The When, Who, and How of Christian Prayer | World Christian Leadership

As persons made righteous by God, our prayers are powerful and effective communication to God, so we should pray.

James 5:13-18 (ESV)

"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. 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."

Do you ever have someone come to you and butter you up first to then get to what you really want?

When I was a kid, I would go to my Nana and say, “I love you” only to ask for what I really wanted- a Honey Bun from the Little Debbie drawer. Many of you may have had the cursory phone call where someone talks to you only to ask for money.

As a former missions pastor in Tennessee, I was responsible for training our short-term mission teams in fundraising. Our teams weren't just traveling to places with reasonable airfares like Phoenix, Columbus, or Toronto—we were going to Rome, the Philippines, and Indonesia, where flights alone approached $2,000. So, we taught them to write support letters that included their personal information, trip details, and two specific requests.

The second request was, naturally, financial support.

The first was to partner with them in prayer.

We wanted the entire church involved in these mission trips, collectively participating in making disciples of all nations. Praying for fellow Christians is deeply meaningful, especially when they're bringing the Gospel to people without easy access to Bibles, without churches on every corner, without local Christians reaching out to them.

Yet now when I receive support letters or see online posts, I recognize a familiar pattern.

"I'm going on this expensive trip" or "I'm starting this new ministry." You can pray, but what I really want is money—so let's skip to how much you can give me.

Prayer becomes merely an afterthought because, deep down, we want words that pray but really cash that pays.

But as we see here, in the text, in God’s Word, prayer must be more than an afterthought because, for the person in Christ, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective in all circumstances.

As persons made righteous by God, our prayers are powerful and effective communication to God, so we should pray.

This passage answers three questions about prayer:

1. When should we pray?

2. Who should we pray with?

3. How should we pray?

I. When Should We Pray? Pray Without Ceasing in All Circumstances

James begins with a set of rhetorical questions. If you're suffering, you should pray to God. If you're cheerful, you should praise God. If you're sick, you should call the pastors to pray but you should also pray. We should be confessing our sins and praying for one another as a church.

As believers, our prayers are not only before we eat our meals. Our prayers are not only for when our family members are sick or in the hospital. Our prayer is not only on Sunday mornings. Our prayers are for all circumstances because prayer is the pathway of communication to the Father. It’s the direct line of access he has given to him.

Jesus teaches us to pray with direct access to the Father. In the Lord’s prayer, he jumps right in and begins with, “Our Father…”

Tim Keller says, "The only person who dares wake up a king at 3 A.M. for a glass of water is his child. We have that kind of access to the Father.”

If he is your Father, you should go to him at all times for everything. He wants to hear the good and the bad. He wants to know you, to have an actual relationship with you. He wants you to lay down your burdens of suffering. He wants you to share in your rejoicing. Read the Psalms. We see the prayers of suffering. We see praises to God. We should “pray without ceasing” because God has not limited what we should bring to him in prayer and is not limited in his power to answer prayer (1 Thess. 5:16).

Do you go to God in all circumstances? Do you go to him in suffering? Pray. Do you go to him when you are cheerful? Pray. Our first reaction should be to pray without ceasing. We should live lives of daily prayer, like we have an airpod in where we can talk to God about anything.

II. Who Should We Pray With? With Ourselves, Our Pastors, & Others

After James explains that we should pray in all circumstances, he then shows three situations where we should pray: with ourselves, our pastors, and with other people. Let’s walk through each.

With Ourselves

He first tells us to pray with ourselves. We should personally pray prayers of suffering, praise, healing, and confession.

If you are going to a counseling session, do you send someone else? No. You go yourself. If you have news that you got a new job or are getting a new grandkid, do you send someone else? No. You go directly to the person. Why? Because it is essential for the relationship and also, you need to share the suffering with your counselor, or you want to share the news with your husband. Charles Spurgeon said, “You will observe that the desire to commune with God is intensified by the failure of all other sources of consolation.” Only God fulfills that personal desire of communion, so we should pray ourselves.

If you are in Christ, you have a relationship with God the Father. “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). If Jesus is the mediator between God and man, then as man, we should have a direct, personal prayer life with God, talking to him like he is in the passenger seat in your car because he really is God It is your means of communication to the Creator, to the Father. Jesus prayed in the mountains. Hannah prayed as she longed to be pregnant.

