SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning into New Sun Churches Podcast.
SPEAKER_01: We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.
SPEAKER_01: May God bless you today through his life-giving word.
SPEAKER_00: A reading from the book of James, chapter 5, verses 13 to 20.
SPEAKER_00: Is any among you suffering?
SPEAKER_00: Should he he should pray?
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone cheerful?
SPEAKER_00: He should sing praises.
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone among you sick?
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up.
SPEAKER_00: For if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.
SPEAKER_00: The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah was a human being, as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it should not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the land.
SPEAKER_00: Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the land produced its fruit.
SPEAKER_00: My brothers and sisters, if any among you strays from the truth and someone turns him back, let that person know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Gracious Lord, we pray that you would illumine this text to our understanding by your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We believe your word had power in its day to transform the hearts of those who first received it.
SPEAKER_01: And we know, Lord, by your Holy Spirit it has power in our day to transform our own hearts.
SPEAKER_01: So, Lord, through prayer and through confession, through the power of forgiveness and relying upon you, we pray our hearts would be shaped more and more into the image of Christ, that we would bear great fruit and find assurance and rest and peace in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: All this we pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Please receive it.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_01: It's a question I've asked myself before.
SPEAKER_01: We talk a lot about the gospel at Newsong, rightly so.
SPEAKER_01: We talk about the gospel a lot as Christians.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel, of course, is the good news that God loves the world and offers us salvation through his crucified and risen Son, our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's good news.
SPEAKER_01: And the gospel as it encounters our hearts, we can expect to see fruit of transformation, of renewal, of revival, of restoration, new creation, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01: If we're a gospel-centered church, and if we endeavor to be gospel-centered Christians, I wonder, at least I've wondered for myself, why is it, if all these things are true of the gospel, its power to transform, why is it that I often feel so stagnant in my spiritual life?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that I often feel such a malaise?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that I often feel so discouraged?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever felt something like that?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever wondered something like that?
SPEAKER_01: It can leave you feeling like a hypocrite, I think, sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: When you come to church and we proclaim these great gospel truths and we read God's word and we see examples and witnesses to the transformation it has in all sorts of lives and saints of old, and yet feel like, what am I doing here?
SPEAKER_01: So there's a story that was shared recently that I've been thinking about a lot, and I want to share it with you.
SPEAKER_01: This is about the Korean revival of 1907.
SPEAKER_01: So Robert Hardy was a Canadian physician and missionary in Pyongyang, and Hardy was discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: He was discouraged by what he saw as a lack of fruitfulness in his ministry, in the mission that he was on.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think you have to be a missionary or a pastor to feel discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: Robert Hardy is preparing to speak at a conference of pastors, and he's struck by Luke chapter 11, which is, you know, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more so your heavenly father will give you the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Hardy's struck by this idea that he's been relying on his own power to accomplish his ministry and mission goals, and he resolves to stop relying on his own ability and instead to turn himself over and begin to rely on God's power.
SPEAKER_01: And so the first thing he does is he endeavors to pray.
SPEAKER_01: And then as he gathers together with fellow pastors at this conference, he begins to confess his own sins, all those ways that he's relied on himself and not on God.
SPEAKER_01: Hardy's example inspires others to do the same, and there's other gatherings all around the city and around the area where Christians gather to pray and they begin to confess their sins to one another.
SPEAKER_01: And there's one example of a man who stands up in one of these gatherings and confesses his hatred for his fellow missionary.
SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, gospel ministers can feel that too.
SPEAKER_01: This man stands up and he confesses his hatred for this missionary, and this missionary reflects on this experience, and he writes this I never had a greater surprise in my life to think that this man, my associate in the men's association, had been hating me without my knowing it.
SPEAKER_01: It seems that I had said something to him one day in the hurry of managing a school field day exercise, which gave offense.
SPEAKER_01: And he had not been able to forgive me.
SPEAKER_01: Turning to me, he said, Can you forgive me?
SPEAKER_01: Can you pray for me?
SPEAKER_01: I stood up and began to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Agape, agape, father, father, and got no further.
