Prayer and Praise (Part 1 of 2)

Most of us work hard to avoid suffering, and yet the Bible tells us that suffering can be a source of joy.

So how's that possible? How can we experience joy in the midst of disappointment or fear or pain? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explores why James says we should consider it pure joy when we face trials.

We read from verse 13. Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.

Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three and a half years.

Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Amen. Now, Father, as we turn to the Bible, what we do not know, teach us. What we do not have, give us.

What we are not, please make us. For your Son's sake. Amen. As a schoolboy, I received a copy of the Gideons' New Testament and the Psalms. I went looking for it this morning and found it where I thought it was. I wonder how many of you also in the course of your life have received a copy of a Gideon New Testament or a Psalms. You just put up your hands.

I'd like to see. All right. A significant number, and most of the rest of you will have found these either in a hotel room or perhaps in a business establishment. I actually received this Bible on the 22nd of December 1964 when I was 12 years old. I was at that time.

This book tells me in class 1C in Eastwood School in suburban Glasgow—1C, not in 1A, not in 1B, but in 1C. Anyway, I remember receiving this, and I remember the surprise and intrigue and cynicism on the part of some of my friends who had already decided by the ripe old age of 12 or 13 that Christianity was useless, that it was a relic, and so on. And I remember the fun that they had by looking up the entry pages and discovering that you could find help for all kinds of things. And where you would find help, if you were afraid, you would turn to page 28. If you were facing failure—165—some of them, like me, knew what that was, especially in examinations. If you were in trouble, you went to page 30 and so on. And they had a tremendous amount of fun with it, because they said, What a waste of time!

If I'm afraid or in trouble or failure, why would I ever turn out to this strange little book? Whatever Christianity was they had determined, it bore no relationship whatsoever to their lives. And they were pretty convinced of that and went on to live their lives without any reference to God or to the Bible at all. Well, is Christianity just a relic? Is Christianity somehow related to the ebb and flow of life?

The book of James, along with the rest of the Bible, clearly refutes the assertion. And from the beginning of our studies, we have each of us, I think, been forcibly struck by the intense practicality of the issues that we are confronted with in these five chapters. You will recall, some of you who were present, that he began his book with the striking statement, Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of various kinds. And he reminded his readers that the Christian lives in the real world of testings and trials, and that these come both to prove us and to reprove us. He then had gone on to say that if this was not our perspective, what we ought to do is pray and ask God for the wisdom that we need in order to see things, to view life, to view the world from this perspective. In other words, he is making it clear to those who read his letter that if we're going to live sensibly, we need to think properly.

And if we're going to think properly, then we need God's wisdom. And so we have gone through the chapters, and now as he's drawing his letter to a close, in this final section it appears that he has deliberately gone full cycle. Having begun with the call to patience and perseverance and the need for prayer, here he is wrapping up with the very same emphasis. And in verses 7 through 12, he has been calling his readers once again to the importance of patience, especially in the face of unjust prosecution and persecution. And then having called them to patience, in verse 13 and following, he returns to the importance of prayer. And if you allow your eyes to scan what we have just read, you will see, as I have done, that every verse from verse 13 to verse 18 deals with the issue of prayer.

First of all, the individual praying, and then the elders praying, and then friends praying for one another, and then even Elijah, the Old Testament prophet, his prayers as a man just like ours. And in it all, he is calling his readers to discover, if you like, the glad acceptance of the will of God, to discover that there is no greater joy than to cast ourselves into God's care and to ask him to fulfill his purposes in us and through us. This final section suggests Alec Mattia is an exercise in practical consecration. Practical consecration. What does it really mean to sing the hymn?

Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to thee, take my moments and my days and let them flow in ceaseless praise. Well, James gives us some start in relationship to this. We're learning that in the rough and tumble of life, the Christian, on any given day, may find himself or herself facing trouble, being profoundly happy, being diagnosed with a significant sickness, facing the issues of ongoing sin. That pretty well covers it all, doesn't it? Is anybody in trouble?

Well, that would cover a few. Any happy? Some more. Any sick? A few hands. Anybody dealing with sin? Every hand.

Very practical. That's what I want us to notice. In other words, what James is doing in this final section is akin to what they do in the Gideon New Testament. Well, what do I do if this happens? Turn to James chapter 5 and verse 13 and following, and you'll find out. Now, we're not going to go through all of these areas, but we are going to tackle just the first two, which come in verse 13. Is anyone in trouble? Pray.

