This is a little devotional I wrote for my college band's tour book. Even though I reference college life a little in it, you can likely take something away from it no matter your walk in life. Happy reading!
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. 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. James 5:16-18
“If we really believed God’s guarantee to both hear and answer our prayers, we would pray far more than we do.” –Jim Cymbala
One thing that God has taught me this year is the importance and power of prayer. I have always known that prayer is important, as it is the primary tool that we use to communicate with God. What I have begun to realize recently is that prayer is more than just a means with which to talk with God, but there is incredible power in prayer. Prayer is a gift that we must use to bring about God’s will here on earth (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Martin Luther said: “No one can believe how powerful prayer is and what it can effect, except those who have learned it by experience. Whenever I have prayed earnestly, I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes.”
It is easy to read about great people who lived long ago and did great things for the Lord, and forget that they were human just like we are. Many people assume that the astounding miracles that we read about in the Bible only happened during that time, and that we are unable to have such a walk with God in our time and culture. This kind of thinking is far from the Truth. We are able to achieve lives that are so in sync with God and His Will that our prayers are powerful and effective as they were with Elijah. Read Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6. We are called to live lives completely set apart from this world and abandoned to Christ. Set-Apart lives are lives that are bathed in prayer, that spend hours before the throne of heaven. No truly great warrior of the faith was able to become so without spending countless hours in wrestling prayer.
I would like to encourage you to plan time in your schedule for prayer. Not just in between classes, but special time set aside just for unhindered prayer. Please read James 1:27 and Matthew 25:31-46. James 1:27 says: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Perhaps you do not have the time or the means with which to care for the least of these, especially now in college. What you can do is make the time to pray for them. Sacrifice your time, perhaps by setting your alarm clock an hour earlier, in order to use the powerful tool of prayer to intercede for the least of these. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40).
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