What I’m about to say has been said so often by so many generations that it has found its way into quite a few clichés. Take your pick.

“We had it good back in the good old days . . .”

“Back when I was a kid we didn’t even have to lock our doors . . .”

“When I was growing up I had to walk to and from school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways.” (usually implying that people were tougher back then)

What the clichés suggest is that things are changing, and they’re definitely not good.

So I say this, fully recognizing it’s been said before.

We live in scary times . . . times that are different than they used to be and perhaps indicative of significant societal changes to come. Far-reaching decisions are being made at high levels, and more and more folks around us do not seem to care about the biblical foundations of ethics and morals.

A couple of years ago Cardinal Francis George said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” He was speaking to the increasing secularization of our society and its potential effects.

Perhaps you’ve said something similar. Maybe you’ve worried about the kind of world your kids or grandkids will live in. There’s no way to know, of course, and no amount of hand-wringing will help.

But it’s good to put things in perspective. Christianity has experienced some of its most incredible growth during times of persecution, and, as I heard someone say recently, the darker it gets, the brighter light shines.

We don’t know what God has planned for our country, but we know that he’s got plans. Presidential statements, Supreme Court rulings, and laws and resolutions don’t surprise or worry him. The changing sentiments and fickle whims of people without God don’t undermine what he’s accomplishing in the world.

Cardinal George went on to say, “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” Though I would disagree with what he means by “church,” I agree with his sentiments.

Whatever happens here will happen under the loving and providential eye of an omnipotent God, and he will use his people as he has done for thousands of years.

It reminds me of the old VBS song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands”:

“He’s got the whole world in His hands . . . He’s got my brothers and my sisters in His hands . . . He’s got the sun and the rain in His hands . . . He’s got the moon and the stars in His hands . . . He’s got the wind and the clouds in His hands . . . He’s got the rivers and the mountains in His hands . . . He’s got the oceans and the seas in His hands . . . He’s got you and he’s got me in His hands . . . He’s got everybody here in His hands . . . He’s got everybody there in His hands . . . He’s got everybody everywhere in His hands . . . He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand (Proverbs 19:21).

It’s an ugly picture. In one of his letters Peter uses the graphic image of a dog’s returning to his vomit or a recently washed sow’s returning to her mud.

What he was writing about, of course, was a believer who wanders away from God. If we’re honest, we must admit that it isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, because this world is often so alluring. Sometimes we’re mesmerized by its glitz and glamor, finally waking up only to realize we’re miles away from God.

Have you ever wandered? In adolescence, perhaps? Or maybe in college or at another particularly difficult point in your life?

I hope you’re back. If you are, I’m glad you came home.

But not everyone has. Not yet. So James closes his letter with a short encouragement for us to do whatever we can for these folks.

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19-20).

You’re probably not a preacher, and you may not serve God in any “official” sense, but I’d like for you to do three simple things today.

One, make a list of ten believers you know who have wandered away from God. Perhaps it’s a family member, former co-worker, a neighbor, somebody who used to attend your church. You could probably come up with a hundred, but just do ten.

Two, pray for every name on that list. Pray that God’s Spirit would work in their hearts and move them to repentance. Ask him to orchestrate the events of their lives so they see that the path they’re on will end in destruction. Ask him to open a door for you to be able to speak an encouraging word.

Three, take one step—just one—to let God use you to work in their lives. It might be something as simple as a “How’s it going?” text or email. It could be a phone call or an encouraging note or a Facebook post. But do something.

We undersell ourselves, I think. We assume all the serious spiritual work will be done by the guys who stand in our pulpits or serve as our shepherds.

If I understand James correctly, though, he’s saying that just an “average” every-day believer can have an enormous effect on someone’s soul. It’s incredible to think that you and I can “save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins,” isn’t it?

So today—make a list, say a prayer, initiate contact—and see what God does.

Perhaps this isn’t great devotional material, but I can’t help but write a few words about the tragic situation in Pennsylvania with Dr. Gosnell, the abortion doctor who was convicted this week of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies.

Perhaps God brought this grisly story to light so that he could change the way that abortion is talked about in our country. Maybe he intends to wake some of us up so that we can see that lives—not cells, not fetuses, not mere choices—are at stake in this conversation. I’ve already read stories of people who have changed their minds about abortion, so we can praise God for that.

