Do this not that is a kind of a popular marketing wording that's
kind of been around for ages and there are many spin offs to
that. You know, go there, not there,
cook this, not that, eat this, not that.
And James is kind of kind of doing the reverse order of that
here. We've done 3 sermons in chapter
5 already, and all three was, for the most part, don't do
this. If we started off with don't
hoard wealth. And then it was like, don't
complain when you get impatient with God's timing.
And then the last sermon was, you know, don't take oaths,
right? And today we get the instead do
this. What does James tell us to do
instead of all that? Do what he says, pray.
His answer is simply prayer. So going back to chapter 5, you
know you're insecure and you want to build wealth to feel
secure. Well, instead of that, pray,
right? Don't complain about God's
timing. Instead, pray and don't be
untruthful to get out of bad situations.
Instead, pray and remember, James is the most practical
letter practical writer of the New Testament, and he wants us,
He wants prayer to be infused in our daily lives.
So it's not just kind of this obscure theological teaching of
prayer, but it's very practical. How can we actually put prayer
in our daily lives? So that's the question we want
to answer today instead of worrying, instead of
complaining, instead of building wealth, how can we pray in our
daily lives? So that's the question we want
to answer today. When should we pray?
If you are new, we do have these outlines and I just there's some
fill in the blanks and and you can be found in the bulletin as
you walk in. Beginning of the year, we had a
little more people than usual. Two places are packed.
Beginning of the year, My gym and my church.
My gym by by February. I don't know because I'm not
there. Hopefully at church we'll still
see some people. When should we pray #1 when
things are going well? When things are going well.
Verse 13. We only have 3 verses.
I'll read the first one for the first point.
Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray.
Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.
OK, he starts off by James asking is anyone suffering?
Then he should pray. And then is the mere opposite.
Is anyone doing well? Then also, you should pray.
James is starting off with something very obvious.
It's like when you're suffering. Yeah, obviously we all know we
should pray, but he says it's the opposite.
It makes us think, really, we pray.
And of course, we should pray always.
But is that when we should be encouraged to pray?
And he's doing that on purpose. You're flipping it around and
trying. He's trying to say something to
make us think more. Hum, this is our area where
maybe prayer is not. We thought maybe it's not
priority, but he's making us think, do we need prayer in this
area? Like when it's cold, wear a
jacket. OK, we all know that he's saying
when it's hot, also wear a jacket.
Like huh, Making us think when things are going well, pray.
Hmm. I mean, Christians, we all agree
we should always pray, but really, is that when we should
be thinking about kind of adding more prayer into when things are
good? Well, let's look into that,
James says, Or are we OK? He should think praises, right?
So he's still in the topic of prayer.
So in context of prayer, he's saying we should be praising
God. We should be thanking God in our
prayer. Now it might sound obvious like
yeah, pastor, like when things are well, yeah, yeah, of course
we're thankful and that's yeah, that's like natural.
But our argue, I would argue that a lot of us feel thankful
when things are good, but not necessarily prayer, pray prayers
on Thanksgiving or praising God. We feel it, but not necessarily
pray it. And the reason why James wants
to pray it is not because it's some like it's rude.
Like, oh, thank, didn't you even thank God for that?
Like the other day I did laundry for my family and then Maddie
walks in like, where are my pants?
And I was like, you ungrateful. You know, it's like God like
saying like, hey, he blessed your life and you don't even say
thank you. No, God is not petty like me.
God is. God also knows our hearts, but I
don't think it's that. But there is a very practical
and essential reason why we should actually pray.
I want to argue that it's we need to give Thanksgiving and
praise to God when things are going well because it is
necessary for the well-being of our souls.
It is good for our hearts. Let me explain why.
When you pray, when you're in prayer, giving thanks to God,
acknowledging that he's the giver of all good things and
good things come from him. When that is something that you
and God communicate, that gives you the the correct perspective
of when things aren't going well, when you don't pray that
you know what happens slowly, it's you slowly adopt what the
world understands about doing well in life, which is I worked
hard, therefore I deserve this. And it becomes very dangerous
for our souls when you start thinking that because God slowly
starts moving out of the picture.
Well, I did this, I earned this. And if you think about it like,
yeah, you worked hard. A lot of us here work hard and
you're successful and you have a lot of blessings, a lot of good
things are happening. So it might almost make sense.
But also think about this, for the most part, if you look
around the world, there are 1,000,000, if not billions of
people who work really hard and yet they live lives of poverty
and suffering. I was just in Cambodia a few
months ago and Oh my goodness, those pastors, they work so
hard. More than half the pastors that
I met in Cambodia are, they don't make enough, enough at
church, their salary to, you know, make a living.
