Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
James 5:16

• Do you have a hard time asking people to pray?
  Me, not so much. I often ask for prayer when I am going through a tough situation, or something important is about to happen, for me or my family.
• How often do you admit that you have a sin you are struggling with?
  Me, not very often at all. It’s hard to open up that much.
• When you do confess a sin to others, do you ask people to pray for you so you are not tempted to do that sin?
  Me, not as often as I should. But it’s important to do, because that’s what James 5:16 calls us to do.
  
  WE NEED TO BE LIVING OUT JAMES 5:16

Living out James 5:16

I am going to share my most relatable experience, in living out this verse, then break it down into 3 steps.

Me and my husband coached softball for many years, until our girls entered high school. As most people know, parents can be the hardest part of coaching any sport! We had been very blessed in that area until the last year we coached.

Up until that last year, all of our parents (in every sport we coached) had been friendly, helpful and encouraging. But that last year, a portion of the parents, I feel complained about anything and everything that they could think of. They would even try walking through the dugout and say negative comments to get the girls mad at us. (By the way, it never worked 🙂 )

The actions of these the parents was bringing out the worse in me, until God brought this scripture to mind. I knew that acting on my anger was not the will of God, so I needed to find a way to NOT fall into that temptation. James 5:16 was the answer!

3 Steps to living out James 5:16

Step 1: Confess
I confessed my sin to a Christian friend. I confessed my sin, not the sin of others, only my sin.

Step 2: Pray
I asked her if she would pray for me to NOT be tempted to act on my anger. Whenever I was tempted to react out of anger to a parent, I would send her a text so she could pray for me at that very moment. She would pray, and I would pray. We were not together face to face, but we were praying for my sin at the same time!

Step 3: Healing
I was NOT healed from this temptation the very next game. But, starting with that first text I was able to BEGIN to heal from the inside out. I began to realize just how much my sin had ahold of me. It did get easier after that, and eventually throughout the season the texts got less and less, until I finally didn’t need to anymore.

Conclusion

God Healed me from that sin, during that season of my life. The parents didn’t change, but I did!
James chapter 5 verse 16 is a powerful verse to live out. It is dependent on multiple people following through, and living out their part of the verse.

If you want to learn more about James 5:16, you can find a short bible study on our website, titled James 5:16 Confess, Pray, Heal.

If you want to learn about becoming a child of God, and what that means you can read our post titled What is Salvation? and God’s Promise of Salvation.

We hope you search our website, Christian Fellowshipping, for more encouraging ways to fellowship with God and other believes. References:
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved