Have you ever looked at your life and said, "What is
the point in following God if life is so hard?" That is exactly what He is saying that the
people have done in Malachi's time. One of
the things about the prosperity Gospel that is so destructive is that it leaves
people unprepared for life and difficulty.
There is no way to account for pain and suffering in that model other
than unconfessed sin or I am not God's child.
He doesn't promise when He will make up His treasured possession but
that in the day He does the distinction between the blessed and cursed will
make sense to us. The promise is sure
and certain because of the resurrection of Jesus, until His coming again we are
to pray for the coming of the kingdom with God's will being done at all times
and in all places. Pray fervently for
that day, the day of justice.
How are we justified?
The answer is clear in this parable isn't it? It isn't in believing ourselves to be
righteous, it is confessing ourselves to be sinners. The Pharisee looks at the tax collector and
sees himself as comparatively holy. His failure
is in comparing himself to the tax collector.
The standard for holiness isn't sinful humanity, it is God Himself as
Isaiah understood that day in the temple.
Moses asked to see God's glory and was told that wouldn't be possible,
he would not live. The only way we can be
justified is to confess our sins and plead for the mercy of God, which He says
is His very character. In Jesus, we see
the mercy and love of God for sinners. We
hear it from the cross in His prayer for forgiveness for those who knew not
what they were doing. We see it in the
restoration of Peter to ministry. We are
justified by the perfect righteousness of Jesus, not the comparative
righteousness of ourselves. The process
only works when we offer a guilty plea.
Prayer, for James, is rooted in confession. He isn't suggesting that all sickness is
related to sin but he isn't suggesting there is never a connection either. He says, "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." The
next thing he writes is "therefore", because this is true, confess
your sins and then pray for healing. Until
we deal with sin, our prayers are less effective than they ought to be. We don't know what to pray for, sin is in the
way of our being heard. Humility is
called for in petitionary prayer. Prayer
book worship never omits confession, whatever form we use it is there, right at
the beginning of worship. In the
Eucharist it is explicitly there twice, first in the Collect for Purity and
then later in the more formal confession.
It is implicitly there throughout the Eucharistic Prayer as well. Is that principle true in your personal and
private prayers?
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