“Is any among you afflicted ? let him pray ….. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed . The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” –Ja. 5:13,16

At this very moment people you know are going through great difficulties– wondering if they can take it and if they will make it. While we can help in some cases, we are helpless in others–what they need is beyond our ability to provide. Finding ourselves in that situation, we often say, “All I can do is pray”. But actually that is the best thing we can do. And if we lose sight of that the chances are we will soon cease to pray. After all, why would we continue to pray if we felt something else would be more profitable? Or if we felt prayer had but a slim chance to make a difference? God forbid that we ever allow that to happen.

I can’t help but wonder what great things would happen if we prayed more frequently and more fervently. There is no limit to God’s power, no hopeless cases and no loss causes if we pray without ceasing as we are commanded to do. Knowing that to be true we should ignore no need, waste no time, spare no effort when it comes to prayer. Persistent prayer opens the door of possibility and gives us hope that help is on the way.

Prayer makes a difference–“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”. It is no futile effort when the request is directed by the Spirit, in the name of Jesus, for the glory of God, and fueled by faith. As a child of God, the Father is always attentive to your cries, even the groanings of your heart that cannot be put into words. Why would you choose to not pray? Do you doubt the power of God? Are you lacking confidence in God’s promises? Do you not care enough to pray? There must be some explanation!

If we really believed that everything depends on prayer, and it does, we would undoubtedly bombard heaven with our prayers. Even if the chances of them being answered are slim that ought to be enough to motivate us. People play the lottery, where the odds are astronomical, to win money. I would rather believe that prayer gives me a better chance of receiving the things I request, things of much greater value than money. If we truly care about the needs of our loved ones even the slightest chance of receiving them through prayer should be enough to motivate us, but we have something much better than that. We have numerous promises from God Himself assuring us that  our prayers “availeth much”. If it takes something more than that to move you, driving you to your knees, I fear you will not spend much time in the prayer closet. Even if we had no assurance of answered prayer, our afflictions and our affection for others should prompt us to pray. Rather than thinking of prayer as our last chance, we should think of it as our first choice. Since prayer is our finest option it should always be our first order of business. It should be the first thing we do in the morning, the last thing we do at night, and the spirit in which we live  throughout the day.

“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die .  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.“ –Romans 5:7-8

We find it easy to love people who are easy to love. In reality, we tend to like people who are like us. Furthermore, we assume that God’s love is bound by the same standards. If He loves us, we assume it must mean that we are not all that bad. Not only is this view false in every way, it destroys a deep appreciation for the amazing beauty of God’s love—that He loved the unlovely, and died for the unloving.

D. A. Carson illustrated the difference between our vision of love and God’s:

Charles and Susan are walking down the beach, hand in hand. They’ve kicked off their shoes and the wet sand squishes between their toes. Charles turns to Susan, gazes deeply into her large hazel eyes and says, “Susan, I love you; I really do.” What does he mean? If we assume he has decency and Christian virtue, the least he could mean is something like, “Susan, you mean everything to me. I can’t live without you. Your smile paralyzes me from fifty yards; your sparkling good humor, your beautiful eyes, the scent of your hair—everything about you transfixes me . . . I really love you.” 

Or do his words I love you mean something like, “Susan, in spite of the fact that your nose is so large it belongs in cartoons, your hair has enough grease to lubricate an eighteen-wheeler, your knees make a camel look elegant, and your personality would scare Attila the Hun, I really love you.”

I’m guessing Charles meant the first one! Yet this is how human love differs from God’s love. When Romans 5 tells us that God “loved us,” it doesn’t mean that God looked down on us and said, “You mean everything to me. I can’t live without you: your personality, your witty conversation, your beauty, your smile— everything about you.”

Not a chance!  When God says, “I love you,” He is saying, “Listen—your nose and greasy hair, your disjointed knees and selfish personality, your wretched sinfulness—all make you disgustingly unattractive to Me. But I love you because I have chosen to love you, through My Son, your Savior.”

