Sanctification fellowship (II) Passionately intense prayer

There are many advantages, in twelve-step-programs, to having Christ as your higher power, someone or something greater than yourself. I have mentioned before the principles and promises of the Word of God, and the power and presence of Holy Spirit. This morning I want to mention one more, namely prayer in the Name of Jesus! The full text of James 1:16 (which more and more is becoming a theme song for these posts) is “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The passionate and intense prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective.” Lest we should be tempted to disqualify ourselves, telling ourselves we are not righteous, I would remind you that Christians are called saints (holy ones i.e. Ephesians 1:1). I am not suggesting we can live lawless lives, but rather with Paul we count all things other than Chris as loss, in order that we might stand by faith in His righteousness, and not in our own (Philippians 3:7-9).

Prayers prayed in the Name of Jesus carry with them many promises. From the lips of Jesus, for example, we read “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). In the context of James 5:16 I want this morning to combine this promise with one that flows out of the deep and genuine unity that comes about when we are obeying the command to confess our faults one to another. In particular “If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). The Greeks word translated here as ‘agree, ’ is sumphoneo, from which we get the English word symphony. It speaks of harmony, as opposed to unison, that is of differences harmonized. This not the uniformity we are so often pressured to exhibit. Such sumphoneo cannot be found where we hide our faults from each other, but it is found supremely in the fellowship of those made righteous in the process of a James 5:16 type sanctification.

The power and effectiveness of such a fellowship was brought home to me on one occasion, when a prayer request had been brought forward of a relative caught in deep addiction and, rightly or wrongly, we feared was suicidal. Not long afterwards, we had the joy of welcoming that person into our fellowship, and he was soon growing in Christ like a weed. Compassion plays a role here, in the type of fellowship I am describing, when one member suffers we all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26), and this makes passionate and intense prayer a simple and natural outflow of our compassion and concern. And we can claim that our prayers are powerful because we are righteous in the righteousness of Christ.

Father, over and over we read in Your Word that Jesus “moved with compassion” healed (i.e. Matthew 15:22). In order to do this Lord we need to enter into each other’s pain. Many times Lord we need Your help here. So please Lord draw us closer both to each other and to You, so that we may receive Your Grace to be Your hands and feet in this wicked and hurting World in Jesus Name Amen