This Ain’t Voodoo

This Sunday the elders of Living Hope are going to begin offering an opportunity for prayer prescribed in the Bible. This ministry has always been available, but it was always supplied by request and scheduled. We will still gladly do that, but now each Sunday we are going to provide prayers of healing for people in need.

Every Sunday we provide a time of response and reflection. It is a time to consider what has been communicated throughout the service and determine if your life is in line with God’s will. You may find that you need to go to the altar, a sacred special space for us to humbly come before God, to pray for yourself or for specific or general needs in the lives of people you know, our church, or our world. You may want to become a member, make a statement of your faith through baptism, or accept Christ as redeemer and leader of your life. Those would be God-honoring responses that our staff and deacons will be there at the front to guide you through.

But you may also be in need of God’s healing power. We are told in James 5:14-16,

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

We have six elders who are righteous men who will gladly anoint you with oil and pray for your healing.

This is not some kind of voodoo. We believe in the power of prayer and the humble submission to God. There is nothing special about the oil or the elders necessarily who pray. The prayer and healing is an act of God done according to His will and Word.

We must take this passage in the context of all of the Scripture. When it says “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well;” we must remember that there are many times in Scripture when what was best for the person was that they remain weak. Remember Paul the apostle who prayed, but realized that God had other plans for him.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We must realize that the prayers of the righteous are heard by God and that a person who has seen their doctor and done all that they can to be healed by their known powers may only be able to be healed by God so that He can be glorified and His name can be honored and praised by others.

Each Sunday during our time of response and reflection the elders will be down front to receive anyone who would like them to anoint them with oil and pray with them. We will receive a person or a group of people and after the service in the pastor’s office the elders will pray for them individually and privately.

You don’t have to be a member to receive this ministry of prayer.

If you have any questions or comments you’d like to share with me email them to me at jpettus@lhbg.org.