Maybe God wanted us to remember again that we live in a broken world, on a cursed earth, amidst fallen people, so that he might stir up in us again a longing to be where he created us to be. Maybe some of us who live tidy lives in the suburbs need to see the face of evil and look wistfully toward a world without violence and death.

Maybe he wanted us to think about abortion in a way that we haven’t before, or at least in a way that many of us haven’t. Instead of just wringing our hands and preaching against it, maybe we should remember again that everyone needs Jesus. That includes abortionists, the people who work in their clinics, and, of course, the expectant mothers who—maybe because they’re confused or they made a mistake or they just don’t understand what they’re doing—choose to have an abortion. Maybe God wanted us to ask, “What are we doing to help confused and broken people? What are we doing to change the cultural climate to help the people around us see that all life is precious?”

I’ve got a lot of questions. I’d like to know how somebody could do what Dr. Gosnell and some of his assistants did. I’d like to know how a country in which the majority of people call themselves Christians could think it’s acceptable to abort hundreds of thousands of its babies every year.

I suppose we don’t have those answers, and maybe we never will, but whenever we see sin in some kind of graphic form like this, it ought to remind us that sin isn’t just the big, headline-making, jaw-dropping things. It’s pervasive, and it hurts us all. Those of us gawking at Dr. Gosnell from a distance also struggle with sin, though maybe it’s of a more private, not-as-serious (so we say) variety.

Here are a few relevant verses to meditate on and pray over today:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and . . . He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1,4).

Maybe you’ve occasionally wondered if there’s any point to prayer. Does it work? Is God listening?

We doubters ought to go back and reread James. Here’s James 5:16 in a few different translations:

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (ESV).

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (NKJV).

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much (NASB).

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective (NRSV).

James apparently thought prayer worked, and you and I ought to believe him. He gives this example:

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit (James 5:17-18).

Perhaps we think that of course God answered prayer back then . . . but we live in a different time, a more hands-off age.

But that thinking doesn’t work. There’s nothing in the Bible that suggests God ever stopped hearing and answering prayers.

Do you believe that?

A “non-answer” from God might be a couple of things:

It could actually be that he’s not answering because I’m walking outside of his will (and therefore not a “righteous” pray-er). For example, Peter wrote that a man who’s not treating his wife well will have an impotent prayer life.

It could also be that what we’re asking isn’t according to his will; if so, we wouldn’t want him to answer it anyway. I’ve begged him for things he later showed me that I didn’t need.

And it could be that he’s already in the process of answering our prayers, but he’s doing it according to his own timetable. Remembering that he exists outside of time helps us work through apparent delays. He knows the end from the beginning, and some things just don’t need to happen right now.

But does he answer?

Absolutely. The prayer of a child of God who pours out her heart to him is powerful and effective.

Believe that, and then pray accordingly.

I don’t know why we ignore this verse, but I’m pretty sure we do, or at least we skip over the plain sense of it.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed (James 5:16).

When’s the last time you did that? When’s the last time you got your sin laundry list out, sat down with a Christian friend, and confessed the many ways you’re struggling in your relationship with Jesus?

“Okay, well first I probably need to confess the sin of greed and covetousness, and then there’s also lust and gossip and selfishness.” Ever said something like that?

I said I don’t know why we don’t do this, but I think I know. We avoid it because it makes us feel uncomfortable. We’re embarrassed. Nobody’s got this much sin but me. If I start confessing all this stuff, I’ll be getting sideways glances at church for the rest of my life. The church’s rumor mill will be on overdrive.

The closest we get to doing anything like this is in our tradition of responding to the “invitation song.” The preacher asks those who might have prayer needs to come “down front” at the end of the sermon, and they can submit their requests.

But that’s a far cry from what James writes here. Our way of doing it is very impersonal, and it lends itself to generic, “I’ve sinned and need forgiveness” kinds of prayers. There’s nothing wrong with those in their place, but James is pointing us to something way more personal, and much more powerful.

If we started doing this like we should, I bet there’d be a huge sigh of relief in our churches.

“You mean you struggle with that too? I thought I was the only one.”

I’m guessing we’d be amazed at how liberating it would be to live and worship in a church environment where we don’t have to pretend every Sunday that we’ve got it all figured out. Too often we’ve got our church clothes on, our Sunday smiles on, and our religious airs on. We’re all pretty much perfect.

Except we’re not. We might just put a façade on to impress other people and keep them from seeing the real us.

I wish we’d start obeying James. I wish we could confess our sins to one another in small group settings and enjoy the freeing experience of recognizing that we’re all in this together, and we’ve all got sin problems.

If we did, I think we’d see the church’s becoming more of the close-knit, hand-in-hand, on-our-way-to-heaven-together kind of community of believers.

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise (James 5:13).

I suppose we’re more likely to obey the first part of that verse than we are the second. It’s easy to let all of life’s stresses cause us to forget our need to praise God for everything good. If we’re not careful, talking to God can be more like a 911 call—something when do only when we find ourselves in a difficult spot.

Talking to God, though—praising him—ought to be what we do in every situation. When we’re hurting or sad, we pour out our hearts to him.

When we’re joyful—when he’s blessed us—we praise him.

James recognizes that life has its ups and downs. We’ll have problems like everyone else; when we do, we pray about it. But we should also recognize that God gives us so many joys.

What’s right in your life today?

Can you hear the birds singing outside? Perhaps you’ve already taken a walk in the cool springtime air this morning. God’s blessings surround us, and most of us have quite a few things to smile about.

A soft bed and a comfortable house. Water to drink and food to eat. A job that supports our families, healthy kids, faithful friends, a stable, peaceful country.

And most of all, of course, we’ve got Christ. Even if we have problems—which we do—nothing can dampen the fact that we’re forgiven.

Saved from sin. Washed in the blood. Justified, sanctified, and soon to be glorified.

So today, take time to praise. List the blessings God’s poured into your life, and thank him for every single one of them.

But especially thank him for giving you hope in the crucified, buried, and risen Savior.

We’ve got a few different options when we’re suffering. We can whine about it, something most of us have done more than we should’ve. But it doesn’t really do any good, does it? We don’t particularly enjoy it, and the people around us certainly don’t.

We can blame God and fuss at him about it, but that probably suggests a lack of trust on our part.

We can finger-point and talk about why our problems are someone else’s fault. That’s really easy to do, and the devil loves it because we’ll never get any better as long as we’re blaming the people around us.

James has a different, simpler solution:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray (James 5:13a).

You may not be like me, but when I’m stressed or struggling, my devotional life suffers. My prayers tend to be more shallow, more perfunctory, less intense. I find myself going through the motions spiritually—praying, but only out of habit; engaging in the kind of “vain repetitions” that Jesus warned us against in Matthew 6. I’ve occasionally prayed an entire prayer and then realized I didn’t really think about any of it.

Do you do this?

Maybe that’s why James includes this simple encouragement: when you’re suffering, when you’re worried, when you’re stressed . . . pay attention to your devotional life.

Talk to the Lord about whatever it is. Don’t offer him clichés; really pour out your heart to him.

He’s never condoned our grumbling, and blaming him or the people around us is counterproductive.

What works?

Prayer, of course. Take your problems to the one who’s in control of your life and your problems and your concerns.

Suffering, worried, or stressed?

Pray about it.

I was planning on writing about prayer this morning anyway, and the Boston tragedy seems morbidly appropriate.

These scenes are getting old, aren’t they? It seems that we’re seeing them with an all-too-frequent regularity. I first saw on Twitter that smoke was rising from buildings near the end of the Boston Marathon, then bystanders posted about explosions, injuries, chaos, confusion.

James’ context and what’s going on in Boston aren’t perfectly analogous, of course, but he points to some relevant issues:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And 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 (James 5:14-15).

Aside from the terrorist aspect (which we’ll address below), events like this remind us that bad things often affect these temporary bodies we live in. Several friends have cancer, another is dealing with the after-effects of a bad car wreck, and hundreds of people are hurting because of what happened yesterday.

These bodies get broken, sometimes mangled and twisted, often irreparably so. I think it ought to remind us—like it did Paul—that these are tents that aren’t suited for permanence (cf. 2 Corinthians 5).

But James’ words also remind us to pay attention to physical needs. When people are sick, pray for them. Do what you can to help them, to heal them, to ease their suffering. Maybe we can’t offer much direct help to the people in Boston this morning, but we ought to pray hard for them. Pray that God eases their pain and heals them completely. Ask him to let his mercy and compassion be seen through the response of believers.

But there’s another point in James’ message, and it’s a little more difficult to grasp (or swallow): there’s often a connection between physical suffering and sin. That doesn’t mean that people who suffer are hurting because of their own sin; suffering often happens because of the sins of others.

