I’LL PRAY FOR YOU

“If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needful for the body, what does it profit” (James 2:15-16)?

Have you ever noticed that God is a doing God. What God intends to do, He does. God is anything but a dreamer or a speculator. God wouldn’t fit in very well in a corporate planning meeting. God has no “wish list.” He will never play the stock market. And He hates empty talk. When God speaks He accomplishes something. He spoke into the blackness and light came. He shouted into a tomb and a man walked out. God expects the same of mankind who is made in his image and likeness. God draws nigh unto those who actually do something. He shuns those who speak pompous words and do nothing. Jesus spoke of two sons. One refused to obey and then repented and did something. The other promised to obey and then went out and did nothing. You know which man Jesus commended. God loves the man whose “yes is yes.” He hates the man whose “yes” becomes “no.” He forgives the man whose “no” becomes “yes.” Unfortunately doing has become a vanishing virtue in our day. The narcissism of the world has crept ever so slowly into the church so that in many quarters being a Christian is defined as having Jesus and enjoying His prosperity. And because we are so busy being prosperous, helping one’s neighbor has been placed on the vanishing species list. Costly sacrifice for one’s neighbor is now out of vogue. If there is a need to get our hands dirty we pay someone else to do it. The army of God which once overwhelmed the world with good deeds is now filled with advisors and short on fighters. We are a corporation of managers with no line workers. One wonders how an aberration like that can survive. The answer: it can’t. Of course we have our excuses. Surely everyone knows how valuable our time is and how rigid our schedule. “Come, look at my day timer. Monday is my day off. I have the soccer game on Tuesday, the birthday party on Wednesday, dance lessons on Thursday, a night with the kids of Friday and who can forget that trip to the mountains over the weekend. Oh yes, I would love to serve and minister, but who has time? Oh wait, yes, I do have a few hours available next April.” The lack of workers in the kingdom of God yields the same problems as a lack of workers in any enterprise. When no one works, nothing gets done. When nothing gets done, the house is boarded up and the bats take over. Some hide behind the excuse that God is Sovereign and He will accomplish what He will accomplish with or without me. All this is true but there is not one verse in the Bible that uses God’s sovereignty as an excuse not to work. Rather, in His infinite wisdom God has established a universal principle that selfless service leads to results. That is as true in the kingdom of God as it is in the kingdom of man. Jesus actually said that… in so many words. When talking about spreading the gospel He said this, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" (Matthew 9:37-38). Did Jesus ever say that no matter what man does, God will give him a great harvest because He is such a great God? No. Rather, the Son of man says that if man would get busy, God would get busier still. Try fitting that into your Calvinistic hat. You can’t. It won’t fit. But it is true. Jesus unashamedly gives the first principle of God’s kingdom, which is work hard and you will see results. Yet we live in an age when hard work is equated with a disease. That seems especially true when it comes to kingdom work. This is where we come to the book of James. The half brother of Jesus gives us five chapters of blue collar Christianity. It is a book of pious living threshed out in the fields and forged on the factory floor. James says quite simply that if you come across someone who has needs, meet them. There is no need to argue within yourself of the worthiness of the fellow, or secretly count the money in your wallet to figure out how little to give away. In James’ mind the most egregious sin is to fall into the trap of saying, “I would help but…” James is a simple man. He says if the man is hungry, feed him. If he is naked, give him a coat. In our present day the way we avoid serving is to set duty aside by uttering something spiritual. It takes the form of “I’ll pray for you.” Somehow we think prayer will put food in the tummy or stitch a new set of threads for the shivering soul. Well, it doesn’t. Prayer is often used as a spiritual delay tactic of the most subtle order. I don’t want to help and be inconvenienced, but I’ll pray. Let us all admit we have done this. And we know why. Prayer is easy. It costs us nothing. But it gets us off the hook because it sounds oh, so good. “You are hurting?’ Well instead of giving you a helping hand let me go one better and say a prayer for you. I’m sure that God will help you…. but I can’t.” Oh yes, I am sure the Levite uttered a short prayer as he passed the wounded man on the road to Jericho. My friend, please don’t insult God with the prayer angle. If you don’t want to help someone be honest enough to admit it. But don’t play the hypocrite and leave someone hungry and shivering on the road while bathing them in an empty promise of prayer. Never forget that a promise can neither fill a stomach or make one warm. And never forget that this kind of prayer gets no higher than the ceiling.