Prayer: Powerful and Effective Prayer

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” - James 5:16

"EM Bounds once said that, 'If prayer puts God to work on earth, then, by the same token, prayerlessness rules God out of the world's affairs, and prevents Him from working. And if prayer moves God to work in this world's affairs, then prayerlessness excludes God from everything concerning men, and leaves man on earth the mere creature of circumstances, at the mercy of blind fate or without help of any kind from God. It leaves man in this world with its tremendous responsibilities and its difficult problems, and with all of its sorrows, burdens and afflictions, without any God at all. In reality the denial of prayer is a denial of God Himself, for God and prayer are so inseparable that they can never be divorced.'

Wow. Just take in the gravity of that quote. Prayer is powerful and God has commanded us to pray! Ever since the beginning of time when God gave man authority over the earth (Genesis 1:26), He has positioned us to be able to release His power in this world. Prayer is partnering with God's plan for this earth and speaking it into motion by His power and authority.

When Jesus taught the disciples to pray in Matthew 6, He taught them to pray that God's Kingdom would come and His Will would be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Have you ever thought that it was strange that Jesus taught his disciples to pray this way? Wouldn't God's Will be done without prayer? Why do we need to pray for that to happen? The answer is because God desires to partner with us to see His Kingdom come about on this earth. Not that He needs us to make it happen, but He enjoys partnering with us to make things happen!

As James 5:16 says that, 'The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.' How do we become righteous in order to have powerful and effective prayers? Well, the first part of the verse tells us how! We confess our sins to each other and pray for each other. Of course, implied in that confession is that we are repenting before the Lord and Jesus's righteousness covers over us and makes us new. At that point we are free to go before the Father and pray powerful and effective prayers according to His Will.

Prayer is absolutely essential to our walk as Christians. We ought to be praying for the Kingdom of God to come to our own lives, our families' lives, the lives of everyone we know and the lives of the billions of people on this earth. Our prayers are powerful and effective! Partner with God today and pray His will into existence."

~ Written by Matt, an Honor Academy Alumni