Prayer of faith – The unused power of Christians
DEC 23, 2020
“Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well….” (James 5:13-15 NIV).
These are troubled times. Many people are in the kinds of troubles that our brother James anticipated when he wrote the above-quoted Bible passage. Christians are not insulated from troubles, problems, sicknesses, and realities of life, including the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Our natural tendencies are that when we are in trouble or are suffering, we complain, blame, think negative thoughts and negative solutions, or give up entirely. However, Christians have at our disposal a positive and powerful weapon to handle troubles and sufferings, that is, the prayer of faith.
Christmas is here in perhaps more muted and reflective tones than many people can remember, but it s Christmas nonetheless. With that in mind, ERR News talked to Bishop Philippe Jourdan, leader of the Catholic Church in Estonia, and with it the small, but growing and vibrant minority community of Catholics in the country, to find out how things stood with current discussions in society, his experiences in Estonia, and of course what has changed and what has remained constant, with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. I m from southern France where Rugby Union is a big sport – I played on the wing myself – and there has been a lot to learn from that sport, when talking about this year in particular. When you re playing together, but also suffering and struggling together, making the tackles and so on it really creates a sense of team unity. The pandemic has been a bit like that too.
Well, a funny thing happened to me the other day as I was strolling through Jstor articles made available through the State Library of Queensland: I found another article making the same point, only this time in relation to 1 Corinthians 5-6. The author is Sean M. McDonough, professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Massachusetts. The article is “Competent to Judge: The Old Testament Connection Between 1 Corinthians 5 and 6” and was published in
The Journal of Theological Studies in 2005.
Before setting out McDonough’s main points I should protect his integrity and warn you that his conclusion is very different from mine. McDonough thinks Paul was so immersed in meditations on the Old Testament writings that he shaped his way of addressing a contingent administrative issue with the Corinthian church by mentally structuring his message as a mirror of a passage in Deuteronomy.
Dec 23, 2020
I can write a soliloquy about Maya Moore’s accomplishments on the court and the brilliance I witnessed when playing alongside her at UConn and the Olympics and I’d be writing about it all day. She’ll go down as one of the greatest to ever lace ’em up, but Maya’s truest impact has been off the court.
I’ve come to the conclusion that real success is becoming the person God intended for you to become and doing the work he set aside for you to do. If there is one person I know who has sought to accomplish this each and every day, before anything else, it’s my friend and former teammate.
Across denominations, there is a common message being preached this Christmas. 9:00 am, Dec. 23, 2020 ×
The Rev. Linda Schauer, pastor of Atonement Lutheran Church, said the church will be holding one in-person Christmas Eve service at 4:30 p.m. John M. Steiner / The Sun
Tidings of comfort and joy are being preached to the people of Jamestown this holiday season. God is with us, said the Rev. Linda Schauer, pastor of Atonement Lutheran Church. I think that message of God with us is something that we always need to hear but especially in these COVID times we need to hear that and that God loves us and that he ll never leave us.