SPEAKER_01: It seems as if the roof was lifted from the building, and the Spirit of God came down from heaven, and a mighty avalanche of power upon us.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I fell at this man's side and wept and prayed as I had never prayed before.
SPEAKER_01: Another person writing about this experience described the great spirit, the sincere spirit of reconciliation in the air.
SPEAKER_01: Many more go on to confess their sins.
SPEAKER_01: Some we might label as trivial, others severe.
SPEAKER_01: But through this practice of prayer and confession, tens of thousands in Korea come to know the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And it resonates even to the church in Korea to this day.
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel sometimes discouraged, stagnant, a malaise, kind of like Robert Hardy felt?
SPEAKER_01: I feel it sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: We've been going through this series on the one another commandments in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to be a gospel or a church that practices the gospel, that puts the gospel into action like a verb?
SPEAKER_01: And we've understood that being a gospel-centered, gospel-actioning church looks like loving one another and serving one another and welcoming one another, forgiving one another, encouraging one another.
SPEAKER_01: Last week we agreed that discouragement is a very easy thing to live in, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: And spiritual discouragement can be an easy thing to live in as well.
SPEAKER_01: And James is writing his letter to a church that's experiencing all sorts of discouragement, all sorts of trials, all sorts of persecutions.
SPEAKER_01: He's writing to a church that needs encouragement, that needs renewal, that needs revival.
SPEAKER_01: James is saying to this church, he begins his letter by saying, Count at all joy, brothers and sisters, when you encounter trials of various kinds.
SPEAKER_01: God is at work.
SPEAKER_01: He's doing something, he's shaping your character.
SPEAKER_01: Be patient, James says in chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: Don't take matters into your own hands.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, pray with faith-filled prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what I want us to see today.
SPEAKER_01: This is what James wants his discouraged church to see.
SPEAKER_01: And the difference that this can make as we put the gospel into action is true for James's day, it's true for our day as well.
SPEAKER_01: A church that puts the gospel into action prays for one another.
SPEAKER_01: And a church that puts the gospel into action confesses to one another.
SPEAKER_01: So, friends, if we desire a sense of spiritual renewal and revitalization, first in our own hearts, and then in our church family, perhaps we would do well to pay attention to James' words.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps we'll find an answer to discouragement and malaise and see what God can do with the difference that it can make.
SPEAKER_01: So open up your Bibles, if you will, to James chapter 5 or your order of service.
SPEAKER_01: Let's walk through this passage together and consider these two very important one another commands.
SPEAKER_01: I think very easy to overlook.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for one another and confess to one another.
SPEAKER_01: Let's start with verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: James has a couple questions to ask.
SPEAKER_01: Is anyone among you suffering?
SPEAKER_01: He should pray.
SPEAKER_01: Is anyone cheerful?
SPEAKER_01: He should sing praises.
SPEAKER_01: Is anyone among you sick?
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: So, first off, let's ask James this question.
SPEAKER_01: What is prayer?
SPEAKER_01: You're telling us to pray in all these circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: What is prayer?
SPEAKER_01: I came across a couple of interesting answers to that that I think James would agree with.
SPEAKER_01: Spurgeon writes, Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century preacher, writes, True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance.
SPEAKER_01: It is far deeper than that.
SPEAKER_01: It is a spiritual transaction with the creator of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is not performative, it's engaging in that relationship with the God who has created us, the God who governs heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: And theologian J.I.
SPEAKER_01: Packer says of prayer, prayer is how Christians practice fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_01: We have fellowship with God always.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is perhaps the most foundational way we put it into practice.
SPEAKER_01: Packer goes on to write this: God speaks to us in and through the contents of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we open up the scriptures daily, why we open up the scriptures together as a church family, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We want to hear God speak to us and speak to our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: God speaks to us in and through the contents of the Bible, Packer writes, which the Holy Spirit opens up and applies to us and enables us to understand.
SPEAKER_01: We then speak to God about Himself and ourselves and people in His world, shaping what we say as a response to what He has said.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is a participation and an ongoing conversation with the God of the universe, the God who desires to partner with us.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is practicing fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And then we might ask James, well, when should we pray?
SPEAKER_01: And he's got a few examples for us.
