Leading The Way

Host (Male): Welcome to Leading the Way with international Bible teacher Dr. Michael Youssef. And today, the final message of an inspirational series in the book of James. It's called 12 Evidences of Faith. Dr. Michael Youssef helps you better understand the evidence true believers should have glowing in their lives. Today, prayer. Be encouraged as you listen to Dr. Youssef's message, Releasing His Power Through Prayer.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Four things here that the Apostle James gives us as this 12th evidence of faith. First, in verse 13, he says pray always. Secondly, in verses 14 and 15, he says pray for one another. And then thirdly, he comes to verses 16 to 18 and he said pray the kind of prayer that releases God's power, that brings about answers to prayer. And fourthly, he says pray for you and for others that they may remain faithful to the Lord.

First he said pray all times. Is any of you in trouble? He should pray. Any of you happy? Should pray. You see, James understood like most of us understand that when you're in trouble, when you're going through tough times, we can become real great prayer warriors. We pray hard and we pray diligently when we are going through tough times, when we want something from God, we want God to answer.

We're at every prayer meeting. We ask people to pray for us. When we're oppressed by our circumstances, when we come to the end of ourselves, we pray and we become great prayer people, men, women, boys and girls. And what James is saying is that when God answers your prayer, that you should be as serious and as diligent and as intentional in praising God as much as you were when you were petitioning God. That's what he's saying.

The problem with spiritual immaturity is that when we want God we ask and we ask and we ask, and then when God answers our prayer, we may, just may, say thank you God and run off until we need him again. Now, James is saying it's okay to pray and petition God in the time of suffering. Don't you stop asking God in the times of trouble. Don't you stop asking God to bring your need to him. Keep on doing it. But please, praise him with the same intensity and with the same desire, with the same diligence and with the same persistence when he answers your prayer.

Now, here's a major problem with some believers. And I'm saying some, not everybody. You can identify with it whether you are or you're not. There are some people when they're facing tough times, difficult times, instead of pressing hard toward the heart of God, they withdraw fellowship from God. They stop praying. Are you one of those? Listen carefully. Just when they need to be closest to God, they run away from him.

Some Christians do that and you wonder why they do this. There are at least two reasons. Both are really either a false view of God or false view of what suffering is. First, many Christians have the wrong view of suffering. They think that if they have been dealt a powerful blow or a setback in life, then God must be angry with them. And because kids learn to avoid and get away from an angry parent, they avoid God because they think God is angry with them.

Now, this is a faulty view of understanding God and the grace of God in life. I'm talking about Christians, I'm talking about believers and I'm talking about people who have been born again, saved by grace. I'm not talking about somebody outside the church. But the reason they do that every time they're in trouble, they get away from God instead of getting closer to God, is because they have never let go of the feeling of guilt and shame and inadequacy of their past sins.

That's why. And so, when God pursues them trying to enfold them in his gracious arm, they think that God is out there to punish them. When he's trying to enfold them into his loving arms to say, "I love you. I care for you. I forgave your sins. My son paid for your sins on the cross," they run away from the loving God like a frightened guilty child.

The second thing is that many people stay away from God in times of trouble because they are angry with God. Now, whether they are going through a financial crisis, or whether they're going through some health issues, or whether they're going through some setbacks of some sort in life, they become angry with God. And listen to me, Satan loves it when a believer is angry with God. He really does. He feels that he's got you exactly where he wants you. Why? Because that way he can get them to rationalize sin and rebellion.

How does Satan do that? Listen carefully. He comes to the person and says, "You know, listen snookums, whatever your name is, you need to get back at God for not doing this or not doing that or the other thing." Asaph was a great musician. He was the head of the choir for King David. Wonderful composer. Wrote lots of wonderful psalms. And in Psalm 73, he looked at how the wicked seem to be prospering and the righteous are suffering and he got angry with God. He said, "I'm wasting my righteous living. I've been good to God. How come God cannot be good to me?"

And then God graciously takes him and let him see the eternity and what's going to happen to those so-called prospering wicked people. And then in the end he says, "Oh Lord, I am sorry. I was a donkey." That's a Semitic way of saying I was stupid, spiritually stupid, and I'm deeply sorry. Years ago, a child psychologist told me this. I've never forgotten it and I'll never forget it.

He said the number one reason some teenagers get into trouble, whether it be cutting themselves or pornography or sexual illicitness or addiction of any kind, he said the number one reason is that they convince themselves that their parents don't love them. And if they convince themselves that the parents don't love them, they can justify the rebellion and sin. Listen, that's how some believers behave. That's how some believers react. They say God doesn't love me, and Satan loves it.

Praying in the times of trouble does at least three things. It's an antidote to loneliness. It is a reminder that God is in control. And it helps us see things and circumstances from God's perspective, not ours. Back in 1855, an Irish poet by the name of Joseph Scriven composed a hymn that is known to most of us: What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Most people don't realize that that hymn came out of the furnace of affliction.

