No matter where you turn these days, every industry as we know it is being impacted by artificial intelligence or AI. And, and so there's a lot of positive uses for AI in the different uh places of business or even the school and things that the ability to adapt and to learn, uh, but it's also if you've watched sci- fi movies, like there's a small part of you like, is this it? Is this now? Is this where the robots try to take over? Um, and maybe it's just me. Um, and so I was just curious and using AI in ministry because it reads so much data constantly over and over and over again. And so I, I put in an interesting prompt this week. Uh, but the results were so specific, I had to share it with you. I asked, I asked Chat GBT, I asked this question. I said, if you were the devil, it's always a good start to a prompt, um, I said, if you were the devil, how would you keep people from following God? You know, artificial intelligence is really reading the inputs of the culture, right? It's, it's real-time reading what everyone's watching, seeing, doing, right? All these data points together. And so by asking the question, it really is just giving, OK, what does society say about itself, is what I was asking, right? And here was the response. It was so specific. I need to read this to you. So the prompt was, if you were the devil, how would you keep people from following God? And here's how AI responded to me. It said, if I were the devil, I wouldn't waste my time trying to make people atheists. I'd simply distract them. I'd fill their schedule so full that God becomes optional. I'd dull their affections, so church feels boring and the Bible feels irrelevant. I divide them from community so that they try to follow Jesus alone. I'd normalize small compromises that slowly harden their hearts. I'd confuse truth so they don't know what to believe. I'd tempt them to delay obedience, thinking, I'll just do it tomorrow. I discourage them with lies about their identity. I'd soothe them with easy pleasures that never satisfy. I'd turn prayer into performance and faith into a show. I'd convince them to hoard everything, their time, money and influence, so they forget the joy of generosity. Because if I can distract you, dull you, divide you, compromise you, confuse you, delay you, discourage you, soothe you, professionalize your faith, and make you fearful, then I don't have to destroy your faith. You'll do it for me. That's the world we live in, folks. It's scary and it's realistic. But there's good news Is that our battle is not against flesh and blood. I guess the evil one. But our weapons are not of this world. They are supernatural, and they are of God. And the enemy doesn't fear a perfect church. Satan's not prowling around the world going, man, I really hope they don't hit every transition and notes and everything goes well at the church, like all the details come into place. No, the enemy doesn't fear a perfect church. The enemy fears a praying church. Because alone, we are vulnerable to every tactic of the enemy, but together, united in prayer to God, we become unstoppable. That's why if you're taking notes, I encourage you to write this down, that a praying church. is a powerful church. A praying church is a powerful church. We're wrapping up our series in James. And the idea behind the letter is you have James, the half brother of Jesus. And who's the leader of the church in Jerusalem. And he doesn't really believe that Jesus is God until after the resurrection. But when he does, he gives his life to it. But the early church is experiencing persecution, so you have dispersed Christians throughout the region. who are going through very difficult times, and he's writing to to share really how does faith work in a world that doesn't. And so he doesn't hold any punches. He's very direct, it's very practical. That's why so much of what he says 2000 years ago applies directly to us today. Because he's saying, hey, I get it. You're going through hard times. There's divisions, there's difficulties, there's distractions. Let me tell you what we're called to do as a church, and let me call you, tell you more importantly, who we're called to be as a church. And so all throughout it, we have practical advice. We see things in here to, you know, to not only hear the word, but to do it. And that faith without works is dead. In other words, useless, useless, or that life is merely a vapor. Your life in the entirety of what you do here on Earth is summed up in a breath. And so how do we live in light of eternity? How do we respond when people are angry, right? How do we tame the tongue? How do we find community? How do we build up our resilience? How do we live this out? So we give, we come to the end. And he's going to encourage people with his most formidable weapon. And that is prayer. Church tradition has it that he prayed so often that someone actually gave him the nickname Camel knees. Because camels, when they lay down, they kind of go knees first and kind of look awkward when they go down, and