SPEAKER_01: Are you suffering?
SPEAKER_01: Time to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Are you cheerful?
SPEAKER_01: Are you happy?
SPEAKER_01: Are you on cloud nine?
SPEAKER_01: It's time to sing praises.
SPEAKER_01: And what's singing praises if not joyfully, you know, lifting up our prayers with a joyful noise, so to speak?
SPEAKER_01: Are you sick?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it sounds like if you're sick enough or the sort of sick that James is describing here, you might not necessarily have the strength to pray for yourself.
SPEAKER_01: So what are you supposed to do?
SPEAKER_01: Ask for others to come and pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: So the bottom line I said, I think, is this.
SPEAKER_01: When is it the right time to pray?
SPEAKER_01: James would say, all the time.
SPEAKER_01: It's never the wrong time to pray.
SPEAKER_01: He would agree with Paul, who writes to the Thessalonians, Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
SPEAKER_01: I love that verse because if ever I doubt what the will of God is for me in a given circumstance, there it is.
SPEAKER_01: Pray always.
SPEAKER_01: Give thanks in all circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: See, I think it's easy, regardless of our circumstances, it's always easy to find reasons to withdraw from our relationship with God, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, suffering seems like an obvious one sometimes because when we suffer and we experience the pain and the grief that goes with maybe it's relational suffering, maybe it's our health, maybe it's something going on in our family, whatever it is, it's easy to feel like God, you must be withholding the good things that I feel I deserve.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not fair.
SPEAKER_01: And so therefore our hearts become resentful and kind of callous and we withdraw.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to pray when we suffer sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: But it can also be, strangely enough, equally as hard when we feel entirely content, entirely happy, and therefore we lapse into a sense of self-sufficiency.
SPEAKER_01: Like everything's going the way I think it should be going, so I don't really feel the need to, you know, ask God for much.
SPEAKER_01: He's provided, so I'm just gonna coast, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01: Whether circumstances are poor, whether circumstances are desirable, always pray to God.
SPEAKER_01: Pray without ceasing.
SPEAKER_01: Which doesn't, I think, mean pray 24-7, you know, do nothing but pray.
SPEAKER_01: But in whatever we do, let it be an ongoing engagement, practicing fellowship with God, turning it all over to Him, and relying on Him to accomplish His will in us and for us.
SPEAKER_01: If we were to ask James why we should pray, he would say this: prayer brings results.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer saves, prayer heals, he says in verses 15 and 16.
SPEAKER_01: Whether that's an immediate sense of salvation or an immediate healing, sometimes that happens.
SPEAKER_01: What we know from God's word is that we are guaranteed that on the last day we will say, God has truly saved us.
SPEAKER_01: God has truly healed us from all that has afflicted us.
SPEAKER_01: We will participate in God raising up all things.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's a preview of that in this life, and we experience God's healing in an immediate way, or whether we know for sure that God will heal us on the last day, we go to Him knowing that prayer yields results.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray on this principle that faith-filled prayer is effective.
SPEAKER_01: It is an active partnership with God that God wants us to engage in, wants us to engage with him in.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for one another at all times because prayer practices fellowship with God and it trusts God and his will for all the results.
SPEAKER_01: So then we might ask this question why is it then that my prayers seem so ineffective?
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever felt like that?
SPEAKER_01: I've been praying for healing, I've been praying for this outcome, and it just doesn't seem to happen.
SPEAKER_01: I see no good reason why God would say no there.
SPEAKER_01: And we could take this passage and if we're not careful, misinterpret it such that it sounds like, boy, if prayer, the prayer of faith is effective, if it's ineffective, I must just not have enough faith.
SPEAKER_01: So I need to crank up that faith dial and really go at it this time.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that just a recipe for discouragement?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we've been there ourselves, maybe we're there right now.
SPEAKER_01: This is why James gives us an important illustration, an important example for us to meditate on.
SPEAKER_01: What does effective prayer look like when it's lived out?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: James reminds us of Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: Elijah, James says, was a human being, just as we are.
SPEAKER_01: And he prayed earnestly that it would not rain.
SPEAKER_01: For three years and six months it did not rain on the land.
