Prayer
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · January 7, 2024 · We Are the Church series
Jeremy MacDonald opens the We Are the Church series by showing that the church is a gathering of people, not a building, then turns to James 5:13-18. James invites us to bring hardship, joy and sickness to God in prayer, together.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The We Are the Church series
Topics: Faith, Prayer, Suffering
Transcript
[0:00] How many of you have been a part of Moncton Wesleyan in one way, shape, or form? For more than 20 years? More than 20 years? Oh, there's a lot of you. Yeah. Lots of you. That's my story too. In fact, 18 years ago, one of the best things I think about being a church that's been around for a little while is that there's history and there's story over much longer than 20 years. But in particular, about 18 years ago, we had an event that happened here in the building that got us on the national news, the national news here in Canada, and the event, do some of you remember what the event was called? Not the Easter icon, although that also got us on some news coverage. Yeah, for sure. The Battle of the Bands. Absolutely. Yes. The Battle of the Bands. Now, this is a bit of a history lesson for those of you that are newer.
[0:48] The Battle of the Bands was this event that was held by our, one of our youth pastors. And so he had this idea that if we could invite to our youth group night bands from across the Moncton area of teenagers, not like roaming bands of teenagers, but like music bands of teenagers to come into play a song at our youth night in this battle competition between bands and there'd be voting and one of them would win. They'd win a prize. That we could generate a lot of interest and perhaps a number of students and teenagers that would show up that would never otherwise walk through the doors of a church and we could actually preach and tell them about Jesus on that particular night. And so this is what it looked like. It was a rocking show and there was a lot of people, depending on the counts, you know, 6, 7, 800 people.
[1:36] It was in the auditorium across the way. It was very, very full. And what happened was, is at one point during the event, a pew got broken, a pew was broken, and who's to say exactly what happened? But you know, there was some rambunctiousness to this event. There's a lot of people, there's some jumping, some moshing and a pew got broken. And that became a part of the story that became this national news headline because a lot of people wanted to weigh in on what does it mean to gather that number of students around in this kind of place? And for that kind of rambunctiousness to happen, and then for a pew to get broken, like have we desecrated the sanctuary because of that? It was one of the questions, and some of you who still have PTSD from those times, like, just go with me here.
[2:24] It's okay. One of the gifts that came out of that time was we had to wrestle with the question, what is the church? And what is this building in particular, what do these pews represent? Because you see for a segment of people, and for those that decided to weigh in from even across the country, you know, Christian leaders from different parts of our world wrestled with the idea that the space that we were gathered in had some sort of special sacredness, because surely that's the sanctuary and this is the church. But the truth is that we had to wrestle with as a staff, as a pastoral team, and the leadership here, and even just people in general, we had to wrestle with what is actually the church.
[3:12] And for the next few weeks we want to deal with this kind of big question because you've shown up in this place, and hey, there's all sorts of different categories of people in this room, right? Like some of you have been a part of Moncton Wesleyan for many, many, many years. Some of you are here for the first time, and some of you are on the outskirts. Some of you are looking in, some of you believe the things we believe, some of you don't. But when we gather in this kind of way, the question that we want to deal with for the next few weeks is what does it mean to be a church? And you see the church started 2000 years ago with this invitation from Jesus. And we have to go there to understand what's happened over the last 2000 years that have shaped our understanding of the church. And this is what we dealt with 18 years ago.
[3:57] So Jesus, He's with His closest followers, and He's asking 'em the question, who do You say that I am? And they're wrestling with this because it's in the middle of His ministry and they're not quite sure what He's doing yet. But Simon Peter reaches out and he says, You're the Messiah. You're the one that we've been promised. You're the one that is God Himself. You're gonna change everything. And Jesus affirms that word from Simon Peter. And then Jesus clarifies what He was about to do. That has dramatic implications for all of us. This is the words of Jesus. And this dictates a little bit of who we are today. Jesus says, I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock, I will build My church. And the gates of Hades will not overcome it. The gates of Hades being death itself, that I will build My church and it will last forever.