Is anyone in trouble? Pray. Now, it all seems so straightforward, doesn't it? And we are immediately saying to ourselves, Oh, we're already doing this.

Well, let's just wait and see before we make those proud affirmations. In the King James Version, the word that is used here is the word affliction. Is any one of you afflicted? And that notion of affliction or trouble or calamity should be in our minds if we want to understand what James is addressing.

It really is a fairly generic word describing anything of which we or an onlooking friend may say, Now, that's bad. That's bad. That is tough to deal with.

That is hard. That is a calamity. That is an affliction. That is suffering.

And so on. It's the same word that is employed by Paul when he talks about his ministry of the gospel, and he says in 2 Timothy 2 verse 9, This is my gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. He was in trouble. And he doesn't want to gild the lily, and so he tells Timothy, his young assistant, that if he's going to pick up the baton that Paul is laying down and himself be involved in the gospel ministry, then it is important for him that he keeps his head in all situations and he endures hardship. Again, the same word that is employed by James here in verse 13 of chapter 5. But James hasn't introduced this just out of nowhere, because in the previous section he has referenced the example of patience in the face of suffering, verse 10, that is provided for us by the prophets. Brothers is an example of patience in the face of suffering. It's the same word that is translated trouble here in verse 13. Now, if we go to the prophets—and we could spend a long time there—we will understand that what James does in employing them as an illustration is very sensible.

Let me give you just three illustrations to make the point. First of all, let's consider Jeremiah, the wailing prophet, as he's referred to, the man who comes with these great lamentations. And eventually the people get sick and tired of him. They didn't want to hear the word of the Lord anymore. And so they took him—you can read this story in Jeremiah 38—and they threw him into a cistern, into a cistern, like a huge, gigantic oil drum, in which there was no water, the chronicler tells us, so that when he dumped in, it would hammer him as he hit the bottom.

And the chronicler says that he was put there in that cistern so that he would starve to death. How are you doing, Jeremiah? Prophet of God? Bringer of good news and bad news? I'm in trouble. You're in trouble? I didn't think the prophet of God would be in trouble?

Well, then, you didn't think. That's Jeremiah. Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 24. And God says to his servant Ezekiel, I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. He's referring to Ezekiel's wife. You're about to undergo the pain of significant bereavement, Ezekiel.

Trouble. And what of Hosea? In perhaps the most dramatic display of God's redeeming, kesed love. And God says to Hosea, Go and show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Look back at verse 10. Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering. Now, this is nothing superficial here. This is not somebody who spilled their coffee on the way to the office. Is any one of you in trouble?

You know, they lost one of the stays for the collar of their shirt or something like this. No. What he is referencing here is the facts of life. What do you do when cruel opposition comes your way, when you are unjustly punished, like Jeremiah? Or what do you do in the loss of a loved one like Ezekiel? Or what do you do, like Hosea, when you face the disruption of marital infidelity? When trouble comes, what do we do?

Well, let's be honest for a moment. What do we do? What is the natural response to these circumstances? The natural response is to be disappointed, disheartened, perhaps despairing, grumble, complain, engage in self-pity, go in a corner and say, Nobody else has ever experienced this.

I am the only one that knows this. That would be natural. But the believer's response, says James, is supernatural. His counteraction to the experience of trouble, affliction, calamity, difficulty is to count it all joy and to pray. When he begins his letter with the striking statement that we noticed, he is teaching the readers what we've been learning throughout—namely, that an important characteristic of genuine faith is that it doesn't collapse when it's tested. An important characteristic of genuine faith is that it doesn't collapse when it is tested, so that, like the writer to the Hebrews, we're able to affirm, We are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but we are those who continue and are saved. Trials may become a source of joy when we respond to them in the way that God intends and in light of the fact that we understand that God has plans and purposes to accomplish in them and through them.

But how do we get to that point? Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. He should come before his heavenly Father, before her heavenly Father, in childlike trust, and say, I'm in trouble, and I need your help. But, says somebody, when I'm in trouble, I don't feel like praying.

Understood? Well then, if you can't find your own words, use someone else's words. Use the psalmist's words. Use the prayers of Paul. Use the prayers that you'll find scattered throughout the Old Testament. And tune your heart on the strength of what others have said in similar experiences. But remember this.

It is on the occasion that I feel least like praying that I need to pray the most. And the devil understands that. And that's why he will seek always to make trouble as an occasion for despair, for disappointment, and for bailing out, You don't need this. You shouldn't have this. Forget him.

