There’s an old saying that “there
are no atheists in foxholes.” The point
of the saying, of course, is that even though some people may ignore God or
even claim to believe God does not exist, when it really comes right down to
it, when we’re actually in a crisis and have to take the possibility of death
seriously, everyone will call on God, because there’s no one else to call
on. They will use God as their solution
of last resort.
Even those of us who are
Christians, though, tend to use God that way sometimes. It can be easy, when things are going well,
for us to start taking God for granted.
We know God is there, and we know God loves us, and so it can be
tempting, sometimes, to just leave it at that.
We go on about our business and leave God in the background. Then, when things start to go wrong, we try
to fix them ourselves, or we look to others to fix them for us. It’s only when a crisis comes, when things
are completely out of control and we have nowhere else to turn, that we turn
back to God and ask God for help. It
can be easy for us to use God as our solution of last resort, too.
What our scripture points out,
though, is that God is not supposed to be our solution of last resort. God is supposed to be our first resort, our
last resort, and every resort in between.
No matter what our situation is, whether it’s good, bad or in the
middle, we need to turn to God.
James talks about what we should do
when we’re suffering. He talks about
what we should do when we’re cheerful.
He talks about what we should do when we’re sick. The reason James talks about those things is
that those are examples of all the things we go through in the course of our
lives. We all have times when we
suffer. We all have times when we’re
cheerful. We all have times when we’re
sick. In these and all the other times
in our lives, no matter what happens, we need to turn to God.
It’s important to recognize
something, though. When James tells us
to turn to the Lord in all circumstances, he is not saying that God will do
whatever we want. James is not trying
to say that God is our servant or that we can control God. Our prayers will only be effective if we
submit to God’s control and pray in accordance with God’s will.
That’s why James does not just
refer to prayer. He does not say prayer
will save the sick, he says the prayer of faith will save the sick. He does not say prayer is powerful and
effective, he says the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Prayer is a very powerful thing, but only
when we pray with the right attitude, an attitude of submission to God.
So, does that mean that if we pray
for someone who is sick, and they don’t recover, that it’s because our faith
was not strong enough or that we’re not righteous enough? No. What
it may mean, though, is that we’ve lost our focus. It may mean that we’re focusing too much on praying for what we
want, and not praying enough for God’s will to be done.
I know this is a lot easier than it
sounds. Most of us here have loved ones
who are in need of healing. Some of us
are in need of healing ourselves. If
we’re not, we have been in the past, and we will be again in the future. When we’re sick, we want to get better. When someone we love is sick, we want them
to get better. And when we’re convinced
of how good the person who’s sick is, it’s hard for us to see how God’s will
could be for anything other than healing.
It’s really hard, when we or
someone we love is suffering, to put aside what we want and pray for God’s will
to be done. But that’s what we need to
do. It’s what Jesus did in the garden
of Gethsemane. Jesus knew all the
suffering he was about to face. He knew
he was going to die a very painful death, and he did not want to do it. We’re told how hard Jesus prayed, so hard
that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling on the ground. But in the end, Jesus prayed to the Father,
“Not my will, but yours be done.”
It’s okay to pray for what we
want. After all, God knows what we want
even before we ask for it. But in those
prayers, we always have to remember to pray that God’s will be done. As James tells us, that is always the prayer
of the righteous And the prayer of the
righteous is always both powerful and effective.
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