Amen, all right, well that's all we have time for tonight. Miss Susie, you won the request a song jackpot. You've got a song that was on the player piano and it had five verses, and so we have to sing all five. Yay, so normally I just sing two, but you won tonight. You got all five of yours. There you go. All right, take your Bibles tonight and head over to 2 Thessalonians, nope, nope, nope, James chapter five and verse 13. James 5, 13. And I remind you, while you find that in your Bibles, that our memory verse tonight is from last week's study. 2 Thessalonians 3, 1. Finally, brethren, pray for us. What are we praying for? That the word of the Lord may have what? Free course. And a free course does not mean your first course is free, but you have to pay for dessert. Free course means that the imagery is of a chariot running through the streets, being driven through the streets, and the footman would run before the royal chariot and make sure that nobody's in the way. make way for the king, make way for the king. So you're giving the chariot free course. And so that's what Paul is referring to when we pray that the word of the Lord may have free course, we're praying that obstructions be removed, not only in the preaching of the gospel, but in the receiving of the gospel. So, and that it not only may have free course, but be what? glorified even as it is with you. And how is the word of God glorified then? In his people. By them believing it and obeying it and therefore showing that it's true. And praising him for it. That's right. And so God is glorified when we follow his word and his word is glorified when we obey the Lord in it. That's what we want to see with preaching, isn't it? That people would heed the word of God, and by heeding, they would also do it. Now we go to James. James, chapter five. And I'll read verse number, let me back up to verse 10. Take, my brethren, the prophets. And let me explain some of the grammar here. When he says take my brethren, he doesn't mean take my brothers. Notice that there's a very helpful comma, which means that the next phrase is the ones being spoken to. Take, my brethren, the prophets. So we're taking the prophets, we're not taking the brethren. And what are we to do with the prophets? Well, we're taking them for an example. Let me read the whole verse now. Take my brethren, the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering, affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy, which endure. Let me stop here. The word endure is connected to the previous verse with the word patience. Patience and endurance are almost synonymous, and many times they are synonymous in the King James. Behold, we count them or reconsider them happy, which endured. Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord. And that is the end that the Lord brought in the story of Job, that the Lord is very, what? Pitiful. That means he is, he has a soft heart towards his people, right? and of tender mercy. But of all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay, lest you fall into condemnation. That is, speak simply, amen. Otherwise you'll find yourself of breaking your oaths. Let's not break our oaths, amen? Now, here's what I want you to notice. Is any among you afflicted? Let him what? Pray. Is any merry? Let him sing songs. That's right. Let's pray and then we'll get into it, okay? Lord, open our eyes to see wondrous things in this book and our minds to receive what we have not yet learned. and our spirits to be conformed by the image of Christ preached from this book, and our hearts inclined to love these things, we pray, amen. There is, I think sometimes the church mice play with the sound system. I do hear a little bit of echoeyness, tinnyness in this. I'm gonna turn something down real quick. All right, the thing about these, or this older analog system, it's like you crank it up and it's, you can, the gain is, it sort of rises gradually and then you get to a certain point and it's like a fraction of a millimeter and it's a complete difference. So I don't know if that's helped or not. Sounds a little better to me. Hopefully it doesn't affect the broadcast too much. Anyways, tonight we're talking about prayer still, and tonight's lesson is about praying for afflictions. One of the other commands we find to pray, and by commands I mean things that we are told to pray about. Again, the whole foundation of the series is people ask the question, I don't know what to pray about. What does scripture tell us to pray about? And then that's what we pray about. It really is that simple. Hence the title of the series is Prayer 101. What are we to pray about? Well, one of the things that we're called to pray about is our affliction. Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. And this, if you're not careful, you can read scripture and kind of roll past some of the things that the Lord might be trying to teach us. consideration and meditation come in. But have you ever read this verse and thought, well, I don't need to be commanded to pray for affliction because that seems to be one of the only reasons why we pray is when we are afflicted. So why then would James command us to pray for affliction when it seems to be almost instinctive, right? And by the way, I do believe that this is one of the ways that the image of God is still noticeable in people, by that I mean his law written on their hearts, is you see when they suffer, they want divine help. What's the phrase? There are no atheists in foxholes, why? Because when people are trying to kill you, or you know that your life is coming soon to an end, you tend to, cave into your secular convictions, or away from them, I should say, and you begin to learn to pray. I don't know how many times, you know, we've heard stories of those who were atheists, and in those dire situations, they find themselves, they're shocked to find themselves praying. Devon? I can actually confess that in my wild child days, I was given some Mary Harry's gifts, God, I don't know if you hear me, but please help me. Yeah, I don't know if you hear me, but please