James 5:16 Confess faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous one avails much.
As America prepares to observe the National Day of Prayer on May 1, I wanted to share some powerful insights I discovered while reading “Why Pray?” by B.J. Willhite.
Willhite wrote, “The law of prayer is the highest law of the universe—it can overcome the other laws by sanctioning God’s intervention. When implemented properly, the law of prayer permits God to exercise His sovereignty in a world under the dominion of a rebel with free will, in a universe governed by natural law.
There are those among the rebels who have chosen of their own free will to obey God. They want His will to be done more than their own. So they pray, ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as in heaven.’
As they pray that prayer, they set up the conditions under which God can legally impose His will in a given situation.”
Prayer is more than a request—it’s an invitation. God, who respects the freedom He gave us, does not force His will upon us. But through prayer, we open the door for Him to move fully and freely in our lives.
When we pray, we are not changing God; however, we are positioning ourselves to receive what He already wants to give. Heaven’s purposes are waiting for earthly permission. Prayer is that permission.
When you feel overwhelmed by impossible situations, remember — prayer isn’t your last resort; it’s the highest authority you’ve been entrusted with. It’s heaven’s legal access point to your situation. No matter how difficult things seem, God is greater — and He’s just waiting for your invitation to intervene!
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One day a passerby saw a homeless man on the roadside. He stopped for a moment to hand him some loose change and casually said “God bless you, my friend”.
“I thank God,” said the homeless man, “I am never unhappy.”
Here in Israel we have an interesting geographical phenomenon – there are two landlocked seas. One is alive and one is dead. The sea full of life is the Kinneret, better known as the Sea of Galilee. The dead sea is…….you guessed it, the Dead Sea. Now the Kinneret is constantly emptying as it flows through the Jordan River valley…. into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not empty its water at all. Instead, the Dead Sea is continually shrinking, because the intense heat at this lowest place on Earth actually evaporates more water than is flowing in. Do you see a parable here?
One of my passions is studying history, especially the American Civil War. Here is an amusing story about General Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign. During the war, Jackson’s army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other.
We tend to focus on the part of that scripture where God does the blessing — but why did He bless Him? The answer lies in the passage! The Lord told Abraham: “I will bless you — and you shall be a blessing.” Abraham was blessed so that he could be a blessing!
In the Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Yeshua prophesied that “… nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The word “nation” in Greek is the word “ethnos”, from which we get the English word “ethnic”. All of this polarization and ethnic warfare which the media feed upon and incite is the work of the enemy as he stirs up the sinful nature of men.
Several hundred years before Jesus was born, a plague broke out in Athens, Greece. In an effort to stop the plague and appease the ‘gods’, the Athenians sought counsel from a wise man named Epimenides from the island of Crete.
A new driver for an interstate trucking company was having a difficult time. He found the long cross-country trips extremely tiring. The older driver who traveled with him, however, seemed to thrive on those long trips. He always seemed to look as fresh at the end of the ride as he did at the beginning.