Early in our marriage, Anne and I met a couple who, at first, seemed fairly like-minded with us. They were interested in folk music and played the mountain dulcimer, which I was learning to do. It seemed like we would enjoy spending time with them. They invited us to their place for dinner, and early in the evenng made a point of telling us that they believed in speaking what was on their minds, that they saw this as part of having integrity. But as the evening went on it became clear that they were just rude and inconsiderate. They spoke what was on their minds, but they didn’t think about how their words might affect others. They felt compelled to say what they were thinking, but they neglected to speak with kindness and grace.
Throughout this letter, James has been concerned about the way we use the gift of speech. In chapter one, he says: “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (v. 19). In chapter two, he condemns empty, pious words: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (vv. 15-16). Most of chapter three is occupied with the misuse of the tongue: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (v. 10). Chapter four begins with the problem of conflicts and disputes in the church, and James says: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (v. 11). And the chapter ends with a warning against presumptuous speech: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring” (vv. 13-14). This problem of how we use the gift of speech has been a major theme in James, and it’s significant that these final verses are centered around the way we speak in God’s presence. If we find ourselves convicted by the things James says about speech, the place to begin is by giving attention to our prayer lives.
The first thing we can see in these verses is that the context for a life of prayer is the Church. We come into God’s presence, not primarily as individuals but as members of the body of Christ. It’s difficult for us to see this, living in such an individualistic culture, but most of the exhortations in the New Testament epistles are addressed to churches, not individuals. Even our language obscures this, because there’s no second person plural pronoun (in the south, the word “y’all” is an attempt to remedy this lack). So when Paul says in Ephesians 4: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” we instinctively read the word “you” in the singular: Paul is talking to me, an individual who’s chosen to follow Jesus Christ. But the word in Greek is plural; he’s calling the church as a body to lead a life worthy of the calling they’ve received. It addresses us individually because God has graciously called us to be part of the Church.
Notice the strong emphasis on the corporate body in these verses in James: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” The people in these different life situations are identified first as part of the church. If any are sick, they’re to “call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Their need is to be brought into the church body and the church (with the elders acting as representatives of the body) is to bring the situation before God in prayer and anointing. Illness tends to isolate us, cut us off from one another; by giving us this instruction, James is seeking to preserve the oneness of the body. A few verses later he says this: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Sin isolates us, so we confess our sins and receive forgiveness and cleansing. The point is that prayer takes place in the context of the church body. We come into God’s presence in prayer, not primarily as individuals but as those who’ve been called into the body of Christ. God is preparing the Church as a bride for His Son, and He’s graciously included us.
I’ve often heard this advice about prayer: “just talk to God and tell Him how you feel,” but I’ve never found this very helpful. One thing that happened when I followed this advice is that my prayer revolved around myself and my own concerns. Eugene Peterson expresses the same concern and says books of written prayers helped him break out of this self-centered cycle of prayer: “I found that books of prayers sometimes primed the pump of prayer when I didn’t feel like praying. And I found that left to myself, I often prayed in a circle, too wrapped up in myself, too much confined to my immediate circumstances and feelings, and that a prayerbook was just the thing to get out of the brambles and underbrush of my ego, back out in the open country of the Kingdom, under the open skies of God” (Living the Message, p. 338). Written prayers put us in touch with the historic Church; they train us in a more adequate language for prayer and praise, and they guide us out of our small worlds and into the larger world of God’s kingdom.
When I was a pastor I visited a man in the hospital who had had one problem after another and it looked like he was nearing the end of his life. At one point he said to me, “I don’t even know what to pray any more.” I suggested using the Psalms for prayer and he responded with disgust, “I thought we were supposed to pray from our hearts!” For him, praying from our hearts meant praying spontaneously whatever pops into our minds at the moment, and I don’t think I succeeded in persuading him otherwise. But for most of Christian history the Church has not seen it this way.
The most important prayer book is the one contained in Scripture, the Book of Psalms. When we make use of the Psalms in prayer, we’re praying with words that the Church has used since the beginning (following the example of Jesus, who prayed the Psalms). Pray the Psalms; they’ll help you learn to enter God’s presence across the whole range of human experience; they’ll free you to pray more honestly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the very first words remind us that we’re part of a larger body: “Our Father.” We come into God ‘s presence as members of the body of Christ, and it’s a good thing to pray with words that remind us of this.
