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.
James 5:16
Often people ask me to pray for them for different reasons. I try to never take that lightly. If I agree to go to God in prayer over matter, I fully intend to do so. This is something I have made a priority over the last few years. In my past, I would agree to pray about something and life would simply get in the way and I would forget. My heart would ache for that person at the moment and my intentions would always be good, but distractions would come so easy.
When I began writing my first Christian novel called A Rose For Jonathan, I decided to make prayer a big focus of the book. I was convicted over and over again to pray more throughout the writing of that book and subsequently the sequel, Quiver. As a Christian, I’d always known prayer was powerful but did not live and stand on that truth. This Bible verse says it all: “The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” It doesn’t say “the promised prayer that was never given” or the “half-hearted repetitive prayer with no thought”. It says “the effective fervent prayer”. That verse haunted me and caused me to rethink how I brought my petitions before God. I wanted my novels to bring people to their knees. It was my hope and desire to do so, but I first had to fix the problems with my own prayer life.
I have shared this in the past, but in my job, I am on my knees a lot helping children learn how to crawl, etc. I have calluses on the tops of my feet from being in this position so much. It shamed me that those calluses were not from being on my knees in prayer. This was the conviction of my heart as I began to study to write those two books.
As I began to search for more verses on prayer, it became evident to me that this was definitely a tool God intended us to use. Did you know it’s one of the only offensive weapons that we have as Christians? Prayer and the word of God are all we have offensively. The rest of the spiritual armor spoken of in the Bible is all defensive in nature. If we truly want to beat the enemy in our lives, we must learn how to fight. The best place to do that as a Christian is on our knees.
I truly believe there is so much God wants to do for us if we would only ask.
