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The
Senior Pastor of my church once said, “There
is no prayer God does not answer. The only reason it seems God does not answer
sometimes is because we get tired of praying.”
For
so long, I wondered what He meant by that, because I felt I prayed long and
hard for the things I desired. I felt. However, thankfully to God, I came
across some scriptures about praying / asking God for things that made me begin
to agree with Him.
Mark 11:23-24 – “For verily I
say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and
be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe
that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever
he saith.”
John 14:13-14 – “And whatsoever
ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in
the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.”
1st John
5:14-15 – “And this is the confidence that we have in him,
that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know
that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we
desired of him.”
Well,
so I knew that if this is God’s word then it is not a lie. So yeah, I agreed
with our Senior Pastor, but I still did not understand it.
God
wasn’t finished with me. He opened my eyes through some preaching and personal
study/meditation to His truth in James 5:16b; and even better to the
Amplified Classic translation of the Bible.
James 5:16b (AMPC) – “The earnest (heartfelt,
continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic
in its working].”
While
meditating on this portion of James 5, I began to analyze it and break it down
in bits. And the little revelation (“little”
because I know God’s got more for me from here) I got on it has helped
improve my attitude towards prayers.
So
what is it about this kind of prayer that I love so much and makes me confident
that God answers prayers?
Let’s
break it down.
1.
It is earnest:
It is serious, intense and deep. AMPC further breaks down “earnest” into
“heartfelt” and “continued”.
It is heartfelt.
You see, this isn’t the kind of prayer you make that has no basis or meaning to
you. It must mean something deep for it to be described as heartfelt. It must
be genuine, sincere. It is not one that is made amiss or with ulterior motives
or with shallow mindedness. It must mean
something to you. Little wonder why sometimes when prayer points are called out
in churches or other Christian gatherings, one does not see the effect. It’s
simply because many people just attend prayer services as part of their routine
activities. It really means nothing to them; even when they are asked to pray
for themselves. The effectual fervent prayer is
a heartfelt one. The one making the prayer takes it very personal and
passionately.
It is also a continued
one. When the Bible says “pray without ceasing”, it means pray without ceasing.
When it says “ask until your joy is full,” it means exactly that. And when it
says “continued”, it means continue, don’t stop. A prayer that yields result
isn’t one that is made once and forgotten about. Don’t mind those people who
tell you that the time you spend praying doesn’t matter. Prayer is about
quality and quantity. They both matter. I agree with my Senior Pastor and I
understand him now. Indeed, the reason why lots of us do not receive answers to
prayers is because we stopped praying. We didn’t “pray through” as Dad Hagin
puts it. And because we didn’t, the power needed to deliver the fruit of our
prayers was not made available. So we go around saying God didn’t answer our
prayers. He did. We just didn’t receive it.
2.
It is “prayer” not “complaint”: Prayer, in its simplest definition, is having a
conversation with God. In this conversation, we make clear, unambiguous
statements and we receive clear, unambiguous responses from God. Many times,
our prayers do not yield fruit because we moan and complain rather than ask. You
rehearse your situation to God and remind Him of how unfair it is and how
you’re suffering and why it is not your place to suffer, etc. whereas, God has
asked us severally in His word to “ask”. Talk to Him. Make a conversation.
Don’t complain. Ironically, our complaints to God may indeed be heartfelt and
very continuous, but because we complain rather than pray, we don’t receive.
Mark 11:23-24 gives us a very good example about a clear straightforward
request – “whosoever shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea”. In prayers,
state exactly what you want to happen. Don’t rehearse the entire sad situation
to God; He knows about them well better than you do. Be clear with your
request. Pray. Don’t complain.
3.
It is offered by a righteous man: Now this is where we may want to shoot ourselves in
the leg, because we think of our inadequacies. But according to God, a
righteous man is anyone who has accepted Christ.
2nd Corinthians 5:21 – “For he hath made Him (Jesus) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him”
Jesus took our place and justified us before Father. He
took our sin and gave us His righteousness. Therefore, before God every
believer is righteous, that is, in right standing with God. So it means that as long as we are all Born
again, any prayer we offer to God is a prayer of a righteous man (and the Holy
Spirit through John tells us in 1st John 5:14-15 that we have an
unwavering confidence in God that when we pray, He hears us and because He
hears us, we will receive what we have requested of Him). It’s important to
note that when we set ourselves to pray, Satan will attempt to remind us of our
shortcomings in order to discourage us from praying. Don’t give in to him. It
matters not what the devil says about you. What matters is how God sees you.
And praise His name, He sees you as righteous – one who can approach Him boldly
(Hebrews 4:16).
[Let me quickly
point out here that our justification through Christ doesn’t give us license to
sin, rather it takes the sin license away from us. So if you’re living
continually in sin and enjoying it and you call yourself a believer – righteous
and heaven-bound, I honestly really do not understand your own kind of
salvation. Be saved!]
4.
It makes tremendous power available: There is no distance in the spirit realm. As we pray,
things are being effected as they need to be; especially when we pray in
tongues. One thing we must know is that God has done all He needs to do
concerning a looooooot of things. What brings them to manifestation is the prayer
of faith. When we refuse to pray, we dull God’s ability to act on our behalf and
we allow the powers of darkness take over our situation. An earnest, heartfelt,
continued prayer of the righteous man makes tremendous power available. This
tremendous power healed that woman with the issue of blood, raised Lazarus from
the dead, won the heart of Saul-turned-Paul over to Jesus, and ULTIMATELY,
raised Jesus from the dead. It is the resurrection power (Romans 8:11;
Philippians 3:10). It is the power that will raise us again on the last day. And
according to Ephesians 3:20, it is already at work in us. Prayer only makes it
available. So why won’t you pray?
5.
This tremendous power is dynamic in its working: That is, it is active, it is vigorous, it is
forceful, it is effective and it is energetic. There is no telling where this
power can go – what direction it can run in. No matter how difficult or
far-fetched we may think our requests are, this tremendous, dynamic power of
God is more than capable enough to turn every situation around. I mean, if it
can raise Jesus from the dead, it can do anything. Something we should
understand about Jesus’ resurrection is that it was different from every other
resurrection before then; in that Jesus wasn’t just raised from the physical
dead, but more importantly from the spiritual dead (having taken the sin of the
whole world upon Himself); hence Colossians 1:18 declares Him “Firstborn from
the dead”. Romans 8:29 says He is the “Firstborn among many brethren”. It is a
marvelous great power, and it is only wise that believers do not slack in
putting it to work.
The effectual (earnest, heartfelt) fervent (continued) prayer
of the righteous man availeth much (makes tremendous power available, dynamic
in its working). – James 5:16b (KJV/AMPC)
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