Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. [James 5.16]
What follows here is not for spiritual sissies. This is a real as it gets...
How far are we from compliance with what James wrote above? How can we read this instruction and think for a moment that we are even the least bit okay? It should put the very fear of God in us that we don't have great power and don't produce wonderful results.
Think of all the people who come into, and then out, the doors of any given church every week without experiencing great power and wonderful results! And then, a week later they come right back and leave again with the same outcome. Nothing. Oh, maybe some emotion, but not what James said above...
The implications of this are not only upon the "sheep" but perhaps even more so highlight the failure of the "shepherds." Where is the great power? Where are the wonderful results?
I went 'down the aisle' last Sunday morning to "be prayed for" concerning my health. I was not alone as there were many people across the front of the room there for the same reason. I am only saying this to point out that the "faith problem" in the Church is not limited to the sheep... I certainly could have missed it in anyone else, but as for me, I walked back to my chair no different than I walked to the front. There was no "commotion" otherwise to indicate great power or wonderful results were present in or upon anyone else either. My walk to the front was a confession of sorts that my faith is lacking and I needed the help of others. I "braced in anticipation" for great power and wonderful results, but to no avail.
There is a HUGE disconnect between what James said above and what occurred last Sunday morning. At some point, should not the prayers of those "stronger in faith" be able to yield great power and wonderful results on behalf of those who are "weaker in faith?"
Here's the point. It is terrible that Christian leaders pray over people with such impotency and remain so shameless about it. The faith deficit in the Church should be appalling to all. I know it is to me and I, for the record, here confess my faithlessness as sin.
Everything Jesus taught that we would do and be is, at best, wishful thinking for most "believers." And yet, we shamelessly call ourselves "believers" before a watching world that simply shakes its head in disgust and disdain at our hypocrisy.
How can I call myself a "believer" and have no great power and wonderful results? Disconnect. Something is wrong - not just in me, but almost universally in the Church. At some point we have to realize that our persistent "faith confession" is yielding no results. Are we then really in faith? Oh, I know, let's talk about patience then... Don't we realize that Jesus NEVER had an oops moment that He prayed with no results and so then told the person to just keep confessing it until it came! For the record, there was not a single soul in faith when Lazarus died, but Jesus raised him anyway.
Where is great power and wonderful results faith in the earth today? IS there faith at all in the earth today? Or just religion?
I apologize to all the people I have prayed for with no results! Please forgive me! Is this not what James said we should do? Confess our sins to each other?
God help us to get real and get out of this powerless existence!
Father, as Paul told Timothy, I want to stand at the front of the line to say, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all." Forgive me for my claims of faith with no great power or wonderful results! Help me to see what is wrong so that I might repent and move away from it and move into Your great power and wonderful results! I am sick of powerless religion!
No comments:
Post a Comment