Effectual Fervent Prayer
PPT 1 Series title
We are in our study of the book of James entitled: Getting the right angle on things.
Today we are going to talk about, why and when prayer doesn't work, and why and when prayer does work.
By getting the right angle on this we can see more prayers answered. Anybody want more prayers answered?
PPT 2 scripture
Jas 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. (NAS)
Jas 5:16 Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (KJV)
Jas 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. (RSV)
From this text we are going to see:
PPT 3 what makes prayer work
For prayer to work it must be:
It must be effective
It must have fervency
It must come from a consecrated life
1. For prayer to work it must be effective
Not all fervent prayers are effective
The NAS translation of our text speaks of prayers ability to be effective, it can accomplish much. The RSV amplifies it slightly and says it has great power in its effects, (I like that wording its power radiates outward like a sun going supernova) but the KJV seems to describe the elements of prayer and what they should be: effective & fervent. This is one of those texts that helps me understand why there are so many versions, the thoughts of God are sometimes bigger than one wording of that thought.
There is only one Greek word that is translated effective in the NAS and in the KJV, there is no second word from which the KJV gets the word fervently. So where do they get it from?
First the Greek word that we translate effective is energao from which we get our English word of power/energy. So then it could simply mean energized prayer (fervent), or effective prayer is full of energy. KJV translators decided to incorporate both meanings and that is why they translated it as two words. I think they are correct because the very next verse says:
PPT 5 scripture
Jas 5:17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months.
Notice the phrase prayed earnestly. The Greek word prayed is prosukamee and it means to pray, and the Greek word earnestly is prosukay it is simply a different form of the word pray (prayer). Straight Greek to English translation would be he prayed with prayer. IOW it would be like us saying, he didn't just pray, HE PRAYED!
He prayed vehemently, with passion, with emotion. Another example is Luke 22:15 "with desire I have desired." John Gill in his commentary says: "... the phrase here seems to design something more than bare praying; a praying, not merely externally, or formally, and with the lip only, but with the Spirit, and with the understanding, and with the heart engaged in it, with inwrought prayer. The prophet prayed with much earnestness, with great vehemence and intenseness of Spirit, as this Hebraism denotes; his prayer was fervent, and it was constant, and importunate, and was continued till he had an answer:..."
So it makes sense that the KJV translators would say that effective prayer is fervent prayer.
BTW the dictionary defines effective as:
PPT 6 definition
ef·fec·tive
adjective
1. Successful in producing a desired or intended result.
So for prayer to be effective it has to have an element of fervency attached to it. I will talk more about fervency in a minute, for now I am concentrating on what makes prayer effective, or as the dictionary says makes it successful in producing a desired or intended result. Fervency is only one element.
When I began this message I said James also teaches us not only what makes prayer work, but what also makes it fail to work. So lets back up in his letter and we read this:
PPT 7 Scripture
James 4:3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume [it] upon your lusts. (KJV)
James 4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend [it] on your pleasures. (NAS)
I don't doubt for one moment that people have prayed a lot of prayers with great fervency and yet they were completely ineffective. Prayers for relationships, prayers for money, prayers to get out of trouble. Fervency alone is not enough to get your prayers answered. Just because you want something very badly doesn't change the fact that it will be very bad for you. And if its bad for you God won't give it to you.
James teaches us how we can ask with wrong motives, and that will prevent us from getting prayer answered. Jesus gave us the acid test to show us what right motives ought to be:
PPT 8 scripture
Joh 14:13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
The goal of all prayer is that it ought to be able to bring glory to God, and to help advance His kingdom on earth.
If helping you with a relationship, or financially or any other reason meets that criteria, He will definitely give you what you want. But if the relationship is fleshly and will pull you from God, it would be foolish on His part to give it to you.
It is very interesting how 1st John and James echo the very same ideas on prayer.
James talks about not asking amiss and John says:
PPT 9
1Jo 5:14 And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
1Jo 5:15 And if we know that He hears us [in] whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.
One of the ways to make prayers more effective is to be sure our motive is the glory of God and the advancing of His kingdom.
Summing up what I have said so far, prayer can work real well or not at all, and for prayer to be effective and achieve the desired result is that we have to ask with the right motive.
2ndly for prayer to work it needs to be fervent.
James doesn't spell out fervency, other than to say that is how Elijah prayed and it worked for him. But permit me to make a few comments on fervency outside of the book of James.
Fervency is the tension of the string of the bow that makes the arrow fly true and far.
