Good Morning,
I pray your day is blessed from above. My coffee this morning is Door County Jamaican Me Crazy. And I can tell you that it is hot, tasty and I filled a large cup. I enjoy looking at this cup. It has a photo of my dad on it. The picture is one of him serving as a US Marine in Korea during the Korean war. Here's to you Dad!
James 5:13-18
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Confess your trespasses[e] to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. 18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
Our church is a church of prayer. Monthly we have an all church prayer meeting after our Saturday evening worship service. I have been blessed to be the one who physically is there to lead the service many times. Fortunately for me the Holy Spirit takes over and we have one powerful time of prayer. The prayer time has been known to go on until 4 AM . I usually start the service by having people go and pray alone, using that time to clear their own minds and hearts, get right with God and ask the Holy Spirit to direct their prayers. I then will ask them to proceed to small groups or continue to pray alone.
This last prayer meeting went almost like that. I asked another prayer warrior if he would lead a small group if that is what the Holy Spirit would want and I would take another. I then asked people to go as they were led. It was almost kind of traumatic as no one went to the other guy's group. Everyone came by me. I started to feel bad. It would be like being the last one picked for a softball game, so I thought. That was not the case. The Holy Spirit and the prayer warriors decided that they wanted a large group for corporate prayer. We formed a large circle. I did however notice that a couple new people had come for prayer. They seemed to want to just observe a little and I noticed them agreeing with the prayers that were popping off like popcorn in a hot pan. It was a night to truly remember.
During the prayer service a Dear Friend of mine who usually is pretty quiet started to pray for me. She started to pray for an upcoming shoulder surgery. She asked God to heal me and guide the Doctors and nurses caring for me. But then she added please God we pray this because Marty prays for other people and helps others all the time and never asks us to pray for him and please lead us as to how we might minister to him now. Man! That hit like a ton of bricks. I do direct people to pray and love praying for others. I often teach on prayer and I do pray for myself. My humility in asking for prayer had become a sin OF PRIDE. I am a "Do it myself:" kind of prayer warrior and only a few do I ask to pray for me." This is not Biblical as we see from the passage above. Allow others to pray for you. If you think about it by not doing so you rob them of intercessory time for you with God.
Don't be a dumb Elder. It seems as if I have that title all sewn up.
God bless,
Marty
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