How Should We Pray For Those Near the End of Life?

Is it okay to pray for those near the end of their life to die peacefully? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. Phone lines are open for the next 25 minutes, and Pastor Adriel would love to talk to you.

Again, that's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. You can email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. And by the way, we're on YouTube. You can watch us live, or you can watch us later in the day. Let's go to Tim in Annapolis, Maryland. Tim, welcome to the program.

Hey, thanks for having me on. Adriel, I appreciate your ministry there. It's very encouraging. Hey, I have a question about—we know that we're saved by grace. However, are there varying rewards for those in heaven who are saved by grace? I'd often thought that perhaps the parable of the talents might refer to that, but now I'm not so sure. Yeah, there are a few passages in the New Testament, Tim, that seem to indicate that there is some level of reward. I mean, the parable of the talents in Matthew chapter 25 is one text that people will go to.

There's also the language of Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. As he's talking about his apostolic ministry, going out and preaching the gospel, laying a solid foundation, he says this. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, beginning in verse 10, According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. And so there's another passage where you have this language of rewards. You think also of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10, where he talks about standing before God at the judgment and each person receiving what's due to them for what they've done in the body, whether good or bad. And so you're absolutely right, we're saved by grace through faith, not according to deeds done by us in righteousness, Titus 3, chapter 3 verses 5 and 6, but it does seem like there's going to be some kind of commendation that we receive from the Lord. Now we don't know entirely what that looks like and what those rewards mean exactly. The Bible doesn't speak to that, but I think that we can say confidently on the basis of places like the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 and even that text in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 that, yeah, we're going to stand before the Lord. Our works are going to be taken into account not as a basis for our justification, but we are going to be commended by the Lord for the things that we've done, and there is going to be some kind of reward.

What that looks like entirely, we're not sure, but I think that's as far as we can go, brother. Thank you for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, it's 833-THE-CORE.

Pick up your phone, give us a call, 833-843-2673. Let's go to Deborah, who called in with a question yesterday. There is many places that have had the power of casting out demons even today, and God has given us the power to bind what's on earth, bind in heaven, loose what's on earth, loose what's in heaven. Demons run because of Jesus' name. The name of Jesus is supposed to be able for us to do so much more. Why would it be not something given to us as believers to utilize because of the opposition that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers? Jesus says that we can do greater things, so if you can expound on that understanding about why we the believers should have power to cast out demons.

Hey, sister, thank you for that question. I'm guessing you were listening to yesterday's broadcast where somebody asked a question, has God given us the authority to cast out demons and do these kinds of things? I said, well, in the gospels, you know, Jesus gave his disciples, the apostles, this kind of authority. My concern was that we don't use Jesus' name like a sort of magic talisman, and that's exactly what was happening.

I was appealing to a passage in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 19, where you had a group of people who were doing that. They knew that there was power in the name of Jesus. They saw the disciples casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and so they thought, hey, we can just use the name of Jesus and do this sort of spiritual Ghostbusters thing, and Jesus' name is powerful, so let's use it against the forces of the evil one.

What we read is really actually pretty interesting. Acts chapter 19, beginning in verse 13, then some itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Siva were doing this, but the evil spirit answered them, Jesus, I know, and Paul, I recognize, but who are you?

And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. My concern is that people don't use Jesus' name as this magic incantation. There is power in the name of Jesus Christ, and ultimately, God has the authority. He's the one who's in absolute control over the evil one, and in Christ, we belong to Jesus.

The evil one can't touch us. We're called to pray, to engage in spiritual warfare. The apostle Paul talks about this in Ephesians.

We're called to resist the evil one, Peter says, but whether or not we're supposed to go around as these sort of spiritual Ghostbusters trying to do the exorcist thing, I'm not confident that that's the case. It doesn't seem like that's what the New Testament says. Yes, there was a period of time where Jesus himself was going around casting out the devil, binding the strong man. The Gospels talk about this. It was really a part of him demonstrating that the kingdom of God was coming here and through his ministry.