So over half of them are actually farmers.
So they farm Monday through Saturday and, and in between
they're preparing sermons, meeting people, having meetings,
and, and they're doing all of that just to kind of live,
survive. But they work harder than anyone
in the US probably. And they must deserve blessings,
wealth, a big raise. But what did I, what did they
get? Well, I just got a update from
Pastor Petros, who are supporting Cambodian Pastor.
You know what he updated me with?
He said there was bombings in the city and his entire village
had to evacuate 2 hours. So they couldn't have services.
They couldn't be at our own homes already.
The border closed, the Thailand, Cambodian border closed already
and over 1,000,000 people lost their jobs overnight.
And because the borders are closed, there is inflation.
And I would say they work really hard, but it's not nothing to
show for it. In fact, they're in, they're in
a lot of, there's a lot of suffering.
So why is it that we work hard and that we get to reap the
benefits? Is it all really up to you or
me? God allowed you to make a living
here, allowed to give you gave you the parents you have and the
influences that you have. It really not just about you and
how hard hard work your work. But when you do pray, you are
going away from oh, I did this too.
Lord, you are the giver, all good things and your perspective
is stays in the correct place. So prayer in good times is
necessary because you need to maintain that perspective of God
is a reason for my blessings. And another reason that we need
to pray when things are good is because the blessings and gifts
when things are good, actually it's a very dangerous time for
your souls because the gifts and blessings, just like that, they
could turn, they could replace God in your heart.
Those gifts and blessings are supposed to be signs pointing to
the grace and the goodness of God.
But instead of signs, they become your gift, they become
your treasure, they become your ultimate.
God gets demoted to pretty important and those pretty
important thing gets promoted to ultimate.
I mean, how thankful are we for our children we are, but how
easy it is that how well they do, how happy they are
determines how happy we are. We're thankful for our jobs.
We should be. But just like that, your job,
what your boss thinks of you, your promotion, that becomes
ultimate. Just like that, every good
thing, every good moment is just a sign pointing to the ultimate
destination, which is Jesus Christ.
But we take those signs, we start worshipping them.
Marriage. Yeah, have a great marriage.
But marriage at its pure form, it's supposed to teach you about
you and God, Us and God is a marriage, and our human marriage
is supposed to point towards the ultimate marriage, having kids.
It points to the ultimate kind of unconditional love of God
towards us. They're all pointers and
signposts, but we take those signs and we bow down to it and
we say you are the ultimate thing.
Over 10 years ago, I went on a road trip with my friend.
Not a road trip. He was going to school.
We drove there, I dropped him off, flew back.
When he graduated, I flew there and I drove back.
We drove back and we were passing by Scranton, PA.
And you will know why Scranton, PA is why Wayne is clapping.
The office, the TV show office is based on a city called
Scranton, PA. So I forget if it was like we
went to, we were leaving like we're like this way or that way.
I forgot, but we were passing by my friend, knowing that I am a
office fan. He said, do you want to stop by?
But I am from Torrance and Pennsylvania is so cold in the
winter. We ate those, you know, we ate
some like sandwiches and outside, you know, Philly
cheesesteaks. And it was like 2 hours.
And I'm like, oh, I don't want to go back out.
So what we did was we just drove by and took a picture of the
sign, Scranton, PA, like over there, like sign coming up.
And it was like my old phone. And it was like, I have a blurry
Scranton sign somewhere. And later on I find out like
what they have. I found out that there was this
big old wall, a mural with all the office characters and it
says like, welcome to Scranton Electric City, you know the rap
song They do a big old mirror. I'm like, oh, I would have loved
to go over there and take a picture instead of just the sign
and all the the intro. When the TV show starts, there's
a building, right? Thunder muffling that actual
building is is a real building in Scranton.
And there are restaurants and places named in the show that is
actual places. And I was like, oh, I wish I
went. But instead I was fine.
This is Scranton, PA population, whatever.
That's all I have now. Thankfully, that's not the only
thing we did on a road trip. There were other places we
actually stopped by. There was a famous seminary in
Philadelphia we stopped by. We stopped by DC.
We stopped by some rattlesnake fried rattles, I don't know,
somewhere in Texas. From Texas to California,
there's absolutely nothing. We did some cool things too, but
imagine if my entire road trip was just signs.
We didn't stop by anywhere. This is a bunch of signs.
What a dumb road trip it would be.
And that's why we're making our life.
We're living this life and God gives good things to us.
But they're a bunch of signposts.
They're just, there's a bunch of pointers to to the ultimate gift
that is in Jesus Christ. That is our salvation.
