"Phone Home!"

The best company in the world is a get-together with God's sons and daughters. Now that is a "family gathering" of supernatural proportions! This is Katrinka writing today. Each day we live we face new challenges and receive new blessings. There is a sure way to get through it all, and that is laid out in our Bible passage for today. Read James 5:13-20 and let is stimulate your mind. Receive the communication from "out of this world."

Most of us remember the classic movie "E.T."  As you may remember, there was a special bond formed between the lost alien and a little girl. E.T. (extra-terrestrial) was lost. He was scared and lonely in this alien place called Earth. His goal was to someway, somehow make contact with "Home." So he learned enough Earth language to say: "Phone home!" He was trying to find his way back to his family somewhere out there. And there is more, the people around him were supporting him and trying to help him contact "Home." And, in the end, E.T. went "Home"! Here in the book of James I see the same theme and it is summed up in verse 16:

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and"

 pray for each other so that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Do we really realize how amazing it is that we have this Divine connection between Heaven and Earth? When we pray, it is not a one-way communication! Our prayers go up before the Father as praise, adoration or cries for help. When we reach out with all our hearts to our Father in Heaven, praying through our Savior, Jesus, Heaven hears. But that is not all, Heaven answers!

When I am lonely or needing some encouragement, I can telephone Chris. It doesn't matter that he is half-a-world away! Because of the wonderful technology of our modern times, I can send a text message or place a call. In moments I am having a heart-to-heart talk with him -- gaining strength and help and love from my son. When I hang up or receive a return text message, I feel the emotional refill I have received from this time spent in communicating. What a great blessing it is for both of us. Prayer works in a much more wonderful and effective way.

Our verses in James give us a clear picture of how prayer works. If I am in trouble -- Pray! If I am having a great day and everything is wonderful -- Pray and Praise in song! What about when I am sick? -- Pray! And here we see the "plus," James tells me how to get a boost of power to my prayer -- call in faithful, dedicated Christians to pray with me. Yes, Jesus taught us to go into the closet and pray. Of course, that means to find a private, quiet place where we can be alone with God. Jesus often went away from the disciples into such a place, just to be with His Father and away from the "noise" of this world. Is this a discrepency or a problem with the Bible? Certainly not.

In the book of 1 Thessalonians 5:17 we read: "Pray without ceasing." Really what this means is to pray regularly, in all situations, in many circumstances. I know that when something unusually painful or life-threatening comes into my life -- such as cancer or the loss of someone I love -- I need arms around me. I need my Christian brothers and sisters to hold me and pray with me! I need to have someone that I have seen be faithful through a trial, and come out the other end in one piece, pray with me. The power of prayer is multiplied many times over when we pray with other faithful children of God. There is also the fact that when many pray, the prayer literally "never ceases." When I am worn out and sleeping, someone else is praying for me. When my side of the Earth is dark, someone in the light on the other side is praying for me. It is an amazing, and powerful thought!

But there is one other aspect that we must not miss. In verse 16 we read:

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and

pray for each other so that you may be healed."

Our foolish pride often stands in the way of powerful prayer. We are so afraid that we will "look bad" to someone else that we try to keep up a false front and pretend that we are just fine and have no faults to speak of, nothing to pray for. Nothing could ever be further from the truth! Each one of us are sinners. Each one of us has many faults and makes many mistakes. Our Father wants us to be humble instead of proud. He wants each one of us to tell about our weaknesses, to tell about the bad things we did -- either on purpose or accidentally. Rather than building myself up, I need to open up and show my Christian family my raw spots, my pitiful failures. Then, and only then, can we truly PRAY for one another. There is no one person who is better than the others. We are all sinners. Without the sacrifice of Jesus our Lord on the cross, we would all be hopeless and helpless in this world and never ever get home to Heaven.

So, "Phone home!" Reach out across the vastness of time and space and call "Home"! Our Father and our Jesus are already online waiting for the call. You see, we must never, never forget that Heaven placed the call to us long before we were ever born! Heaven is reaching out, waiting for us to pick up the phone and "Phone home." Our God is always at Home and ready for our call!

May God bless us as we continue in this beautiful circle-relationship called Christianity! And it is my prayer that each one of us gets "Home" for Eternity!