Prayer, Our Earnest Invitation

"Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” James 5:16 (NLT)

by Alexandra Copeland

In his epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 1:9 The Message (MSG), “Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works.”  After our Savior’s ascension, the Apostle Paul was truly one of the most influential teachers and ministers of Christ, and he was extraordinarily qualified. He was so careful not to brag or boast about the accomplishments of the flesh, but understood that we can do nothing outside of the gifts that God has so lovingly bestowed upon us. It is in the Father that we live, breathe, and have our being.  The Apostle knew how much we desperately needed to comprehend this truth, and here again in Colossians, we have a sure witness of his love and commitment to help Christians firmly plant their feet on God’s Word. He told them that even from the first day that he heard of their conversion, he had prayed for them continually. If you want to know the mark of a solid believer, this is it!

Often times our lives can feel very stale and lackluster. Things just don’t seem to move in a direction that delights us or engages us to the point of feeling effective or fulfilled. We’ve been told by our spiritual mentors, teachers, and leaders that we have all of this Christ potential, but it can feel very much out of reach at times. One of the reasons that we experience these seasons is because we have missed opportunities to pray for others.   

James 5:16 (NLT) tells us, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Some Christians are so embarrassed by the things they’ve done that they can’t imagine confessing their wrong doing to another. James 5 lets us know that this is good medicine. We need to release that stuff, to speak it forth to a Christian we trust. We are to bear each other’s burdens in this way. And there are also times when we’re ministering to others that they just flat out need to hear that we’re not perfect; that we make mistakes and mess up just as everyone else does. They need to know that we’ve been there, and that we all do things that we have to seek God’s forgiveness for.

Confessing our sins is only one part of this common practice revealed in James 5. The other part is that we are to pray for each other continually. This is the part where many of us fall off the grid. Nothing with Heavenly Father happens just because. There’s a reason for everything that He does. So you and I can know definitively that nothing happens by happenstance with us either. The people in our lives, the situations we deal with daily, our jobs; our churches, fellowships, and communities…these are all on purpose. They all can be impacted by our individual span of influence.

As Christians, we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we have a responsibility to lift each other up in prayer, but we also have to pray for those who may be outside the faith. You might see a person that is homeless and digging through the garbage as you drive by. Or maybe you see someone on the side of the road with a flat tire. It may not be wise to approach everyone you see that is in need of assistance, but you most certainly can and should pray for them.

Sometimes we overlook these opportunities to pray because we do not feel as though our prayers will be heard or that the person will be helped by our prayers, but this simply isn’t true. James 5:16 lets us know emphatically that when it comes to the earnest prayers of a person who has been made righteous in Christ, wonderful and powerful results are produced. It’s not your power that you are working with; it is the power of Christ at work within you.

Prayer is one of the greatest ways that we can be effectual in the earth realm. Prayer is our earnest or well-meaning invitation to God to intervene in a situation or condition; either for ourselves or someone else.  We have been given this extremely special privilege to pray, but let us take care how we practice it always. Our prayers should be backed by the authority of the name of Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Master told us in John 14:13 (NLT), “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father.” He would not have told us to pray in his name if he did not mean for us to do it.

People who do not read the bible may think that God should come into our situations and circumstances without being invited. They think that He should clean up all the messes that all of us have made, without the invitation of prayer, but this isn’t the way love behaves. Love never pushes—never shoves; love gently guides, and many individuals in the world vehemently refuse to be guided.

When it comes to life on earth, I’m sure you’ve heard the term, “the devil’s playground.” Well, it kinda is. Everything in the universe belongs to God, and although the earth belongs to Heavenly Father, it is still under the dominion of the ‘prince of the power of the air’, the devil. 1Peter 5:8 tells us that he roams the earth seeking people that he can devour. Jesus tells us in John 10:10 that the enemy is a thief whose only motives are to steal, kill, and destroy. We need look no further than the condition of our world today to see his handy work. Dominion over the earth was transferred to the enemy through Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience, and he’s been causing havoc ever since.

This information should under no circumstances cause the Christian to start quaking in his or her boots; quite the contrary. 1John 4:4(NKJV) tells us, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Because of the spirit of Christ in us, we are greater than the demonic forces in this world. Romans 8:37 calls us “more than conquerors through Christ who loves us!” So we can accomplish miraculous and powerful things in the earth; we can walk with confidence, spiritual strength, and tremendous love for God’s people, all through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

 
Praying in the name of Jesus Christ invites the miraculous. Philippians 2:10 (KJV) says, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;” The name of Jesus Christ gives us everything we need to be game-changers in the earth’s realm. This knowledge should cause us to see through different eyes. We should never look at a situation the same way again. We can be confident that it is within our power to help, heal, make better and bring deliverance, all through our earnest prayers. This is what God wants every believer to know. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.