"Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." James 5:16
To be sure, we all need God. There is nothing without Him. A close second, however, is the fact that we all need each other. Among the greatest and most beneficial things God created are relationships. Everything He created relates in some way to every other thing, most relevantly male and female animals and the creation of man and woman. Nowhere in Scripture are we command to worship God in isolation but in association with others.
As parents raise their children together, so God raises His. We teach our kids to love honor and respect one another as well as others, but these are lessons we learn from our common Father. The benefits of living life in association with others are innumerable. Among the things we can do with and for each other is to grow our relationship with God through prayer.
Beloved we all need encouragement. We need companionship. We need to be corrected when we are out of line. And we need to be needed. By confessing our sins to one another we are not only positioning ourselves to receive needed help, but we are empowering brother(s) and sister(s) to obey God and to use the gifts with which they have been blessed. It is not unusual for a person to feel so down that they cannot pray for themselves. This is where our relationships are most effective. As the Scripture says, great and wondrous things can be accomplished through prayer. Verses 17 and 18 of the same passage outline the fact that Elias prayed and it did not rain for three and a half years. He prayed again and the rains came bringing forth fruit. Imagine using that power for one another. God would have us to relate to one another within our relationship with Him.
Rejoicing in the Lord,
Lee
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