But we live in a world in which bad things happen, and it’s because of sin. From the time that Adam and Eve took those forbidden bites, our world started suffering.

As if we needed another reminder, yesterday asks us to think again about the fallenness of our world. Cowardice, cruelty, twisted hatred, misguided religious fervor—perhaps we’ll discover that these and other motivations played into yesterday’s cruelty.

The good news is, Jesus is in the process of fixing it all. He’s bringing his people a new heavens and a new earth—one with no bombs or explosions, no terrorism, and also no cancer, pain, loneliness or suffering.

But until that day comes, this is the world we live in. And when stuff like this happens, we pray hard, and we try to help people heal, and we also hope that they’ll embrace the only One who can take them to a better world.

You’ve probably heard stories of the good ole days when people just shook hands over deals . . . when the attorney-written, loophole-closing, fifty-page contracts of today were unknown.

“A man’s word is his bond,” people said. “A handshake is as good as a contract.”

I’m not sure if this is a case of romanticizing and therefore exaggerating the past, or if some people really did make big deals with nothing more than a nod of the head and a shake of the hand.

Here’s what I do know: with Christians, our word really ought to be our bond. When we tell people we’ll do something, we ought to break our necks to do it. We shouldn’t need a stack of Bibles or somebody’s grave to swear on or by.

Why?

Because we serve a God of truth, so we tell the truth, unadorned by extra words meant to convince people we really mean it.

James knew well what Jesus had taught, and he includes a loose quotation of one of the Lord’s sayings (cf. Matthew 5:33-37):

But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation (James 5:12).

We’ve tried to teach our kids this. If you tell somebody something, you don’t need to say “I swear it’s true” or “I swear I’ll do it” or even “I promise.”

It won’t take people too long to figure out if you’re a truth-teller or not. If you are, they won’t require some kind of verbal proof that you mean what you say.

I think that’s what James is getting at here. I don’t think he’s saying there’s anything wrong with written contracts or taking an oath in a courtroom. He’s telling us to tell the truth.

Always.

He’s telling us to do what we say we’re going to do.

Always.

That means that we parents keep our promises to our kids. If we tell them we’re going to be at their soccer game at 5:00, it ought to take an earth-shattering event to keep us from being there.

The same thing applies to our spouses, our co-workers, our neighbors, the folks at church.

Christians are truth-tellers, and we don’t need oaths to convince people of it.

If they know us, they ought to know what we mean when we say “yes” or “no.”

Always.

I’m sitting at a coffee shop as I type these words, and I can’t help but overhear bits of the conversation coming from the table behind me. They’ve touched on different topics—divorce, job problems, their kids’ lives, etc.—but disappointment and concern seem to be lying just beneath the surface.

It’s everywhere, of course, from the coffee shop in the suburb to the mill in a small town to the boardroom in a downtown highrise. People are struggling. Job woes, health problems, marriage break-ups, rebellious kids, unfulfilled dreams. The list goes on.

Most of us put on a happy face when we’re in public, and we remove the mask only at certain times in front of certain people. Behind the forced smile is a litany of unspoken concerns:

Will my kids turn out okay?

Will this stress ever get better?

Will I ever meet life’s demands more consistently?

Will my health be okay?

We’ve come a long way in the last fifty years. We can do things our grandparents never imagined.

But we haven’t removed worry, have we? And we never will, not here, not on this planet, not in this life.

James’ world was different in many ways—different language, different culture, different customs—but the people weren’t so different from us.

I know this, at least in part, because of what he writes here:

As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful (James 5:10-11).

James’ people were struggling, and they were asking the question people in every culture and every time have asked: How will I make it through this?

He does the only thing anyone can do: he points them to the Lord.

He doesn’t tell them everything will work out the way they hoped. He doesn’t tell them the suffering will stop right now.

He simply promises them that a blessing from the Lord awaits everyone who remains steadfast.

Hang in there, he says. The Lord knows, he cares, and he’s got a purpose in all this.

Maybe James’ message hits pretty close to home with you today. If so, I hope you’ll hear him. I hope you’ll see the importance of staying close to Jesus. I hope you’ll hang in there.

We consider those blessed who remained steadfast, James wrote, and that’s the same promise the Lord gives you today.

If you stay steadfast, he’ll bless you. It’s his promise.