PODCAST
Pray With Confidence
November 21st, 2012
James 5:13-20
God wants us to come to him with confidence like a child. When our daughter was small we had a financial need. As my wife and I discussed it our four-year-old daughter spoke up and said, “We can ask God and he will give us bags and bags of money!” Our daughter’s childlike faith is the kind that gets results from God. He is interested in every aspect of our lives.
Elijah was a great man of God. He prayed and the rain stopped until he prayed that it would rain again. Another time Elijah prayed and a young man was restored to life and health. Before his death water parted at Elijah’s command and he crossed on dry ground. We look at Elijah with awe because of his power with God, but he was human just as we are. Elijah had discouragements and difficulties. At one point he was under a death threat and felt that he was the only prophet of God left.
What do we need from God? Any need we have can be supplied through confident praying. Elijah’s life is an example to us of faith and obedience.
November 21st, 2012 at 7:09 am
Personal confidence in Jesus believes that HE answers just enough prayers to raise our faith to trust, but not all of our requests to keep us in faith (hope). (If in doubt, keep a prayer journal.)
James 5:16 tells us to confess our sins (to get the lies out of our heart allowing the Holy Spirit to purify); and, the prayers of a righteous person are powerful.
Hebrew 5:13-14 tells us that the teaching of righteousness is for the mature. Therefore, righteousness must be a hard teaching.
According to Isaiah 64:6 our righteous acts are like filthy rags. It is only through Christ that we know righteousness. He is our plum line (Isaiah 28:17) to which we are to align ourselves; and, “justice” measures the distance to or from the plum line. However, it is only the mature in Christ (who have trained themselves with constant use of evaluating good and bad) that can measure with justice -– not righteousness. Measuring with justice is judging the conformity to the right actions of Jesus.
Of course, in reference to the answering of prayers, it is Jesus who determines our righteousness.