The Power Of Prayer

When you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Ask Boldly

A couple of years ago the Lord put it on my heart to ask Him for speaking opportunities. Specifically, He laid it on my heart to ask Him for twelve speaking opportunities that year—one a month. In James 1:6-7, we are told that when we ask, we “must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” And in John 14:14, Jesus tells us to ask anything in His name and He will do it. This is very beautiful because when we walk with Jesus and take delight in Him, the desires of our hearts begin to align with His, so therefore, we begin to want what God wants. To boldly ask anything in the name of Jesus is to ask in faith according to His will.

So, in excited confidence, I asked the Lord in January to bless me with the opportunity to open His Word and speak twelve times that year. Someone called and asked if I could come and speak at a conference in January. We got an e-mail asking if I could speak at a retreat in February, and we got a message asking if I could come speak at an event in March. I then went to speak in April and began to praise God for September because I knew that He had gone before me and been faithful. I spoke every month that year, and sometimes twice a month, because God loves to blow us away and make His name known.

Devoted

In Colossians 4:2, Paul tells the believers, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful,” and the way that this verse builds is so encouraging. To devote yourself to something means to attend constantly. “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective,” and because God bends down to listen, we shall pray as long as we have breath (James 5:16; Psalm 116:2). Jesus is the way to the Father, and because Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave to conquer our sins that separate us from God, the veil is torn and we now have complete access to the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-20). We can “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16). To devote ourselves to prayer means to talk with Him all of the time.

Sometimes it is easy to get into the habit of praying simple prayers such as thanking God for this day or for the meal we are about to eat or asking Him to help us do well on a test. While these prayers are beautiful, God has so much more that He wants to give to us and through us in our prayers. In devoting ourselves to prayer, we are committed to talking with the Father, and our faith deepens as we see how He is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than what we could ever ask or imagine according to His power at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).

Watchful in Faith

Not only do we get to devote our lives to talking with God, but we are also called to be watchful. If we are being watchful for something, then we have a sense of expectancy and alertness. We would not be looking for something that we were not expecting to come, so to be watchful in our prayers, we are not looking to see if God will answer but simply how He will.

The Lord has gone before us and has been faithful in ways that we have not even seen yet, and He hears us while we are still speaking, and He answers us before we even call on Him (Isaiah 65:24). Therefore, we praise Him before we have even seen our prayers answered, and we thank Him “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)! We enter His presence with thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4), and because we are always in His presence, we should always be thankful.

In Joshua 10, Joshua is leading the Israelite army to fight against the five kings of the Amorites. The Lord had told the Israelites to not be afraid of them because He had given them into their hands and that not one of them would be able to withstand the Israelites (Joshua 10:8). The sun was going down, and Joshua needed more daylight to take hold of the victory that the Lord had already gone before and given into his hands. So “Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.’ So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies” (Joshua 10:12-13). The sun literally stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day (Joshua 10:13)! How incredible!

Joshua was devoted to prayer and prayed with expectant faith and was watchful, and while I do not know what Joshua’s response was because the Word does not tell us, I would think that he was so thankful. Prayer is powerful because it is seeking the face of the One who is holy and for whom nothing is impossible.