Powerful Effective Prayer

By:  Dale Weckbacher

This Saturday’s post is the fourth segment of the six-week series on empowered evangelism.  The studies are based upon the Book Empowered Evangelism, which is available at https://sites.google.com/site/dalesrbooks/

James 5:16-18

16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

NKJV

Prayer is a power and effective tool and its power must not be underestimated.  When sharing a struggle or problem with another brother or sister in the Lord and they tell us they will pray for us, it is easy to believe they are just uninterested in our particular problem and are simply putting us off.  I hope that is not the case for those reading this for as James reminds us, effective and fervent prayer is powerful. 

In fact, I believe anything done for the Lord must be done with prayer backing it up for as we saw last Saturday, we are engaged in a spiritual battle and need to be in continual conversation and communion with God to be effective.  I also believe this to be especially true as we endeavor to reach lost souls God puts in our path but we must ask, how should we pray?

In what is called “the Lord’s Prayer” Jesus provides us with the following pattern for prayer,

Matthew 6:9-13

 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:  Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.  10 Your kingdom come.  Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.  11 Give us this day our daily bread.  12 And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.  13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.  For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.  

NKJV

As a child, I remember my mother having me memorize this prayer.  I believe she did this in order to have me memorize scripture but God does not want us to recite this prayer word for word for in Matthew 6:7 Jesus also warned against making vain repetitions.  This model prayer however provides a pattern for us to use when praying. 

The prayer is broken down into two parts.  The first part, Matthew 6:9-10 tells us to begin our prayers with worship of God by,

1)      Addressing our prayers to God the Father – Because of the finished work of salvation at the Cross, we who have accepted Jesus as our Savior have complete access to God the Father.  We can therefore address our prayers directly to God the Father without the need of going through some third party intermediary. 

2)      The name of the Father is hallowed – Even the very name of God is holy.  Unfortunately, it is all too easy, especially for those of us living in the United States where we have the freedom to worship God as we please to take the name of God for granted.  I follow some Jewish rabbis on Twitter and whenever they tweet about God, instead of writing God they write G-d.  These rabbis revere and hallow the name of God so much, that they cannot even write it.  However, I do not believe it is necessary for us as Christians to forbid the writing of the name of God for as we saw in point 1, Jesus finished work on the cross did give us full access.  However, we do not deserve salvation for nothing we do can make us good enough to earn salvation.  Therefore, we must also hallow the name of God and continually thank Him for providing full salvation from our sins by sending His Son to die for us.

3)      The Kingdom of God is coming and God’s will is going to be done – As Christians, we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and therefore the Kingdom of God dwells within us.  In addition, Jesus is coming again and when He does, He will establish his Kingdom here on earth.  Our prayers must also be in agreement with the will of God.  Granted we can pray for anything and God will answer every prayer we offer to him but the answer may be yes, no, or wait.  However, prayers offered for salvation of the lost are always in the will of God (Revelation 22:17). 

The second part of the Lords pattern for prayer tells us how to make our specific petitions to God. 

1)      First, we ask God for our daily provision – Notice, the prayer does not ask us to make petitions for His provision for the next 5 to 10 years or for the rest of our lives, only to petition Him for our daily provision.  God wants us to live lives that trust Him daily for His provision.

2)      Ask for forgiveness – Sin separates us from God and if any unforgiven sin exists in our lives, it may hamper the answer from coming.  This would represent an instance where God answers our prayer with wait for there is unforgiven sin in our lives that must be dealt with before the answer comes.  We are also to forgive others.  This is especially important for those of us that have decided to share our faith with others for the very people we are praying for may have wronged us in the past. 

3)      We ask for protection from temptation and evil – We live in a secular world full of sin.  Temptation surrounds us but we must remember that temptation is not sin because sin is when we give in to temptation.  As we endeavor to share our faith with others, Satan may throw temptation at us, tempting us to revert back to the lifestyle we lived prior to accepting Christ.  Therefore, praying for protection from temptation and evil is vital. 

By addressing prayer to God the Father, hallowing His name, acknowledging his Kingdom is in our hearts, His earthly Kingdom will come, and His will is to be done, we gain a Godly perspective of our problems.  Living in Arizona, I have visited the Grand Canyon many times.  The canyon is 18 miles across and one mile deep.  To cross it is a monumental hike that only those in good shape should attempt.  However, at 30,000 feet from a plane, the canyon appears small.  This is the Godly perspective of our problems and gaining that perspective allows us to gain confidence that God can help us.  With this Godly perspective we are ready to ask God to supply our needs.  However, before the answer can come we must search our hearts to insure we have no sin or unforgiveness in our hearts.  We also must seek God’s protection from temptation and the evil of the world we live in. 

Prayer is an effective and powerful tool.  Using the pattern for prayer Jesus offers in the Lord’s Prayer will help insure the prayers of intercession offered for lost souls God places in our lives are effective.