James 5: Powerful Prayers

“¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” -James 5:16-18

Prayer. By nature, we assume some have a better ability to communicate with God than others. There are prophets who stop the rain, and then there are the rest of us. But James indicates something different.

Rather than prayer belonging to a special class of elite saints, he taught that what made prayer powerful is that it is done by a righteous or just person. If a person who follows Jesus lives a life of integrity, he or she can expect to live with a powerful prayer life.

How often we miss this! We ask God to do something for us, yet live however we desire. Instead, we are challenged to live for God, knowing that our prayers will be powerful when we do. This is not a practice for the spiritual superhero; it is a call for us all.

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Dillon Burroughs is the author and coauthor of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.