The second thing to notice is that the way we speak to God is connected with the way we speak to others. James discussed this earlier in the letter: “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (3:9-10). These closing verses of James begin with verse 12: “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by any other oath, but let your ‘Yes” be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” He’s not talking here about cursing, but about emphasizing the truth by taking an oath, like when someone says, “I swear to God this is true.” This kind of speech is rooted in dishonesty. We’re saying, “I may not tell the truth most of the time, but you can be sure what I’m saying now is true, because I’ve taken an oath.” James is saying that this kind of basic dishonesty will undermine your relationship with God.
Verses 19-20 encourage us to confront one another: “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” The temptation when we see someone falling into sin is to call our friends and say, “do you know what I just saw? Can you believe a Christian acting like that?” When we do this, it undermines our relationship with God. The way we’re speaking to one another cuts us off from God and destroys our prayer life. James is saying, “don’t gossip about what you’ve seen, but also don’t just ignore the problem. Go to the person and say, ‘it looks to me like you’re wandering from the truth; am I mistaken? If it’s true, I want to help you in any way I can, and I’ll certainly pray for you.’”
In his first letter, Peter gives this warning to husbands: “Husbands... show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex, since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life – so that nothing may hinder your prayers” (3:7). “Show consideration... so that nothing may hinder your prayers.” If you don’t show consideration, if you don’t pay honor to your wives, your prayers will be hindered. We can undermine our prayer life by the way we speak to other people. So, if you want to cultivate a life of prayer, “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
The third thing to notice is that everything in our lives should be brought into God’s presence in prayer. Prayer isn’t just about spiritual things. In prayer, we invite God’s presence into every area of our lives. “Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick?” (The Message). Don’t just cry out to God when you’re in trouble. When things are going well, give thanks to Him, since He is the source of all good. The idea is not to have a strong time of prayer in the morning to get that obligation out of the way. Time set aside for concentrated prayer tunes our hearts so that we can walk with God throughout the day. He wants us to be aware of Him in all the experiences of our lives, good and bad.
One book that’s been especially helpful to me over the years is called The Sacrament of the Present Moment, by Jean-Pierre de Caussade (an 18th century Jesuit). De Caussade encourages his readers to encounter God in the duties of the present moment. Whatever it is that God has called us to do, the way to know Him is to be attentive to Him and obedient to the duties of our calling. “Divine action cleanses the universe, pervading and flowing over all creatures. Wherever they are it pursues them. It precedes them, accompanies them, follows them” (p. 3). We can get so intent on pursuing God that we forget He is pursuing us. Then, a few pages later: “You are seeking God... and he is everywhere. Everything proclaims him to you, everything reveals him to you, everything brings him to you. He is by your side, over you, around you and in you. Here is his dwelling and yet you still seek him. Ah! You are searching for God, the idea of God in his essential being. You seek perfection and it lies in everything that happens to you – your suffering, your actions, your impulses are the mysteries under which God reveals himself to you” (p. 18).
God us pursuing us; He is all around and within us, but we miss Him because we’re not attentive and because He appears in surprising ways. So here’s de Caussade’s advice: “There remains one single duty. It is to keep one’s gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey his will” (p. 9). Sacraments are tangible things that enable us to connect with God; they’re like doorways into the invisible world. Be attentive to the things God does for you throughout the day, things you’d be likely to take for granted; these things can become sacraments as you turn your heart to God and give thanks. When you encounter difficulties, these things can also be sacraments, when you remember that God is there, ready to help carry you through the experience. If we’re attentive, we’ll find that God is reaching out to us all the time, calling us into His presence. The more we pay attention, the more we’ll find that everything in life proclaims Him to us. James is calling us to turn to God in all the experiences of life: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” He’s not giving us a complete list; he’s saying, “whatever is going on in your life, turn your heart to the Lord.”
When we invite God into every area of our lives, we not only come to know Him, we experience His help and intervention in surprising ways. That’s the point of James’ example in verses 17-18: “Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years is did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.” When we hear of people who’ve had a strong prayer life, we very quickly put them on a pedestal and think, “of course, I could never pray like that.” James wants to remind us that Elijah was like us, a weak, frail human being, but prayer connected him with all the resources of God.
Prayer connects us, in all our weakness and failure, with God, who is our Father and is committed to caring for our needs. Spend time in His presence, and recognize that even when you’re praying on your own you are praying as part of the Church. Make use of the great resources that are available in the Church for cultivating a life of prayer. Pray the Psalms, pray through a hymnal, make use of a prayer book. All these things can enlarge and enrich our prayer lives. May God bless our efforts to spend time in His presence and may He make Himself known to us all in deeper ways until we see Him face to face.
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