Regina …The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. James 5:16
The prayers of the righteous are effective. We have not even an ounce of righteousness left to ourselves. What we have is a righteous king who has imputed or given to us His own righteousness. This is no small thing.
But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. Romans 8:10
As a result of this grace, when we pray to God our prayers don’t fall on ears that cannot hear. They don’t bounce off our ceilings back to us. They aren’t words to an unknown God, no, our words are to a God we do know. He causes our prayers to accomplish things, because when we pray in the Holy Spirit, we pray effective prayers in righteousness. When we refuse to repent we reject the grace God offers.
I cried to Him with my mouth, And He was extolled with my tongue. If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear; But certainly God has heard; He has given heed to the voice of my prayer. Psalm 66:17-19
For the repentant righteous, our prayers not only bring us closer to our God, but they are also effective and powerful as they work according to God’s will. We see this plainly in Scripture in many places, like Daniel, but perhaps never as clear as we do in the book of Revelation when God accomplishes His will by means of the prayers of the saints. My aim here is not to uncover all the facets of this passage but to simply point out the truth that surfaces in this portion of Scripture, that God has ordained in His sovereignty that our prayers be a part of what He uses to bring forth His will on earth.
When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Revelation 1:1-5 (emphasis mine)
The startling truth awes. God uses our prayers for His purposes is stunning truth.
John Piper says this about this particular portion of Scripture:
“The utterly astonishing thing about this text is that it portrays the prayers of the saints as the instrument God uses to usher in the end of the world with great divine judgments. It pictures the prayers of the saints accumulating on the altar before the throne of God until the appointed time when they are taken up like fire from the altar and thrown upon the earth to bring about the consummation of God’s kingdom.
In other words, what we have in this text is an explanation of what has happened to the millions upon millions of prayers over the last 2,000 years as the saints have cried out again and again, “Thy kingdom come . . . Thy kingdom come.” Not one of these prayers, prayed in faith, has been ignored. Not one is lost or forgotten. Not one has been ineffectual or pointless. They have all been gathering on the altar before the throne of God.”(desiringgod.org)
It is also clear from Scripture that the Lord responds to our prayers, even as we pray them at times. Although He does not act in the same manner in regards to every request; we have every reason to believe the Lord listens and responds according to His will when we pray. Daniel serves as an example of this fact.
Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. (emphasis mine)
The Lord sent an angel in response to Daniel’s petitions. While Daniel remained yet unaware of the coming answer to his requests, the Lord was active in the heavenly places working powerfully on Daniel’s behalf, and aren’t we grateful? For Daniel penned intriguing, helpful, eye opening prophecy as part of the end result of His communion with God. We can be assured that because of Jesus’ sacrifice our prayers are powerful as they work. Have we grown weary or forgetful in prayer? And how about this…
What has yet to have happened, because we have yet to pray?