[4:51] And so when Jesus says, I'll build My church, what is He actually saying? And so at that moment in time, as Matthew is kind of writing this out, this line from Jesus and distributing it amongst the Jesus followers, the Christians in the first century, he writes not exactly the word that Jesus would use 'cause Jesus was likely not speaking Greek. And yet Matthew's writing and writes in Greek, and he writes this word to try to encapsulate the words of Jesus. He writes the word ekklesia. And ekklesia at that time was actually a general word to mean a gathering of people at that time. If you gathered on purpose for a purpose with a group of people, you could be an ekklesia. And so Jesus says, I will build My gathering of people, My ekklesia, and we're gonna do something special as a group.
[5:40] And so what happened was, is after the resurrection, Jesus had launched this movement, and this movement really did become a movement. And they would gather together for the purposes of celebrating the risen Lord and Savior and encouraging one another and looking out for one another. And this ekklesia, this group of people, became this incredible movement in the first century. But something happened that has implications to this day. You see that first movement, that movement of Christians, they were often persecuted. And Rome, the empire around them, put weights in and on them. And like sometimes they were killing Christians. And so the Christian movement was a little bit underground. It wasn't quite the thing that we obviously see and experience today.
[6:27] And so what happened though is in the 300s, the emperor himself, Constantine, actually became a Christian. And all of a sudden it became popular to be a Christian. And the ways that the Christians gathered before changed. And what happened was, is they started to be able to gather publicly and they could build monuments and be okay to be public about their gathering. 'cause people were excited to be Christians. And so all of a sudden, the empire, Rome, began building these buildings to gather in, and that's the rise of a Latin word for these types of buildings, the basilicas. And then over time, as the movement changed and adjusted and traveled over across into other regions and expanded over the centuries, we got these kind of German-rooted Christians that created this word and this explanation of these kind of places in these gatherings, the keka or something along those lines, I don't speak the language, but the modern word became Kirche, the German word for these buildings, these gathering points.
[7:29] But they were describing a structure. And so what happened was is that translators took that word to describe what Jesus was saying all the way back then. And that's where we got the word church. The issue is that if we're not careful, we can assume that the church is a building. It exists on a premises, that the church is a place that you go, that the church is a physical entity. And 18 years ago, we wrestled with what is the church? And when Jesus started it, He wasn't building a building. In fact, He was tearing down the building and instead building a movement, a group of people.
[8:15] And so what we have to realize as we launch into this series is that when we talk about the church, what we're talking about, we're not gonna change the word church, we're gonna use the word church. But when we say the word church, you have to realize it's not the German Kirche. It's not a place, it's a people. Or put it this way, a Kirche is a location, but an ekklesia is a purposeful gathering of people. So you can lock the doors of a Kirche, but you can't do that with the ekklesia of Jesus. And so the question becomes, what is this gathering of people all about? Because when we gather in this kind of way, we're a wide ranging group of people, right? Like for some of us, we know what we're here for and for others we're kind of confused.
[9:01] And for some of us, we know what we're here for. But it's because we're forced to be here. You know, we have to be here. Somebody dragged us here to get lunch afterwards, we have to show up. And that's understandable. But then there's other people and you're here and there's some kind of expectation that maybe God would do something. For some of you, you've got so many doubts and questions. And when we gather in this kind of community, we wanna wrestle with the question of this, what is this church all about? And so over the next few weeks, we wanna unpack something in particular, but let's just be clear ultimately what this church, Moncton Wesleyan, this gathering, this ekklesia, what we're all about is Jesus ultimately. But then in our day and in our place and in this time and with this particular group, we get to have emphasis and things that we help focus on for such a time as this.
[9:56] Because the overall church for all time and across all places is clear in Scripture. And yet God invites His people to be the church in unique ways, in different spots, in different times, in different places. And so we wanna share with you a few things that are a little bit maybe optimistic in some ways. They're descriptive in some ways, they're prescriptive in others of what this church, this ekklesia, what Moncton Wesleyan is gonna be all about and is all about and what we need as a group of people to be all about. And so for today, I want to give you one, and over the next couple weeks you'll hear a couple others. For today, we're gonna talk about prayer. Prayer is something in particular that we want to be and we need to be as a group of people, all about.
