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The Holy Spirit Energizes Your Prayers 

It’s frustrating when we don’t get answers to prayer. Even worse, sometimes, it feels like praying is a chore, like folding laundry. It’s a good thing that God’s Word teaches us how to pray!

In James 5, we learn about physical healing through prayer. Being a pastor, James must have understood some of the insecurities people have about approaching God and making requests, especially for something miraculous like healing. Sometimes, we don’t feel we are worthy of God, or we get the idea that He only responds to the prayers of big shots like the preacher with 100,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel. James wanted his audience to know that prayer has nothing to do with the size of the person praying or the size of the prayer. It has everything to do with the size of our God!  

To express this truth, James says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” The righteous person refers to anyone who is entirely surrendered to God and genuinely seeking to obey to His will. All it takes is a sincere heart and a desire to do what God says. 

Next, James tells us what happens when a righteous person prays. He says their prayer has great power “as it is working.” In the Greek, this is one word, energoumenē, which we find in the passive voice. It’s like saying, “The car was washed.” Well, who washed the car? Who makes the righteous person’s prayer work? Energoumenē most often refers to divine power, activity, and energy at work in the cosmos. We’re not told, but we can safely assume it’s the Holy Spirit. Thus, the power and energy of the Holy Spirit, behind our prayers, causes them to be answered.

Today, make a decision not to do prayer by yourself anymore. Next time you go to pray, instead of reciting a laundry list of requests, wait upon the Holy Spirit. Welcome Him and ask for His help. As you do, you’ll sense Him taking the burden of your requests upon Himself. He will be praying through you, supercharging your prayer and making it extremely powerful. Words will flow out of your mouth and all of the distractions around you will disappear. It will be you and the Holy Spirit; you’ll sense that your prayer is breaking through. Before you know it, you’ll have an answer.