How should we pray for heali..

Well, tonight we will be addressing the second question in our questions series. The first question was, does God ever get angry with Christians? And I gave a qualified yes in response to that. Tonight's question is, how should we pray for healing? Now, there are many word of faith and prosperity preachers who claim that if someone's sick, at least if they're a Christian, then it's always God's will to heal them. And so if we just prayed enough, if we just had enough faith, if we just walked in repentance and obedience faithfully enough, then God would always heal us. But of course, there are numerous problems with that view. For one, it's an over-realized eschatology. It takes something that truly is God's will at some point in time, and tries to make it God's will now. Because we all will be perfectly healed in the new creation. But right now, our outward man is perishing. And that's why we get sick, and it's why we ultimately die. And death is not a sign that we've failed as Christians. It ought to be a sign that we've succeeded. As Paul said when facing his own death in 2 Timothy chapter four verse seven, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. So healing is not promised now, it's promised then. Now a second issue with thinking that healing is always God's will, it diminishes our appreciation for the way that God uses physical infirmity for his glory and for our good. Physical affliction is not a purely bad condition to be escaped. It's something that God uses to sanctify us and to glorify himself. So for example, in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says that he had a thorn in the flesh, which was almost certainly some kind of physical ailment. And he prayed three times for God to take it away, but God said no. So that seems to be a case where healing just wasn't God's will. And in fact, Paul says there that he was given this thorn lest he become conceited. Right, so this was for his sanctification. And then when he asked God to take it away, God answered, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. And so Paul says, I will boast all the more about my weaknesses, or as some translations put it, infirmities, or you could even say sicknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. And so God uses physical affliction for sanctification and for his glory, and any view which claims that healing is always God's will will always inevitably lead us to under-appreciate that. Now a third problem with that is it winds up making sick Christians feel guilty rather than comforted. Because if healing is always God's will, then who's to blame if you're sick and not getting better? You are. It's because you don't have enough faith. You aren't praying long enough or hard enough, or you haven't repented enough. And so rather than finding comfort in Christ and hope in the resurrection in the midst of your sickness, you find yourself condemned for your failure to get God to heal you. And so the doctrine that it's always God's will to heal is both wrong and damaging, and we are right to emphatically reject it. However, I fear that in our zeal to avoid falling into that error, we can all too easily fall into another. And in our care not to presume upon the will of God, we can wind up failing to really pray for healing at all, or praying for it in a way which is rather passive, which lacks persistence, lacks fervency, lacks boldness, and at the root of it, lacks faith. And so what I want to do tonight is draw your attention to one passage of scripture in particular, which I think can help guide our understanding of how to pray for healing. And that's in James chapter five, especially verses 14 and 15. So turn your Bibles there to James five, and we're gonna look at verse 14 and 15. Now James asks, 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. Now there is just so much here that we're gonna have to leave unsaid because of how brief our time is. But there are five things in particular I want you to notice concerning how we ought to pray for healing. And the first is this. In general, we should pray for healing. This appears to be a general exhortation. James says, is anyone among you sick? James does seem to have in mind someone who's sick enough to need the elders to come to him. and someone who is sick enough to be bedridden because he says the Lord will raise him up, but he's not addressing a special situation. I mean, this is just a sick Christian. And in that situation, James says, call for the elders to come and pray for you. And so I take from this that it is good and right for us as believers to pray for healing. It's not unspiritual or a failure to trust God's sovereignty in your sickness to simultaneously pray that God would heal you from it. Now, there may be cases like Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 where God may lead us to conclude that in a particular case, maybe it's time to stop praying, that maybe this just isn't God's will. I think that can happen, but I think in general, it is good and right to pray for healing. Now, number two. we should pray for healing for one another. This passage says that the sick person should call for the elders of the church to come and pray for him. So there is a special significance to the elders gathering and anointing and praying. And by the way, this is something that we practice. We as elders have anointed and prayed for members and we welcome anyone to come and request that and we'd be glad to do so. But I also think there's a broader implication here that we should pray for one another's healing. In fact, I think in the wisdom of God, this is one of the things which ought to unite us as we learn to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. We should not just pray alone, but together. Third, we should pray in faith. James says that the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. In other words, it's not just prayer in general, but especially the prayer of faith, which God answers. And this echoes Jesus' own words in Matthew chapter 21, verse 22, where Jesus says, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. Or again in Mark chapter 11, verse 24, Jesus says, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours. Now we could spend all night trying to wrap our minds around the tension of praying in faith while simultaneously knowing that it's not always God's will to heal. But all I really want to say tonight is that even if we can't fully understand that, we need to be faithful to strive to live this out. And whether or not we can doctrinally explain it, we need to take seriously all the examples Jesus gives us of how we're supposed to pray. I think for a moment of this story Jesus told about the persistent widow and the unjust judge and how he commends that widow's persistence and says, look, if an unjust judge would listen to a widow who has no means to compel him to do anything, how much more will God answer the prayers of his own elect children? Or remember when Jesus told the story of the friend who has visitors at midnight and he goes to his friend's house and he knocks on the door and he just keeps knocking. And Jesus concludes saying, look, the guy isn't gonna give up and give him the bread, not because it's his friend, but because of his persistence. And that's in response to Jesus' disciples saying, teach us how to pray. So Jesus is teaching us that we should pray like that. Or remember the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew chapter 15. The woman that comes crying out, and Jesus ignores her. In fact, he ignores her for so long that the disciples are getting annoyed that this woman won't go away, and they ask Jesus to send her away. And Jesus tells her, basically, I didn't come for you. And she just keeps on persisting, and then Jesus is like, look, it's not good to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs. And then she says, yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. And then Jesus says, woman, Great is your faith, let it be done for you as you have requested. And think about that. I mean, you go through the book of Matthew, and again and again, Jesus tells his disciples, oh, you have little faith. Oh, you have little faith. And then he holds up this woman, who would not take no for an answer, and he says, this is an example of great faith. And so, when James says the prayer of faith, These are the kind of examples he would have expected to come into the minds of his readers. I mean, most if not all the New Testament's not been written at this point, but they've heard the stories of Jesus. This is what they understand faith to be. And these are the stories that I think should come into our heads as we think, what does it mean to pray with faith? In fact, I think there might have been one other story at the forefront of James' mind as he wrote this. And it's the story about the paralyzed man who got lowered through the roof. And you remember that when the man is lowered through the roof, it doesn't say that Jesus, when Jesus saw his faith, but interestingly it says when Jesus saw their faith. So this includes not just the man being lowered, but it includes the faith of the friends. These friends that were so determined to get their friend to Jesus that even when they get to the house and there's a crowd and they can't get inside, that they go around and they somehow drag their paralyzed friend on a roof and then dig through the roof of the house while Jesus is teaching and have the audacity to lower this man down in front of him. And you remember that in that case, Jesus responded to their faith by quite literally raising this man up, saying, take up your bed and go to your house. And so friends, we ought to pray for healing with faith, with real expectation that God is the living God who hears and answers prayer, and that nothing is too hard for him. And moreover, this prayer of faith is not an individual thing. It's not just the faith of the person who's sick. It's the faith of the elders here who are praying. And it's the faith of the community as we pray together for one another. And so we should pray in faith together for one another and for one another's healing. Now a fourth thing I want to point out here is that when we pray for healing, we should confess our sins. Look at how James connects these things in verse 15 and 16. He says, 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. Now, one thing we can take from this is that some illness, may be the result of specific sin. And therefore, confession and repentance of that sin may be necessary in order for God to listen to our prayers for healing. But other illness is not the result of specific sin. It's just part of living in a fallen world. And yet, I would suggest that even in those cases, it is still good and right for our prayers for healing to be accompanied by confessions of sin. And I think Sinclair Ferguson said something very insightful about this, because he was reflecting on the way that sickness always seems to bring about an acute awareness of our fallenness. And you see, physical infirmity seems to be one of the tools God uses to expose our spiritual inadequacy. and to remind us afresh of our utter need for God's grace in Christ. When we're sick, we are brought low, and I think we are just reminded that we are fallen people, and that this should point us to remind us that yes, I am a sinner, yes, I'm in need of forgiveness, yes, I go to God confessing sin, but God has provided a Savior in Jesus Christ. And so as James says here, let sickness be something which prompts self-examination, not because there's necessarily any direct link between our illness and some particular sin, but so that even as we go to God asking him to raise up our bodies, he might simultaneously raise up our spirits through a fresh reminder of our need for forgiveness and of his abundant provision in Christ. And so just like that paralytic who was lowered through the roof, we might not only take up our bed and walk, but we might do so with the knowledge that our sins are forgiven. Now fifth and final observation here about how to pray for healing. In order to pray this prayer of faith that James refers to, we must be students of the word. You see, great faith doesn't come from blissful ignorance, that just assumes it's always God's will to heal because it doesn't know any better. No, truly great faith comes from intimate acquaintance with God and his word. And look ahead to verses 16 through 18, where James continues by saying, the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. And then he goes on to give an example of the kind of prayer he's talking about, an example of the prayer of faith. He says, 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. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. Now if we again borrow from Sinclair Ferguson, where did Elijah get the faith to boldly go before a king and to declare, as the Lord lives before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word? I mean, how does Elijah have that boldness to go and proclaim that? Well, he got it from knowing his Bible. And he got it from knowing that an utterly faithful and reliable God had said in Deuteronomy chapter 28 that if his people turned away from him and followed other gods, then, verse 23, the heavens over your head shall be bronze and the earth under you shall be iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed. And you see, Elijah had the faith to take God at his word and to authoritatively declare that God's word would come to pass and that God would bring the drought upon the land that he had promised. And friends, if we are gonna have wisdom, to accurately apply the word of God and the promises of God to particular situations and to pray prayers of faith that are truly inspired from heaven, then we need to be men and women who know our Bibles and know our God. We need to know and study God's promises, and we need to know that the God who promised them is utterly reliable, wholly able, and perfectly good. And I think that will lead us at some times to be able to pray with great faith in particular ways that God would act in a certain way. And I think in the same way, it may lead us at other times to pray with open hands and say, God, I know your will is good. And even though I don't know what it is, I trust you. And I think it may look either way, but it comes back to knowing God and knowing his word. And so in summary, how then should we pray for healing? Well, generally speaking, we should pray for it. And we should pray for it together. We should pray for it in faith, with persistent and bold, confident expectation. And as we pray for it, we should confess our sins, both to God and to one another. And finally, in order to pray in faith, we must be students of the word, who know our Bibles, and who know our God, that we might pray according to his will, confident that he will do all the good that he has promised. Amen, and let's pray.