[10:46] And again, you're at all different places on the journey of prayer. You see, when we talk about prayer, there's a sense that everybody understands enough about it. You understand what the concept is, but we're not on the same page in terms of our experience. You see for you, like if I ask this question like, do you pray? You know, I can prompt you for different examples of this that maybe reminds you of, prayer in some ways, in your own journey in your life, for some of you, you think about like, do you pray at meals? And you're like, yeah, I've experienced that. Or, you know, we gathered at Christmas a couple weeks ago and you know, somebody prayed, there was a prayer there. So, you know, you kind of have a box and understanding of what prayer is. And if I said, do you pray maybe in desperation, some of you say, yeah, like I've experienced that moment where the car was going on the black ice and I started praying.
[11:34] All of a sudden, I don't know where that came from. You know, I was desperate in the moment and I reached out to, and I don't even know exactly what I was saying or who I was talking to, but in desperation, I let out a type of prayer that happens for people maybe that happens for you. You know, do you pray maybe to test if someone is listening, like your journey in spirituality at some point? And maybe now is this kind of quiet time where you're like, I'm not sure that anything is there. And yet you have these times when you've thought even just in your mind, like God, if You're out there. And that's kind of how it starts. God, if You're real, I don't think You are, but if You are now I'm praying about something. Or maybe for you, if I ask this question, do you pray in moments of gratitude?
[12:20] You know, there's something that happens in those intense moments of joy where you just want to be thankful to something beyond yourself. And you know, maybe it's when you, if you've had children or, you know, you've had these other moments in life where it just seemed like things were happening well, and you just want to be grateful and, and it kind of moves you to something. And so that kind of prayer wells up inside of you. And the truth is that prayer is something that's been marked by the church in all of these instances and so much more for thousands of years. And so let's take a few moments to take a look at prayer through the lens of a particular New Testament author. I think it's gonna be enlightening for us all. Let's go to this passage in James 5:13-18 and we're gonna wrestle with it. I've talked about prayer here before. If you've been around for a length of time, often the Lord's Prayer becomes this marker of how we can pray and we learn from that.
[13:10] But I'm fascinated to look at James with us all because James is the half brother of Jesus. And if you've tracked the story of the New Testament, you would notice that James shows up as an author here in our New Testament, but also throughout the story of the New Testament church. He shows up but only after the resurrection, which this is just kind of surmising a little bit, but I don't think James was on board with Jesus's ministry before the resurrection. And I'd like to think that, or I kind of assume that because if you have siblings, think about this for a moment. If you have a sibling, what would it take your sibling for? Your sibling to convince you that they were the Son of God?
[13:56] You know what I mean? Like you've grown up with them, you've seen them, you know, in some spots. What would it take for them to be like, no, no, no, listen, I'm the Messiah. You should bow down to me. Now, they've said that before, they've asked you to bow down to them. I get that in other contexts. But what would it take for your sibling to convince you that they were the Messiah? I think that's part of James' story. This is just me guessing. But he watches his brother buried, died on a cross and then resurrected and all of a sudden he realizes, oh, He is the Messiah. And James surrenders his life to his risen Savior, even his brother Himself. And so this is the story of James.
[14:42] He becomes this key figure in the New Testament church. He at one point, historically we believe, was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. And as the Christians were persecuted and they were distributed around the region as they were trying to escape persecution, James writes this letter trying to articulate some clear things about the Christian journey. In particular, one of the commentators explains it this way for James, he wants to overcome the divided character of Christian existence. He's concerned about the wholeness and perfection of the Christian life. And I think that's why it's so helpful for us when we think about prayer. Because for a lot of us, the Christian journey, maybe this is your story, whether or not you're in or not, the Christian journey is kind of like this segmented thing. Like I do the thing at church on Sunday, but then I do the rest of my life or I believe in God, but I don't really know what that means.
