It will probably come as no surprise to any of you to hear me say that, over the years, I’ve done a lot of study in public speaking. Getting up in front of people and communicating effectively is a big part of being a pastor. So, I’ve taken speech classes in high school and college, and many preaching classes in seminary. And all of those experiences taught me one very important thing about public speaking: the importance of having, what’s called, "an interest opener." In other words, it’s not usually very effective to just get up and say, "I’ve got four points I want to make today." Most people won’t care about your four points. First, you’ve got to catch their interest—with a moving story, or a provocative question or a funny joke—and then you move on to the four points, once you’ve gotten them interested.

It’s very important. However, I’ve also learned that it’s not always absolutely necessary. When you preach at a funeral for example, you don’t really need an interest opener. People are already interested. They want to hear from God!

Now, I’m taking a chance with this, but I’m guessing that I don’t really need one today either as I talk about "praying for healing." I’ve never done or seen a formal study on this, but my guess is that nothing inspires us to pray more than when someone we love is sick. You all know that we collect prayer requests at most of our worship services here at Prince of Peace. Again, just a guess, but I think if you were to look back at all the prayer requests we’ve received over the years here, about 80% of them would be prayers for healing. Most of us have to work hard at remembering that there are other important things to pray for too. But no one seems to forget to pray for people they love who are sick, especially when they’re seriously sick. Prayers for healing come pretty naturally. This is a topic we’re already interested in.

And if that’s true, then our text from James 5 should speak to all of our hearts today. Because in James 5, God gives us an amazing promise about praying for healing. He says in verse 15, "the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well." That’s a pretty strong statement! And what a wonderful statement to hear if someone you love is sick and needs healing.

The problem however, is that the promise doesn’t seem to jive with our life experience, at least not as perfectly as that verse suggests. My guess is that most of us here have experienced times when God answered our prayers for healing, sometimes in amazing and miraculous ways! But most of us have also experienced times where we prayed for healing and the person we love didn’t get better. Maybe they even died, despite our fervent, heartfelt prayers for healing. And if that’s true, then how are we to understand the promise of verse 15?

And that’s a question that’s not easy to answer, because although these few verses appear to be very simple and straightforward, their meaning is hotly debated by scholars of the Bible. For example, some scholars question whether this text is even talking about physical healing at all. They point out that in verse 14, when James says, "Is any one of you sick?", that the word for sick is the Greek word, "astheneo," which literally means "to be weak." Paul uses this same word in another famous Bible verse, Romans 5:6, when he says, "At just the right time, when we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly." The word there that’s translated "powerless" is the same word translated here as "sick." But clearly in Romans, it’s not referring to physical weakness or sickness. He’s not saying, "When I got cancer, Christ died for me." Paul’s obviously talking about spiritual weakness—the weakness that comes from sin.

Back in James, verse 15 may be another clue. James says, "And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well." Again, it seems pretty straightforward. However, when you dig a little deeper, you find out that the words "make well" are only one word in Greek, the word, "sozo", which literally means, "save." Literally, it’s "the prayer offered in faith will save the sick person."

And right after that, he says, "the Lord will raise him up" and of course, the verb there is often used in the New Testament in connection with the resurrection.

So, some people put all that together and say, "I don’t think James is promising every physically sick person will get better if we just pray for them. In fact, I don’t think he’s talking about that at all. Maybe what he’s really promising is the assurance of salvation—that the person we’re praying for will find ultimate healing—not by recovering from all their physical sicknesses, but by being forgiven of their sins and saved and being raised to eternal life with God.

And that’s just one of the issues that’s debated from these verses. Another hot issue here is related to the mention of anointing the sick person with oil in verse 14. The question is, "what exactly is James suggesting here?" Some people think the oil is not a spiritual thing at all. They think James is just mentioning a common medical practice from the ancient world. And they might be right. You may remember that oil is mentioned in this way in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke 10:34 says that after the man had been robbed and beaten up, the Good Samaritan, "went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine."

But other people think the oil must have spiritual significance. Because if it was purely medical, wouldn’t James have said, "Is any one of you sick? He should call the doctor to anoint him with oil." Who needs the elders of the church if it’s just a medical thing?

Now, we could go on and on like this. It’s amazing how much conversation and debate these few, seemingly straight-forward verses have inspired! Let me try and move us forward with a few thoughts of my own:

First, regardless of what significance you think the "anointing with oil" has, James clearly ties the healing he’s talking about, not to the oil, but to the prayer. Verse 15 only mentions the prayer, not the oil, when it talks about what makes the sick person well. Praying for healing is what’s being emphasized here. So, let’s not get so caught up in the minor point, that we miss the major one!

Second, regardless of what you think about who "the elders of the church" are and what you think they should do when someone is sick, James is clearly connecting his promise to everyone, not just to a select few. In verse 16 he says, "pray for each other so that you may be healed." So, the power he’s talking about is in the prayer, not the elder. You don’t have to hold a special office, or have received a certain level of maturity to experience what he’s talking about here. This promise is for all of us.

