Back to the Basics: Prayer

Prayer is often seen as asking things of God, as one would Santa Clause: 'Please give me a new car, help me land a job interview, please give me a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc' are often the prayers we pray. Today, I would like to hopefully show that there is more to just asking God for the the things you want. Now, I am only going to be scratching the surface of the subject of prayer. Prayer should include thanksgiving (Psalm 95:2-3), and acknowledgment of who God is(Matt. 6:9). Jesus teaches us how to pray in Matt. 6:5-15, and the Bible also gives us an example of one of Christ's own prayers in John 17. I encourage you to go and read those verses, but today I am going to examine one particular verse on prayer, James 5:1b.

"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."

 

Righteous Man (or Woman!)

Are you a righteous man/woman? First off, 'none is righteous no not one' Rom. 3:10. What?! Paul was saying this to show that it didn't matter what nationality we are, we are all equals in that we've all sinned and can never be righteous according to the law. Thankfully Christ died for us so that we could be made righteous in his sight (Rom. 3:22). This means that to have an effective prayer, you must first be saved. 
 However, I do believe that we can go further to say that to have an effective prayer we need to be in God's will. We see a great example of this in Acts 4: 23-31. We see here that the church members prayed for boldness not for the persecution to stop, or for their lives to be all peachy but for the courage to stand up and proclaim the name of Jesus. We see that in verse 31 that prayer was heard and granted. You see, if I am in God's word (more on that in the next post) and striving to live in His will, then I am going to ask for things that are in accordance to His will. When Jesus was about to go to the cross he asked that only if it be in God's will that the cup be passed from him. If Jesus sought God's will above all else, then we should certainly do the same!

Fervent

Fervent is defined as 'exhibiting or marked by great intensity of feeling', in other words, passionate. How many times have we talked to God and said the exact same words as we did the last time we talked to Him? If we again, look at how Jesus talked to God before going to the cross, we see such passion and intensity of feeling exhibited by him (Hebrews 5:7)(Luke 22:44). When is the last time you literally cried out to God, and wept over your sins, or over the thing/person you were praying for?
When I think of fervent, I also think of, repetitive; not in that we say the same prayer over and over again, until the meaning is lost, but in that we go to God and make our request known to him often. Jesus gives an example of a lady who goes to court wanting justice done. The judge doesn't listen at first, but after great persistence, gives in. Jesus ends the parable by saying  that even though the judge was unjust, he still gave the lady justice because of her persistence 'So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night?'  (Luke 18:2-8)

So in other words, for our prayers to be effective, we should passionately lay our requests before God, doing so from a heart that yearns to do His will above all else.