[15:34] And James is experiencing that amongst his friends and his church and his followers of Jesus around him. And he's trying to clarify, no, there's a wholeness to this faith. Like you can go all in with all parts of your life. And one of the most profound ways you can do that is with this invitation to prayer. And so James writing to Christians, he says this specifically talking about prayer, he asks this question, and this is a question I want us to wrestle with, even here in this room. He says this, this is James writing. Are any of you suffering hardships? Now, 2000 years ago there were a lot more hardships, but that doesn't change the fact that today there are a lot of hardships. You know what James is saying is, is there anybody here? You don't need to raise your hand, but like, is there anybody here that is not quite sure if 2024 is gonna be okay economically for your own family?
[16:26] Like there's a little bit of uncertainty around your budget, that's a hardship. Is anybody here experiencing a little bit of uncertainty around their health or the health of a loved one? Like that's a hardship. Are you here wondering what's gonna happen with so and so or what's gonna happen in this instance or when the kids go back to school? Like is the school experience gonna be okay? And there's a sense that there's hardship in your life. If you just take a moment, that hardship bubbles to the surface and you can think about it for just a second, I bet you are suffering hardship in some way. And so for James, he says, if you are suffering hardships, when you answer in the affirmative, whatever the thing is, this is what he says, you should pray and you should pray and you should pray and you should pray and you should pray and you should pray.
[17:30] But here's the truth, you don't. I mean, that's kind of harsh to say. I don't know fully your story and your journey, but if I had to guess, I don't think you actually pray about the hardship. Like, I think you think about it, I think you worry about it. I think you're frustrated about it and maybe there's a moment or two where you're like, God, like, this is a hardship. But I think for most of us and most of you, that hardship isn't something that you actually take time to pray for. You don't have a practice to sit down and to say, God, this is hard and I don't know what to do with it and I don't know what's supposed to happen here.
[18:19] And so James, the brother of Jesus, he's like, Hey, listen, the Christian faith, if you wanna be in on it and some of you don't want to be in on it and I get that, but if you want to be in on it and you want experience all that God has for you, you take your hardship and you bring it to God and you need to do it, you actually need to do it. You should pray. And what do you pray when you pray about your hardships? You know, you kind of wrestle with, okay, what is he talking about here and what was the experience of early Christians? And there's kind of a sense that this is what it looks like, presumably then the prayer that he encourages here is the spiritual strength to endure the trial with a godly spirit. You know, he's gonna give different examples here in a moment. But you know specifically around hardship, there's a sense that you know, yes, we're gonna pray and ask for God to take hardship away from us.
[19:08] That's good. And that's not wrong. You should do that, but, but ultimately we're praying that God would give us a spirit to be able to go after that hardship and through that hardship and change even our own hearts and minds in the midst of it. Because that's what we really need. And so whatever your story is and whatever your journey is, you should pray about your hardship. And if you're not, you need to do it today. And we're gonna give you space today at the end of the service. In fact, just as a spoiler alert, at the end of this service, we've got a extended time where we're gonna invite you and you're welcome to. You don't have to, there's no pressure. But we're gonna invite you to actually pray and take time in this room, in this service to pray either by yourself or with somebody else because we want to pray for hardships because James told us we should.
[19:57] And James, the brother of Jesus, leading the church in the first century, understood what it meant to be a Christian. And this is our invitation. This is the kind of people that we wanna be. We wanna pray for your hardship, you wanna pray with it with other people and that God will give us a godly spirit from this place even after this fact. When you pray for your hardships, there's lots of ways to remind yourself to do it. So if you have a phone, you can take a photo of this next slide. This will be helpful. You can look this up, but there's two places you should go. You can go to MW Church slash prayer. We always want to hear about the things that you're praying for your hardships because we as a team have a group of people praying. We wanna pray for you. And you can leave your prayer request there. There's cards in the back of your seat pocket. You can take those out, you can write your prayer request on the end of the service.
[20:44] You can leave them at the front. We will pray for you. We'll pray for you. Even if you won't pray for you, like maybe you don't think any of this is real, I think it's real. Let me pray on your behalf, I think that would be okay. You go to bible.com/prayer. The Bible app gives you an opportunity to remind yourself to pray for the hardships, the things that you are wrestling with, whatever it is. So James says, if you're feeling hardship, if you're experiencing hardship, you should pray. Then he asks this other question, are any of you happy? Now I kind of came on strong on that one. So let's just lighten the load a little bit. Some of you are happy, we just got to Christmas. You had some joyous experiences, you had some good things going on, there's lots of upsides in your life. And for some of you, you would say like, yeah, there's some hard parts, but also there's some great parts like, I'm actually really enjoying this or that or these people or this experience, whatever it is.
[21:37] And so James, knowing that life isn't all about the down when things go up, he says, if you're happy, here's what you do. You should sing praises. What do we not do when we're experiencing the good joyful things about life? Christians, cia, the gathering. We often miss that when things are good, we should also bring those things to God and be grateful that that kind of gratitude wells up inside of us if we're willing in the good moments to turn to God and sing praises. And so when we gather in this way and when we sing these songs, part of what we're singing is gratitude and gratefulness and praises to God for even the good things in our life. Or as the local theologian says, the songs we sing are prayers we pray as a community.
[22:24] That's Marc from our team. He's a smart guy. But I love that thought that when we sing these songs, these are these kind of communal prayers, being grateful to God. And so James trying to give us this whole picture, but then he goes to a third category. And this third category I think is important too. He says this, he asks this question, are any of you sick? And sickness in this room has a wide range of opportunities or it's a wide range of categories that could fit into this? Like sickness is surely the traditional, like you've got a diagnosis, you're dealing with it, maybe not everybody knows about it, but like you've been wrestling with it. For some of you, the sickness isn't something that anybody could see on a scan, but it's something still inside of you that you're dealing with and you're wrestling with.
[23:12] And it's just this sense that you're not the way that you're supposed to be. You know, sickness can come as an emotional sickness, it can come as a mental sickness. It can come almost as a situational sickness that just has overtaken your life. And of course the physical sickness that some of us and some of us are honestly wrestling with. And so for James, this is what he says, or if any of you are sick, here's what you do. You should call the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Now I highlighted those three things 'cause we have to understand what he's saying when he says those three things. The elders, what does the elders mean? What does it mean to anoint you with oil? And what does it mean to pray in the name of the Lord?
[23:58] Okay, I wanna explain these things because today we wanna give space. For some of you that have been sick or experiencing that diagnosis or that sickness, you can do what James has asked you to do and explain that you should do, if you have any measure of faith or if you have no measure of faith, but you would trust that we could use our measure of faith on your behalf. He says to call the elders of the church, here's what the elders of the church means. The elders were those spiritual leaders who were recognized for the maturity and the faith. Therefore it is natural that they with their deep and rich experience should be called on to pray for healing. At some point in church history, elders became kind of this role. And that's important, that's good. But in one sense, what James is saying is those that have experience of God's goodness have the confidence to pray for God's goodness in your life.
[24:49] And we have some elders, not age elders, but God's goodness, elders who have experienced it, who would love to pray for you. And interestingly, James is about to say, you'll see it in the next verse, that the faith of the prayer, the person doing the praying over you is what God is listening for. He is not listening for your faith, He's listening for the faith of the person that's praying for you. And so if you came this morning and you don't have even a mustard seed of faith, that's okay. If you're sick, you can come and you can receive prayer and you can rest on the faith of the people that will pray for you who have seen God move and heal people in profound kind of ways. Now, the faith that we pray in when we pray this, this is the other part that's important when we pray in Jesus' name, the faith with which we pray, always faith in the God whose will is supreme and best.
[25:42] Only sometimes does this faith include assurance that a particular request is within that will, this is the tension of praying for something like healing and also recognizing that healing comes ultimately in the life hereafter, but not always in this instance. And it's a tension that we manage and we're frustrated by and we're okay to bring that to God and still be frustrated with it. But God invites us anyways to trust Him and to ask for this kind of healing. Even recognizing that sometimes healing in this life isn't gonna be a part of the story. And this is exactly, this is even kind of what Jesus has invited us to the qualification that is needed to understand Jesus's own promise when He says, you may ask Me for anything in My name and I will do it. This is Jesus saying that.
[26:28] But to ask in Jesus' name, to ask in Jesus' name means not simply to utter His name, but to take into account His will. And so we don't understand fully and know His will. And that's okay. You know, when I would talk about this with teenagers as a youth pastor, I would say, how different is your understanding of the world now that you're a 14-year-old compared to when you are a 9-year-old and a 14-year-old says, I've got a whole different view of the world than when I was nine. Like, I'm so much more mature and I have a bigger sense of what's going on. You're like, yes, absolutely. That's what maturity is. And then you talk to a 19-year-old and you're like, how ridiculous were you as a 14-year-old? And they're like, I was ridiculous. Like I didn't get anything. Like I was crazy.
[27:15] I'm glad that the things I wanted to happen didn't all happen when I was 14. You're like, "Yes." And then you come to a group like this and you're like, "Aren't you glad all the things you wish for as a 19-year-old didn't come true?" 'Cause you were crazy? Yes. Amen. Absolutely. And there's a sense even in today in our world, in our lives, that we are grateful that there's a God who has a much bigger vision for our lives and our world that we couldn't even imagine in this moment. And we trust Him. And that's why we come to Him in prayer. And we ask Him though, because it's what we know and what we expect and hope for God in the midst of this sickness, would You heal me of this? And so then the anointing with oil bit, it's interesting.
[28:02] James tells us to do it. This is why we do it. This isn't our idea. This is from the New Testament. James says, anoint the sick with oil. Why would he say that? Four possible ideas, one I think is true. I'll tell you the others maybe are true. First off, maybe it was a medicinal idea. I mean, in those days there wasn't the same modern medicine. There's a sense maybe oil had some type of medicinal properties. Some of those early texts would explain that from a doctor's perspective, obviously we're not quite sure that's the case. There's a pastoral sense like the oil brings people's minds to faith in a more profound way. And so maybe that's kind of the idea. It was kind of a religious idea. Maybe it's sacramental, this idea that the oil carries with it some type of miraculous part to it.
[28:48] That's beyond our understanding. And then the one that I think I kind of lean on a little bit more is just, it's religious, it's, but it's symbolic. You know, throughout the Old Testament and even in the New Testament, anointing with oil was a way to consecrate something, to showcase that it was set apart for God's holy work. And so when we anoint somebody with oil, there's a sense of us saying, you're being consecrated. You're being set aside for God's holy work. We're asking God to do something with you for His purposes. You are God's anointed, and that God would use you even in the midst of this request. And I've seen it, and some of you have seen it. Like, I've had conversations with unchurched friends and family and they're like, "How do you have this kind of faith?"
[29:42] And honestly, part of it is seeing people get healed in miraculous kinds of ways, and not everybody does. And that's a tension. But James says that we need to approach our Heavenly Father with this kind of request. And so we will do that and we'll do that shortly. The verses go on. I wanna make sure you understand this. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. This kind of prayer is powerful. In fact, James will say, he'll say, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. This is a general sense, the gathering.
[30:28] This is the kind of thing that we do together. When you're, if you're on the outside looking in, this isn't, you don't have to do this, but if you're a Christian and you want to be a part of the church, we are the church. These are your people. And this is the kind of people that we are, that we might confess to each other, that we might pray for one another. And it's not the strength of my prayer, it's not the strength of the prayer team's prayer, it's the strength of God who inhabits the prayers and does the work in our midst. In fact, this is what James says. He says, the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results, but it's not their power, it's the power of Jesus. In fact, this is what the explanation, if you would just kind of encapsulate, it's that the righteous person is simply the believer.
