James 5:13-20 - Part 3

As long as I keep coming back to these verses in James, I keep finding more in them. They really are a wealth of challenges in the few sentences. Over the last couple of weeks, I've written about some of the first verses in this passage: Part 1 and Part 2. Today my thoughts come from James 5:16 which says: "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

This verse starts with something I haven't found that we really like to do. James tells us to confess our sins to each other. Most of the time, we would rather keep our sins to ourselves. We'll confess them to God, all-though even that we sometimes do reluctantly, but we don't seem to naturally want to confess them to other people. Whether we see that as admitting weakness or to do so would breakdown our facade of being perfect or we're embarrassed by what we struggle against, we don't often confess our sins to each other. But James has a good reason for encouraging us to do so. There really is a power of sin that is broken when it's no longer a secret sin.

The idea of confessing our sins to each other is so that they can pray for us about it. Sometimes when we're in the midst of something we might not know what to pray, but when we share it with others, they are able to pray for us and that can help to make the difference in that area of our lives. Being able to pray well for each other is why we confess our sins to each other.

When confessing our sins to each other we do need to keep in mind being appropriate in what we share. To confess our sins, we don't have to give all the detail if it could cause the people listening to stumble. Share just enough for them to know how to pray for you.

The second part of this verse tells us that "the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." For those of us who are disciples of Christ and have had our sinfulness replaced with Jesus' righteousness, we righteous people. That means our prayers are powerful and effective. That's an incredible truth to embrace. Our prayers have the ability to change things, because of Jesus's work on our behlaf. That should motivate us to pray.

quiet time & formulas

Have you felt that there are certian things you're required to do in your quiet time? Or a certain time of day you have to do it? Or a certain amount of time you have to give to it before God will speak to you?

I konw I've often felt like there was a formula I had to follow to have a successful quiet time. I've also spent a lot of time trying to figure out the "magic formula" for getting God to speak clearly to me. Only to discover there is no such thing. There's no one way that is the secret to how to have a quiet time. Each of us is different and for each of us our quiet times will look different.

What is important about a quiet time? What really matters?

A quiet time is really all about building relationship - growing deeper in how well we know God.It's about taking time and making it a priority. In the same way, we make spending time with family and friends important in our lives, we need to make spending time with God important. What we do will probably look different than some of our friends, but that is okay. In fact, that's a good thing, because we're different people.

For me, my quiet time looks different depending on the day and time of year. Sometimes it's in a coffee shop; sometimes outside; sometimes at my dining room table; sometimes sitting in a comfy chair. And it could be morning, afternoon, evening. But, what I've discovered is that most important thing is that I make the time each day.

romantic language

Over the last couple of years I've heard and read a lot of people who were talking about the use of romantic language to describe our relationship with Jesus. When I read two different people talking about it last week, it was something I began to think about a lot. I had definitely noticed the language before, but I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it until now.

To be honest, the language in some songs I've heard lately has not really been language I'm a fan of. I've struggled to sing songs in worship that I feel like could be sung to a boyfriend. If I can't tell when I listen to a song whether it's written as a love song to Jesus or to a boyfriend, I really do have a hard time with it as a song in corporate worship.

I don't mean that we shouldn't love Jesus. I don't want to devalue anything about Jesus' love for us. It's a vital part of our lives as Christians. We need it. But, I sometimes struggle with the language we use when speaking of this.

I don't find this struggle only with worship music. I've also struggled with using the language "dating Jesus" that I've heard at times. It's important that we spend time with God and deepen our relationship with Him. But I've always seen that as spending time with Jesus like you would a friend. To me spending time with friends it listening, talking, laughing, crying. and just overall being together. To me, that's what spending time with Jesus should be as well, and I don't feel that I need to "date Jesus" in order to do so.

Really, when I'm on a date, I'm often putting up my best self. I'm not usually being myself on a date. I'm trying to impress someone and present the part of me I want to have seen and known. But, when I'm out with friends, I'm usually more myself. I'm more likely to let the "real me" be known. I guess that's why I've often had a problem with "dating Jesus". It just doesn't seem like it can be as real to me.

I guess my conclusion about this is that, while we are to love Jesus and loved by Him, we need to be cautious in our use of romantic language to describe that relationship. To me, it seems that when we go overboard with that kind of language, we can actually push people away rather than draw them in.