R.C. Sproul

But nevertheless, we still are to be encouraged because there's a massive impact from that prayer that God does at times heal people and restore them and also alleviates their suffering.

Sometimes he says yes.

Sometimes he says no.

Now, one of the things that's really misappropriated from this text is that James said it's the prayer of faith that will save the sick.

And so we've had a whole theology emerge in the popular culture associated with so-called faith healing, so that if you are not rescued from your malady and delivered from your disease, then obviously the problem is you didn't have the faith.

And if you have true faith, you'll never be sick.

You'll always be cured and so on.

God always wills healing.

You hear that kind of theology.

You just have to name it and claim it and so on.

This is such a gross distortion of the total truth.

picture of what prayer is supposed to be and do in the Bible.

I've had people tell me that if you pray for somebody and you say, if it be thy will, O Lord, please raise this person up, that that is a sin.

It's an affront against God to say, if it is God's will, because God always wills that.

I say, wait a minute.

If it is a lack of faith to say, if it be thy will,

What does that say about the posture of Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane?

The greatest teacher we have on how to pray is Christ himself.

And when he was faced with his great passion, his ultimate suffering, that none of us can imagine what it was like to have the cup of God's wrath set before him.

We can't imagine that.