[31:17] It's any one of us who have chosen to follow after Christ, because that person is righteous by virtue of receiving forgiveness through Jesus. It's not on our own merit that we're righteous. It's because Jesus forgives us. That's what allows us. So anybody that turns to Christ and asks for His forgiveness is now considered in His eyes righteous. So it doesn't require a super saint, oh, sorry, forgiveness through Jesus prayer. James wants us to make clear is a powerful weapon in the hands of even the most humblest believer. It does not require a super saint to wield it effectively. So this is the kind of people that we need to be and want to be. And so this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna pray. In a moment, I'm gonna pray to start us off here in this time.
[32:03] As I'm praying, the prayer team, we've got some of our church elders prayer team, I'm gonna come down front and we're just gonna make some space. And if you're not sure about any of this kind of stuff, you can stay seated at some point or you know, our worship team, they'll invite you to stand. You can sing along, but I'd encourage you just to take an open posture even and just ask God to maybe speak to you even if you don't think there's a God out there. But if you're here and you've got a hardship or you're here and there's something you need to celebrate on or that you're here and you are sick, you should pray here simply because we're making the space for it. And then throughout this week, because we are the church when we gather as Christians and we gather here, but we gather in homes throughout the week in small groups and Bible studies and gatherings.
[32:59] And so there's nothing spectacular about this space other than the fact that it's a group of people gathered for this purpose of focusing on Jesus. And if you've got those hardships, you can come forward. You come to a prayer team, they'll just ask you, "Hey, how can I pray for you?" You can be specific, you can be general. You can just pray on your own if you want. If you're sick and you want to be anointed with oil, it's, again, it's just symbolic. It's just a little bit of oil. It goes on your forehead. And we wanna pray for you in the same way that James has told us we should pray. And if all of that's a little bit nerve-wracking and you just wanna write on the blue card that's in the seat pocket in front of you a specific prayer request, you can bring that forward. You can lay that anywhere along here. You can give it to me. It'll just come in to me. I'll hold onto it.
[33:45] I'll pray for you this week. But as a church, we're a people and we are people that need to pray. And so let's take some time and do that. And let's take some time and invite God to speak in and through us in the way that from the very first century where we were invited to do. And then we'll go from this place. And I trust and believe that as we go as a church, we, the church, need to continually be these kinds of people that don't just practice it here, but take it into our world.
[34:31] Heavenly Father, what an odd thing, that to take a few moments and just reflect and look to You, that we might be able To speak to the person that created our earth and the universe, that has full power and control over everything and all things. God, we're humbled by that. And it seems outrageous that we would come to You in this kind of way. And yet You have asked us to do this. And so we are just trying to be obedient to what You have told us to do. And so I pray for the people in this room because there's some folks that understand this call and are ready to jump at it. But I know that there's a lot of folks that are nervous about it because, although You've told us to do these things, we don't do them.
[35:22] And because of that, we feel a little bit inadequate, we feel a little bit nervous, we feel a little bit odd. And so for that feeling that's going on here in our midst, I pray Your Spirit would descend on us and clear up those kind of conflicting emotions. And instead, we would just see You as we think about our hardships and the things that we're dealing with, that we would look to You and only see You. And so God, I pray that we would come and as a church, that we would pray for each other and that You would hear our prayers because of Your will, that Your will would be done in our midst. I pray that some would be healed. I pray that all would be healed. I pray that hardships would be relieved. I pray that faith would be emboldened.
[36:07] And I pray, God, that You would be honored in our midst at all times. And for those on the fringe and not sure about any of this, I pray that You would inspire them and speak to them in ways that are ways that they would just understand and know that there's something here in our midst. So heavenly Father, we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So just stay seated for a few moments and if you would like to come forward, the band's just gonna play. You can reflect in your seat in a moment. Our team will invite us to stand and sing, but you can still, as we're singing, please come forward. We've got this space. Let's take this time here at the start of 2024 to mark it with prayer and to do the things that we're called to do.