help me. Isn't that almost like that scene from It's a Wonderful Life, a movie which many will watch this year. And George Bailey is in the tavern, right? And he's in a bad sort of way. And his prayer, I think it begins, God, I'm not a man of prayer or something like that. But then he begins to pray. I'm not saying that the character wasn't an atheist, but he obviously wasn't a a zealous Christian either, by his own confession. So why would the apostle enjoin us to pray for things that we pretty much already know that we should pray about? And I think he does this because we pray for our afflictions rather poorly. And so there is a previous to verse 13 in verse, 10 and 11 instructions on how we should be praying for our afflictions. But let's begin by asking the question, what are afflictions? Well, it's a very general term, isn't it? It is anything that brings suffering into our lives, whether it's physical or mental or spiritual. And in fact, suffering can overlap all three of those areas where if you're physically suffering, It can mentally afflict you and it can also spiritually drain you as well as physically harm you. So there is many times all of these parts of us involved in suffering. And the apostle though, he directs us in verse 10 to look at the prophets. And here's another example in the New Testament of why you need to be familiar with the Old Testament. Another example of why God's people need the word of God and to be in the word of God. And it was always God's plan that God's people be familiar with the word of God. And I feel bad for so many churches and Christians who go to churches where the word of God is scantily treated and it's not encouraged. The reading isn't. And you need the word of God. You need to be familiar with Elijah and Elisha and Daniel and Isaiah and Jeremiah. You need to know all of these stories and all of these books, be as familiar with them as you possibly can. Because there are in those passages lessons. James says it, Paul says it. These things are written for our examples. Right? The Savior references the Old Testament in his preaching, especially the book of Deuteronomy, which is one of the books that people struggle with reading through. The Savior preached from it more than any other book. And so we need to be familiar with the word of God in the Old Testament and the New. But we're to go to the Old Testament and look at the prophets, James says, and take their lives as an example of suffering affliction. That is, if you wanna see how you should be doing it, then look at the prophets and see how they did it. And there you'll find helpful godly examples of how to get through the suffering in your life. And when we look at the prophets, we see two examples or two ways to learn regarding suffering. And one of the ways is they show us what kind of afflictions we can face. And didn't you look at all the prophets, they all ran the whole gamut, didn't they? You look at, for instance, Job. I mean, come on. We could say Job probably went through the whole litany of suffering in a way that few mortal men have. He was bereaved, and bereaved of his children, which is probably one of the greatest kinds of grief a human can experience, to bury a child, and not just a child, but all of them. But all of them, and I was reading, and I can't remember, I think it was Jeremiah Burroughs, who was a Puritan preacher. I could be wrong about his name, but it was one of those fellas back in the 1600s, and he and his wife had 12 children. Every single one of those children died in childhood. They buried 12 children. And I think the Lord used that kind of grief in his life to make him a mighty theologian and a wonderful pastor and preacher. But I mean, can you imagine 12 little graves That's just unimaginable heartbreak. Job and his grief and his diseases, and not only that, but he had also that mixture of persecution and comfort from his friends. They were friends, the Bible calls them friends, but they didn't, I mean, they were, they were friends who were mal, they were, guilty of malpractice when it comes to applying the word of God. And so the book of Job is a very interesting book. It's a very wonderful book, but you have to be very careful with it, too, because Job's friends say true things, but they apply it in a way that it isn't meant to be applied. And so keep that in mind when you read the book of Job. Jeremiah, what persecution that man suffered. And he preached and nobody would listen to him except one man. And that one man wasn't even a Hebrew. And he was hated, and eventually, church history holds, and I think Jewish tradition also holds that he was murdered, possibly down in Egypt where he was taken away, forcibly. You think of Hosea, another prophet. What happened to him? He married a woman and she became a harlot and it absolutely broke his heart and you can imagine the betrayal he felt and God used his marriage as a metaphor for the Lord's dealings with his people. So and that's just a sampling of the Old Testament prophets and what they suffered you can look at Elijah and Elisha and you can see how they were persecuted, how they were hunted, Elijah was hunted, right? Elisha, he was surrounded by an army, you see? And the list goes on. You understand, they show us then what kind of afflictions we may face. And I truly doubt that you will face anything that the prophets have not faced, and certainly what the Lord Jesus has not. if not in specific events, certainly in categories. They also show us not only what kind of afflictions, but they show us how to endure our afflictions. And sometimes they show us how not to endure our afflictions. For instance, Elijah. Yeah, Elijah, what did he do? He sat beneath the juniper tree, right, and felt sorry for himself. And the Lord was gracious to him and fed him, but he also reprimanded him. And so they show us most often how to endure, but sometimes how not to endure. Now, another reason why the apostle tells us, he commands us to pray for something that we feel like we instinctively do already is because Oftentimes, when we pray for our afflictions, it's because