PRAY FOR OTHERS
Giving thanks in general and public worship might be other categories,
HOWEVER we often think that our personal prayers are between us and the Lord. Especially when we pray for our personal matters, regarding forgiveness, health, happiness, relationship, wealth, well‐being, progress of any kind.
These are the Prayers like saying: Oh Lord, you can see that I am sick, I can not lift my finger, I am bed bound, or I am in wheel‐ chair for years, or there is cancer in the body and chemo in the veins, there are tumors here and there, blockages in the arteries, big pain in the chest, the heart is tired to beat, the lungs are shadowed, infections everywhere, broken hips, rusty knees, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, hernia in the front, hernia in the back, broken limbs, broken ribs, cracked spine, shaken brain,weakened bones, Alzheimer and Parkinson in the brain, mental illness in the soul, or just suffering from the spread of epidemics or simple flu.
O Lord heal me, O Lord heal me, please have mercy upon me. We can have similar personal prayers, that O Lord I have committed my picadillos, my transgressions here and there, You can see and judge my sins, but oh Lord, my burden is unbearable, heal me , heal me, have mercy upon me, give me forgiveness.
We can have our personal prayers regarding our relationships, that O Lord I am lonely, oh please give me a fiance, give me a spouse, give me a child, give me a friend, give a company, give me a community. Or the similar one, that Oh Lord my relationship is broken with my spouse or with my children or with my parents or with a friend or a friendship circle or with the community. O Lord heal my relationships, please have mercy upon me. Similarly in a personal prayer we used to pray for the bread on the table, hopefully not for the lotto prize but for the necessities of the life, especially in the time of need where and where the bread is profoundly missing, poverty hits, hunger and cold prevails.
O Lord help me in the need, may Your kingdom, and your abundance come into my life. All of these personal prayers might be completely legitimate and justified.
There is the human need, and the human turns to the Almighty Creator, Healer, Sustainer God in prayer, asking for forgiveness, healing and Providence. SO FAR SO GOOD. However we should pay attention to the very advice of Apostle James, otherwise we could somehow end up as even Apostle Paul.
Paul confessed in his second letter to the Corinthians that “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.” He prayed three times but the thorn stayed.
The very advice of Apostle James is similar to what Jesus told to the disciples regarding prayers. The Master said according to the gospel of Matthew that the Lord knows all your needs and also the urging importance of the necessities, however " seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
The Apostle James wrote that when You pray You shall pray first for the others, and as a community you shall pray for each other, then conclusively the personal prayers will be heard as an addition. The first question regarding prayer, that why should we pray if God knows all of our needs even before we word them, and moreover he knows better what we really need than we know it ourselves. We have to pray because prayer is already an acknowledgment of the kingship and ultimate parenthood of God.
God does not need an acknowledgment, he is not fed by our prayers and indeed he does not need our prayers to know us. Praying is for our benefit. As the epistle of James says prayer may heal the sick, and it is a great tool of repentance on the path to be forgiven, as the sinner turns to God in prayer.
However again the epistle of James in the chapter four warns us, that we pray but we do not get it or as he says that 4:3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passion” James warn us that the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective, which also means that the prayer of the wicked sinners are NOT heard in Heaven.
The born blind man’s case says the same thing. When Jesus healed him giving back his eye sight, his neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging , they asked that How were your eyes opened?" they asked. He replied, "The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to the lake Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."
The Pharisees also came to rebuke him and the same time accusing Jesus. But the man answered that: We all know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” So it is a great instruction we receive directly from the Gospel, that only the prayer of the righteous is heard in Heaven.
That is why so significant the commandment in the Epistle of James that You shall pray for the others first, and pray for each other as a community, because it is a prevalent characteristic of the righteous that they pray for the others.
The Epistle of James mentions Elijah, that when he prayed there was no rain in Israel for three years. It happened, not because Elijah was in a whimsical mood against precipitation, but it was a prophetical action. We take the fertilizing rain as granted, however it is a gift from God, like a rewarding blessing for the ground. The Prophet made it visible that sinners do not deserve to be rewarded, thus the rain was not granted from Heaven but withheld from the country which committed idolatry at that time. He did not pray for personal gain,
or anything for himself, but he conveyed God’s message to the sinning country.
That message is always the same. REPENT and TURN to GOD. Jesus on the cross was mocked to make a miracle and leave his cross and the torture behind. Instead of doing that he prayed for his scoffers and persecutors asking God to forgive them, because they did not know what they did.
So in order to reach the heights of healing, forgiveness, health and providence we have to learn to pray for others. It may be easy if you try really hard, to care about the others. Any selfish and egoistic prayer turns to be the opposite, instead of becoming a blessing, inflation of the ego is a curse, even if we aim the skies with it. Praying for others, praying for each other is the LEAP OF THE FAITH which is very much compelling to be heard above. MAY THE LORD LISTEN TO OUR PRAYERS, Amen.
