“The Healing Power of
Prayer”
James 5:13-16
Introduction
Our Lord has imparted to us a new vision of becoming a people of
prayer, a place of grace, and a partner with our triune God in
reclaiming the captive, restoring the wounded, and redeploying the
equipped. Our first priority is to move toward becoming a house
of prayer. There is a wide variety of prayer forms, and the more
styles of prayer you engage in, the more enriched, the more powerful,
and the more enjoyable your prayer life will be.
Scripture Reading
This morning’s sermon will be a teaching sermon on three types of
healing prayer that are called by different names, but all with the
same purpose of connecting our deepest pain to God’s throne of
grace and healing presence. Let us pray…Scripture
Reading…
Models of Healing Prayer
James speaks about four different types of prayer in this short
passage. The first category is an all inclusive category of “praying without ceasing.”
James admonishes us, “are you in any kind of trouble, trial,
challenge, then pray!” As Christ-followers, our knee-jerk
reaction to life’s stuff should be prayer, not worry, not seeking
professional help, not looking for some program, but to pray.
The second category of prayer that should be a perpetual part of the
rhythm of our life is praise.
Worship in song is another form of prayer. Praise is prayer in song. I
hope that you all live lives full of worship in song.
This third type of prayer our passage speaks about is healing prayer done by the elders of
the church. God has ordained this avenue of prayer as one source
of His healing power. Now God always responds to our prayers for
healing. However, God definition of healing often is different
from ours.
It is to our shame and great loss that we do not engage in such prayer
as a regular part of our overall ministry. This needs to change,
and will change, as part of our calling to become a house of prayer
most certainly will include having our elders pray over those of you
who need healing in any area on a consistent basis.
The fourth category of prayer our passage speaks to is the category we
will now explore more deeply—inner
healing prayer. Verse 16 invites and admonishes us to “Therefore, confess your sins to
each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
The Catholic Church has turned this one passage into a whole theology
and Sacrament of the Confessional. While we reject the idea that
this practice should be called a Sacrament, or that this mutual
confession should be so formal and only to a priest, they at least
recognize the healing power of mutual confession.
Now let me define what is meant by “confessing our
sins.” I suspect most of you are thinking of this in terms
of telling someone else your list of specific acts of sin. This
is not mutual confession.
Mutual confession is overall manner of relating to others of being
transparent with a trusted friend or in a small group about your
ongoing struggles and trials, and hard questions of God, faith, and
life. It is interacting with others in vulnerable honestly as
opposed to pretending that everything is ok.
Now in the Protestant world, we have sought to live out this passage
through such avenues spiritual direction or counseling, through close
special friendships, and through small group life. And in your
journey of faith, I hope that you are actively engaging in all three of
these powerful, healing, transformative means of grace.
But there is another powerful, and too often neglected avenue, of
connecting with God’s healing power that comes under the larger
category of healing prayer. This category of healing prayer takes
on many forms such as listening prayer, Theophostic prayer, inner
healing prayer, prayerful mediation on Scripture, and Lectio Divina.
Whatever the form, they all serve as a means of grace that brings the
Word of God from our head to our heart, which is a mandatory event if
we are to live in the freedom and power of God’s Word.
So before I present to you some practical steps on how to engage in the
means of grace of healing prayer, let me attempt to explain the
theology behind these practices. It all has to do with head
knowledge versus heart knowledge, with propositional truth versus
experiential truth.
To put it as simply as possible, we are never transformed by head
knowledge. Knowing something to be true in our heads, never
fosters an embracing of that truth in how we live out our life.
If head knowledge was sufficient, none of us would smoke, or over
drink, or over eat, or do anything that we know in our heads to be
wrong or harmful. We do not live driven by rational
understanding. We live driven by what we really believe in our
hearts will give us what we think we need to be happy or successful.
So for truth, and specifically for God’s Word, to change us, we
must experience this truth in our hearts. How does this
happen? Only the Holy Spirit can speak truth into our
hearts. And the Holy Spirit uses specific avenues to do so.
The Holy Spirit speaks truth to our hearts through anointed preaching
and teaching. The Holy Spirit speaks truth when we prayerfully
read and study God’s Word. The Holy Spirit often speaks
truth through the words of others. Now most of us engage in these
avenues of encountering experiential truth.
But the main point of this sermon is this. Engaging only in these
avenues of hearing, preaching,teaching, and personal Bible reading
& study is inadequate, if we want to encounter that full measure of
God’s freedom, healing, wholeness, and power. Using only
these practices is like the doctor giving your two prescriptions for
your illness, but you only choose to take one of them.
So if sermons, Bible teaching, Bible study and reading is only half of
God’s prescription for healing and wholeness, what is the other
prescription? It is all these other means of healing prayer that
I have mentioned.
Now while there are many forms of healing prayer, in this sermon I am
going to present to you three specific practices you can begin to
include in your life. I promise you that if you will engage in
these spiritual practices, you will discover a closer relationship with
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and you will experience increased
freedom and deep healing in your life.
We are going to look at three forms
of healing prayer. Two you can do on your own of
meditation on Scripture and a special form of meditation called Lectio
Divina, and the other requires praying with an experienced prayer
counselor.
1. Memorization and Meditation
of God’s Word
Throughout the Bible, we are invited and commanded to meditate on
God’s Holy Word. Yet how many of us do this? In our
Western Christianity, we have shied away from even using the term
“meditation” as it conjures up images of meditation in
false religions or New Age practices of meditation, and images of
meditation on our belly buttons, or on some meaningless sound.
Our failure to mediate on God’s Word keeps the devil in great joy
because he knows what most of us seems to have forgotten or never
knew. Meditation on God’s Word is thee most powerful avenue
of getting the truth of God’s Word from our heads into our
hearts. And remember the principle of transformation, only truth
in our hearts can free, heal, and change us.
We have this powerful promise in Psalm 1: “Blessed is the
one those who delight in the Law of God and in God’s law they
mediate day and night.” In Joshua 1 we read this command
and promise, “Do not let God’s Word depart from mouth,
mediate on it day and night. Then you will be empowered to obey
it, and then you will be prosperous and successful, then you will be
bold and courageous”
So there are many ways to mediate on Scripture. One powerful way
that as deeply enriched and empowered my life is to memorize a passage,
and then just ponder it throughout the day. I fall asleep every
night mediating on memorized passages.
If you simply cannot memorize things, you can get the same benefit of
mediation, just with the added piece of having to carry around a note
card, by writing out the passage, and pulling it out whenever you have
down time, like standing in line, or driving, or before you fall
asleep, and slowly and prayerfully recite over and over again the
passage.
What will happen is that the Holy Spirit will begin to show you all the
many faceted truth of that passage, and these truths will be spoken by
the Spirit into your heart. And what’s the principle of
transformation: Only truth in your heart, not your head, will
change, free, and heal you!
2. Lectio Divina
Another way of meditation is the ancient practice of Lectio Divina
which can be done alone or in a small group. Lectio Divina is a
Latin term meaning “Divine Reading.” It is a model of
praying the Scripture that has been used by Christians for 1500
years. It is simply a structured form of praying and meditating
on God’s Word.
There are many variations of how to engage in this practice, and if you
Google the term you’ll find hundreds of sites. A copy of
how to do this practice is available in the Narthex as well. Here
is one format for doing Lectio Divina privately.
• Choose a short
passage of Scripture that you desire God to speak to your heart
Place yourself in a comfortable position and allow yourself to become
silent.
• Turn to the text and read it slowly,
gently. Savor each portion of the reading, constantly listening
for the "still, small voice" of a word or phrase that somehow says, "I
am for you today."
• Slowly repeat it to yourself, allowing it to
interact with your inner world of concerns, memories, and ideas.
• Speak to God. Interact with God as you
would with one who you know loves and accepts you. And give to
him what you have discovered during your experience of meditation.
• Rest in God's embrace
• Lectio Divina has no goal other than that of
being in the presence of God by praying the Scriptures.
3. Inner Healing Prayer
So memorization and meditation on Scripture, and Lectio Divina are
powerful models of healing prayer that can be done privately or in a
small group. There are few guarantees in life, but I promise you
that if you begin to include this practice in your prayer life, you
will encounter a much closer relationship with our triune God of grace,
and experience a significant increase to God’s healing, freedom
and power in your life.
This next model of healing prayer is one that must be done with an
experienced prayer counselor. The broader name for this type of
healing prayer is called “inner healing prayer” and it is
practiced under many different models.
In the briefest and broadest of explanations, inner healing prayer is
simply allowing the Holy Spirit to bring into the light of your
conscious memory any hidden pain and deeply imbedded lies. These
strongholds keep you from experiencing the full measure of freedom,
healing, wholeness, victory, joy, and power that Christ longs for you
to live in for His glory and kingdom purposes. The outcome of
inner healing prayer, is a life of increased faith, hope, and love.
Here is why many people need to receive such ministry. None of us
can escape being deeply wounded by life. We are sinful people
living in a sinful world interacting continually with other sinful
people and sinful human institutions. Like the line in
“Princess Bride,” “Life is pain and anyone who tells
you differently is trying to sell you something!”
Many of us experience deep woundedness through abuse, or serious
losses, or failed expectations and shattered dreams. Many people
are born with just extra sensitive souls and experience deep
woundedness by events that others may not find so hurtful. Many
hear extremely hurtful words spoke to them that take deep root and
fosters within them a polluted self image or a corrupted image of God
or others.
No matter what the source, these deep wounds and imbedded lies become
strongholds that serve as a barrier for that person being able to live
in freedom, joy, and the full measure of intimacy with the Father, Son,
and Spirit, and with others. They try and try and try to do all
the right things, read the Bible, pray, worship, etc, but none of these
regular means of grace seem to work for them. Often they give up
on God. Many keep connected to God and a faith community, but
come and go to worship and fellowship with their deepest pain and
secret sin untouched and unhealed.
And here’s why: There are some deep wounds, and some
imbedded lies that will never be freed and healed by only engaging in
the standard means of grace of studying the Word, praying, worshipping,
fellowshipping, and serving. Some issues require the
“spiritual surgery” of inner healing prayer.
What happens in an inner healing prayer session is really quite
simple. A prayer minister will invite the Holy Spirit to bring
into a person’s thoughts or feelings the area of woundedness or
lies that our Lord wants to address at that time. Once the lie or
pain is discovered, the prayer minister than ask Christ to personally
speak His healing word directly to the person in that area of bondage.
Now the process is simple, but the results are miraculous. This
process is also very dangerous as you are stepping into areas of deep
pain and lies. This is
why this practice should only be done with an experienced prayer
counselor. In this congregation, that includes my wife and
I, and we are in the process of training others as well.
Let me give you two examples of just a how powerful this model of
healing prayer can be. One I will just mention briefly, and at
some time in the future she can give a full testimony on this. My
wife Kelly struggled with eating disorder for many years. She
tried all manner of professional help. She then went through a
number of inner healing events and she was completely set free from
this bondage.
The next testimony of the power of inner healing is brought to you live
by our very own Pauline.
• Testimony by
Pauline