James 5:16Plain English VersionSo whenever you go wrong and do bad things, don’t try to say that you are still good. No. Tell each other the true story about the bad things that you did. Then you can pray for each other, so that God can make you good again. Whenever a good person prays to God about something, then God uses his power and does whatever that good person asks for. See the chapter |
Then Abraham prayed to God and asked him to make Abimelek and his mob better. You see, before, at the time when Abimelek got Sarah so that he could marry her, God made Abimelek sick and stopped all the women in Abimelek’s house from having babies. But then God talked to Abimelek, and Abimelek gave Sarah back to Abraham. So then Abraham prayed to God, and God made Abimelek better, and he made Abimelek’s wife better, and he made all the women that lived in Abimelek’s house better too, so that they had babies again.
Then God gave Jesus the Holy Spirit, and he gave him power to do his special work. Jesus was from a town called Nazareth, and he went everywhere doing good things. Some people were sick, and the devil, the boss over the bad spirits, was giving them big trouble. But Jesus made them all better. You see, God was with him.
At that time, some of the Christians in Ephesus were still doing bad things, and some of them used to sing people and curse people. They had a lot of books that showed them how to do that bad magic. Those Christians heard about those 7 men, and then they said that they were sorry for the bad things that they were doing, and they gathered up all of those books about magic, and they burned them. Everybody saw them burn those books. Those books about magic cost a lot of money. They reckoned all of those books together cost about 5 million dollars.
God is the one that helps people to be happy and quiet inside themselves. I want that for you, and I’m asking God himself to clean you properly inside, so that you will be his special people. I want God to help you be properly good in every way, with your body, and your spirit, and also that part inside you that thinks and that gives you your feelings. Yes, God can clean you and help you be properly good, so that at the time when our leader, Jesus Christ, comes back, God will not blame you for doing anything wrong.
Jesus never did anything bad, but he died instead of us there on the cross. He took the payback for the bad things that we did. He died so that we can stop doing bad things, so that instead, we will do the right things. Jesus let them hurt him so that God can make us clean on the inside. It’s like we are sick, but God can make us better.