Prayer: In Every Personal Environment

“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 working.” (James 5:13-16)

Prayer Must Reflect Our Lives
Real life does not happen on a straight and level line. Changes we go through tend to be on steep, rough slopes, also. The journey we travel for the length of our days on earth has no finish line or destination while we are living through it. Our prayers must follow those unpredictable paths wherever they lead. They must be appropriate and effective regardless of the season we presently experience during our unique pilgrimages.

The Bible does not teach prayer as a religious exercise although man’s religions often insist on this approach. On the contrary, Scripture encourages us to pray responsively to God as the human beings we are, doing our best to negotiate life on this planet. Prayer should happen with no regard to present circumstances. Real life brings pressures and uncertainties. Real life causes us to encounter moments of fear and weakness. Real life will also cause us to know joy and rejoicing when the Father turns “our mourning into dancing.” (Psalms 30:11)

Faith is Honesty, Not Inevitability
You see, prayer will not always sound the same all the time. Somewhere along the line we adopt the idea that faithful people always pray with confidence and boldness. Over time, we hear the sure, secure words of public praying and we notice when the resolute requests are rewarded with audible agreement. At the same time, we observe that the more awkward phrases accompany corresponding silence. Eventually, we adopt the notion that faith is associated with certainty. Reaching this conclusion causes us to see prayer as a time of self-indemnification instead of the dwelling place of honesty with the Lord and with others in the Christian family.

Consider God’s servant Job. His plight has grown beyond a Bible story to a well-rehearsed metaphor for total loss in even secular circles. Job did not resign from prayer and communion with God during these desperate times, but his words and emotions underwent drastic transformation. Job’s praying turned into complaining, questioning, and even accusing God of his predicament. However, in all his words, Job did not sin![1]

In the end, God rebukes Job’s friends for blaming him and restores to Job more than he had before the story began. This occurred after Job prayed for those same friends.[2] Job did not make the mistake of grumbling about God; he always offered his grievances in complete and total honesty to God.

On the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus plainly and honestly admitted to His Father that He did not want to endure the shame, humiliation, agony and death of trial and crucifixion. His stress caused His sweat to fall to the ground as “great drops of blood.”[3] Our Savior did not conceal his will from His Father nor from us but expressed it openly and genuinely in prayer.

In our passage from James, we are further instructed to be accessible and candid with one another in the Body of Christ so that our corporate prayers for one another will be effective.[4] The list of situations in James[5] is evidence that prayers are to be offered honestly on all occasions, no matter how different they may be from one another. However, we must be sincere about our own state of mind, emotion, and life always.

Faith Surrenders the Outcomes
The prayer of faith[6] is not always offered with total confidence in the outcome. The word translated as faith here and throughout the New Testament is the Greek word pistis. This word does not invoke a formula designed to get God to grant us our desires. It means that we pray with trusting reliance on God through Jesus Christ and the promises He offers us in Scripture. More than intellectual assent, faith conveys deep, personal trust that God is able to change the shape of our lives.

Exercising true faith, counting on God, means we can be honest about our doubt, grief, anxiety, and fear when we pray. This is an act of complete surrender to the One Being on Whom we depend.[7] Honest, surrendered prayer comprehends that we are not alone when we are praying.

Holy Spirit Assistance
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:26-28)

“Entygchano” is the Greek work translated intercession in verse 27. In the New Testament, and particularly in this passage, it means that the Holy Spirit is literally praying with us, making entreaty to God on our behalf. The benefit of His effort is astounding!

1. The perfect harmony of the Trinity guarantees that the Father knows the perfect intentions of the Holy Spirit and that the mind of the Spirit is completely transparent to Him.

2. The intercession of the Holy Spirit is always in perfect alignment with God’s will, never misguided, ineffectual, nor contrary to God’s desires for us.

3. The result of the Spirit’s intercession is that all our circumstances, offered in honest prayer, work out for our eventual good.

Putting It Together
There is a story that is told of a man who was asked by his pastor to conclude the Sunday morning church services in prayer. His simple offering went something like this:

“Dear Lord, you know how much I hate buttermilk and that I would never touch a drop. And You also are aware that the tastes of flour and of lard are offensive to me. But Lord, when those three things are mixed up together in just the right way, well, You know I love hot biscuits more than almost anything else. So, I pray, Dear Lord, that you consider all our many situations and circumstances we have offered to You this day, and that You take them and mix them up in just the right way for our good and your glory.”

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

[1] Job 1:22, 2:10 [2] Job 42 [3] Luke 22:34 [4] James 5:16 [5] James 5:13-14 [6] James 5:15 [7] 2 Timothy 1:12