WEEK 5 - DAY 5
READ James 5:13-19
QUESTIONS:
These are some things that really stuck out to me as important:
My favorite thing I read today was:
Something I didn’t understand today was:
What is prayer?
Why should we pray?
How does your view of prayer and the power of pray compare to James’ view of prayer and the power of prayer?
What is the relationship between confession of sins and a powerful prayer life?
Read the following excerpt and then journal/write about your commitment to prayer.
Ever wonder what happens to the prayers you pray. Will all prayers truly be answered? If you’ve ever felt like prayer is a waste of time, read the following text from John Piper:
JOHN PIPER EXCERPT from Revelation 8:
God Has Preserved All the Prayers of All the Saints
Look at verse 3:
And another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
Notice: it is the prayers of "all the saints" that have been piling up on the altar. If you wonder where your prayers go and what God does with them, here is one of the answers. They go onto an altar before his throne. If mere human beings can invent a microchip that holds millions of bytes of communication, it is not difficult to imagine that God has no trouble at all devising a way to preserve on his altar every prayer that has ever been prayed in the name of Jesus.
What God Does with All These Prayers
Then when the time is right God does something with these prayers. He sends an angel to mingle heavenly incense with these prayers—perhaps signifying that the hosts of heaven and the prayers of the saints are one, great unified act of worship. In verse 4 that worship ascends before the Lord: "And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel's hand."
Then something happens which shows that the prayers of the saints are the cause of great historical upheavals as history comes to an end. Verse 5:
And the angel took the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar [that is, with the burning prayers of the saints] and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
These great events: thunder, sounds, lightning, earthquake simply represent the action of God from heaven on the world as the scroll of the end of the age begins to open and the seven trumpets and the seven bowls are poured out. The unmistakable point is that your prayers bring that about.