Righteous Prayers of a Righteous Person
Read: James 5:16
Reflect: What does it mean to be a righteous person? How does righteousness help our prayers?
Request (Prayer): Ask God to make you a righteous person?
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Does that mean that the prayer of an unrighteous person doesn’t have power? Yes. How so? In order to understand this whole idea about a righteous persons prayer being powerful, we first need to understand what the word “righteous” means.
The word, righteous, means, “just and right; free from guilt and sin”. So the righteous person is one who is free of sin and guilt. What person is righteous? It’s the person whose hope and trust is in Jesus. It is the person who has confessed with their mouth and believed in their heart that Jesus is Lord. That’s the righteous person.
Many people think that we are righteous by our good works, but that’s not even close to being true. We are only righteous because of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. How so? It was His blood that was shed on the cross to forgive us of our sin. It was the perfect body of Christ that was nailed to the tree. And we are only righteous because of Him.
So if a righteous persons prayer is powerful, it is the prayer that is made by a Christian because he isn’t praying on his own power, he is praying upon the power of Christ. Martin Luther said, “prayer moves the arm that moves the world.” When we pray, we don’t pray for our own will to be done or based upon our own power, we pray for God’s will to be done and we pray for the power of God to hear it and answer it.
Have you prayed about something and wondered why it wasn’t being answered? Was it because you were praying in our power? Did you think that you were capable of answering it? Did you not believe in Jesus at that time? Whatever the case may be, we need to understand that prayer does not get answered if it is not solely based upon Jesus. The only way prayer can be answered is by praying in the name of Jesus and relying upon His power. That’s the only way your prayers will be heard and effective.