That is the grace of God. We ignore that and we go to the
sign, Jesus Christ that way, and we just take pictures.
We're like, yay, we have children, we have jobs, we have
nice things. Life is great.
And our life is just full of pictures with signs.
And those are the ultimate. I want to go to that next sign,
Grand Canyon, this way. I want to go to that sign.
No, it's not about the sign. Enjoy it, but you got to be
reminded what is pointing to and how are you supposed to be
reminded? Pray in the good times so that
when you're enjoying it, you realize this is just earthly
things. My eyes should be up in heaven.
All right, point #2 when should we pray?
One was when things are going well #2 when we are suffering,
when we are suffering. Verses 14 and 15 Is anyone among
you sick? He should call for the elders of
the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil
in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save
the sick person and the Lord will raise him up.
If he has committed sins, he'll be forgiven the committing of
sins. And verse and the rest of the
verses have some of that going on.
That's next week's sermon, so I won't touch on that, but I'll
focus on 13. I'm sorry, 14 and the first part
of 15, it says here that is anyone sick, you should call the
elders of the church. So verse 13 is anyone suffering.
So suffering is sick is a kind of like a sub, you know, like a
more specific part of suffering. So James is saying, you know
what, I want to talk about prayer in something very
specific. Maybe we don't think about
prayer in this area. So he wants us to think about
prayer when somebody is sick or when you are sick.
It it looks like just three simple steps, right?
It just seems like when you are sick, call the others and the
elders go to that sick person and annoy with oil and then and
then pray for healing. It just seems like call the
others elders, show up oil, pray for healing and just one steps
1-2 and three. Can we do that?
Any elders here? John?
John here. OK, so Jay is teaching the the
kids today. So they're not here.
So let's talk about what we could do when you're sick.
It says call an elder and he will show up with oil.
Unfortunately, we don't have anointing oil in stock at our
church, but I, I looked up the recipe and I, I will send it to
the elders. It is just olive oil, myrrh,
cinnamon, frankincense and Castillo.
Or you could just buy something that has all of them for 795 on
Amazon.com. So is this something we should
be taking literal call Jay, John, John or myself?
I'm, I'm one of the elders too. And we show up with oil and then
we dump oil on your head and we pray for healing and then we go
back home. It's not really practical,
right? So let's talk about what it you
can do this literally, it's fine.
But I do think there is a concept to be followed, not just
the step by step here. I think what it means is when
you are sick, call let involve your church, involve your
church. And This is why James is saying
prayer could protect your community.
So let's say somebody gets sick, can't show up for a couple
months, that person is excluded from our community.
It's nobody's fault, but that person is sick, right?
That person is not part of our church community for let's just
say two months. So James is saying use prayer to
protect the community. How do you do that?
Well, if that person cannot join our community, send the
community over to a sick person. That's why it says anoint with
oil when somebody's sick. We could say, oh, are you OK?
Yeah, you know my prayers. I would see you.
We could say nice things and we could even actually pray for
them. But you know what you can't do
long distance, you can't anoint with oil.
Long distance anointing with oil is an in person activity.
James is saying when somebody is sick, church people should go
over there, spend time with the sick and do something in person
so that person is still part of the community.
Anointing of oil has several significant meanings, especially
in the Old Testament. One is it oil does heal, has
some healing, you know, elements.
So it could be if somebody is sick, take care of them, you
know, bring them food and and and whatever.
And you know, when we have someone has a baby, we do meal
trains. I think something similar, but
anoint with oil also has a meaning of setting apart that
person for for special work of God.
When David was chosen to be the next king, when he was just a
child, Samuel anointed him with oil.
Any prophet, priests, kings were anointed with oil.
They were set apart to do God's work.
So you may be thinking, wait, somebody's sick and we show up
and we say you are set apart to do special God's work.
Like why are we picking on the sick person?
Well, when you are sick, and this is this is probably
referring to a little bit more serious sickness illnesses.
OK. And James, the reason why James
says pray for healing. When somebody's sick, pray for
that person, pray for healing. So let's say there is a physical
healing, it's not always, but sometimes there is a physical
healing. Then God is glorified in the
old. In the church building before
this one, we rented from a Korean church called One Family
Chapel. And the pastor's wife, she had
brain tumor and the doctors gave her I think like 1 percent, 2%
something small number chance of survival.
And the pastor, this is before, you know, there he was a pastor
and he, he prayed to God and said, if you save my wife, I
will become a pastor. And then she got healed and he
became a pastor. It's a miracle.
It's a testimony. God was glorified through the
healing. So yeah, do pray for healing.
Don't feel bad praying for healing.
