Have you experienced the power of prayer? Have you earnestly cried out your concerns to God and received peace, healing, grace? Prayer is for sure one of the most amazing gifts God has given us. If you haven’t experienced the power of prayer, don’t waist one more minute! Why?

E.M. Bounds explains “Four things let us keep ever in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer.”

One of my most marvelous prayer experiences has been a very simple evening prayer with my husband. Earlier that day something had brought up some past hurts of mine. In prayer I gave all my hurts to God and we asked God to heal me. Afterwards I fell into peaceful sleep and in the morning all the hurts had miraculously been taken away. Praise the Lord!

Don’t be anxious about anything; rather bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks. (Phil. 4:6, CEB)

Don’t be anxious! Easier said than done, right? But I do think that we can either worry or pray. We can’t do both. Either we worry and keep focusing on our problems. Or we pray and focus on God.

Probably the most difficult step in prayer is to choose to give up worrying and enter into the presence of God in prayer. Yet,
God is always waiting for us to turn to him.
God knows what we need before we have any idea of it.
God wants us to leave anxious thoughts and wearisome worries behind us.
God wants to give us inner peace in the midst of our troubles.
God wants to bless us with his wild grace.

Prayer is indeed a tremendous gift of God to his children. The more we experience the power of prayer, the less likely we are to skip prayer. But even then we sometimes don’t really believe in its power. But, like C.H. Spurgeon states, “If you want that splendid power of prayer, you must remain in loving, living, lasting, conscious, practical, abiding union with the Lord Jesus Christ”

The prayer of the righteous person is powerful in what it can achieve. Elijah was a person just like us. When he earnestly prayed that it wouldn’t rain, no rain fell for three and a half years. He prayed again, God sent rain, and the earth produced its fruit. (James 5: 16-18, CEB)

We have a miracle-making God. We have an omnipotent God. We have an amazingly powerful God. But, yet, we pray small prayers. Like we would not believe in the power of prayer. What would happen if we all prayed believingly like Elijah ‘who was a person just like us’? What would happen if we persevered in prayer even when we don’t get instant responses like Elijah ‘who was a person just like us’?

 

Gracious God,
Thank you for the gift of prayer.
Thank you for the power of prayer.
Teach us to pray believingly.
Teach us to pray large prayers.
Teach us to persevere in prayer.
Come, change us, dwell in us,
make us bold in Christ!
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U: Have you experienced the power of prayer in your life?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you pray boldly large prayers!

Did you know that each weekend there is a Weekend Prayer Wall at Flowing Faith? Bring your prayers/prayer requests or link up your prayer post to create a global chain of prayers! Join us this weekend!

Image courtesy of Jennifer Powell. Some parts of this post have previously been published. Linking up today with Brag on God Friday.