Forget it. The fact is, we do have plenty of words, don't we? It's not that we're missing words. It's how we employ the words and to whom we address the words. In the hymn, What Various Hindrances We Meet, when coming to the mercy seat, the fourth verse always smacks me on the nose, and it asks the question, it says, Have you no words?

Ah, think again! Words fly apace when you complain, And fill your fellow creature's ear With the sad tale of all your care. In other words, you can sit down and drive your spouse to distraction as he or she listens to you go on and on and on and on about all this trouble, and we haven't spent a couple of minutes going to our heavenly Father, which is supposed to be the reaction of the believer to the experience of trouble.

Jesus, in the face of the most extreme suffering, the writer tells us, prayed more earnestly—prayed more earnestly—an opportunity to come to the Father and experience what is described for us in 1 Peter 5 verse 7, that we can cast all our cares upon him because he cares for us. Who am I going to talk to? Who will listen? Who knows?

Who even cares? Answer, we do not have, Hebrews 4, in Jesus a high priest who is sort of up there and out there and beyond there, but we have one who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities. Therefore, in light of that, let us come before the throne of grace, where we may find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need, in our time of trouble. But remember this, that what it says, Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Full stop.

Then on to the next topic. Some of us are disappointed, because we want another two or three sentences that say, Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. And when he does, everything will be hunky-dory. As soon as he finishes praying, as soon as you stand up from praying, whoa, it's all gone!

Shazam! The thing has come, or bazook, the thing has left. We're fine. Trouble, prayer, gone.

No. Trouble, prayer, trouble. That's the reality. You see, and that's why when we make ourselves the center of the universe and our well-being the key to answered prayer, we just pray like the unbeliever.

The only reason the unbeliever thinks ever of praying is to get what he wants. I want this. I need this. Give me this.

No reply? Forget it. I'm not doing that again. The Christian, when he prays, must learn to pray as Jesus prayed. This is what I would like, but nevertheless, it's really what you would like, Father, because you are my Father, and I absolutely trust you. Yeah, you may take this from me, but since you're powerful enough to take it from me, I also recognize that you're powerful enough to have prevented me ever having to deal with it in the first place. Therefore, I'm going to have to trust you. I'd like to be delivered. Will you deliver me?

The reply may be, No, I won't deliver you. Certainly not immediately, but I will strengthen you. You see, is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.

That's all it says. And some of our prayers will just be laments. Laments. If you listen to Scottish music at all—and you should do so sparingly, especially listening to bagpipe music. The bagpipes were sent by the Irish to the Scots as a joke, and we never got the joke. But the fact is that bagpipe music will do things to you. It can stir you and make you wish you were a soldier.

It can make you think that you could score tries in international rugby with just aplomb. But it can also reduce you to tears. And there is a place for lament, isn't there? You see, there is a place for, Is anyone in trouble?

I'm in trouble. Let him pray. And the prayer just goes, Father? Father? Sit. Nothing.

Why? He knows. And if you don't know that he knows, you're not reading your Bible.

Or you don't know him. Is anyone of you in trouble? Pray. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life, and we'll hear more tomorrow. As we're thinking about prayer, I'm imagining some of you struggle with prayer and you're not alone. Even the disciples had to ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. You can learn more about prayer by listening to additional sermons from Alistair on the subject. You'll find them on our website at truthforlife.org. Simply click the sermons in the top menu bar and search for prayer on the topics list.

You can download the messages, stream them, share them with friends, all for free. And if you'd like to dive a little deeper into the subject of prayer, Alistair wrote a book on it titled, Pray Big. This is a short practical book that draws from the Apostle Paul's prayers for the church at Ephesus. Alistair wrote this to help you enhance your prayer life and to pray in a way that glorifies God. Each chapter ends with a sample prayer to help get you started.

Pray Big is available in paperback. There's an e-book or an audio book and there's a companion study guide you can use to follow along chapter by chapter, making it perfect for you to use on your own or in a small group. The book and the companion study guide are available for purchase at our cost in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store and shipping in the US is free. You might wonder how we're able to offer so many resources for free or at cost and the answer is because of our truth partners. These are listeners just like you who give each month to help care for the cost of producing and distributing our daily program and making Alistair's online sermon library completely free to access. We get so many letters from people who aren't able to donate to the Ministry of Truth for Life and they tell us how grateful they are for listeners like you.

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I'm Bob Lapine. We learned today how trials are designed by God to test our faith and to drive us to him in prayer. Well believe it or not happy times can test our faith as well. Tomorrow we'll see how we can respond when life is going great. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.