Daily Devotional for Friday, December 30

The Effectual Fervent Prayer

I knew a preacher once who occasionally said something like this: “If anything ever happens to me, I want all of you praying for me, because I do not know who of you is righteous or not!” While he was mostly joking, the statement also had a very real and serious lesson to teach.
There is a lot of lesson packed into this Scripture, and we can learn much about the nature of our prayer from it. There is much debate about exactly how our prayers influence God. Does God actually alter His actions based on our prayers? Again, there is debate on this but this is not the point. Clearly, however, we see things happen because of prayer. We also see that there are right ways and wrong ways to pray.
First, we have to confess our faults. If sins in our lives are straining our fellowship with God, then we have to make things right before we present our desires to God. We might say that we will not have His full attention until we make things right. Confession and repentance are always a good way to go before the throne of grace. Our verse says we must be righteous. By the work of Jesus, God has given us His righteousness. Yet, restoring our strained fellowship with God is the first step to getting our will in line with His.
Second, our prayers must be fervent. We must pray like we mean it. God has the power to speak existence into existence. Why would we pray as if God were not capable of doing what we ask of Him? That would be an insult to Him!
Pray as if you mean it, with a clean heart, and watch what happens!

JUST A THOUGHT: If we do not pray like we believe God can actually do
what we are asking, why should He even listen?

Wally Fry