Powerful and Effective
James 5:16 Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.
I have heard it, I have said it, and I have believed it all my life: prayer is powerful and effective! We are God's children, and He wants to hear from us. He wants to hear us say we believe He can heal, He will restore, He will provide exactly what we need and want. In my devotional today I was struck by the author's transparency. He admitted that in his prayers for his dying sister he asked for comfort and peace, and ease from the pain; he didn't ask for healing. Some time later he was able to pray for her healing. How many of us can say we believe it, but we ourselves don't pray it? It is easy when life gets hard and seems to be rolling forward and all you can do is hang on by the tips of your fingernails, to find yourself wondering, "Will God really do it?" Our prayers tend to reflect the current state of our faith I think. As Ryan and I have been walking through this season, it is true to say that I have found myself praying out of my lack of faith. Disappointment, anger and heart break cut us down and some days when we have so little left in us, our prayers can become habit, tired, almost empty. I can recall some really dark moments in my prayer life recently when I have heard myself saying the same words, but they lack meaning and belief. I can sense within my soul that I long to believe it, but my words come out from a place of weariness. As I have poured over the Word and other companion resources, I find my well is still dry. It is perhaps just the feeling I need to push me forward in my Christ walk. My faith has need to grow, and for reasons only God truly knows He is requiring of me to continue to push forward, stretch, reach for the answers. I know the point will come when I have moved so far and He will have something for me. I am not there yet, but I have found my pace and I need to push on to what is ahead. I am out of breath, sides aching, but within my depths I can feel that burn, that desire for something more. I see how far I've come, but look...it isn't much further and I can say I pushed on to the next level.
I have heard it, I have said it, and I have believed it all my life: prayer is powerful and effective! We are God's children, and He wants to hear from us. He wants to hear us say we believe He can heal, He will restore, He will provide exactly what we need and want. In my devotional today I was struck by the author's transparency. He admitted that in his prayers for his dying sister he asked for comfort and peace, and ease from the pain; he didn't ask for healing. Some time later he was able to pray for her healing. How many of us can say we believe it, but we ourselves don't pray it? It is easy when life gets hard and seems to be rolling forward and all you can do is hang on by the tips of your fingernails, to find yourself wondering, "Will God really do it?" Our prayers tend to reflect the current state of our faith I think. As Ryan and I have been walking through this season, it is true to say that I have found myself praying out of my lack of faith. Disappointment, anger and heart break cut us down and some days when we have so little left in us, our prayers can become habit, tired, almost empty. I can recall some really dark moments in my prayer life recently when I have heard myself saying the same words, but they lack meaning and belief. I can sense within my soul that I long to believe it, but my words come out from a place of weariness. As I have poured over the Word and other companion resources, I find my well is still dry. It is perhaps just the feeling I need to push me forward in my Christ walk. My faith has need to grow, and for reasons only God truly knows He is requiring of me to continue to push forward, stretch, reach for the answers. I know the point will come when I have moved so far and He will have something for me. I am not there yet, but I have found my pace and I need to push on to what is ahead. I am out of breath, sides aching, but within my depths I can feel that burn, that desire for something more. I see how far I've come, but look...it isn't much further and I can say I pushed on to the next level.
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