their knees are, are kind of gnarly and, and, and callous. And so James prayed so much and so often. That he was given that nickname. And before we jump into Uh, our study of James 5, we're reminded here in just the chapter before. He says this in James 4 verses 2 and 3. He says, you do not have because you do not ask, and you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions. In other words, he's saying, you don't ask because you don't pray, and even when you do pray, you pray for the wrong things. And it's not that it's bad to pray for the food and then to to pray for safe travels or traveling mercies that we say when we're in church, right? Traveling mercies, um, but prayer is so much more than that. You see, prayer itself is, is not passive, it's powerful. And in a world that doesn't work, prayer reminds us that God still works, and that it's really this idea that Prayer I'll put it this way, prayer is not. About instant gratification. But instead, prayer is about eternal transformation. Late pastor and author Tim Keller, who's got a great book on prayer, uh, and you can look it up, it's simply titled Prayer. It's kinda right on the nose there. But in his teachings around it, he says these words, and I'm paraphrasing here, he says, the purpose of prayer is not to satisfy your desires immediately. But to set your heart and mind on the person who will satisfy your desires ultimately. It's not about gratifying the immediate desires, but rather setting your heart and your mind and align, uh, aligning yourself with the one who will satisfy the desires of your soul ultimately. I share often when I talk to people about prayer, the illustration from Kent Hughes in his book Disciplines of a Godly Man, he compared prayer to have a boat tying a rope to shore, that if you have a boat and you have the shore, when you tie the rope to shore and you pull, are you pulling the shore to the boat? Are you pulling the boat to the shore? Right, well, you're pulling the boat to the shore. In the same way, when you pray, you are aligning your heart with God's heart. That it's not simply a shopping list of things you want. Right, I love the day and age that we live in. Right? We can, we can say all we want about the distractions of technology, but I sure do love me some Instacart. You know what I mean? Oh, man, the schedule's full, days are full. I go, oh, I want this, this and this, boom, and it's at your doorstep. It's great. The problem is we sometimes pursue prayer like we do Instacart order. OK, God, I got this need, this need, this need, this need. OK, pray, uh, you're gonna deliver when? And we think God answers prayers on our timeline. He doesn't do that, does he? Why? Because prayer is not a button to be pushed, but a relationship to be pursued. There's talking with God, there's listening to God, and there's simply being with God. How does a child learn to speak? A child learns to speak in the presence of a parent. And it starts by listening. And at first they're just utterances, right? Right, right. Well, more important than the formation of the child's words is the presence of the parent. Why? Because the parent understands the needs of the child. In the same way, when we learn to pray, we are learning to be in the presence of God. And it really is a way of life, more than a moment of pleading. Right? We are learning to connect with his heart. It says in Psalm 37:4, it says, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. He will give you the desires of your heart. Well, that first part is the key part there, that if you delight yourself in the Lord, if you place your heart into his hands, if you pull your boat to shore, when your heart is aligned with God's heart, then what you're gonna ask for, it's what God's gonna give you, which is God Himself. It's the very presence and power of God, the same God that spoke the world into existence, that was there for all the prophets and leaders and the early followers of Him, that then when Jesus came down and spent time with his disciples, died on the cross, was buried, rose again on the 3rd day, offered the Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us to launch the movement known as the church, so that we would come to him. Right? Think about the disciples. The disciples were with Jesus pretty much every day for about 3.5 years. They could ask him any question. And the question they wanted to know was Jesus, teach us to pray. Like if it were me, I might be like, yo, Jesus, can you teach me that whole water thing? That was cool. You know, water or wine, that might be nice. Maybe walking on water, that's cool there or maybe the food out of nothing, or how do you heal someone? How do you preach? Right? I'm a preacher, I love preaching. Would it be great? Like Jesus had to teach me to preach. The disciples didn't say that. They said teach me to pray. Why? Because prayer, even for Jesus, was a foundational component of. His life and that if we're called to walk as Jesus walked, as it says in First John 2:6, that then we're called to pray as Jesus prayed, because prayer is not a button to be pushed, but a relationship to be pursued, and that it is vital to Christians as much as it is breathing for humans to survive. So what does James say? Let's read it together. James chapter 5 verse 13. Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray You're hurting, you're struggling. Go to God. Is anyone cheerful? Really translated is, is anyone well with their soul? Good times are bad. If you're well with your soul, let them sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Sick here, by the way, could mean more than just physically sick. All those who are weak and weary. Carrying a burden that they can't handle, mental, emotional. Everything that you got nothing left to give. It says, let him call for the elders of the church. Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. It was a practice of the early church and and really the the power was not just in the oil itself, but in the in the God that they prayed to. And so there was practical implications of the oil for medicinal purposes, if it's a physical healing, but also you see references in the Old Testament. So sheep, for example, shepherds would anoint their head with oil and keep some of the bugs and those things away. Priests would anoint, uh, I have anointing oil when they would go before offering sacrifices before God. So this idea of the leaders of the church praying for, praying through and praying. Uh, lifting up that person before the Lord. Verse 15, it says, in 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. 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. And so this idea. Of understanding church as a community experience. So when people say, well, I love God, but I don't I don't, I don't love the church. I mean, it's understandable, but it's not what the Bible describes as church. Iglesia is a gathering of people. There's a reason there's over 51 another commands in Scripture. Why? Because we need each other. That prayer is what really tunes our lives together as instruments in the band tune their instruments to the the standard tuning. As they become in tune with the standard, they become in tune with each other. In the same way, when we align our hearts with God's heart, we start to lift up and encourage one another. So this challenge, therefore, it says in verse 16 then is to confess your sins to one another, to pray for one another, that you may be healed. It says in 1 John 1:9 that if we confess our sins, that he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So that means there's a component to to to humble ourselves, to be specific in our confession to God and to each other. That when we hurt each other, we can apologize and and share and and encourage and lift up. We love the phrase iron sharpens iron, but did you ever stop to think about that actual picture? When there's iron sharpening iron, what you also get is sparks. It could hurt a little bit That means as a church, we're not saying, well, I'm OK, you're OK. And if I don't confront sin and and you don't confront sin, then we don't have to worry about it. No, but it's about bringing the, the, the struggles, the issues into the light. And when you bring it into the light, God, God can work. Why do we expect God to work in our sins that we're unwilling to confess? If we're trying to hide something from God, why are we expecting God to do something with that? The very first sin in the world, go back to Genesis, Adam and Eve in the garden, when they sin against God, the first response then is to hide, right? In shame and guilt. And God asked the question, where are you? Do you really think God didn't know where they were? No, he knows where they were. So why did he ask the question? Because Adam and Eve didn't know where they were. In the same way, when we confess our sins and we pray and lift each other up, it takes the burden out from in us, uh, it takes the burden off of our shoulders and brings it into the light and in the rawness and the authenticity and the realness, we can actually deal with it, and we can encourage each other through prayer. Because a praying church is a powerful church, right? We see that here, it has great power, and this makes sense. The prayer of a righteous person works. That makes sense. The problem is, none of us think that we're righteous people. Or maybe the wrong people think they're righteous people, you know what I'm saying? Like if you're wearing a t-shirt that says I'm a righteous person, like, you're like, OK, calm down, you know. But when you write to the church, your identity actually is saint. When Paul writes his letter, he says, I'm writing to the saints. Right into the priesthood of all believers. That we have the power of the living God inside of us, that means that we all have access to it. He says, let me show you. Next verse, verse 17, he says. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. And he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for 3 years and 6 months it did not rain on Earth, and then he prayed again. And heaven gave rain and the earth bore its fruit. Elijah was this crazy prophet. Like he's in the goat conversation of prophets, OK? It was so powerful that the evil King Ahab, God spoke through Elijah, who prayed, and then there was a drought for 3.5 years. And if you read 1 Kings chapters 17 and 18, it said that Elijah was sustained because ravens would bring him bread in the morning. Can you imagine if animals were bringing you your coffee and bread? You'd be feeling pretty good, right? And he gets this confidence because his sustain his sustenance is by God. And so it gets, it comes to a head, it comes to like, there's this game 7 of the World Series last night, crazy, like crazy game. Like my heart goes out to the team that lost and the heart, like the fans that are cheering for the team that won, like you're so excited, but it comes to almost like a game 7 type moment for the prophets in that area. So on one side, you have Elijah. OK, who's following after the God of Abraham, Isaac in Israel here, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then you have the prophets of Baal, the pagan gods of worship here, and there's 450 of them. And so Elijah says, look, we haven't had rain, this hasn't come down. Let's go ahead and show who's God. Let's both build an altar, and then we'll pray to God, and then we'll see which God answers. And so first up are the prophets of Baal. They're first up, they get the top of the inning, because, you know, God gets home field, we get the bottom of the inning. And so up at first, and they're praying and nothing's happening. And I love the rawness of the Bible and these prophets because the Elijah's like, oh, that's too bad. He starts trash talking the other team. And I love it. He's like, oh, maybe pray louder, maybe cut yourselves more. Hey, maybe you're God, maybe Bale just went to the bathroom and he's not hearing you, right? And he's, and he's and then nothing's happening. And then Elijah's turn comes up, bottom of the inning. He says, you know what? Before I pray, go ahead and cover my altar with water. Let's make this even more difficult. And they drenched the altar so much that water comes down and soaks it and fills the trench around the altar. And then when it comes time for Elijah to pray, he prays a prayer that's really simple, and that and and basically modern day English terms. He's like, hey, God, just do what you do. That's not the original Hebrew of it, but it's my translation for this moment. And fire from heaven comes down. And Elijah and his boldness with the people said, All right, take care of those prophets too. Boom. And like, I mean, it's one of the craziest showdowns ever. And now we fast forward to James and he goes, oh yeah, Elijah was just a dude. He was just a normal person. What, you think the fire came down because Elijah was good? The fire came down because God was good. It's not, it's not the words of his prayer, but it's who he's praying to, and that God, that's the God we're praying to. And if God's gonna answer Elijah, then God's gonna answer me. God's gonna answer you. We have the power that brought down fire from heaven. We have the power that rose Jesus from the dead. We have the living Spirit of God inside of us. And so then when we pray, it's not that we pray too low, it's that we pray too little. Verse 19, says, my brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone brings him back. Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. Some of you are praying for sickness right now. Some of you are praying for finances, uh, some of you are praying for a protocol. Someone close in your life that has walked away from God. And I want to encourage you, don't give up. Because just in these first few verses here that we see, uh, we see James give us 7 different times to pray. Give us 7 times to pray. What are those times? He goes, let's go right back through these verses, verse 13, it says, in suffering, pray. Are you hurting? Go to God. Then he says, in success, pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him praise. Then he goes on and says, in sickness, pray. If some of you are struggling, Go to him. He continues on, he says, if someone's in sin, go to God and prayer, confess your sins, lift up one another to God, confess. Number 5 is in support. When you got needs of the people around you, pray. Now, if you have the needs to meet The things that people are praying for, go and meet those needs, right? That's the whole 1st 4 chapters of the book, right? If you know what to do and you don't do it, they say just in the last hour that's sin. But let's not forget to pray to the God who can heal, the God that can save, the God that can forgive, the God that can cleanse, the God that can can convict. Go to Him in prayer. Number 6, it says in seeking. Go to God. Let me ask you, are you seeking answers? or are you seeking God? Because sometimes I think we pray just simply because we want an answer. But then we miss God. But it tells us in Colossians 3:1 and 2, right? To set our