My friend, if you think you deserve God’s love, even to the smallest degree, you will never feel totally secure in Him. You will live in perpetual fear that you might do something undeserving of His love and, if that is the case, then you definitely will!

Don’t be afraid. This is the amazing beauty of God’s love toward us, that “while we were still sinners, He died for us.” The truth is, there isn’t anything you can do that will ever change His mind. His love for you is the same yesterday, today . . . and forever!…

Thank the Lord for loving you so much that He not only chose to die for you while you were still in your sins, but He chooses to love you every day in spite of your sin. Pray that He will give you strength to obey His command to love others in the same way He has loved you.– Stephen Davey

“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed , came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,“– Luke 10:33

“O Lord, advertise your love through us!” was the prayer of an earnest Christian. A young Christian, when asked if she loved Jesus, was moved to tears, saying in her heart, “What a dim light mine must be, if others are not sure that I love Jesus!” A Christian writer has recently said, that the deadliest heresy is to be unloving.

God advertised his love through the good Samaritan. Others needed not to ask him if he loved God. He was not guilty of the deadly heresy of being unloving. He had true compassion. He was not content merely to say a few pitying words. His sympathy took the practical form of doing something. He bound up the man’s wounds—that was help of the best kind. He stopped the bleeding away of the sufferer’s life. He rested not until he had him safe in a warm shelter.

He did not even content himself with getting the man into an inn, then throwing off further responsibility. He might have said, “I have done my share; let some other one look after him now.” But he was in no hurry to get the case off his hands. He took care of the man for a time, and then provided for the continuation of the care as long as it would be needed. The good Samaritan is Christ’s own picture of what Christian love should be in everyone of his disciples.– J R Miller

“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:”–Romans 9:1–3

Every one of the more than seven billion people living on the face of the Earth will spend eternity either in Heaven or in Hell. Over a billion people were born in the fifteen-year period between 1999 and 2014. Each of them must either choose Christ as Saviour or die in their sins—and yet many, many of them have never even heard the gospel. Charles Spurgeon said, “If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.”

The reality is that the mission field is not just far off places where the customs and language are different from our own. The mission field is also our jobs, our neighborhoods, our restaurants, and our families. The people you meet today are headed toward eternity. Our society is obsessed with avoiding the reality that life will end. People spend large amounts of money trying to look and feel young. Companies sell “life” insurance that doesn’t keep you alive and doesn’t pay you if you live. Cemeteries used to be located right by the church so people saw them every Sunday. But no matter how much we try to avoid or deny it, “…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). If we keep this inescapable truth in our minds, we will not find it hard to witness to those we meet.–Dr. Paul Chappell

“If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”–1 John 2:1
“If any man sin, we have an advocate.” Yes, though we sin, we have him still. John does not say, “If any man sin he has forfeited his advocate,” but “we have an advocate,” sinners though we are. All the sin that a believer ever did, or can be allowed to commit, cannot destroy his interest in the Lord Jesus Christ, as his advocate. The name here given to our Lord is suggestive. “Jesus.” Ah! then he is an advocate such as we need, for Jesus is the name of one whose business and delight it is to save. “They shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” His sweetest name implies his success. Next, it is “Jesus Christ”—Christos, the anointed. This shows his authority to plead. The Christ has a right to plead, for he is the Father’s own appointed advocate and elected priest. If he were of our choosing he might fail, but if God hath laid help upon one that is mighty, we may safely lay our trouble where God has laid his help. He is Christ, and therefore authorized; he is Christ, and therefore qualified, for the anointing has fully fitted him for his work. He can plead so as to move the heart of God and prevail. What words of tenderness, what sentences of persuasion will the anointed use when he stands up to plead for me! One more letter of his name remains, “Jesus Christ the righteous.” This is not only his character but his plea. It is his character, and if the Righteous One be my advocate, then my cause is good, or he would not have espoused it. It is his plea, for he meets the charge of unrighteousness against me by the plea that he is righteous. He declares himself my substitute and puts his obedience to my account. My soul, thou hast a friend well fitted to be thine advocate, he cannot but succeed; leave thyself entirely in his hands.(C. H. Spurgeon)