SPEAKER_01: That prayer was effective.
SPEAKER_01: Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the land produced its fruit.
SPEAKER_01: So a couple things.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer we know is practicing fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Elijah was one who practiced fellowship with God.
SPEAKER_01: We also know that Elijah was the sort of person who experienced some of the most amazing examples of God working in power and miraculously.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he Elijah was there to see a sacrifice, a caramel, just consumed by flame, if you know that story from 1 Kings.
SPEAKER_01: He saw God do powerful and amazing things.
SPEAKER_01: And then in the very next chapter, Elijah's so discouraged he goes out into the wilderness and prays, God, I just would rather die.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we know what that spiritual flip-flop feels like from one day to the next.
SPEAKER_01: That's why James wants to remind us.
SPEAKER_01: Elijah was a human being just like us.
SPEAKER_01: See, I think sometimes it's easy to put certain saints on a pedestal, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Or to put Bible characters on a pedestal and feel like, well, of course Elijah's prayers were effective.
SPEAKER_01: He's Elijah, and I'm not Elijah.
SPEAKER_01: James's point is exactly the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: He's a human being just like you and me.
SPEAKER_01: See, it's not that his faith dial was cranked up to eleven in a way that ours is cranked up to like two and a half or something.
SPEAKER_01: Elijah knew who he was putting his faith in.
SPEAKER_01: And so, having put his faith in the Lord God and in his promises, he trusted God to bring about his will on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it means to pray in faith.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is a commitment to the will of God, and all true prayer exercises its truest faith in patiently waiting to see what he has determined to do.
SPEAKER_01: That's what one biblical commentator writes.
SPEAKER_01: So, how do we pray?
SPEAKER_01: James gives us some instructions, verse 14 to 16.
SPEAKER_01: First off, he gives some specific instructions if you're experiencing sickness.
SPEAKER_01: You should call for the elders of the church, they're to pray over you, anointing you with the oil in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is a prayerful practice of relying on God to work his healing through us.
SPEAKER_01: Now, God works his healing in many different ways.
SPEAKER_01: God has providentially given us amazing uh medical technologies and medical treatments that can treat our illnesses and our injuries, and we should give God thanks for those.
SPEAKER_01: That's his providential care for us.
SPEAKER_01: And we should not refuse those and say, well, no, I'm just gonna rely on faith.
SPEAKER_01: It would be faithless for me not to accept God's goods, gifts in medicine or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: No, we receive them as God's good gifts for us.
SPEAKER_01: And we engage with God in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: We know where healing comes from.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's through his providential means or whether it's through his miraculous and spiritual means, we always go to God in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And when we are too sick to pray for ourselves or we are sick in such a way that uh we are in serious trouble, it is a good thing, a right thing, a thing that God has given us, a gift that God has given us to call upon the elders of the church to come and pray and to anoint in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And the word elders here is related to the word for pastor or you know, priest if you're using the English prayer book or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's just priests and pastors who ought to pray for the sick.
SPEAKER_01: James, we should remember, is calling us to pray for one another.
SPEAKER_01: But this is a particular ministry of prayer that I do think James has in mind is particular to the pastoral office, that a sick person would be anointed with oil in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that this oil is a magic potion, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it is a symbol of God's blessing.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a reminder of God's ongoing promise of our flourishing in Him.
SPEAKER_01: So to be anointed with oil is to put into prayerful practice that reliance upon God to do only what God can do for us, and that is to bring his flourishing and his blessing to bear.
SPEAKER_01: And whether that's anointing in the middle of illness, or anointing right before surgery, or anointing right before death, in all circumstances we know that God in Christ has secured our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what that is meant to bear witness to.
SPEAKER_01: It's a prayerful action.
SPEAKER_01: That's a specific circumstance.
SPEAKER_01: Call the elders to pray for you and anoint you if you're sick, but there I think there's some general applications we can find here as well.
SPEAKER_01: Because remember, James says pray for one another, it's not just pastors.
SPEAKER_01: I think praying for one another requires first and foremost that we ourselves are praying.
SPEAKER_01: If we're going to pray for one another, if we're going to practice fellowship with God together, we must first practice fellowship with God ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Do we have a discipline of prayer?
