James 5:13-16 13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
I decided long ago that I wouldn’t be controlled by trouble. I wouldn’t let it dictate to me how I would interact with God or with people. You can decide today how you will behave when trouble comes. In fact, it is better to have a plan, a strategy, ahead of the troubling times, so that you are ready to respond rather to simply react with panic or fear. I see three Christian principles in this text that give us an approach to trouble, three principles that can be applied in any circumstance.
First of all, Trouble should prompt an upward reach. James tells us here that when people are in trouble they should pray. Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1 We access God as a refuge, and we access God’s strength as we look to Him in prayer. I preached a message one time that asked the question, “Is God our first refuge or is He too often our last resort?” Do we talk to everyone else about our problems or post about our problems or even worse, google solutions for our problems, instead of talking with God about what is troubling us? Listen, When you are in trouble, there is nothing more strategic you can do than pray.
Second, Trouble should prompt an outward connection. We are supposed to look to other people to help carry our burdens when we are in trouble. The Body of Christ, the Family of God is a gift to us when we are struggling. We aren’t supposed to “suffer in silence.” We aren’t supposed to hide when we are hurting. There are people we can talk to and people that can pray with us, agreeing with us for God’s best in our situation.
James says in 5:14 that people who are in trouble should call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.
Now, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, but what if the reason anointing oil was to be used was more than to symbolize the power of the Holy Spirit to come on the scene? What if God knew that in our humanity, we sometimes struggle to admit our need? That we sometimes struggle to let other people into our lives when we are struggling? That our pride keeps us quiet and self-reliant rather than God-reliant and reliant on the Body of Christ as God has ordained?
Like what if the reason that anointing with oil was instituted was because we are made to be touched by other people when we are hurting, and the only way to get some of us connected to the Body in those moments is to request that we have someone put oil on their finger and to place it on our forehead and in the process put their arms around us and pray a prayer that reassures us that everything will be OK? What if help in trouble is supposed to come through a connection with God’s people? Could it be that the connection we have with people of faith has been designed by God to be a conduit for the healing power of God?
Don’t let trouble disconnect you from the Body of Christ because as you do, you are removing yourself from a source of power that can help fortify you while you are struggling. Sometimes when people go missing, and I go on a mission to find out what has happened, often there has been upheaval, trouble, a crisis, or some kind of catastrophe in a relationship that has left people feeling embarrassed or like they might be judged if anyone knew their story. Rather than come and be supported, they stay home and suffer. I’m telling you God wants to love you through His people. You may have good reason to keep people at arm’s length. You may have suffered hurt in some church setting before. I know it happens, but don’t turn away from the helpful resources that exist because of something that happened in your past. Look to someone who is spiritually mature and receive what God wants to give you through His church.
So, trouble should prompt an upward reach and an outward connection. Finally, James tells us that Trouble should prompt an inward look. Sometimes the trouble we find ourselves in is the result of poor decisions we have made. Sometimes the only way out of trouble is to confess that we have caused our own problems. Verse 16 says that we need to take an internal look and see what we might need to come clean about, what we might need to confess, in order for the confusion and clouds to clear in our situation. Maybe we need to own that we are the reason we are in trouble. James says, Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
This is a critical step that would be easy and convenient to skip. It’s not fun to admit we have done something wrong, to admit we have violated God’s laws, to humble ourselves and to ask for forgiveness, but it’s a must if we are going to get the help from God that we need. Psalm 66:18 says, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened to my prayer.” Unconfessed sin can separate us from the help we need in troubling times.
What does the end of our James passage say? It says, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Now, if you are a believer, you have been given the righteous of Christ. That is supernaturally gifted to you. That means you have right-standing with God because of Christ’s perfection. So, we aren’t talking about your track record, but God’s. However, willful sin, continuing to do what God has convinced you is wrong, is in opposition to God’s plans for you. God cannot and will not bless sin. God will rescue us from sin, but He won’t rescue us so that we can remain in sin.
A lack of confession in our lives not only points to our desire to do life our way, but it also spotlights our refusal to deal with sin God’s way. I would call that a double affront to the holiness of God. God gets to decide how sin is dealt with. He punished Christ on our behalf, but He calls us to a confessional life that allows what Christ died for to be made manifested in our lives.
Are we going to rely on God and rely on Him to be at work in the church or are we going to rely on ourselves and hope for the best? If you are choosing the latter, I’d love for you to look me in the eye and tell me how that is working for you.
You can’t always control whether trouble finds you, but you can be in control as you reach for God, as you connect in faith with other believers and as you look internally to see what might need to be altered in your life. Trouble can actually take you to a place of triumph that easier times would not.