Do you have a personal prayer life, or do you just leave it to Sundays? Do you tell him about your day? Do you talk with him about the sin you are struggling with, the sickness that you’re suffering with, the children that you long to see come to Jesus, the joys that you have in life through him? Do you tell him? Pray yourself.

With Our Pastors

We should also pray with our pastors. James outlines a situation that the relationship of our pastors praying for us and us working with our pastors. A church member is sick and unable to get out of bed. He calls for the pastors of the church to come and pray for him. He takes initiative. The pastors come and properly respond. They anoint him with oil, showing that God has set them apart as a righteous person, which we will see in a second. They pray over him because he cannot get out of bed. Then they pray the “prayer of faith,” and the person is healed, and if they have committed a sin that led to the sickness, they will be forgiven.

There’s a lot in here. Let’s break it down.

The person calls and the pastors come.

First, the church member calls for the pastors. Do not expect your pastors to be watching you 24/7 like they have a security camera at your house. You are not their only member. If you need them, reach out to them.

The pastors do go, and good pastors should either come or help someone come in the stead. Does this mean that Pastor Mike or Pastor Noah are at your beck and call? No. You should not call for everyone to come if you have a cold. But pastors do have a responsibility to minister to their members, especially in situations like this.

The pray over him and anoint him with oil.

The pastors come and pray “over him,” signifying that he is bedridden, and anoint him with oil. This is not a special process. They are doing anything crazy. They are not “washing away any leftover sins” like some believe. They are not adding anything special to heal him. This seems to be a “setting apart.” The oil has no power, but the prayer of faith does.

The prayer of faith will heal them.

In response, it says that the prayer of faith, the person will be healed, and if he has sinned, they will be forgiven. Is this saying that if we pray for someone who is sick, we (1) guarantee their healing and (2) can have their sins forgiven? No, because last we all checked, there are still many people who die from sickness even though faithful Christian’s have prayed and none of us are Jesus Christ, who is the only one who can forgive sins.

What is the prayer of faith? The prayer of faith is not a prayer where we say, “I have so much faith, and because I muster up a ton, it is going to happen.”

This is a prayer directed by the Holy Spirit trusting that it will be answered according to God’s Will. It is trusting that God has the power to answer it, and if he does, it will be for his glory and our good. The Lord’s Prayer even says, “Let your kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It is not a prayer that is trying to use God or coerce him into something.

Does that mean if we pray, and a person is not healed, that we do not have faith? No. Not all prayers are answered how we want them. Consider Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his death. He knows that he is going to be crucified, and he knows that he is going to take on all our sin as a curse. He goes and prays for the cup of God’s wrath to be removed. But listen to how he prays. “Matthew 26:39 And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Was Jesus’ prayer answered? Yes and no.

Didn’t Jesus have faith? Of course he had faith. He had the most trust in the Father of anyone. But the Father answered no because it was not according to the will of the Trinity, including Jesus, the Son of God, himself.

Have you received everything you have asked for from the Lord? No. But we should pray in faith that it will happen.

And if they have sinned, they will be forgiven.

There were instances in Scripture where sickness is directly connected to sin. Here, if the person that is sick is praying in faith, then not only will they be healed from their sickness, but also their sins will be forgiven. Not all sicknesses means that we have sinned.

The man born blind, Jesus said that it wasn’t because of his sin or his parents’, but so that the glory of God may be shown. But we do see that some sickness is a result of sin, and we see a hint of this with the lame man at the Bethesda pool in John 5. “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (14). This is pointing to that this sickness may have been connected to the man’s sin.

Some churches choose not to do altar calls at the end of services, and I can understand not wanting to guilt someone into coming down, but some of the most ministering times that I have had are when I have taken the initiative to go down to the altar and a pastor has hugged me, laid his hands on me, and prayed over me. This is what we are talking about. Whether the prayer was answered like I wanted or not, I needed that.

You need that. We should pray with our pastors. They are the shepherds caring for us through the ministry of the Word and prayer. They are the ones whom God has placed in your lives to spiritually care for you, to pray over you, to preach the Word to you, and to equip you for the work of ministry. Do not neglect a necessary connection.

At the end of the service, if anyone wants prayer, I would love to pray with you. About salvation. About baptism. About joining the church. About your suffering. About your cheerfulness. About your sickness.

With Others

We should also pray with other people. James continues by saying, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

When you read “the prayer of a righteous person,” it could seem like it is saying a person that seems righteous, like a pastor or someone who feels more spiritual than you. But this righteousness is not a special righteousness that you and I cannot have. This righteous person is one that practically and visibly lives out their faith, who truly has a relationship with God.

From the righteous person, we can expect powerful and effective prayer, so we should confess our sins and pray for one another that will result in spiritual healing. This is not an open door to gossip or use another believer as your unpaid therapist, but if you are struggling with sin, you should confess it so that they can pray for you. When we confess sin, we get it out in the open, and sin has much less power in the light than in the darkness. We should be praying with our church family and other believers because we do not fight a physical battle but a spiritual battle.

Have you prayed with another believer? I would challenge you to talk to someone today and say, “Hey, can we pray for each other this week? Over the phone. Through text messages. I am about to do that with a friend who is going to live in Alexandria for 2 months in a nurse residency, away from his wife.”

We should be praying at all times with ourselves, our pastors, and other people.

III. How Should We Pray? Earnest & Effective Prayers with Faith

James ends with an illustration connecting us to the prophet Elijah. When a Jewish person mentioned Elijah, it would be like us mentioning George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, maybe for us in New Orleans, Drew Brees- icons who did great things and felt larger than life. Elijah was the prophet who stood up to the 300 prophets of Baal. Elijah stood up against Jezebel and Ahab. Elijah was carried into heaven on chariots of fire.

So what does James say, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.” He was like us. He was a man. He was a sinner. He was a “righteous man” like us in that he had a relationship with God. He was someone who could pray in faith. James levels us with Elijah, and then moves forward. He shows that he prayed and the rains stopped for 3 years and 6 months. Then he prayed again, and the heavens rained, and the earth bore fruit.” Jesus talks about prayers of faith that can move mountains.

How do we relate? Elijah prayed earnestly and effectively. It literally says, “he prayed with prayer.” His thoughts, desires, and graces were fixed on exercising prayer. It is this double emphasis showing that he prayed for his prayers. It was not a cursory text message of a prayer or one of those conversations you have with your spouse or friend where you are talking to him or her, but then you are also doing something else like watching television. No. Elijah prayed earnestly and effectively. If the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, and Elijah’s earnest prayers were powerful and effective, then we need to pray earnestly, focused on God, faithful that he will give us an answer for it according to his will.

How do we pray earnestly and effectively?

1. We need a relationship with God so he can declare us righteous.

   1. Prayer is effective, but it can only be effective for the righteous person. How do we become righteous persons?

   2. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We do not become righteous persons because we have enough faith and muster up our “prayers of faith.” We become righteous because Jesus became sin for us. He prayed according to God’s will, and the cup of wrath on sin that he wanted he wanted to pass instead was poured on him. Jesus was THE RIGHTEOUS PERSON. No one had to make him righteous, yet he became sin so that we might have the righteousness of God and that he might declare us as his children and say, “MINE!” If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, then you aren’t a righteous person. The one prayer that God will guarantee answer if you are not a righteous person is that you say, “Lord, I need you. I cannot be righteous but I know that you lived the life I could never life, died the death I was condemned to die because of my sin, and rose again so that you could make me yours. I’m a great sinner, but you are a greater savior, and you can make me righteous.”

2. We need to live our lives as righteous persons with visible faith.

   1. Elijah was a man like us. He was not better than we are, but he did live his life according to God BECAUSE he had a relationship with God. If you have relationship with God, then you need to live like it. Don’t be a dead tree. You are supposed to bear fruit. The righteous person is one who practically and visibly lives out their righteousness. They actually live like Christ. We should be proclaiming the Gospel, loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Loving our neighbors as ourselves.

3. We need to treat prayer better than second class holiness.

   1. Prayer is not second class. We don’t need money more than prayer. We don’t need preaching more than prayer. We don’t need acts of service more than prayer. We don’t need new carpet or a new parking lot more than prayer. We don’t need to be nice people more than prayer. We need to pray, pray, pray, and pray. Praying unceasing prayer in all circumstances means that prayer should be to us as like we are breathing them out.

Summary

As persons made righteous by God, our prayers are powerful and effective, so we should pray in all circumstances. We should pray unceasingly in all circumstances. We should pray personally, with our pastors, and with others. We should pray earnestly and effectively in faith. Prioritize prayer in your life. Don’t cut off your connection to Christ.