Meditation: 4 Steps to More Powerful Prayer
Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. 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 produces wonderful results. Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops. (James 5:13-18)
I was reading in James recently. This particular morning, the passage on the power of prayer stuck out the most. Strengthening my personal prayer life is something God’s been convicting me on, embarrassingly, for years.
I want to be able to have prayer that is as powerful as that. I need to be able to have prayer as powerful as that.
This gives specific steps to “attaining” that type of prayer. So here it is, straight from the Bible
1. Prayer and Praise
God wants to hear from us! Any healthy relationship has back and forth, requests and compliments, sharing and receiving; and yet many times we slip into expecting our relationship with God to be more about receiving than giving.
2. Have Faith
Be confident in the fact that God wants to hear from us, answer us, and give us good gifts. That sort of confidence is the simple faith He is looking for and the faith it takes to get things done.
3. Ask Forgiveness and Confess
We need to confess our sins in order to receive all forms of healing: psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual. When this healing happens, we are healthy, and our prayers are given more umph!
4. Become a Righteous Person
It says right here that our prayers are powerful and productive when we ourselves are righteous. The first three tips the James gives us are basically the steps needed to get to this final one. If we talk to God, thanking Him for who He is, exercise confidence in His love, and confess in order to be forgiven and healed, we are made righteous.
I want to meditate more on this for the future.
Anna Sadler 