Book of Common Prayer

Praying in faith

¹³ Are any among you suffering? Let them pray. Are any cheerful? Let them sing psalms. ¹⁴ Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church, and they should pray over the sick person, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ Faithful prayer will rescue the sick person, and the Lord will raise them up. If they have committed any sin, it will be forgiven them. ¹⁶ So confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

When a righteous person prays, that prayer carries great power. ¹⁷ Elijah was a man with passions like ours, and he prayed and prayed that it might not rain—and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. ¹⁸ Then he prayed again, the sky gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

¹⁹ My dear family, if someone in your company has wandered from the truth, and someone turns them back, ²⁰ know this: the one who turns back a sinner from wandering off into error will rescue that person’s life from death, and cover a multitude of sins.

⁹ He told this next parable against those who trusted in their own righteous standing and despised others.

¹⁰ “Two men,” he said, “went up to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, the other was a tax-collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood and prayed in this way to himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like the other people—greedy, unjust, immoral, or even like this tax-collector. ¹² I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

¹³ “But the tax-collector stood a long way off, and didn’t even want to raise his eyes to heaven. He beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am.’ ¹⁴ Let me tell you, he was the one who went back to his house in the right before God, not the other. Don’t you see? People who exalt themselves will be humbled, and people who humble themselves will be exalted.”