A Cry For Understanding: James 5
The study that Jason and I are doing together over the course of a year had us reading Habakkuk 3:1-15 tonight. I sat here, reading and rereading the passage probably 6 or 7 times total. I just wasn’t getting it tonight. It felt almost as if I was reading another language for some reason. Jason suggested that I step back, pray and if God was telling me to stop with my reading for the night, then just come back to the reading and corresponding questions tomorrow instead.
I pushed back my chair, bowed my head and just said “help me, Lord… I’m so confused!”. I then felt the need to read a different passage for the night, so I went into the book of James (chapter 5). And I read. And I almost cried, because I just felt like the LORD was telling me so much with just 20 little verses. Things that I had prayed with Jason about just half an hour earlier, things that I hadn’t even prayed about but have been meaning to. Even sitting here, my throat feels so tight with emotion, and my fingers and mind can’t wrap themselves around everything that I feel the Spirit saying to my soul.
The first section of the chapter is entitled, Warning to the Rich (vv. 1-6). This section could have been written about me as a prodigal. I greedily clung to my treasurers (money, possessions, etc), living an earth-centered life of luxury and self-indulgence. No matter how much money I had, there was always more out there to get. No matter how much stuff I had, it was never enough. There was no one on earth (except, perhaps, my husband and parents) who mattered as much as I did. I held a great mask up to others, of course. I smiled, sympathized, gave money to charity because that’s the “good thing to do”. But, to look at a homeless person on the street and have true sympathy for them and their situation? No way – go get a job. I’m sure that McDonald’s is hiring. It hasn’t been until the past two or so years that I have really felt the Lord molding, changing and refining me into a person that He can use for His glory. He is helping me to shed the blinders that I have held up to my eyes for so long, helping me to see His glory in the smallest things, truly turning my heart from stone. I pray that instead of having a heart that has been fattened and ready for the slaughter, God continues to refine and shape me to His will.
The second section of the chapter (vv. 7-12) is entitled, Patience in Suffering. The first thing I want to say is that I am not saying in any way that I’ve suffered above and beyond what the next person has. Suffering is so incredibly different for each and every person. To face the unknown can be to suffer for one person, while experiencing heartache and ruin is suffering to another. For me, at this very point right now, and for what I prayed about earlier, I am suffering through a time of confusion. I have so many different things happening in my life (and the life of my family, in general) and so many different things hitting us at every direction that I feel God showing me just how much I need Him and that I must turn things over to Him. That is the only way to achieve patience through suffering. I must establish my heart to the Lord. I must remain steadfast and remember that our Lord is compassionate. He is merciful. I just have to have patience and the vision to look and see what He is doing. I need to sit back, I need not grumble… I need to wait for His grace to come falling down like rain.
The final section in the chapter is entitled The Prayer of Faith (vv. 13-20). In just the first line, God was showing me an answer to something that I hadn’t even (sadly enough) been brave enough to pray out lately.
Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.
There is no other word for what is happening to my husband right now than that. He is suffering. Physically, he has been hit by the enemy pretty badly lately. I truly feel that every time that we make a step toward the plans that we feel God has for us (being in Hutto and being a part of this new church plant), the enemy attacks him the best way he knows how – physically. His RA has stopped responding to his medication, we’re looking into a drug that has only been on the market 6 years (which, in my opinion, isn’t long enough to find out the effects that it could have on a person in the long run), his immune system has been and will continue be badly damaged by the medications that they have him on. As we clean and try to pack, his allergies and sinuses continue to really bother him as well. It had gotten so bad from a day of heavy dust-raising that he was laid out (between the RA and the allergies) for 4 days. It just makes me want to scream every obscenity that I can think of sometimes as how crappy the timing is on this. (I know I feel like I’m complaining, but it’s not that… This is just me venting my frustrations to the Lord!!). I know that the enemy doesn’t want to strike when there are no major repercussions, and that this is the perfect time to strike us. It just frustrates me to NO END that while we’re trying to be faithful to the Lord, this crappy little angel who thought he was oh, so much better that everyone else has to go and mess around with us. How dare he do this!? I will not stand for it!! I will not let him keep me from praying for these things any longer! My mission tonight is to contact a couple of the elders of our church and claim the promise of vv. 14-15:
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Lord, I know that there are so many things that Jason and I do each and every day that just make you shake your head and say “guys! you know better than that!!”. But Lord, the things that makes you so incredibly different from us is that you look at those things, and you forgive us each and every time for them. It just takes one breath from our lips and our sins are as far from us as the east is from the west. Lord, your word says that we must confess our sins to one another and pray for one another so that we may be healed. I claim your promise Lord, as I come to you tonight, asking you for your forgiveness for the sin in my life. [...] Lord, I ask you to please watch over those families here who are committing themselves to further your kingdom in the Hutto area by being a part of this new church plant. Lord, I have seen in so many of us how the enemy is exploiting our weaknesses, but the advantage that we have over him is that you, O Lord, are our fortress. You are the safe house that we can always run to. You are Jehovah-Nissi, You are the banner that we rally around. You are always there in the fight, showing us who You are. You are Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who Provides. You are Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord who Heals. I call upon you, El-Elyon, to hear my prayer. And it is in your son’s almighty name I pray, Amen.