Posted on 09/30/2018 7:49:10 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Powerful prayer. I’m going to keep this close in general! ;D
God the Father of Mercy: we hold the Kavanaugh family up to you.
May they be protected as the apple of your eye. May no weapon formed against them prosper. May Brett Kavanaugh be swiftly confirmed as Supreme Court Judge.
May Kavanaugh’s human adversaries be rebuked and falter. May they repent and come to believe in your Son. May we all be healed and sing with joy together at the Last Day.
May the fallen angels that shriek and howl for the destruction of all good be thrust into hell.
+ We ask these things in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ +
Amen.
Brace yourself, it’s going to get hideous.
It was read at my church yesterday also
Thanks so much for posting this!
Here’s an article from desiringgod.org about the main ingredient in powerful and effective prayer that I thought was good.
Article by Jonathan Parnell
Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Its tragic how easily we can miss the main ingredient in effective prayer.
In our sin, weve been rewired to focus on us on the steps we should take for our prayers to be heard. We have this bent toward believing that every result is born from method. If something works for somebody, we want to know what that somebody is doing.
Weve developed the assumption that if we can just strip it all down to a reproducible process to put into action, then the results will multiply. While this applies to certain things, it doesnt apply to prayer or at least thats not the vision the apostle James gives us. The main ingredient in effective prayer is emphatically not us.
Often Misunderstood
Many of us find James 5:16 to be a familiar verse: The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working which is also translated, as an ESV footnote spells out, The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power.
We pray as ordinary people who have an extraordinary God.
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This is one of those coffee-mug verses. Its commonly understood like this: Be righteous, and your prayers will work. Its what I used to think. But thats the skim-milk meaning. Its what happens when we fly by the text without questions. Our broken bent is to make the burden of this passage something to do with us. We simply settle to think that, if we want our prayers to be effective, then we need to be righteous.
But this reading doesnt hold up.
Reading in Context
First, look at the context surrounding James 5:16. Jamess whole point is that prayer is effective. He asks in James 5:13, Is anyone among you suffering? Then he replies, Let him pray. What about cheerfulness? Or sickness? Or sin? In each case, James encourages his readers to pray. Why? Because prayer is effective, which means, God hears his people and acts on their behalf.
Then, in the beginning of verse 16, because prayer is effective (James 5:1315), he says, Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed (James 5:16). To make it even clearer, he follows this with, The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power. That line is the second portion in a double dose of support for our praying. Jamess point is to repeat his theme to pray because prayer is effective. His concern is not how prayer is made effective, but that prayer is effective. And then verse 17 comes to ground that point.
What About Elijah?
James 5:17 then brings in Elijah. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently.
What does Elijah have to do with our praying? Does it mean that Elijah was righteous and his prayers worked, so we should be like Elijah for our prayers to work too? Is that what he is saying?
No way.
Prayer is effective not because of great men who pray, but because of a great God who graciously hears his people.
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Look at the book. James says that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He was just a man. He was like us. He had a nature like ours. And being just a man, being like us, having a nature like ours, he prayed fervently and God heard. The point is not that we should be righteous at the extraordinary level of an Elijah, but that he was normal like you and me. James doesnt say for us to be like Elijah for our prayers to be answered, but that Elijah was like us and his prayers were answered therefore, pray.
Dont Miss Whats Main
This means that the focus of effective prayer is not us, but God. Prayer has less to do with the specifics of how we say what we say, and more to do with the one to whom we are saying it.
We pray as ordinary people who have an extraordinary God. Were just normal, you and I. Were just normal like Elijah. Prayer is effective, not because of great men who pray, but because of a great God who in Christ graciously hears his people.
Hes the main ingredient. So, pray.
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