we get around to it, because nothing else has worked. And prayer becomes not our first recourse, but our last resort. And since nothing else has worked, now let's try prayer. Well, this is not how Christians treat their afflictions. You don't go to God when, Nobody else has helped you, and nothing else really has helped. You go to God immediately with everything, including this issue of suffering, and understand that our initial reactions reveals our hearts. I think psychologists sometimes use, or psychiatrists, I get them mixed up. I've tried to figure out the distinction between them over and over again. The guys who look at your head, the head shrinks. They sometimes use a word, Again, they mention something and then the first word that comes to your mind, they try to read into that some sort of a mental situation that's going on in your head based on your reactions. I'm not necessarily advocating that, but I am saying your initial reactions often do indicate where your heart is. And when you suffer and you're going through afflictions, do we go to God in prayer or do we first complain to others? I think probably one of the most common manifestations of this is instead of storming heaven, people are spamming social media with all of their conflicts and sufferings and problems. There's nothing wrong with sharing your afflictions with people. Don't get me misquoted on this, but understand that your first reaction, your first impulse ought to be going to God. And maybe go to God not just about your affliction, but how much of it to share with others before you, you know, spill your beans with the whole world. Maybe pour out your heart to God first. and let him give you help in that, and let him give you guidance in your suffering and your affliction. And I want you to notice Job's initial reaction to his extreme suffering. It's in your notes, but it's also in Job chapter one in verse 20 when the messengers were coming one after another to Job to tell him of all these calamities. When the final one came, Job arose and he rent his mantle, like his exterior robe, And, of course, that's a very cultural thing. I'm not saying that's what you should do. But he's expressing immediately grief in a way that his culture would express it. And he shaved his head. Again, I'm not saying that you should, unless you like shaving your head. But this was, again, his expression of grief. And notice what he did next. He fell down on the ground. And what did he do? He worshipped. Job's initial reaction was not to, you know, bellyache with the world or even with those close to him, but immediately to express his grief as he goes to worship God. And he's not even going to God in the sense of he's going to pray and ask for, you know, everything to be made better right away. He's going to God and he's worshiping. His affliction has brought him to his knees in the sense of he sees God as right in all he does, though he cannot understand it. And Job, of course, no man is sinless, and Job's latent sin is discovered through the book. You find it in the end of the book. But nevertheless, you see this shining example of a prophet's righteousness. in the beginning of his story as he worships immediately after his life just absolutely collapses in on itself. And so we learn that we should go to God in prayer about our suffering first. First. And we see in scripture also that those who delay in prayer are often those we see as having weak faith or even no faith. Two little too late examples include King Saul, who started out strong in his walk with God and his royal appointment, but it didn't take long for the wheels to fall off and he never did really recover any modicum of godliness and He walked all of his days, mostly, without walking with God faithfully, and when he finally tried to inquire of God before a battle, the Bible says, the Lord answered him not. Too little, too late. During the plagues, don't forget about Pharaoh. He asked Moses to pray when judgment was unbearable, right? That's when he wanted God's ear. But when the pain was gone, What did he do? He hardened his heart and went his own way. Forgot about the Lord and the pain and was once again arrogant and smug, wasn't he? And King Asa, I'm reminded of him. And there's other examples I'm sure we could plumb the scriptures and find, but King Asa consulted with only the physicians when he had a disease and did not pray to God about his disease. And how did that end for him? He died from it. Now, I know that there are some extreme faith healers who use that story to show that you shouldn't go to physicians at all. That's hogwash. Luke was a physician, right? The usage of physicians is never, ever once condemned. But however, what Asa's problem was, is he not only did not go to God initially, he didn't go to God at all. And that's not how God's people should react to their sufferings. Thirdly, another way that we fail in prayer for our afflictions is, and I hear this often, not from you folks, you understand, but generally in conversing with Christians and over the years of ministry, this is something I've heard more frequently than I wish, and it's this. Well, I tried that when referencing prayer. Have you prayed about it? Well, I tried prayer. I tried praying about it. I tried that. And may I suggest to you that we do not try prayer. And if that's even a part of your vocabulary, you're in the wrong mode, Christian. Prayer is not something we try, it is something we do. It is a lifestyle that we live. It is, well, that's why we call it walking with God, amen? We walk with God. That means we pray all the time with God, not just in our set prayer time, but we understand that God is available all throughout the day, and we pray whenever the need arises, whenever the inclination hits, right? And so we don't try it. It's something we do. It is a life that we live. Jesus spake a parable to this sin in Luke 18, or for this reason, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. And that fainting is not passing out, it's giving up, okay? And it's not giving up on what you're praying about, it's giving up on