All We Can Do?! James 5:16b August 24, 2018

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

I was recently tasked with renting a portable stage for a rather important community event.  Weeks before the event I contacted a rental company and secured what I was told would be enough stage area for our needs.  Five days before the event, I staked out the area that would be covered by the stage, and to my chagrin, discovered that, while technically it might be large enough, the dimensions were tight and the organizer of the event requested I double the size of the stage.  I found this out at 7 p.m., long after the rental company was closed.

Enter hours of worry.  What if they did not have enough panels to double the size?  What if there were no other panels to be found in the city?  What if a luminary fell off the stage?  On and on.  

Even though I knew I would have to wait until 8:00 the next morning to see if the problem could be solved, I still found myself ruminating, thinking, pondering, worrying.  At one point in the evening, I told Kristi, "Well, all I can do now is pray."  And while this was a true statement, it sounded almost defeatest.  Prayer is all I have.  Woe is me.  Nothing else can be done right now.  Reminiscent of Eyore of Winnie the Pooh fame.

While the message was true, the attitude was wrong.  All I could do was pray and that more than enough.  Rather than think if prayer as a last resort, I should have considered it an avenue to access all of the power in the heavens.  Prayer is permission to place worry and problems at the feet of my Heavenly Father and the all-powerful Creator of the universe.  Prayer is powerful, not passive.  Pray can kick down doors, not whimper at the threshold. 

"Oh well, all I can do is pray" should have been replaced with "Alright, now I get to pray!"  I get to bring in the big guns.  The Alpha and Omega is now involved.  Elohim is all over it!
  
For those times when prayer truly is all that can be done, we need to realize that prayer is the most powerful, effectual of all the things we can do.  God will allow us to have times in our lives when prayer is all we have left in order for us to realize that through prayer we can experience comfort, guidance, wisdom, or power according to our needs. These times can increase our faith and reliance on Jehovah.  It is through all-we-can-do-is-pray situations we more fully experience God's love, faithfulness, and provision.

Thank you, God for those times when all I can do is pray.