Wholeness by Prayer and Action

Creation: A Divine Cycle
The Birthing of a New Community

Christ Creates Holy Living

James 5:13-20. The Message

Prayer to Be Reckoned With

13-15 Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
16-18 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
19-20 My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.

For Reflection

Bishop Fulton Sheen was once asked to open Congress with prayer.  As I can remember, he said, "There are three things a man must do for himself; blow his own nose, make his own love, and say his own prayers." With that comment, Bishop Sheen asked for silent prayer. This was not an abdication of prayer. Rather, Sheen encouraged private prayer, that if practiced, was impossible to disregard.

Sheen was a man who not only professed his Catholic faith, but also studied, explained, and practiced his faith. He was, above all, a good and righteous humble man. I tell you this because as a teen I was a TV fan.  I rarely missed one of his lectures. He was a great influence on me.

Sheen described prayer as, "taking a little rest to contact power for one's soul." We pray prayers of petition asking God to provide, to intercede. Often we ask God to change God's will. Perhaps we should ask rather for things that have spiritual worth.

We worship and praise God in prayer. But, does God need praise? I rather think not. We praise God because we need to acknowledge our gratitude and recognition for God's gifts and God's sovereignty.  This prayer strengthens our soul.

Our lives are a living prayer when our actions are offered up to God. As we understand that our lives are holy and act accordingly, we serve as prayer.

So, let us make prayer a common practice. Let us resolve to pray individually, to pray in communion with others, to petition God for our spiritual needs, to pray in praise and worship, and to live righteous lives -- a living prayer, not for God's sake, but for ours.

Pray

That you will often pray about all things. Pray to receive spiritual gifts. Pray in praise and worship. Pray that your actions will honor God.

*Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Prayer, "Life is Worth Living," TV Show, 1953  (See You-Tube."