{"id":1464,"date":"2020-12-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2020-09-25T11:42:46","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T01:42:46","slug":"how-to-pray-effectively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/how-to-pray-effectively\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Pray Effectively"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible says: <i>\u2018The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 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.\u2019<\/i> (James\u00a05:16\u201317<sup>\u00a0NKJV<\/sup>) There are two words in this portion of Scripture that you need to pay particular attention to: <\/p>\n<p>(1) <i>\u2018Fervent\u2019.<\/i> This describes the intense heat you get from a blazing fire. The Amplified Bible puts it like this: <i>\u2018The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].\u2019<\/i> If you\u2019re not careful, you can fall into the trap of thinking you have to \u2018work up\u2019 strong emotions before you pray or while you\u2019re praying, in order for your prayers to be heard and answered. Not so! Your feelings may move you, but only your faith will move God. The Bible says, <i>\u2018Anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.\u2019<\/i> (Hebrews\u00a011:6<sup>\u00a0NIV<\/sup>) Just because you felt God\u2019s presence in a special way yesterday when you prayed, and you don\u2019t today, doesn\u2019t mean your prayers aren\u2019t being heard and won\u2019t be answered. <\/p>\n<p>(2) <i>\u2018Righteous\u2019.<\/i> Elijah was a righteous man, but he certainly wasn\u2019t a perfect man. Yes, his prayers were effective. But he was also given to bouts of fear and deep depression. Here\u2019s the key: because you are clothed in Christ\u2019s righteousness you\u2019re always worthy and acceptable before God, therefore you can be confident your prayers will be heard and answered (see\u00a0Romans\u00a05:17). Knowing that, you can pray effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible says: \u2018The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. 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.\u2019 (James\u00a05:16\u201317\u00a0NKJV) There are two words in this portion of Scripture [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}