symbol of our circumstances. In Psalm 23 where it says, “My cup runneth over.” In Gethsemane Jesus said, “Take this cup from me. I don’t want this suffering. I don’t want to go to the cross.” You have to tell the truth. You have to be honest.
Then second, God wants us to pray openly because God wants to lead. Here’s what he says in chapter one: “If any of you is lacking wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind;for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”
We’re asking for wisdom and saying, “God, show us where to go.” Prayer is a leading edge in our lives. As we pray, our lives will follow.
E. Stanley Jones, one of the great missionaries of Christendom, a missionary to India, a great writer, a great teacher, and a great preacher – here’s what he writes: “Prayer is surrender. Surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from a boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.”
Prayer is moving us into God’s will, God’s purposes. Jesus says in the Garden of Gethsemane: “I don’t want to do this. Then nonetheless, not what I will but what thou wilt. I surrender. I give myself to you. I want to be aligned with your purposes.”
When he talks about the doubter, the double-minded, what he’s saying is, “Look, when you pray to be aligned, to be brought into God purposes, you can’t do it saying, ‘I want to be brought into your purposes unless they’re counter to mine.’”
Let me give you an example. When I was youth pastor in Athens I was at the Presbyterian Church there. I was serving as the youth pastor in Athens, Texas, not Athens, Greece. We were having a youth dance. All the teenagers were there for the dance. The custodian came to me and said, “Hey, there’s a teenaged girl over in the sanctuary and she’s praying.” So, I went over there to check on her and I didn’t recognize her.
Here’s the deal. Turns out that she was a guest and had been invited by a friend to come to the youth dance. But she was Baptist, and she was struggling with whether it was okay to dance or not. I was thinking, “Hey, I’m Methodist – dance, dance, dance!” But I didn’t want to scoff at her, so we talked about it for a while and I said, “If you really hear from God that you shouldn’t dance, then do you want me to call your parents, do you want to go home? Or do you just want to come over and watch?”
She said, “Oh, I’m going to dance.” Like, “I just want to know if it’s okay or not. I’m going to do it. I’ve already decided I’m going to dance. I just don’t know if I’m asking for forgiveness now or if it’s okay.”
We laugh about it but honestly, that’s how most of us pray. We already know what we think. We already know what we believe. We have already decided where we’re going to go. So, we’re double-minded in the sense that we’re saying, “Okay, here’s God’s will? Well, here’s my will.” What he’s saying here is that if you’re not willing to make the change then I’m not going to tell you what to do. Why bother? No, we’re called to be open.
Alyce McKenzie is the professor of Old Testament and Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology/SMU. She’s an expert in wisdom literature. Remember that if any of you want wisdom. Here’s what she says: “Biblical wisdom is being flexible enough to be led by God. What’s the opposite of Biblical wisdom? Being stiff-necked.”
Remember, that’s what the Scripture called the Children of Israel? They were stiff-necked.
Are you ready to be led by God? Pray openly. Ask for wisdom and be willing to respond to what God says.
Here’s the third and final thing, and maybe this is the hardest one to get our minds around. We are to pray willingly because God is at work. Here’s what it says in James 5: “The prayer of faith will save the sick …” Then a few verses later: “…the righteous is powerful and effective.Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.”
People often think, “So does my prayer work? Does it do anything?” Well, yes, it changes me, but does it change the circumstance? Does it heal a sick person? Does it bring world peace? Does it do any of those things I’m praying for? Or does it just change me?
I think we have to understand as we read this that Elijah didn’t just say, “I think I’ll pray for no rain.” God initiated this conversation. Go back and read it in Kings. God initiated it and said to Elijah: “Hey, you go to King Ahab and tell him it’s not going to rain.” He went to Ahab and said, “Hey, I’ve prayed and it’s not going to rain.” Then three and a half years later it says, “The Word of the Lord came to Elijah and he goes, and he tells Ahab ‘Hey, it’s now going to rain.’”
The whole point here is not that Elijah prayed and what he wanted came to pass. No, Elijah prayed and what God wanted came to pass. You see? Prayer is the tool that God uses to accomplish God’s purposes. Not to accomplish our purposes but to accomplish God’s purposes. Prayer is the tool God uses to accomplish God’s purposes.
I have to tell you that I’ve worked all my ministry to try and find a way to make this clear to people, that the purpose of prayer is to move the one praying – so it changes us – it moves us into partnership with God, not just intimacy with God, to move the one praying as well as the world toward the realization of the Kingdom of God.
Let’s see if I can do it with an example. Let’s say you have a friend who’s sick, and you say, “I’m going to pray for them. What difference does that make?”
Well, when you pray, you join the team. You join God’s team of healing. You join the doctors, the nurses, the physical therapists, the pharmacists and the drugs. You join the caregivers and the encouragers, and you become part of God’s team in making a difference in the life of that person. God uses our prayers to bring healing.
It’s not that we somehow are changing God’s mind, so God decides to heal. Rather, God wants to heal all along. God’s going to say, “What do I have to bring about healing? Oh, look! There’s a doctor- you go to work. Or look, there’s Tom – you go pray!” That’s your job in this and God says, “I’m going to use everything I’ve got to bring about healing.”
You say, “So why aren’t they healed?” Why did Joe Zink die anyway when you prayed that he’d be made well? I don’t know, but here’s my best guess.
Thomas Harper in our video for Scripture Shared about prayer said it really well. He said, “Yes, we’re praying for God’s will to be done, but there are other wills in the world, too.” You might call it Satan, or evil, or disease, or brokenness – you might call it all sorts of things. You might call it the human will. But these are things working against God’s healing.
There are those who don’t like battle imagery, but I feel like we’re in a battle, we’re pushing back the darkness. God is using every tool God can to make that happen, and prayer is one of the most powerful.
I want to make it a little more practical. When I look at the saints of the church – the people who made such an incredible impact with their lives across the theological spectrum... So, everything from Billy Graham as an evangelical, to Dorothy Day, a social activist on the left, working for justice. Across the spectrum, when I look at those people, those who made an impact took prayer very seriously. It was where their power came from.
When I look at churches I want St. Luke’s to be like, churches that are making an incredible difference in the lives of individuals and families in the city and making transformation in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. All of those things. When I look at those churches I want St. Luke’s to be like across the spectrum, be they Roman Catholic or Pentecostal, they take prayer seriously. That’s how they get drawn into the flow of God’s power. God’s movement, it’s how they join that work.
Don’t you believe that if you prayed fervently, persistently, honestly, openly, willingly, that your life would be changed for the better? Don’t you believe that if every person in St. Luke’s Church prayed persistently and openly and willingly, honestly and fervently, that St. Luke’s would be changed? That lives would be changed through the work that St. Luke’s does? Don’t you believe that? I do. So just pray.
Let’s pray together. Gracious God we do believe that prayer changes things. It changes us, it changes the world and we want to be about that work of bringing your Kingdom to pass. We believe that you are drawing us into that work through prayer. Speak to our hearts that our prayer lives might be changed. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.