This was a really unique thing that was happening. Jesus was accomplishing it. The apostles were doing this as well, but we're not to be going around, I think, again doing the spiritual Ghostbusters thing. That's not to say that we don't engage in spiritual warfare, and that's not to say that there isn't the reality of things like demon possession today.

I just think we want to approach this with wisdom and according to the Scriptures and not using Jesus' name as a magic formula to do spiritual warfare. Thanks for your question. Thank you for that, Adriel.

This is Core Christianity. We'd love to hear from you. I mentioned one of the ways you can listen to this program or actually watch it is on YouTube, and Annette is watching on YouTube live right now. Here's a question from her. She says, Was the flood a form of eternal judgment on those who were not in the ark? Well, the flood definitely was a form of judgment, yes. In Scripture, the flood is frequently appealed to as God's judgment on the world or referred to as God's judgment on the world, both in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. Baptism, actually, this is really interesting. A lot of people don't make this connection, but baptism for Christians is a type of flood. Peter talks about this. You see this in the New Testament.

It's this sort of judgment that we experience. Was that flood judgment? Ultimately, it was the death of Jesus Christ.

He was buried through death. Paul talks about this in the book of Romans, and we're united to Jesus by faith. It's as if we share in that judgment. That's why we're saved by faith. We're in Christ.

We belong to him. Yes, the flood absolutely was a judgment, the judgment of God upon the wicked world at that time. You have this picture of judgment but also this picture of new creation because God brings his people, Noah and his family, through the judgment waters to repopulate the world. There's really a lot of amazing pictures, analogies there between the flood and baptism. It's this judgment through which the people of God are saved and a picture of new creation. Annette, thanks for that question.

This is Core Christianity. By the way, we should mention that some of the radio stations that air our program air it on a delayed basis, so if you want to call and talk to Pastor Adriel live in the studio, here's the time you want to call. It's 1130 a.m. Pacific, which translates into 1230 Mountain, 130 Central, or 230 Eastern Time. That's when we take your calls here in the studio.

And if so, if you hear the program at a later time, that means it's been recorded. You can also, by the way, leave a voicemail anytime 24 hours a day by calling us at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Gaylene in Topeka, Kansas. Gaylene, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hello. Hello, Gaylene.

What's your question? Yeah, I was, I was trying to say, I have a kind of hard time with the Bible and then, you know, reading the Word, being attacked so much by, you know, spirits. And so I called a priest, the gospel around the world, but I was trying to see how did that work if you, if the Holy Spirit, if the Holy Spirit was to help you or how did that come about? Yeah, well, absolutely. We desperately need the help of the Holy Spirit for the sharing, preaching of the gospel.

And we're not alone in this. It's really quite wonderful to see. If you look at the book of Acts, for example, in Acts chapter 4, Peter and the rest of the disciples, they're struggling because they're being persecuted for their faith because they had been preaching the gospel. I mean, this is coming off of the heels of the day of Pentecost, and there's this, there's this wonderful prayer, and I just want to read some of this prayer to you. A sovereign Lord, this is Acts chapter 4, beginning in verse 24, who made heaven and earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage in the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.

And then he says this, truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. So here you have the disciples early on crying out to God and saying, Lord, fill us with your spirit.

For what purpose? So that we might boldly proclaim your word. When we share the gospel with others, brothers and sisters, we desperately need the Holy Spirit. We need the Spirit of God to grant us that boldness.

And so let me just encourage you as you listen to this. Maybe you've never shared the gospel with anyone in your life before. Pray. Pray that the Lord would open up doors for you to be able to share the message of salvation with the people that he's brought into your life, and pray that God would give you boldness so that when you have those opportunities, you would take advantage of them and that the Spirit would guide you. Now let me just say another thing, Galen, because there's a lot of confusion today about what it looks like to actually share the gospel. I think too often Christians, when they think about sharing the gospel, what they really are sharing is their own sort of personal experience with Jesus. You know, believe in Jesus because he's made my life so much better.

