Someone Touched Heaven For Me
The Power Of Prayer
James 5: 13-18
Story: Build Me a Bridge
A man walking along a California beach was deep in prayer. Suddenly the sky clouded above his head and, in a booming voice, the Lord said, "Because you have TRIED to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish."
The man said, "Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over anytime I want. The Lord said, "Your request is very materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking. The supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific! The concrete and steel it would take! It will nearly exhaust several natural resources. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that would honor and glorify me."
The man thought about it for a long time. Finally he said, "Lord, I wish that I could understand my wife. I want to know how she feels inside, what she's thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says ‘nothing's wrong,’ and how I can make a woman truly happy."
The Lord replied, "You want two lanes or four on that bridge?"
James 5:13-18 Read.
Prayer is powerful!!! Prayer is the one most powerful tools we as Christians have if we will just use it to glorify God.
In our Scripture we read about just how strong prayer really is. You see Elijah was a man just like us, and all he did was pray but pray earnestly and we see the power unleashed. It didn’t rain for 3 and a half years. Then the Bible says that he prayed again and the heavens opened up and the rain fell and the crops grew.
There was nothing special, or supernatural about Elijah. The scripture says that he was like us. Just a normal man who prayed earnestly and received an unbelievable answer to his prayer. Of course there are some other factors here at play.
Back in verse 16 it tells us that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Proverbs 15:8 Tells us that The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases Him.
Proverbs 15:29 The Lord is far from the wicked but He hears the prayer of the righteous.
So maybe you are one of those people that seem to think, none of my prayers seem to ever get answered. Ask yourself this.
How righteous is your life?
Do you have sin in your life?
Are you repenting of those sins?
Are you turning away from those sins?
God will bless and answer the prayers in powerful ways if we strive every day to be righteous.
I would like to think that we all pray the way we should.
I do know that most of us do not pray the way we should.
I Thessalonians 5:16-18 Tells us to be joyful always; Pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Many people only pray when it is convenient or only when things have reached a point in our life that we have no other option but to pray for help. We never look to God until we realize that we can’t do it alone anymore. We can’t fix it. We have finally thrown our hands up in the air and said I can’t. Then we go to our last resort and decide to pray for help from God. We want God to bail us out of the mess we got ourselves into, when we could have avoided the whole thing if we would have prayed for guidance. Or simply tried to live righteous. This seems somewhat backwards if you ask me, but each of us have done this.
The scripture tells us to pray continually.
Why wait till it is out of control? Why not stay in constant communication with God and let Him lead us, steer us in the right direction in life.
We will still make mistakes, MANY mistakes in life but I truly believe that if we allow God to take over the reigns and listen to His guidance, stay in constant communication with Him, we will be so much better off than we could ever do for ourselves.
So what is the best way to Pray?
This reminds me of the story of
The Best Way to Pray
A priest, a minister and a guru sat discussing the best positions for prayer while a telephone repairman worked nearby. "Kneeling is definitely the best way to pray," the priest said.
"No," said the minister. "I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to Heaven."
"You're both wrong," the guru said. "The most effective prayer position is lying down on the floor."
After listening to all of this the repairman could contain himself no longer. "Hey, fellas," he interrupted, "The best prayin' I ever did
was when I was hangin' upside down from a telephone pole."
My point is this.
Don’t wait till we are hanging upside down in life to call out His name. As our scripture says stay in constant prayer with God.
We have talked about the consistency of prayer now what about the quality of prayer?
Now many of us pray a lot, and when we pray, what are we praying for? Are we praying for something that Glorifies God, or are we praying for things that would be considered selfish or materialistic? Like the guy in the first story.
1) Do we pray for others in need? Praying for the sick, the homeless, praying for the lost and even taking that a step further and telling those that are lost about Christ.
Back to James 5:15-16
And the prayer offered in Faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
We should earnestly and in faith be praying for the sick, for the people in need. For the forgiveness of sins. So that we can be healed.
Do we do that?
2) Do we pray for our Church? We should be.
Read: Ephesians 6:18 Says and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
We need to pray for the leadership, and the people of the congregation? Most of us don’t pray for these things and yet we are the first ones to sit back in our pews with our chest stuck out wondering why we aren’t growing fast enough, judging and criticizing the decisions that our leadership makes. But we don’t want to do what is necessary or to do our part which is simply praying for those decisions and the Church as a whole. We are so quick to play Monday morning quarterback and think of the many ways we would do things different and we can’t keep it to ourselves, we have to share those negative thoughts with others, tainting the thought processes of yet another.
If you don’t like the way things are going then pray. Not for what you want but for God’s will in all aspects of service and decisions in our church and let Him do what He feels is right. If it doesn’t change maybe what is going on is His will and maybe we need to reevaluate our own thought process.
3) I’ve got one for you, Do we pray for our enemies? This is probably the hardest of all. We all struggle with this one. I have a real hard time with this one. It is hard to pray that God bless someone that we may not have a good relationship with or have had a disagreement with, or have something that maybe we are holding a grudge about, but are we able to realize the true power of prayer if we are not able to do this?
Luke 6:28 Says to “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
Matthew 5:44-45 Says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven.
God tells us that we should pray for our enemies. We should also Love one another. Can we say that we do that?
Like we have seen so many times in the scripture to day, prayer is a very powerful thing. Prayer can change things, can cause healing in many, many ways. All we have to do is make God His time and if you do, you wont be sorry.
I found out growing up that the best prayers were grandmothers. Grandmothers that I have known are true prayers. They pray for everyone and everything. My Momal when I was growing up used to hold devotions after supper and when she would pray, it would take forever.
But she would do it, and her voice, I noticed even as a child was so sincere, I was amazed at the way she spoke to God. And then she had to go and do it. She told Him about me. I was small and helpless and she just called me out right there by name even. I was so scared. Young people, if you have a grandmother that is praying for you to come to know Jesus and I promise that if you don’t know Him and you have a Grandmother, GIVE UP! It’s almost like Grandmothers have a direct line. Like a red phone or something.
But when she prayed it was so passionate and so overwhelming to me as a child.
That is how we should pray. Give our all.
I tell you this so that I can tell you about a true story that happened to a friend of mine who is an evangelist who was preaching a Revival at a Church in Dayton Ohio.
Story about Tanner:
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT A GRANDMOTHER WHO BROUGHT HER GRANDSON TO CHURCH WHO WANTED TO SEE HIS FATHER AGAIN WHO HAD LEFT AND THROUGH THE FERVENT PRAYER REALIZED THAT GOD WAS #1 AND HE WAS #2 AND HOW HIS PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED.
Conclusion:
Maybe you are here to day and for along time now you have been missing the point. That you can’t do it alone. That God is #1 and you are #2 God will always do what He said He would do. You can’t do this alone. And the cool part is, It was never meant for you to have to. He stands there waiting on you to call on His name and waits for you to remember that all things are possible through Him and the way we communicate with Him is through Prayer.
Stop missing the wonderful blessings of a life in control.
-Maybe you’re here today and you feel like your life is upside down. He stands here waiting for you too to call on His name.
-Maybe you’re here today and never knew what it is like to know Him. To have Him in your corner, To know that He is the Lord of your life. If you’re here today and have never been saved and followed Him in Scriptural Baptism, He is standing here waiting on you to call out His name.
-Maybe you are a Christian and you need to rededicate your life to Him in that you want to start staying in constant prayer and always putting Him first and allowing Him to finally start leading you. Just remember, He is standing here waiting on you to call out His name.
He is #1 you are #2 God will do what He said He would do.