minds on the things above, to literally place our minds in his hands. Because if you seek God, that's when you will see the answers. If you seek answers, you end up missing both. And the last one there is in searching. Are you wandering? Are you looking? Like the U2 song, or you still haven't found what you've been looking for. So you see here and suffering, success, sickness, sin, support, searching, searching, uh, seeking, searching, what he's saying here, in every season. Pray Mark Patterson, who's written a number of books on prayer, described it this way. There comes a point in time. When you have to quit talking to God about your mountains, and instead start talking to the mountains about your God. Right? Instead of simply going to God with your doubts, now speak to your doubts about your God, because his words ring true. His words brought fire down from heaven. His words brought dead people to life. His words split the sea, his words fed the thousands, his words healed the lame, made the blind see and brought hope to the hopeless. Amen. This is the God that we're praying to and we forget it. Why? Because we get distracted. We get sad, we get lonely, we get defeated, and God says, no, when you pray. Understand that a praying church is a powerful church. But what happens when we don't get the answer that we want? The reality is God does answer every single prayer, and he answers every prayer with one of four options. Number one, he answers prayer with yes. We like that one. Right? Have you ever prayed for something and then it comes through like, oh, God is good. But can you still say God is good when you get one of the other three answers? Cause if God can say yes, God can also say no. But what I've found is God's no is all about his perspective, not mine. And it's hard to see why God doesn't say yes in the moment, but if you look back on your life, have you seen times we're like, man, I'm so glad God said no? Man, I'm so glad God said no to me for that person or that job or that position or that place, because if I hadn't been no there, I wouldn't have been positioned to where God has me now. The third answer we get Another one we don't like is weight. You realize that most biblical characters, after they get a call from God, has a season of waiting. You know, the call for call from God is for you to bless others. But oftentimes what I've found is the waiting is is for you. Because before you can do what God's called you to do, he's got to work in your heart, and you gotta be the person that can handle the weight of responsibility that he has coming. So sometimes it's weight. And the last answer we get from God when we pray. He's saying, and it's tied with no, but it's no because I got something better. I got something better. A praying church is a powerful church. But what do we do With those unanswered prayers, right? Because God heals, and I've been in rooms with people who who've been healed. But I've also been in rooms where we pray fervently for someone to get healed of cancer, for example, and then they soon pass. What do we do with that? I think we were reminded. That while we don't understand the whys. We can plead persistently and consistently before God, because it's not about intelligence, it's about persistence, right? It's about intensity and consistency that we are aligning our hearts with God's heart, so that we can see him move in a mighty way, so that when we don't see why God does something, we can say, God, I don't understand this, but I'm asking for this. I'm coming for. I know you can. I know you did. I know you will. And so I want you to have glory in all things. For example, I think of a teen I prayed for who died at 19. And I remember being so angry at God that God didn't heal him. From cancer And It was after his funeral. I remember thinking back, God gave me this little note, and I was so mad at God. And I remember, uh, I remember him giving me a little nod. They're like, where do you think he is right now? And I paused. I was like, oh, wait. I prayed for his healing, and now he's standing completely healed face to face with the God who made him. He was healed, he just wasn't healed how I wanted him to be, right? You know, Jesus He would go into villages and he would heal people. But I always found it interesting, they didn't heal everybody. Right? Paul writes, he says, I got a thorn in my side. God, I've asked for you to remove it, but you haven't. And so I'm gonna use this as a reminder of your grace. And so we can continually come to him over and over and over again and lift him up in prayer. Don't give up If you got a protocol In your life, someone, a child, a parent, a sibling. A friend, a co-worker, someone that's as far off from God, don't give up. Keep praying, keep pleading. Because God does hear your prayers, and in the right time, in the right moment, God will answer that for His glory, though, not for ours. Those battling addiction, those battling sickness, battling brokenness, battling grief, understand that and and all of those things