Don't be like, oh Lord, if it's your will, you know, if it won't
mind, can you heal that person? No, you could you could boldly
ask for healing. Sometimes God doesn't grant
physical healing, but sometimes God gives spiritual and or
emotional healing of that person.
One example is Johnny Erickson Tada.
She when she was a teenager, she got into an accident and she
became paralyzed neck down. And for over 50 years she's been
in ministry. And this is what she says, you
know, so, you know, obviously when she got hurt, everyone pray
for her. God did not heal her, but God,
she was able to meet God in a in a personal in a deep way.
And when she was paralyzed. And her famous quote is
something like sometimes God allows something he hates so
that he could accomplish something he loves.
He allows something he hates so that something he loves can be
accomplished. And Johnny Erickson Tata, it's a
she. Like, it's not.
I thought it was Johnny, but I guess everyone pronounces it
Johnny. She's been an inspiration and to
not, not just other, you know, other people who are paralyzed
or sick, but really to anyone and everyone who who's heard her
story. So when she was sick, people
prayed for her. And you may think, oh, goddamn,
a healer. Oh, what a bummer.
What a failure. No, God healed her in a
different way. And I could honestly say, yeah,
she was set apart to do special work for the Lord.
She wrote so many books, she so many conferences she spoke at
inspired so many people. She's she's had special
anointing to do God's work in her sickness.
So what James is saying is, was somebody sick?
Pray because that is an opportunity for God's work to be
done. Pray so that that person is not
excluded from community. Pray so that that really sick,
sick person could glorify God through healing, physical or
otherwise. James is showing us how
important prayer is in our everyday lives.
I worked for Korean churches until this one, Korean speaking,
you know, And I felt like people involved, the church or pastors
or elders like in too many things.
My boss, the Manian pastor, I was the assistant.
Somebody asked him to pray for their new car he bought like
this, Mercedes says. Pastor, can you pray for my car
and I was like, I wasn't there, but I was like, I would have not
not said yes, pray for your Mercedes.
No pray for my minivan. That's that's my minivan needs
prayer. Pray for your brand new Mercedes
Like that's crazy. Like OK, that's that's I feel
like they were too overboard and involved in the church in their
daily lives. Too many of members invited me
to their like their granddaughters, like kids
birthday or something where I'll show up and not nobody.
I don't know, like OK, maybe. But I think SPMC might be on the
other extreme, like when you're sick, we kind of see it as a
personal issue, private issue. And sometimes it is.
And it's OK to let a few people know.
It's sometimes it's sensitive and I understand that.
But generally speaking, when you're sick, let people in so at
least they're praying for you. You know, the elders are not
like our jobs. One of our major jobs is to pray
for you. But we got to know we can't just
be like, oh, pastor Lord, I pray for this person and I don't know
if that person is sick or not, but in case you're sick or he's
like, no, just tell us you're sick and we'll pray for you.
One one thing is, you know, this is the baby.
What I say, not not baby making stage a baby time of stage in
life for many people having babies.
We are such a small church and we have what, 30 ladies in our
church, five are pranked. That's a very good percentage.
We should advertise it. You know, fertile, fertile
church come by. And yeah, it's not like an
illness, but it is a medical situation and and we don't see
you guys for 2-3 months. And I get it, vaccines and you
don't want babes to get sick and all that.
But we have to, after the initial like really sensitive
time, like 6 weeks, 8 weeks, whatever that is.
I think we have to do a better job bringing the community to
the sick people. But also people have to let the
church in, right? So I think we have to have a
little shift in culture so that hey, let's protect our
community. Let's even if you are not here
for a couple months, we've had people not show up for months
because of work, some family emergency, like hey, my mom's
sick. I got to, I got to take care of
her. We've had people like class
schedule internships. So instead of, OK, see you in
three months, a lot of times they never come back.
We're going to be as a church community, we're going to be
more aware of that. So you know what, let's bring
the community out to them. Let's get our anointing oils and
let's visit the people who have been here.
So yeah, let's have a change in perspective perhaps.
And it doesn't have to be overnight suddenly, suddenly
change everything. But certainly, let's not be a
church community that just hangs out with each other, the church
community that prays for each other, who is physically
visiting each other and and praying and caring and loving
for one another. Main point, God keeps us
connected to him and to the church community in both joy and
suffering through prayer. Let's pray at this time.
Let's just say a simple prayer to God.
Lord, help me to pray more. Help me to pray besides just,
you know, meals and maybe before sleep, but just ask God.
Lord, I want to communicate with you.
I want a real relationship with you and want to pray when I'm
well, when I'm sick in my ups and downs.
Lord, I want to include you. Let's just say that simple
prayer to God, let's pray.