The Prayer of Faith

James surveys several conditions in the church and gives each a Godward response: suffering should become prayer, cheerfulness praise, and sickness a summons to the elders for prayer and anointing in the Lord's name. The prayer of faith is associated with restoration, raising up, forgiveness, confession, and mutual intercession. The paragraph broadens ministry beyond private devotion into shared pastoral care where righteousness and prayer meet with real power. The community is shown as a praying body, not a collection of isolated sufferers.

I¹³s any one of you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. ¹⁴Is 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. ¹⁵And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.

Elijah is then given as proof that powerful prayer does not require a superhuman person. He was a man like us, yet his earnest petitions affected the heavens and the earth over years of drought and rain. The point is not Elijah's singularity but God's readiness to act through believing prayer. The paragraph closes the section by making divine responsiveness the ground of prayerful confidence.

¹⁷Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. ¹⁸Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth yielded its crops.