LET US PRAY, AGAIN

And he prayed AGAIN, and the heavens gave rain, – Jas 5:18

If one were to poll the reason why Believers struggle to pray, the typical responses would be “carnality”, “laziness”, “sin”, “misplaced priorities”, “Social Media”, etc. Nevertheless, a cause for prayerlessness is one that doesn’t get mentioned a lot in Bible Study classes: i.e. Depression.

If the truth be told, not every Believer who skips Prayer Meetings is as carnal as we presume. Not every family that stops Morning Prayers do so because of the rush of modern life. And not every Believer who stifles a scoff when you said, “Let us pray” is backslidden.

It may surprise us that they probably were more prayerful than we are right now. Some were in the Church’s “Prayer Unit”, some had spent days in dry fastings, and others still had a reputation for praying for hours at a stretch by themselves.

But Life, cruel as it can sometimes be, has a way of dowsing the hottest flames. One loss here, a little disappointment there, a SUDDEN frustration that they’ve been praying for the same thing for years... and former Prayer Warrior becomes Cold Churchgoer.

Despondency happens to the best of us. It happened to Abraham, it happened to David, and it happened to Elijah. Nevertheless, whenever we find ourselves in such situation, we must do as they did. We must pray, AGAIN.

If Jesus’s prayer were answered the first time that He cried out in agony to God in Gethsemane, He wouldn’t have needed to pray again. But Mt 26:42 says He went away AGAIN THE SECOND TIME, AND PRAYED.

And even that was not sufficient enough, two verses later, He went away again, and PRAYED THE THIRD TIME, saying THE SAME WORDS.

Beloved, we have no other avenue of receiving spiritual grace, no other channel, no other route. If we presumed the solution to the problem was prayer back then, it is still the solution now. We mustn’t succumb to the lies and haunting pressures of the Devil.

Let us not be despondent. Let us Pray, AGAIN.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN