By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Whether you’re breeding and training horses, raising cattle or competing in rodeo, at first look, it’s a lot of solitary work. But if you go out to the barn and you find your horse is lame or has a bad gash on his leg, you call a veterinarian for help. You get advice on supplements from the feed store and when it comes time to branding cattle, you have a whole team of help to work through the process.
In the roughstock side of rodeo, it’s you versus that bucking horse or bull, but you still need someone to open the gate when you nod your head.
There’s much in our lives that we go through alone, even when we have families, we sometimes keep struggles to ourselves. But James shows us the importance of community through prayer.
James 5: 13-18 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 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. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
These verses are sometimes used to suggest that with enough faith and prayer, healing is guaranteed but we know even from the first chapter of James, that the only thing we can count on in our broken and fallen world, is that we are going to face trials. Sometimes the healing we desire or the escape from our struggle doesn’t come or it doesn’t come easy.
We know that God will turn a trial into something good, but now, near the end of James, we also know we aren’t supposed to be the only person praying and we aren’t supposed to go through a trial alone.
And, we’re supposed share our joy with others, as James sells us to sing praise when God works in our lives, which shares that praise with everyone.
We’re in community together, good and bad.
When I’ve sinned, confessing it to others and praying together is going to strengthen our position against repeating that sin and we are going to draw on strength from others more mature than us as they pray for us. James isn’t specific if the healing he mentions is from physical illness and disease or a spiritual healing but he’s clear that there is power in our pray for others and being part of a community of believers.
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