Hope City Church

Faith that Prays | Matt Joy

• Matt Joy • Season 2024 • Episode 45

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Discover how to develop a life of prayer that brings peace, healing, and a closer relationship with God.

In this episode, Pastor Matt explores James 5:13-18, emphasizing the power of prayer in every season of life. Learn how to build a faith that turns to God as a first response, not a last resort, and discover the peace and healing that come from a life rooted in prayer.

🏆 Challenge for the Week: Set aside five minutes each day to pray, focusing on both your struggles and your joys. Make a note or journal about what you prayed for. Next week, take a look through your notes and ask God to show you how he worked through your prayers. 

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- Hey, this is Phil Kniesel, lead pastor at Hope City Church. Thanks for tuning into our podcast. My prayer is that this helps and encourages you, gives you some practical ways to live out your fate and ultimately fills you with hope. Enjoy the message,- Trying to fight back tears and failing miserably. I snuck outta my office discreetly and found my way to my vehicle where I started to sob and started to drive. I'll never forget how I felt in that season. Completely overwhelmed. I didn't know what to do with the emotions that were boiling over at that point, and I couldn't pinpoint a specific event or a single cause. It was paralyzing, it was embarrassing, and I felt very humbled in that moment. My instinct was to cover it up to soldier on and suppress it in hopes that it would subside on its own. And I did that for as long as I could. All the while knowing the futility of that approach. You see, I had coached and pastored countless of people, a number of people on the other side of this scenario through the years, and ironically was attempting to treat my own situation in a way that I would never encourage anybody else to. Questions felt very heavy to process in that moment. How could I allow people to see cracks in my armor when I'm supposed to be the one supporting others? What will it say about my leadership if I admit weakness in this area will opening up only add more stress to the people that I love and care about the most? I remember calling a clergy care number. I grabbed this number from my bulletin board on my way outta the office and I remember calling it, and this was supposed to help in moments like this. That's why it was there. It was anonymous, it was safe and I felt a sense of connection when someone said hello. On the other side of that, reach out. I started to unpack what I was feeling as best I could. What led up to this particular moment only to have the person on the other side interrupt me and say, sir, sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just the administrator. I'm here to book an appointment for a future date. Discouraged probably for the only time that I can remember in my life. I hung up on somebody. I knew this was going to take a more vulnerable turn if I was gonna get the help that I needed in that moment. And I called one of my best friends. I knew he had worked through a valley like this in previous years and his perspective would be lived not just red. So I did that. This reach was vulnerable. I felt weak in that moment, but somewhere within I did know it was courage. Poet Elizabeth Elliot said, sometimes fear does not subside and one must do it afraid. That's how it felt In that moment. Chris spoke encouragement. He prayed over me, he prayed with me. He spoke truth to me from scripture. He made me commit to a couple things. Number one, taking two days off just to rest. He made me make a commitment and a promise to him that I would call and book an appointment with a counselor on that phone call that day. So I did and God met me in those pieces. And more beside in that season, on the other side of that reach out, I learned a valuable lesson. What should have been my first response had been my last resort. On the other side of reaching out, I was met by the presence of God through a friend and follower of Jesus. You see, it's not just in those kinds of scenarios that we see this, we can often leave what should be our first response to be our last resort. Our default can be so to be so independent and self-reliant and it's robbed us of growth, it's robbed us of connection of peace and joy. This happens in so many areas of our lives. Just think of a couple with me. We often put rest off until we're at a point of exhaustion or until our bodies are sick. We tend to push off, open and honest communication in hopes that the conflict will go away or take care of itself. We put off self-care in order to show up more and have more capacity for others or situations only to know deep down that the greater our wellbeing is, the better we can show up to those people in spaces. So many areas of our lives are affected by this, but our propensity to leave as a last resort, what should be a first response is probably no greater seam than in the area of prayer. If we're honest today, we often turn to God in prayer after we've exhausted our own resources, after we've done everything in our own strength to do so. Corey 10 boom calls us to reflect on our prayer habits In this way. Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire? Is it what guides you or is the practice of prayer in your life more like a tool that you lean on to get out of a jam when you find yourself there? Now, I'm not assuming we're all there or that we're there all the time. Maybe you're here and you've cultivated prayer as your first response and you've got a rich communication with God and a regular communication with God. I encourage you, thank God for that, fan it into flame and come alongside of others who are still trying to develop that. Find ways to be a mentor in that space. This is our last, uh, talk in this series of messages outta the book of James. And we've, we know life can be hard. We don't have to, to have somebody that would tell us that or remind us of that, we know that it's been our story and we've been asking this question along this journey of 11 weeks. How do we develop a faith for real life, for that life that's full of joy and struggle and pain and and heartache? How do we have faith in that, in the context for all that could come our way, the expected, the unexpected, the known, the unknown. We've been looking at how we can cultivate a faith that meets challenges, that grows through trial, that impacts our words and our actions that resist temptation and so much more. If you've missed any of those 11 uh weeks to this point, I encourage you to head to our YouTube channel to get caught up and to to get fed through that study in the book of James. So today we're at the close of James' letter and he reminds us that we're not meant to do this life alone and that faith relies on the supernatural. It's a faith for real life and it's a faith that praise. He calls us develop to develop prayer as a first response and not just a last resort in our lives. So I want us to read together. We're gonna jump into James chapter five, starting at verse 13 today. He says, is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. He gives us this dichotomy of experiences here that represent our gamut on this journey through life. Pray in everything at all times is the stress of work or parenting too much in this moment. Pray someone just paid for your order in the drive-thru praise. Miss that passing grade on a critical exam. Take it to God in prayer. Landed that promotion at work. Praise him for that marriage hanging on by a thread. Pray. Just got an awesome report back from the doctors. Praise. Are you wrestling through or trying to endure the pain of this season right now? Pray. Are you experiencing God's nearness and closeness even as you navigate trial? Praise him for that. James is letting us know that an upward posture of turning to God regardless of what we're feeling, whether we feel like we're winning or losing, whether we're fighting or celebrating, it's always our best response from the highs to the lows. To live at a faith for real life is to develop a rhythm of coming to God in prayer regardless of how we might feel. The term that James uses here for trouble at the start of verse 13 in the original language means to suffer misfortune. It's used in relation to the inner experience we have in enduring the struggles of this life. See, as we've been learning over the past couple weeks, James is advocating here for a strength that we need to endure the trouble of this life. Remember, his original audience were believers who were being persecuted for their faith. So when he's referring to trouble here is not necessarily the removal of hardship that we need in our life, but he's saying that inner turmoil, even as we face it and go through it in this life, not necessarily the removal of it, trouble anyone happy. He says sing songs of praise. It can be easy for us in our context to correlate happy with feelings of bliss or everything being on point in our lives. But this is not the picture that James is painting. It's a deep rooted contentment of the heart. And this is often the result of a life that's cultivated a, a posture of prayer not easily rocked or sidetracked. It's a maturing happiness based on a growing and grown trust in God, even in the middle of trial, a trust like any relationship that develops and that grows over time. You see if you're struggling in a sea of doubt, wondering where God is or you're at a place where you are aware of and experiencing his peace and joy and presence, James is saying God not only deserves it, but he desires our prayer. He desires us to come as a first response to him. So he continues this theme of a faith that praised by reminding us that we're not meant to travel through this life alone. Verses 14 and 15, he says, this is anyone among you sick. Let them call on the elders of the church to pray over them, to anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well and the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Make no mistake here, this is God's work. He does the forgiving, he does the healing. But you also hear this incredible call to be done in community, to be done together in the face of leaning towards going it alone, a soldiering on through pain and suffering, that we are enduring against the grain of our reluctance to reach out for help. And even when we feel paralyzed at the thought of admitting that we need help, James calls us to something wholly different than that kind of independence. He says, pray in community with vulnerability. Are you hurting? Are you in pain? Are you sick? Take a step of faith and reach out to the leaders in your church for prayer. Step towards community. Lean into the faith of others. There is healing, there is forgiveness, there is freedom in not going in alone. James says, one of the greatest gifts you see that God has given you and I is in the form of his family in the form of the other. It's the person sitting next to you. It's the pastor that's ready to pray with you. It's that small group that comes alongside of your family to hold you up when you aren't sure that you can go on another day. You see prayer in community matters. We aren't meant to carry burdens alone. And each time that you put up your hand or you pick up that phone or you acknowledge your own need and ask someone to come into that space to pray with and for you, that is an act of faith. It might be all that you have left to muster up that request, but it is faith and God honors it and calls us to it. This is why we prioritize it at the end of every service. Why small groups are so vital? Why developing friendship with other believers is so critical to your journey? The elders of the church are those that God has appointed to leadership. There's an expectation of spiritual maturity and living right. They've been vetted by the church. The anointing with oil here is symbolic of God's presence and power of being set apart for his glory of his care for us of healing that is possible of joy and gladness that his presence makes possible in our lives. And then James continues on and introduces a topic that's not quite popular, but with care and trust can be a part of our healing and freedom in Christ as well. James five 16, he introduces the concept and the practice of confession. Therefore, he says, in your sickness, in your trouble and pain, when you're coming into community with vulnerability as an act of faith and joining your faith with other believers, there's healing and forgiveness. There's a spiritual work that God does, there's a physical work that God can do in that space. Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Confession opens the door to healing and freedom. We heal from sin by coming out of hiding. Today. The biblical writers refer to the practice of naming our sin to another person as confession. And often you see the response to our guilt and our shame for the sins that we've done or the sins of omission of what we didn't do. Our response is often hiding. It's pulling back from community. It's isolation. It's drifting towards those pieces of feeling trapped and bound. It's it's then cultivating hypocrisy where we pretend and present as one thing, but in the dark we are completely something other. Confession can be the last thing that we wanna do when we come face to face with the mess of our lives. Yet James says right here, so clearly that naming our sin and secrets to a trusted person, to a spiritually mature, trusted person can be a catalyst for our healing and our freedom. Aa knows this and its community is largely built on this mantra that we are only as sick as the secrets that we keep. There's some truth in that. We just finished week six of our practicing the Way spiritual formation course on Monday nights. And this week's practice is actually confession and and the practice calls us to this. Number one, find someone to trust that you trust who will love you no matter what and will call you up to holiness. It could be a friend, pastor, family member, spiritual director, therapist Number two, find a confidential place to meet that allows you to feel safe in that peace. Three, name your sin or your shame or your secret. Bring into the light what is now hidden and let them love you. Let them be faithful to you and speak Jesus forgiveness over you. If you ever have an opportunity to be on the other side of someone's confession, your role is so vital as well. We don't shame, we don't lecture, we don't scold. We be a person of welcome. We affirm God's love over them. We honor their courage while inviting God's healing presence into their story. Verse 16 continues on in this way. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. To be a righteous person is not to be someone who doesn't sin, but they do not stay in their sin. There's this godly sorrow that comes with their sin that leads them to repentance, that leads them to this upward plea and and cry for forgiveness, but also into confession. Righteousness is the mark of a life that walks in the light, a confidence not on perfection, not on always having done all the right things, but in not having anything to hide. There's a confidence that comes by living right. It's a life free of guilt and shame that runs to the light in repentance, in confession, bringing sin there to receive grace and forgiveness and healing. It's a life that simultaneously embraces its humanity, being honest and struggle, willing to name and reckon our emotions while still believing that God can do the impossible in my life and through my life. So James tells us to have faith for real. Life is a faith that prays pray in everything at all times, pray in community with vulnerability and practicing confession. And then he draws back to an ancient example of a righteous person known as Elijah and he, and we can read all about Elijah's story and ministry in one Kings 17, 18, and 19. I encourage you to do that, but James reflects on his story in just a small snippet here in verses 17 and 18. He says, Elijah was a human being even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. And again, he prayed and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops. See, James' audience knew this great prophet to be a man who walked closely with God and was used in supernatural ways. Uh, the example here that James is using is referencing. Uh, when Elijah prayed fervently for a drought as a judgment on Israel's idolatry, he goes to wicked king Ahab to let him know after hearing from God that God has had enough, the taps were gonna be turned off and that there would be no rain. God tells him to kind of go in hiding, wait this out. And just over three years later, he comes back out of witness protection and tells Ahab that God is gonna teach him and the nation a lesson. And it leads to this dramatic showdown where Elijah challenges the prophets of the false God. Baal to a reign off over 400 prophets on Baal on one side and Elijah on the other side. And the challenge was to have both sides set up an altar with a sacrifice to their God and to see whose God would send fire supernaturally burning up the sacrifice and then making it rain. Whatever God would uh, fulfill that challenge or call would be proven to be the the one true God. So first up, there's this dramatic display from the Baal representatives to no avail. They dance, they called out, they shouted, they shouted louder. They even began cutting themselves to get BA's attention to no avail all day, no sound, no reply, no response, nothing. And Elijah has this supernatural confidence. He begins poking fun at them and even suggesting that their God may be daydreaming or even gone to the washroom. He then asked them to drench his altar even more to amplify God's greatness in this moment. And then he praise his prayer in one Kings chapter 18 verses 36 and 37. He says, oh Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all of this at your command. Oh Lord, answer me. Answer me so that these people will know that you Lord are God. And God lights up the altar with fire. It was an impossible feat of God partnering with Elijah to do the impossible. An entire nation now being reminded of the God who had got them there and the one who's still in ultimate control. And the rain comes. And James uses this recall to remind his readers of some life-changing truth, his original audience, but even to us today in 2024, as great as he was, Elijah is your peer. The standard of right living that he kept is ours to keep. But you. But if you keep reading, you'll even see Elijah's struggles in, uh, one Kings 19 at one point. He even wants his life to end'cause he's, he's reckoning with his his real motions In that moment, you see, we have no right to disqualify ourselves from being a candidate to be used by God and considered as righteous before God. Regardless of where you've been, what your struggle is right now, what needs to come into the light, what has come into the light. God is able and wanting to work in you in the same way that he did with Elijah. He's appeared just like you. And then secondly, belief for the supernatural. And while there's a mystery to how and, and when God works, we can be confident that he wants to work in and through us. Don't settle for a faith that you can figure out on your own. Choose dependence upon him. Choose to believe that God is able to and let us be people. And a church that asks for the miraculous. Let's never change that posture. If God has sent his son to die for our sin, if he's raised him from the dead and made it possible for us to be free from that sin, guilt and shame. And he's invited us to come to him with boldness and confidence because of Jesus. Let us hold fast to the impossible being made possible in my life, in your life, through my life, through your life. Inner city, in our nation. Let's hold fast that God is able. Elijah used by God in such mighty ways was a peer just, uh, like us to grow faith for real life, develop prayer as a first response and not a last resort. The act of prayer you see is an acknowledgement of number one, the fact that we aren't in control. There is so much in this life that we have no say over. Coming to God in prayer owns that truth. It yields to it while knowing that there is nothing still outside of his control. Secondly, the act of prayer acknowledges that we can't do this on our own. This flies in the face of a dominant message that we hear in society that says we can do anything we put our minds to. We can do anything if we have the right amount of effort, but it embraces God's design for us to be dependent upon him and interdependent upon one another in the family of God. The act of prayer is also an acknowledgement that there is someone listening who cares and who is able to do something about what we are going through. Sometimes you see God rescues us from it. Sometimes he gives us what we need to get through it, but all of the time he's present to us in it all the time. So how do we cultivate a faith for real life that makes prayer our first response and not just the last resort? Here's some helpful ways. Number one, to cultivate uncomplicated rhythms. If prayer is talking to God, we need to pause and talk to God. Don't overcomplicate it by feeling that you need to to sound a certain way. Be honest, be you. Like any training regimen, it takes repetition to incorporate a new rhythm or practice. Determine in your weak in your day, what is the right quiet time? What is the right quiet space to give God my attention? It could be on that commute. It could be early in the morning. It could be, find out what that looks like for you and develop an uncomplicated rhythm of talking to God. Maybe you need to start with using the Psalms as a little bit of a guide for your life. Secondly, choose vulnerability in community. There will inevitably be risk anytime that we reach out to trust other people. Be wise in this, cultivate trusted relationships with spiritual mature believers, but commit to growing to together. Resist a temptation to believe that it's only for people who figured it all out, who don't make mistakes and got it all together. That is a lie. We're all on a journey of becoming like Jesus. We're all receivers of his grace, and we get to be conduits of that same grace. Lean into small groups, invest into growing friendships with other believers. And then thirdly, I encourage you to confess sin, to clear the way for God to move in your life. If there's any obstacles, if there's anything in the dark or hidden that needs to be brought into the light, I encourage you and implore you. Bring it to the light. Bring it to him in repentance. Clear the way for us to see God at work in us. You see what stays hidden doesn't heal. We are truly only as sick as the secrets that we keep. Walk in the light today. Choose to embrace forgiveness rather than striving for perfection. Lean into honesty over hiding and healing over hypocrisy. We know it can be so hard for us to turn to God as a first response in this life. And to get a, a kind of a, an honest and raw and fresh perspective on this. I asked some of our newest believers, people who've recently made a decision to trust God and to follow Jesus. I asked them for some feedback on what, why is it so hard for us to turn to God in this life? One gentleman said, it's because of the guilt for what I've done. It feels easier to go it alone than to turn to God because I feel so unworthy of God. Another one said, it took me years of trying to fix everything on my own to finally realize that I couldn't do it alone anymore. I felt broken beyond repair and I kept telling myself that I could handle it, but it never got better. Another gentleman said, personally, I find the need to be