Healing from God

So then, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you will be healed. The prayer of a good person has a powerful effect. Elijah was the same kind of person as we are. He prayed earnestly that there would be no rain, and no rain fell on the land for three and a half years.  (verses 16, 17)

Read James 5:13-20

The church is not a club for people who have their lives ‘together’. It’s not a group of people who have all life’s problems sorted out and who are so well integrated that they experience no friction in their relationships with each other. The church is really like a hospital for spiritually sick people who know that they need healing from God and who have no choice but to bear each other’s burdens and pray for one another.

It would be silly for patients in a hospital to pretend they weren’t sick. In the same way, it would be silly, and wrong, for members of the church to pretend that they have no sin to confess, or to pretend that they don’t need healing prayer from those around them.

God has called you into his church so that you can speak truthfully about the problems in your life, and so that you can receive the prayer support from your brothers and sisters in Christ. So that you can receive healing from God.

God, thank you for calling me into your church. Give me the grace to confess my sins and receive healing from you. Amen.

By Fraser Pearce, in “God’s Promises for each day” (LCA, Openbook Publishers (1999)

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