“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.