Ever since I came to Jesus, you know, I just have this peace, that kind of a thing. We share a lot about our own personal testimony, but we never really get to the gospel. The gospel is not the message of how my life was changed per se. That's an implication of the gospel. The gospel is what God accomplished in history through his son, Jesus Christ.

It's the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the burial of Christ, the resurrection of Christ. And so when we share the gospel, what we're praying for boldness for is to share that message, what Jesus has accomplished. The reason that's so important is because if we're just sharing about our own personal experience, you know what the response is going to be from people?

They're going to say, hey, that's great for you. We live in what we sometimes call a pluralistic society, a society where, you know, you believe what you want to believe in terms of religion. You believe what you want to believe. I'm going to believe what makes me feel good.

And it's great. We can just agree to disagree or it's, you know, your truth for you and my truth for me. But that's not how the gospel is to be presented. The gospel is not something that we should embrace because it just sort of works for us. The gospel is something that happened in history that God accomplished. It's what Jesus did so that we might be forgiven. And now God commands all people everywhere to repent on the basis of that very truth. And so may God bless you, Galen, and everyone listening right now, you who are listening right now, may God bless you and fill you with his spirit to share the message of the gospel with the people around you. There's nothing wrong with sharing your own experiences as well. How that message has shaped you and blessed you, totally fine.

Make sure that you're first and foremost focusing on what God did to reconcile sinners to himself. That's the gospel. That's the good news. Thanks for calling us, Galen. Amen. Great word, Adriel.

Thank you so much. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we have a brand new Bible study we want to offer you. And it's on a book of the Bible that challenges a lot of Christians because it's got a lot of symbolism and metaphors in it. It's the book of Revelation.

Yeah, our Revelation Bible study is hot off the press, written by actually a professor that I had in seminary, Dennis Johnson, a godly man, an excellent writer, and a New Testament scholar, someone who has spent a lot of time in the book of Revelation, and can really help you understand this book better. So this is a resource that we really thought was important because we get so many questions about the end times, about the significance of the prophecies in the book of Revelation. This is going to help you.

And so get a hold of this resource. It's yours for a gift of $20 or more, and I know it's going to bless you. We would love to send that to you. All you have to do is go to our website and request it. And as Adriel said, for a gift of $20 or more, we'll send the brand new Revelation study to you. Go to corechristianity.com forward slash Revelation, or call us at 1-833-843-2673.

That's 833, the core. Well, let's go to a voicemail that we received yesterday. Hi. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for your show. You are a true blessing. So grateful for your show.

I really appreciate it. I work in an assisted living nursing home setting, and of course what I see mostly here is people suffering and dying. And when I see someone in a terrible condition, I pray for them to die quickly. I pray for God to please take their soul, please take them quickly and let them die. And I wonder if it's wrong to pray that, because I know that we're supposed to pray for healing. I honestly don't believe that these people will be healed. I believe that it actually is.

I mean, they're in their 90s or, you know, some hundreds. I pray that they will die quickly and not suffer. And I just want to know if that was okay.

I just want to see them taken out of pain. I love your show. Thank you again. Hey, Sheila, God bless you in the work that you're doing and not just serving there, but also praying for people. I know that the Lord hears your prayers and continue to do that. The first thing I would say is there's a total difference between just praying that someone would die, that they would perish, and praying for someone because you don't want to see them suffer anymore.

You're right there on the front lines. I mean, you see it every day, the suffering that people are going through. I think a big question here is, you know, death is different for different people. And what I mean by that is for the believer, death has been transformed.

It's entering into life. Jesus said, when he was speaking to Mary and Martha in John chapter 11, verse 25, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? And she said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who's coming into the world. And so for the believer, death is an entrance into life. You see this especially in John's writings in particular.

For the non-believer, death is an entrance into judgment. And I think that should factor into the way that you pray. For people who are on their deathbed, maybe still suffering outside of Christ, I would pray that God would cause the light of his glory to shine upon them, that they might even there apprehend the truth of the gospel.