SPEAKER_01: Have we set aside time for prayer in morning or evening or both or whenever that is to make our burdens and our thanksgivings and our confessions and our adorations, all these things to God in prayer, we practicing that fellowship?
SPEAKER_01: If we are called to do it one with another, then we are first and foremost called to do it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And friends, I it's normal to struggle with that.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is a struggling sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's not always intuitive, it doesn't always seem easy.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's hard to know how to get started.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, truthfully, I was most of the way through my theology degree, and I had nothing that even resembled a consistent prayer life.
SPEAKER_01: Truthfully.
SPEAKER_01: The thing that was a jump start to my own prayer life was discovering how to pray with the church.
SPEAKER_01: And praying with the church in my circumstance looked like discovering this gift called morning prayer in the prayer book, and Compline, which is a kind of bedtime prayers.
SPEAKER_01: And these were, it was like finding the words that I've been looking for this whole time, and it started to shape my own prayer life.
SPEAKER_01: It was almost like getting the paddles on your prayer life.
SPEAKER_01: If you struggle with prayers, then sometimes we need to rely on the prayers of others, and sometimes those prayers that we receive through the ministry of the church is a gift.
SPEAKER_01: It's praying for one another through time and through space.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for one another.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we put the gospel into practice.
SPEAKER_01: It is practicing fellowship with God and practicing fellowship with God with one another.
SPEAKER_01: And what is the gospel if not finding fullness and fellowship with God in Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Pray for one another.
SPEAKER_01: But James gives us a second imperative, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_01: He gives us a second imperative, and I have five minutes.
SPEAKER_01: The second imperative is to confess to one another.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for one another and confess to one another.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if in James' mind these things, these two things are so intertwined, he almost talks about them with the same breath.
SPEAKER_01: But it's so easy to overlook, I think, this second imperative to confess.
SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about when we talk about confession?
SPEAKER_01: Truthfully, when I think of confession, the first thing that comes to mind, uh I've never been there myself, but perhaps you've been there, where you walk into the little confessional booth and you slide the little window and the priest is on the other side to hear your confessions and pronounce absolution.
SPEAKER_01: And I do think, friends, there is a there is pastoral wisdom in something like that.
SPEAKER_01: There is pastoral wisdom in taking time to make your struggles and your sins known to a trusted spiritual advisor, especially a pastor, and to be reassured of God's forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: For Anglicans, we do have a rite of reconciliation, but we also, I think, have a great line of wisdom that reminds us it is not mandatory that all can, none must, and some should confess.
SPEAKER_01: All can, none must, but some should.
SPEAKER_01: However, that's not exactly what James is talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: He's not talking about a rite of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about a particular means of practicing reconciliation, which is to say, asking for and granting forgiveness toward one another as the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: In particular ways.
SPEAKER_01: John Stott writes this confession must be made to the person against whom we have sinned and from whom we need and desire to receive forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: There is secret confession to God, because there are secret sins committed against God alone.
SPEAKER_01: Next, there is private confession, because some of our sins are committed against man as well as God, a private individual, or two or three as such, and must be confessed to the offended party.
SPEAKER_01: Thirdly, there is public confession because some sins are committed against a group, a community, or the whole local congregation, and must therefore be confessed publicly.
SPEAKER_01: Do you catch the difference here?
SPEAKER_01: It's not that there isn't pastoral wisdom to taking time to confess your sins privately, but the sort of confession that James is calling us to is the sort that makes a point of going to our brother or sister in Christ and saying, I have been caused for offense.
SPEAKER_01: I have wronged you.
SPEAKER_01: Would you forgive me?
SPEAKER_01: That's the sort of confession we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: And the church is called to be a community of confession and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: Why would we confess our sins?
SPEAKER_01: James tells us it brings about healing.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Along with prayer, James writes that prayer and confession.
SPEAKER_01: Pardon me, verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
SPEAKER_01: James writes.
SPEAKER_01: Confession brings about healing, a spiritual healing, a relational healing, where we've put wedges in our relationship, wedges of sin between ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ, or wedges between ourselves and God.
SPEAKER_01: Brings about spiritual healing.
SPEAKER_01: Brings about relational healing.
SPEAKER_01: I have a friend who practices healing ministries, particularly gifted and called by God to it.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot I could say about him, but he is an amazing, humble man of God.
SPEAKER_01: I asked him once, what's the thing you hear folks need healing from the most?
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what I expected him to say.
SPEAKER_01: Colds, headaches, back pains, something like that.
SPEAKER_01: Without hesitation, you know what he says to me?
SPEAKER_01: Unforgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: That's the thing most people need healing from.
SPEAKER_01: Unforgiveness is like a cancer of the soul.
SPEAKER_01: And if we are body and soul together, then perhaps that cancer of the soul can manifest itself in our own physical pain in particular ways.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to get too over-spiritual here, nor am I trying to say that every example of back pain means you haven't forgiven someone.
SPEAKER_01: Not saying that.
SPEAKER_01: But when we withhold forgiveness, when we withhold confession, we are withholding healing both from ourselves and from the body of Christ with which we are called to fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: Confession is aimed towards restoration.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what verses 19 and 20 are all about, restoring what's been broken and lost in the community.
SPEAKER_01: We confess to one another because confession will restore what sin has taken from us and bring healing and renewal to our souls and to our relationships.
SPEAKER_01: So when it's time to confess, we acknowledge our sin to our brother and sister honestly.
SPEAKER_01: We're not trying to make excuses for it.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to call it for what it is.
SPEAKER_01: And we ask humbly that that brother or sister would forgive us for it.
SPEAKER_01: And if we are approached, someone is making confession to us, we need to bear in mind that we are sinners too.
SPEAKER_01: And we are not immune from the sort of sin that is being confessed.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to remember that as sinners, we are first and foremost forgiven in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And if nothing else, that will be our motivation to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: That does not mean that what is confessed was okay.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that it's overlooked.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that there aren't consequences to be faced.
SPEAKER_01: Forgiveness is not the same as deleting past history.
SPEAKER_01: But it does mean that we surrender the right to hold a grudge or to hold on to resentment and let it calcify in our soul.
SPEAKER_01: We give it to God and we release this person from it.
SPEAKER_01: That's putting the gospel into practice, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Because isn't that exactly the sort of forgiveness that we receive in Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Christ who suffers for us.
SPEAKER_01: Christ who prays for us at the right hand of God is always interceding for us.
SPEAKER_01: Christ who forgives us.
SPEAKER_01: Mike preached a couple of weeks ago on forgiving one another, and he reminded us of Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the one praying for us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the one forgiving us.
SPEAKER_01: Praying for one another, forgiving one another in the context of confession is putting into practice the very good news of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: It witnesses to one another and to the world that there is another way to be than to be discouraged, than to be in malaise, than to hold on to resentment and unforgiveness, but to find that God brings renewal and revival as we are willing to open ourselves up one to another to confess our sins and pray for one another.
SPEAKER_01: I am not promising that if we are to pray for one another and confess to one another, we will experience here what they experienced in Korea in 1907.
SPEAKER_01: I'm making no promises.
SPEAKER_01: But on the authority of God's word, I think we can rest assured that God will bear fruit in our prayers for one another and in our confessions to one another.
SPEAKER_01: He will do good work in our hearts, in our church family, and perhaps even in the community around us.
SPEAKER_01: If we desire renewal and revival for ourselves and for our community, perhaps first and foremost we need to pray, God, would you start with my own heart?
SPEAKER_01: Would you incline me to pray for others?
SPEAKER_01: Would you incline me to forgive one another?
SPEAKER_01: Would you incline me to confess to another when that's necessary?
SPEAKER_01: Lord, start with me.
SPEAKER_01: Because just as Christ prays for us, we pray for one another.
SPEAKER_01: Just as God in Christ forgives us, so too we forgive one another.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, let's put the gospel into practice.
SPEAKER_01: Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.
SPEAKER_01: If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.
SPEAKER_01: Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.
SPEAKER_01: Newsong's ministry is entirely funded by the generous giving of those who worship and journey with us.
SPEAKER_01: If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.
SPEAKER_01: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.