You see, Joseph was engaged to be married not just once, but twice. His first fiancee drowned on the day before the wedding was supposed to take place. The second time he got engaged, his fiancee died of pneumonia. Can you imagine the girls in town running away from him? And in the end, he decided that he's going to dedicate his life 24/7 to serving the Lord. Far from being angry with God, he gave his whole to God. In fact, he wrote that song originally as a poem for his mother to comfort her when he left Ireland and went to Canada.

But then some of the stanzas were added later: Have we trials and temptations? Have we trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness. Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Pray at all the times. Secondly, he said, pray for one another. Verses 14 and 15. Is any of you sick? You should call the elders of the church and pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. See, James is speaking about the person who's so sick he couldn't go to church. And he talks about the oil because the oil is the symbol of the Holy Spirit's power to heal. Now, I think some of you know this, but I want to tell you anyway.

This particular verse is talking about the faith of the elders, not the faith of the sick person. Now, I am not minimizing the faith of the sick person, but I want to tell you, at least in this passage, he's talking about the faith of the elders. And what this prayer of faith is all about? What is that all about? It is the belief expressed in prayer by the elders of the church, namely that our sovereign God is in the business of healing people.

It is the belief that the option for healing remains in God's hands, not ours. It is the belief that when we do pray, we do not order God to do something like a genie. It is the belief that we submit to the sovereign will of God. It is the belief that it's God's prerogative to heal or not, not an obligation. It is the belief that our obligation is to petition God and then trust him fully for the outcome. Pray at all times. Pray for each other.

Thirdly, he said, pray that prayer that releases the power of God in answered prayer. Talk about a misunderstood verse. Therefore confess your sins to each other and the prayer of the righteous man, in the old translation it said, "availeth much." It is powerful and effective. What does that mean, confess your sins to one another? Now, here's the sad part. It is fashionable in some circles in this 21st-century church in the West to take this to mean that you got to hang out all your dirty laundry for everyone to see.

Tell everybody every sin you committed. I'm aware of some groups that practice this travesty and ended up destroying many a marriage because of this public revelation. They think that this verse means you got to have total honesty. And they think total honesty means that you tell everything. I want you to listen carefully, please, because that is a total misunderstanding of this verse. Because when you do that, where is the focus? The focus is on sin, not on the power of God to forgive sin.

When you focus on that and when you focus on sin, not the power of God to forgive sins, the devil can use that to drag you back to sin. So, what does it mean, confessing your sin one to another? Listen very carefully. First, you must begin confession of sin to God because ultimately every sin is a sin against God. The Psalmist in Psalm 51 said, "Against you and only you have I sinned." And that is why 1 John 1:9 says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

Secondly, we confess our sin only to the people who were affected by our sin. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 if you go to the altar and you're about to offer your gift and then you remember you hurt somebody, you did something wrong, you leave them there and not stand up in the middle of the temple and say, "Hey guys, I have done this and this and the other thing." He said no, go to the person. You go to the person that you wronged and you confess to him or her.

The third thing I want to tell you is this. We should never confess our sins beyond those who have been impacted by our sins. Private sins require private confession to God and to the individual who's been hurt by our sin. Why is this so important? Listen to me. Why am I spending time? Why? Because such accurate and biblical confession releases the power of God. You see, when you don't confess your sin, you create a barrier between you and God.

Now, God does not put the barrier. Don't blame God for that. God never moves. God never changes. But we place a barrier between us and God. When we confess our sin, what are we doing? We come in agreement with God because God knows what happened anyway. God knows our sin anyway. And therefore, when I come in agreement with God, I say God I am deeply sorry, I repent, please forgive me. James said there is a secret of blessing when you come in agreement with God.

There's a power in agreement. Imagine the power of agreement with God. Listen, if we don't keep short accounts with God every time we pray we're going to feel like heaven is like iron and the earth is like brass. We're not going anywhere. The Psalmist said if I incline a sin in my heart, that is if I don't confess my sin, God will not hear me. That barrier that we have created by our sin.

Here's something I want to tell you you must never, never, never forget. Those believers who are not growing spiritually, it is because they have a casual attitude toward sin. They really do, they have a casual attitude toward sin. But sometimes you have to ask the question: what keeps a person from confessing to God and confessing to the person that they wronged? What keeps them from asking for forgiveness? Well, sometimes it's because of pride. We don't want to say we're wrong. We don't want to say I'm sorry. Pride plays a dominant role.

Other times it's because of fear. We always say, "Well, what's going to happen if that person withdraws forgiveness from me? What's going to happen if that person rebuffs me? What's going to happen if that person deliberately turns around and hurts me?" Let me tell you something. It is worth it. It is worth it to be able to receive the blessing of God and the power that he releases in answer to prayers. It's worth it. The blessing of confession and seeking forgiveness.

And sometimes it's just general dishonesty. We are like Adam, we try to hide from God and hide from others and even hide from ourselves. We'd rather cover up than confess. But that's why James is saying that it is vitally important to confess. Why? He gives us the answer in verse 16. Healing will take place when we do. What kind of healing is he talking about? It is the healing that comes from mending our fellowship with God, from mending our fellowship with one another.