Maybe they heard it years and years ago, and now they're thinking about it. They don't know what a person has gone through, knows what they've experienced, but praying that they would come to know the Lord. And also, it is a totally legitimate prayer to pray that God would ease their pain, ease their suffering.

You don't want that for them. But I would say that has to factor into how you're praying for, that should factor into how you're praying for these people who are approaching death. And so I think that's really, really important. And I would also say, again, there's a difference between just praying that someone would die and saying, Lord, take this person out of their suffering. I don't think that there's anything wrong with praying that way. And I pray that the Lord gives you wisdom and grace to continue to minister to the people that you're working with and fills your heart, sister, with his love and his strength to do the work that you're doing.

Thank you for your question. Wow, what a challenging job she has. And we should be praying for her for that, you know, daily encouragement that she attempts to give those patients there in that assisted living place.

Tough, tough situation. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Glory in Modesto, California. Glory, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? It is regarding prayer and specifically praying with a group. I'm finding more that when I hear someone in the group make a lot of noises, I know maybe they're intending to encourage the person saying the prayer out loud.

But I find it's really distracting and it completely takes me away from what the person saying the prayer is praying for. For example, you know, there's... Yeah, Glory. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

You were going to say... What do I do? Is that normal? Yeah, well, look, I think we've been there, right? I mean, you're in a prayer circle and somebody's praying and everybody's kind of saying, yes, amen. And it really can, I think, be distracting. One thing, right, like we want to be so careful here because it really is easy to sit or stand and judge the prayers of another person.

Frankly, let me just say this. Some prayers deserve to be judged. I mean, sometimes I think when we pray, we can do it in ways... And Jesus, the reason I say this is because Jesus did this.

We do it in ways that, you know, we're trying to draw attention to ourselves or just to sort of using vain repetitions. I mean, Jesus in Matthew chapter six, he said, when you pray, don't heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles and don't do it to be seen by others. And so in that sense, according to Jesus, there are some prayers that we should say, okay, you shouldn't pray that way. But a lot of times in these situations, I think sometimes people might just pray differently than we do or other people, maybe they're engaged in the prayer process a little bit differently than we would be.

Maybe they'd like to add an amen when this other person is praying. And I think that can be distracting for us, but I would encourage you to try and as the prayer is taking place, fix your eyes upon the Lord by faith. There are a lot of distractions that we experience in prayer and with others.

And there are instances where I think maybe it can be appropriate to say to someone, hey, that's really distracting to me. But I think sometimes maybe, you know, if it's just somebody saying amen or they're doing the kind of a thing, I don't know that we need to say that. But I think for us, you know, in those situations, it's just saying, Lord, help me to focus on you. Help me to focus on what is being prayed so that I too can say amen and pray with my brothers and sisters and maybe also being sensitive to the fact that maybe for some of these other people, glory, this is just how they're entering into the prayer, how they are able to identify with the words that are being prayed, you know, how they are participating. And whether we're participating in silence and in our hearts, truly praying along with this other person, or whether they're praying and we're saying amen as they're praying, you know, I think both of those are okay. And we have to search our own hearts to say, Lord, help me to focus on you, not to be easily distracted. Now, I'm not saying, again, that there aren't situations, glory, where things can be, people can be distracting and pray in ways maybe even that they shouldn't be praying and we can have conversations about that as well and it can be helpful maybe to talk with that person, to speak with them and just to say, hey, it makes it really hard for me to be able to pray when you're making so many noises.

I've actually had to do that before in the context of a Bible study where we would have group prayer and an individual in the Bible study would just start to sing while we were praying and nobody else was singing and it just was distracting. I had to have that conversation with that individual, but I would say just encouraging you, sister, continue to pray with the body of Christ, try to work through the distractions, fixing your eyes on Jesus by faith and being encouraged as you gather together with other believers to speak to the Lord and to pray to Him. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.