you can bring before him. Jesus himself, right? In the garden, right before he would die, prayed. You know, Jesus had an, in a sense, an unanswered prayer. Do you ever think about that? Jesus says, God, Father, if there is any other way, take this cup from me. But then where does he land? He lands at the end of it. Saying, but ultimately, God, your will, not my will be done. Can we land in that same place? Here's how we get there, OK? If you wanna pray, there's this, this is a way to pray. This is really designed just to help you start praying. But if you, if you go to God, Encourage you to start with praise. Thanking God. For who he is and what he's done. Cause I've personally found. The more grateful I am, the less anxious I am. Right It's to be human is to be anxious, by the way. That's why Paul writes, like, don't be anxious, but Through prayer and supplication, take all your requests before God, right? So if you're you're feeling anxious, I'll let you know that's, that's because you're human. OK? That's why we pray, we take these things that are too heavy for us and we give them to God. Start with praise and gratitude for who he is. Second, repent. Confess your sins before God and others. God can't work with something that you're trying to hide. Right? You can't take something out of your hands that you're just clinging on to. So confess, turn before him, be direct, be humble, be honest. Repent. And when you do that, then it brings you to the 3rd place then to ask. Bring your requests and issues. Ask for healing, ask for return, ask for blessing, ask for these things, but you ask in a way that is ultimately for God's glory and God's story to take shape and form in your life. That's why you land in the last spot, which is to yield. As Jesus said in the garden, says your will, not mine. As Jesus taught his disciples to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's what we do when we pray. We are not praying our culture up. We are praying His kingdom down and we want his glory and his story to reign in every ounce of our being. I want to close with this thought, is to be willing to pray messy prayers. Be willing to pray messy prayers. I, I was reminded actually in the first service, I was talking to a friend Andrew. Who he was someone we were praying for. There were some of you in this room that remember we went to his house, he was battling addiction. Remember we got kicked out of his house, he was yelling at us. Ultimately, God would break him, he'd end up in a place of rehab, out of state, and in rehab, literally went blind for a month. Couldn't see. God ended up restoring his sight, comes back, and now is, I mean, I just had a conversation, and we're talking 40 minutes ago with this guy, talking about how he's sharing his faith this week, every single day. And God's not done. God's still working. But can you pray messy prayers? Can you pray heavy? Broken, struggling prayers, knowing. That it's our prayers that changes things, and it's not our prayers themselves, but the God who we're praying to. That a praying church is a powerful church. And just as James, at the end of his letter said, look, if you've got nothing else out of what I've told you, go to him and everything in prayer. To the God who can change anything and everything. Remember who God is and what God has done. I don't know what you're walking through right now. But I want to encourage you to bring that to the cross. The questions, the doubts, the sins, the, the struggles, bring it before him. We're gonna take communion here in just a moment. And when I step off stage, we'll have ushers that will come down if you don't have the elements yet. I invite you to open these elements. That the purpose of communion is to remember the redemption through Jesus Christ alone. Brandon's actually written a song uh for us called The Joy of Communion. And as we pray, he's gonna be singing over us and with us, and, and one of my favorite lines in the in the song that he wrote is, what if we acted like we have the access to the restoration of the living well? What if we prayed as if God were in the room? What if we prayed as if God defeated death? What if we prayed as if God sits on his throne? What if we prayed as if all of that is true? What would you pray? How would you pray? Let us humbly reflect on who he is. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you now. We humble ourselves as we prepare our hearts for communion together. God, I pray that we can take these elements, hold them in our hands, confess our sins before you, God, that we bring all of our requests and our struggles and our doubts before you, and we yield that your will be done. May you have the glory in all things. May we reflect on your goodness, that there really is no good apart from you. And God, we ask humbly that you build your church, and you do it here, and you do it now, and you do it today. It starts with us, and more importantly, God, it starts with you. Help us to remember who you are and what you've done. This is that we pray, amen.