“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (James 5:16)
A long time ago when I lunched with a friend on Mondays, I always asked him, “How are you, Skip?”
“Great, wonderful, marvelous and tremendous!” he’d answer. Always.
Many Mondays I’d not had a good weekend and life was not great, wonderful, marvelous, and tremendous for me. But this guy was always emphatically optimistic. After this pattern continued for some time, one Monday I asked him, “Tell me something. If everything wasn’t great, wonderful, marvelous, and tremendous, how would you answer my question?”
“Oh, I’d probably lie to you,” he responded.
I decided to rephrase my question. I asked, “How are you, really, Skip?”
He worked with a group of people who emphasized Scripture memory and they all memorized a verse each week. “Frankly, if you really want to know,” he said, “My verse of the week is, ‘Hang it on your beak, freak!’” We then had some honest conversation, what I call reality contact.
This is what James had in mind – if we are honest with each other we will be burdened to pray for each other. If we’re not honest when we meet together, we will not pray for each other honestly. One translation reads that our honest prayers will explode with power!
We should have this kind of reality contact with a believer we trust.
How are you, really?
Dick Woodward, 01 November 2011
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