resourceful, self-reliant, independent. Sometimes it's hard for me to let go of that attitude and actually lean into God. And then another guy said, it was hard for me to turn to God because of my shame. You see, whether it's shame, guilt, that strong sense of independence or self-reliance, there are so many things that keep us from the light. We have perceptions. When we see the light of God's glory and his love. Even we, we think that we don't belong or we convince ourselves, or I believe even the enemy of our souls convinced ourselves to stay in hiding or stay in the dark. It reminded me of a story when I was 15 years old. It was on a Saturday in November of 1997, and I had gotten a call from a friend or an acquaintance at school who I'd never spent a ton of time with outside of school. And he had this bright idea that we would hitchhike to a community 30 minutes out the Trans Canada Highway on a Saturday evening to hang out with some friends in that town. It was a Saturday, lots of weekend traffic, and he was gar. He was sure we were gonna get a ride, no problem. And at 15 years old, apparently had a ton of experience in hitchhiking . I left without any of my closest friends knowing who I was with or where I was gone, let alone my parents or anybody in my house. We got a ride right away and I thought, man, this is easy. He's right. We, we gotta ride right to the community. We hung out and then around 10:30 PM we thought we better start our trip home. So the brother of a friend that we were hanging out with brought us halfway to a community in the halfway point and drop this off. And we thought, okay, we only have this much to go. Great. Not thinking of the likelihood that someone was gonna pick two 15, 16-year-old guys up in the middle of the night on the Trans Canada Highway. So we walked and we walked and we walked. And about 2 30, 3 o'clock in the morning, we saw a taxi cab on a parallel street. Now we're in a little bit of a ski village outside of our town, and we see a taxi cab parked on the street down below and there's a ditch between us with some snow. And we just said, that's our chance. So we bolted through this ditch, you know, our knee deep in snow and popping up, and we got out on that road and we scared the life outta this taxi driver. And we begged him to get us into town with no money in our pockets. And he did. He did us a solid and he dropped us off in my neighborhood. As we walked through my neighborhood, my house came into view. I could see the living room light on exactly . And then I had a second thought. My dad is preaching in a few hours, this isn't good. The light made me believe that I was in way too deep, that the punishment would be too severe and that it was easier for me to keep running. So that's what I did. I kept going and I went to my buddy's house and went to sleep. Little did I realize that the police were at my house at that hour. A missing person's report was about to be filed. And little did I know that the light on in my house reflected something wholly different than what I interpreted. There was a reflection of my parents' heart to know that I was home, that I was safe, that I was in their arms. Again, it was a reflection of them knowing their boy was safe and sound. Yes, there were hard conversations and there were consequences, but that is exactly where I need it to be in that moment. So today, I would say to you, regardless of what your story has been or what it is right here, right now, what amount of guilt or shame or weight you might be carrying on your shoulders, that as you see the light of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you would run toward it. I'm, I'm saying regardless of what you have, what's in secret, what's in the past, regardless, run towards it today. This is the point of the good news, that there's nothing that can keep you from his love. Run to the light today. Build a faith for real life by building a faith that prays, that turns to God and let turning to God be your first response and not your last resort. Can we stand together? If you're able today, I wanna pray. And if you're here and you haven't made a decision to follow Jesus or you've drifted so far in isolation and hiding and shame that it's been so long for you to have that you've had a a real connection with him. I'm praying today is the day that you rise up and you run towards the light. There is so many people in this room, pastors even on our team that would love to be a reflection of God's open arms to meet you there, to pray with you, and to love you forward into all that God has for your life. Can we pray together today? Dear Jesus, we acknowledge our need of you. We choose today to step into the light with all of our stuff, knowing full well that's where the freedom is. That's where the healing is. I pray, oh God, for those who need courage, that you, by your Holy Spirit would fill them with courage to take that step. Those who need healing today, I pray there would be healing in this space that your Holy Spirit, even now would make sick bodies well would make Lord troubled minds at peace, broken relationships and hearts mended. I pray, let this be a house of miracles. I pray, Lord Jesus, as we run towards you, as our first response in our lives, we love you and we thank you and we trust you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. If you made a decision to follow Jesus today, we do have a QR code on the screen behind me or in the seat back in front of you, scanning that allows us to put some resources in your hands to help you on this stage of your journey, but also gives us a chance to follow up with you directly and to walk with you. Uh, if you're here and you have a need that you'd love for a pastor or leader to pray with you about, we are gonna have a team ready on my right and your left. Just come forward here and uh, and we'd love that opportunity. God bless you. We'd love you. Have an incredible week and thanks for showing up today.