Third, I believe the text is referring to physical healing, not just ultimate healing when we die, for a couple reasons. First, because the New Testament never talks about salvation as something I can do for you, simply by praying. Secondly, because while the word "save" does sometimes refer to salvation, it is also frequently used in the New Testament in connection to physical healing. [For example: Luke 7:50, Luke 8:48, John 11:12] And thirdly, while the word, "raise up" does often refer to the resurrection of the dead, it too is often used by Jesus to simply mean, "getting up from your sick bed because you’re well." [For example: Matthew 9:6 & Mark 1:31] Besides, whether James means this or not, Jesus Himself made similar promises. In John 14, for example, Jesus said, "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." [John 14:14] And He doesn’t say that praying for healing is exempted.

So, how then are we to reconcile this amazing promise with our own life experience? Well, the key is in verse 15. We have to see that the amazing promise has a contingency. The promise is contingent on one very important condition: that the prayer for healing is offered in faith. Only "the prayer offered in faith" makes the sick person well, according to James.

Now, we have to be very careful here because this principle has been horribly misinterpreted at times. James is not saying, that if you pray for healing and the person you love is not healed, that it is therefore your fault, because you didn’t have enough faith! Think about James’ example. In this case, the one who’s praying is not the sick person, but the elders of the church! Now, just think about that: would God really say, "Well, I wanted to heal you, but you picked a bad church with immature elders! Sorry, there’s nothing I could do."? Of course, that would be ridiculous. No God like that would be worthy of our worship!

When James says that only "the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well", he is not saying that it’s your fault if the person doesn’t get well. What he’s saying is this: that when we pray as God desires, what we are ultimately doing is submitting ourselves to the will of God, trusting that He knows better than we do and that He loves us and is always working for our good, even if He doesn’t always do exactly what we want.

It’s clear from the Bible that God’s will isn’t always to heal us physically. Even the apostle Paul was not healed of his famous "thorn in the flesh" though he says he prayed for healing three times. [Second Corinthians 12:7-10] So when we pray, and especially when we pray for healing, we must never insist that God must bend His will to ours. That’s not "praying in faith." Instead we offer our prayers to Jesus, saying, "thy will be done."

On the other hand, we must also never fall into fatalism in our prayers and think that our prayers for healing are meaningless and that God’s just gonna do whatever He wants no matter what we ask for. That kind of thinking about prayer imagines God as stern and uncaring and distant, instead of as the loving, compassionate Father that He is.

I learned this lesson well back in the fall of 2006. Many of you will remember that my mother-in-law was gravely ill, following complications from open-heart surgery. She spent seven long weeks in the Intensive Care Unit with her life hanging in the balance. We raced to Michigan several times when it looked like she wasn’t going to make it. My brother-in-law, who lives in Florida, spent thousands of dollars on one last minute plane ride after another when yet another complication occurred, because he wanted to be there when Mom died.

I can remember my father-in-law praying for her healing and how positive and hopeful he was as he trusted in Jesus. I remember him talking to us about Hezekiah and how he had prayed for healing and God gave him 15 more years of life. And I remember smiling and nodding, but in my heart, not believing that it was going to happen this time. I remember telling my wife, Linda, privately, more than once, "you need to prepare yourself…because your Mom is probably not going to survive this next step." Because after all, I was the experienced pastor. I’ve been around lots of sick and dying people. I know the signs when I see them. I recognize the speeches that doctors and nurses give when they know that death is drawing near and they’re trying to get you ready. There was nothing to be hopeful about anymore, except the hope of the life to come. I even said goodbye to Mom once and told her I’d see her next in heaven.

But I was wrong. God had other plans! "The prayer offered in faith made the sick person well, and the Lord raised her up." She’s home now and living a very full and blessed life—traveling, playing with her grandkids, serving at church—doing all the thing she always did. I would tell you that it’s a miracle, but it’s far more than a miracle. It’s multiple miracles! I’ve often said since that it wasn’t really a healing, so much as a resurrection! There were so many times along the way when she really should have died. I was sure she was going to die. All my experience told me she was going to die. But I was wrong! James was right! "The prayer offered in faith made the sick person well, and the Lord raised her up."

It doesn’t mean that God will do exactly the same thing in the life of every sick person we know. He won’t. But it does mean that we must never give up hope that He can and that He just might. It means we must offer our prayers for healing in faith: saying, on the one hand, "Thy will, not mine, be done, Lord", but on the other hand also saying and believing that, no matter what, "With God, all these are possible!" [Matthew 19:26] No matter how desperate or how hopeless our situation is, we can say with confidence what Martha said to Jesus as they stood by the grave of her brother, Lazarus, "Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask." [John 11:22]

That’s a prayer for healing offered in faith—the kind that makes the sick person well! Amen!