prayer. You see, men are always to be praying, men and women, you understand, all people are always to be praying and always continuing in prayer and never quitting praying. And he gives parables to teach us that we should never, ever, ever, ever quit praying. And when we look to the prophets for examples of how to suffer an affliction, the apostle tells us not only to learn of their suffering, affliction, but to learn of their patience. And that is to see as they suffer that they learn through their godliness, their walk with God, they learn to endure the suffering. And here again is where many times our praying for our afflictions is wrong. We almost always pray that God would take the afflictions away, and that is all we pray about with our afflictions. But there is something that God is teaching us in our suffering, and that is endurance, patience. And so instead of only praying that God would deliver you from your afflictions, and there's nothing wrong with that, But in addition to that, pray that God would teach you patience. And I'll say this, if in your suffering, you are not growing in endurance and patience, you're doing it wrong. And it could be, and I can't say this is true for everybody in every situation because it's not, but it could be that the Lord is prolonging affliction until we learn what he has for us to learn. And so when you pray in your suffering, you should be praying, first of all, that God would give you grace to endure your suffering and to have patience in it and to endure it in such a way that it brings glory to his name. And pray that your heart would be molded to where you want to glorify God in your life no matter how he sovereignly chooses to do that in your life, because he wants that from you. And he has ways of working in every person's life to get you to the point where your life is a glory to him. And often that involves, for some, lifelong suffering, and for others, temporary seasons of suffering. Paul, there's your hand up. Look, King David and everything, it was his sin that brought about the correction from God and everything, but when he learned what the, I believe, when he learned what the Lord was trying to teach him, it said that he got up and dressed himself and worshiped. Yes. when he found out the child was dead. You're right. And his response shows that he was in prayer, not only praying that the child would live, obviously, but also praying that his heart would be readied for whatever comes. And well, the child died. And his response was, well, they were like, well, why aren't you? Yeah, why aren't you like completely beside yourself? Well, because he cannot come to me, but I will go to him. And so he he had an eternal perspective. And that's what we need in our suffering, isn't it? We need God's eternal perspective. We can't have it in the way that he does, but we can have a measure of grace to help us see it more through God's eyes than ours. So the emphasis in James 5.13 is that of initial reaction. So it's not that you didn't know you should pray for your afflictions, but rather James is driving home, I believe, and emphasizing the need that this is how we should react. Are you afflicted? Pray. And what's the rest of the verse? Is any, Mary. Is any Mary sing psalms? So when something really good happens, we should be singing. Can we be bottom shelf for a second here? When was the last time you sang to God because something wonderful happened? Well, good, good. I hope it's as frequently as it... I didn't exactly sing, but... Huh? I didn't exactly sing, you might say. Right, well, but you know what I mean. You praise God. Paul? I was thinking of Paul and Silas in prison. You know, they were married in the midst of the persecution and everything else. Yeah. And the Roman prison was noted for an extremely bad place to be. Yes, and the apostles had this wonderful, and it's interesting you bring that up, the Jameson Fawcett Brown commentary mentions that very instance with this verse in James, that often those who are afflicted are merry in their affliction. and they sing songs. How is that possible? By the grace of God. And that's what we're praying about when we pray in our afflictions, that even in the affliction, there can be a happiness in the Lord. Because for instance, when Paul and John were beaten for preaching in the name of Jesus, they went away rejoicing because they were counted worthy to suffer for his name. And so that is how, that is where we want to be in our suffering, that we can rejoice in it, right? Because it is God's way of glorifying his name through our lives. And for that, we give him thanks and we count ourselves worthy then. to suffer for his name, as Paul and Silas sang in prison, as Peter and John were beaten and rejoiced afterwards, and as Paul was even glad for the thorns in the flesh that he had, because he learned that when he is weak, then actually he is strong through the grace and strength of the Lord. So one of the ways that we pray, one of the things that we should pray for is our afflictions. And let me say, that we do, and understand I'm not discouraging you from praying for others. You, by all means, should pray for others a lot. But Paul, or James says, is any among you afflicted? Let him, the person who's afflicted, let him pray. So, it's very personal, isn't it? Are you afflicted? Are you suffering? Then you pray for your suffering. And others will pray for you and with you, amen? But you, let this be your reaction when you suffer, that you go to God in prayer. Remember the prophets as an example, amen? Amen, all right, we're gonna end the lesson there, and we're gonna say goodnight to all of those watching online. Say goodnight, everybody. Actually, let me pray real quick, and then we'll dismiss everybody, okay? Let's pray. Lord, help us to then, by your grace, learn to react to our suffering with prayer, and when we are merry, help us to react to our happiness with singing of songs and songs of praise to you. we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, give everybody a wave. They can't see you, but I'd like to see a wave anyway.