Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Effective prayer”
Our Bible verse for today: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for the next three and a half years! Then he prayed for rain, and down it poured. The grass turned green, and the crops began to grow again.” James 5:16-18 (NLT)
Our thought for today: “Our prayers for each other are powerful and effective.”
In his book “Moving Mountains”, John Eldredge tells the story of Agnes Sanford, a woman who was a great prayer warrior and who seemed to be especially effective when it came to praying about other people’s health issues. Agnes seemed to be more effective at praying for their healing than the people themselves were.
The reason Agnes’ prayers for the healing of others tended to be so effective is that the sick person invariably, and naturally, focused their prayers on the sickness, but Agnes focused her prayers on the Healer. When the sick person prayed, they would focus almost exclusively on how they were feeling and what they were experiencing in their lives as a result of the sickness. When Agnes prayed she looked right past the sickness (might not even mention it at all), and she focused her prayers instead on the power, and majesty, and awesomeness, and mercy of Jesus.
The sick person focused on the sickness. Agnes focused on the Healer.
When we’re suffering or struggling in some way, it’s perfectly natural for our thoughts and prayers to focus on the pain and the suffering. But the trial we’re going through is the problem not the solution. As long as we’re focused on the problem, we often can’t see the solution. Jesus is the solution. Whatever the problem, Jesus is the answer. So we need to be focused on Him rather than on the issue we’re wrestling with.
That’s one of the big reasons we ask other people to pray for us. Other people aren’t so personally wrapped up in our problem and therefore they can view it from a distance. That being the case other people are often better able to focus on the Solution (Jesus) rather than on the problem itself.
This is why James calls us to pray for each other. He reminds us of the power and effectiveness of our prayers and he does so by citing Elijah’s great example from 1 Kings Chapter 18. James reminds us that Elijah was no different from us, he was just a man. But he was a man of great faith and he was a man of powerful and effective prayers.
As I mentioned in an earlier devotional this month, Elijah was a man who worked long and hard at his prayers and his prayers focused on the power of God as the solution, rather than on the problem itself, which was a limitation. So I want Elijah or Agnes Sanford (or someone who knows how to pray like them) praying for me!
We need to have others praying for us, especially those who really know how to pray.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 