Look at the last line of verse 16: the prayer of the righteous. You have to ask who are the righteous. Listen carefully. All the believers are righteous in some way because we have no righteousness of ourselves. When we came to the Lord Jesus Christ and received him as savior and Lord, the Bible said Jesus imputes his righteousness upon us. So we only have an imputed righteousness, all the believers do. But I know and you know not all believers walk in that righteousness.

And that is why he's saying when we have short accounts with God, when we confess, that is the righteousness that pleases God. And that's why the prayer of the righteous, not a special supersaint, not a pastor or an elder, but anybody who is walking in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who's confessing and keeping short accounts and not holding grudges and not building grudges, that person, his prayer and her prayer are going to be answered. See, that's the power that God releases as a result of us keeping short accounts.

And that's why he goes on to tell us about Elijah. Elijah was intimate with God. Elijah was attuned to the mind of God. Elijah would not allow anything to come between him and God. Elijah knew the mind of God so much so that when he prayed, God released his power. But Elijah was far from perfect. Let me give you a Youssef translation. Elijah was flawed like all of us. I know it's a rough translation, but that's really what he meant.

But he would not allow a barrier to build between him and God. Elijah knew God. He trusted God fully. He obeyed God even when his knees were knocking. Pray all the times. Pray for others. Pray that prayer that releases the power of God. And fourthly, pray that you and others remain faithful. Verses 19 and 20. One of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back.

He said remember this: whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover a multitude of sins. Do you know someone who's wandering from the Lord right now? Someone is wandering from the fold of God? You may be a person here today who had wandered away from the fold of God and God brought you here for a purpose to hear this message. Because God is pursuing you. He wants you to come into his embrace.

He's not pursuing you so he punishes you. He's pursuing you so he may bring you in and hold you and enfold you. If you know someone that you tried to restore and bring back to the truth and for whatever reason they're not responsive, listen to me very carefully. Here's what you need to know. Don't ever give up praying for that person. Don't ever surrender his or her soul. Keep asking for the opportunity to restore the brother or the sister. Your prayer will cover a multitude of sin.

In all of this, there's something of vital importance. He's saying that love does not sweep sin under the carpet. It doesn't. And where there is love, there is truth. And where there is truth, there is an honest confession. Where there is honest confession of sin, there is cleansing and forgiveness and power.

Beloved, I know in the spiritual life, sometimes people feel trapped. They may feel trapped in an illness. They may feel trapped in financial circumstances not of their own doing. They may feel trapped in past sins. They may feel trapped in some opposition and scorn of others. They may feel trapped in one form of addiction or another. And when you feel trapped, the natural tendency is to panic. But don't do the natural. Do the supernatural. The natural tendency is to lose your head or you pound and you scream or imagine the worst.

That is why don't forget there is an emergency button. It's called prayer. And you can pray to the one who has limitless power who listens to you 24/7, the one who loves you more than anyone is able to love you. The prayer of the righteous availeth much. After confession and cleansing and restoration, God's power is going to be released in you. The question is: are you ready?

Host (Male): Thank you for making time to listen to Dr. Michael Youssef and Leading the Way. I really appreciate the timely reminder that prayer is reaching out to the one who has limitless power and he loves me more than anyone.

Guest (Female): I grew up in a very traumatic living situation. I was sexually abused. I was very terrified of pretty much everything and I didn't trust anyone. And I had a great desire to be loved. My heart craved love. As I look back, I can tell that there were many instances where the Lord was beckoning for me to draw near to him. Sometimes I would just walk by a church and I felt like the church was calling me to come inside. One day I was at home and the Lord impressed in my spirit that he was real. And I decided to ask the Lord to come into my heart and save me.

And I was baptized. As I grew in my Christian faith, I entered a phase in my life where it was very confusing. It was during that time of crisis that I started listening to Dr. Michael Youssef's teachings, which I found were very uncompromising. And that really drew me. The Lord was showing me that I needed to hold fast to his word and that he could be trusted as a sure foundation. And Dr. Youssef preaches the uncompromising truth: the word of God.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. That's our God.

Guest (Female): By listening to Dr. Michael Youssef, my faith began to grow. As the Lord says, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And when I found out that Dr. Youssef and the rest of the team were coming to DC, I was so excited. I just knew that I had to be there to hear Dr. Youssef proclaim the gospel and to be in prayer along with my brothers and sisters in Christ. It was such an amazing event. In addition to Awake America, I am so excited about the Navigators. There are people all over the world who can access these Navigators and hear the gospel being proclaimed in their own native language.

That is just so awesome. The Lord used Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef in my life to help me greatly. Now the way that the Lord is using me, he's just constantly connecting me with people and giving me a burden for people so that I can pray for them and share the good news of the gospel. You can trust the Lord. He loves you. His word is true.

Host (Male): Learn more about Dr. Youssef and how you can be on mission with Leading the Way through this month's giving challenge. In fact, today is the last day in this month's giving challenge. Learn more when you call 866-626-4356 or when you visit online LTW.org. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at LTW.org.