PPT 10 picture bow being pulled
A bow without a string in tension will not shoot an arrow. Every man in here, and perhaps a few ladies have at some point in their childhood attempted to make a bow and arrow. Most likely your arrows at best went a few feet and then the string broke. A proper bow has a string in high tension and that is the power that gives flight to arrows.
Likewise passion and fervency is the power that gives flight to prayer.
Many times you have heard me define sympathy as: "your pain in my heart." When we have emotions they set our prayers on fire. When we don't have an emotional connection our prayers are listless and perfunctory. (Routinely with little interest or care)
PPT 11 church sign that says you won't get a million dollar answer for a 10 cent prayer
God places very little value on empty sleepy prayers. We need to ask like we really want it.
Illus: On a recent trip my power converter overloaded car fuse and it shorted out. When we get a lot of requests for prayer and we don't have compassion to pray we will overload and shut down. Facebook will wear you out, you will get more requests than you could ever hope to pray for. Better to pray for a few with fervency than a lot with complacency. This is a stress I continually deal with as pastor, Paul spoke of all the troubles he faced (shipwreck, robbers, persecution) and then added what I believe he said was his greatest struggle:
PPT 12 scripture
2Co 11:26 [In] journeyings often, [in] perils of waters, [in] perils of robbers, [in] perils by [mine own] countrymen, [in] perils by the heathen, [in] perils in the city, [in] perils in the wilderness, [in] perils in the sea, [in] perils among false brethren;
2Co 11:27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.
2Co 11:28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.
"...the care of all the churches." I believe Paul had a lot of love and compassion for all those first century churches, and it was a prayer burden he had to carry. Again my point is this, I believe we need to have an emotional investment in our prayer life, or we will not be motivated to pray, but we live in a day and age where because of technology we can be overloaded with prayer requests, and if that happens we will shut down. I'm not telling you not to pray, I'm telling you to be careful not to get overloaded.
On the other side of the need for fervency is too much fervency. There is a danger that you get so emotional you lose sight of faith, that your prayers don't rise in faith, but drown in sorrow, but the far greater danger is that we just don't really care enough.
Let me give you a scripture to pray:
PPT 12 scripture
Eze 36:26 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
I want to especially challenge the men in this area. For the most part we try to keep our emotions down, and yet God says that He wants to give us a heart of flesh, meaning a heart that cares deeply. Most often in the bible when it speaks of the flesh, it speaks of the sinful nature. This text is an exception to that understanding, it means among other things that we will be moved with compassion for the needs of others. Isn't that what Jesus our great example was all about?
By this shall all men know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. This is not simply a mental concern for others, this is a heartfelt compassion that moves us upwards in prayer, and outwards in touching others at their place of felt need.
Jesus is recorded as weeping twice for the needs of others, but I don't think that is all He ever wept for us. If we want to be Christ like as men, some of us will have to learn to get a little more emotional, because emotions move us to action. The things we care about, we do something about.
To be men and women of prayer, and of effective prayer we need to be people who are moved by compassion. No compassion = no prayer.
Here is a verse I am going to preach on next year, but there is a thought I want to snatch from it about fervency in prayer. It is not a text on prayer but there is something buried in the text that can teach us about fervency.
PPT 13 scripture
1Sa 30:8 And David enquired at the LORD, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake [them], and without fail recover [all]. (KJV)
I want you to notice the word overtake. Overtake means to catch up with. The only way you can catch up with an enemy that has gotten a head start on you is to run faster than they are running. If you run the same speed that they are running you will always be chasing and never overtaking. IOW we have to work harder and run faster than the enemy if we want to get back things they have stolen. Fervency and compassion will put fire under our feet, wind in our sails, gas in our engine, and not just gas but racing fuel.
Sleepy prayers won't get it done.
Jesus would have sent the Syrophonecian woman home empty handed but she was fervent in her desire to get her daughter healed, and she asked with the right motive. You are a master that even feeds the dogs. In Luke 18 Jesus taught a parable to this end, "that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;". Men ought to pray! Men ought not to give up, but keep asking! When a man has a heart of stone (or very little emotion), his prayers will never reach the fervency or continuity that is sometimes required to see them answered. Jesus, give us hearts of flesh!
Sleepy prayers may have worked before but we are in a different age. We need to turn it up. Men we need God to give us more of a heart of flesh, it is only then that we will pray with greater fervency.
I am going to stop here, next week I will talk about the need for prayers to come from a consecrated life in order to be more effective in getting answered.
Close: God teach us to pray effectively, God give us a heart of flesh, God help us to outrun our enemies. (Note to pastors at the conclusion of the message I asked the men who would be willing to come to the front of the church as a means of asking God for a greater heart of flesh. Our altar was filled with men crying out to God.)
