James 5:13-20
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
The Prayer of Faith
13 Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.(A) 14 Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.(B) 15 The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.(C) 17 Elijah was a human like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.(D) 18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest.(E)
19 My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth[a] and is brought back by another, 20 you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s[b] soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.(F)
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James 5:13-20
The Message
Prayer to Be Reckoned With
13-15 Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
16-18 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years. Then he prayed that it would rain, and it did. The showers came and everything started growing again.
19-20 My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.
Read full chapterNew Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson