Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.
As I prepare for the one day Zebra event in Colusa, God has stepped up the learning curve. He has shown me a few new things and reminded me of truths I often forget.
For example, no matter what we think, the real work in ministry and life is prayer.
We like to think it’s what we do, the events we plan, the ministries we run, but it isn’t. The real work, the changing of hearts and lives, is only something God can do. And the only part we can play in that is to pray.
Last week I watched Facing the Giants again. My kids tease me that I watch that movie once a month, which isn’t true, but I do watch it a lot. I love the main message which is we need to live lives that are honoring to God but there are so many other truths in the movie that when God prompts me to watch it He always shows me something else.
This time He reminded me about the importance of prayer.
In the movie the school undergoes a revival. Emotional images of students praying and hugging each other on the school lawn are intended to pull at our hearts strings. But it was the interruption of those images by a short segment of an older man walking through the halls of the school praying over each locker that made me cry.
According to the storyline, the man had been coming every week for years praying over those lockers. Praying God would raise up, for Himself, a generation that loved Him.
The school’s revival, it’s implied, is a direct result of his prayers.
The Bible tells us the prayers of a righteous man, a man who desires only to do the will of God are powerful and effective. Especially if like Elijah, they pray fervently, not half-heartedly, not when they have time, but fervently like lives depended upon the answer.
Love,
Jill
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