Get Serious

...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. James 5:16b

I hate ritualistic, habitual prayer recitations. Prayers before meals, public prayers of any sort, any type of "regularly scheduled" prayer...I am, at best, leery of these. Prayer is an amazing, important, invaluable thing; yet how often do we turn it into an empty recitation? Think about it the next time you go to pray for your meal: are you even really aware of what you're saying, or are you merely repeating the same mantra you did before your last meal...your last dozen meals? Are you genuinely expressing thanks for the blessing of food, or just saying words because you think it is expected of you? God doesn't want a memorized, rehearsed spiel. He wants to hear your heart--the good, the bad, the ugly. He knows it anyway, so you may as well bare it. The word "effectual" here is energeho, which means to be active, to be mighty in. It means to be energetic. God wants us to be zealous and energetic and determined in prayer. He wants to know we really mean it, we really want it, we really expect it...and we're not going to stop until we see something happen. Is that how you pray? You want to see something happen in your prayer life, maybe you need to infuse a little energy into it.