Rev. Biodun Fatoyinbo, the founder and general overseer of the renowned church in Nigeria, Common Wealth of Zion’s Assembly (COZA) spoke to his members about the effectiveness of prayer. He read the book of James 5:13 which says:
“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms”
This verse was written by James the half-brother of Jesus Christ. He had lived with Jesus for 33 and half years. He didn’t know he was God but by the time he knew Jesus was God, he went ballistic. By the time the book of James was written, apostle Peter had retired. “You can imagine the number of years this was after the death of Jesus Christ. So James was now the senior pastor of the first church in Jerusalem at the time of his writing,” he said.
The man of God then revealed that with all the happenings involving the Holy Spirit and other situations, saints began to write him letters saying: we are sick; we are dying; what should we do? The book of James was a response to the complaints of the church at that time. James then said, let him pray. He didn’t say you should go to prayer contractors. Apostle James knew that with this power that is available to us as believers, it will take a lot for God to reject your prayer because Jesus is at His right hand tapping Him and saying, “this is one of the people I died for. We had an agreement”.
According to him, the antidote to affliction is prayer, not complaints. You don’t want to publish something that will make the devil gain an upper hand. “I am not saying you should live in denial but don’t like to be pitied,” he said. Why is it that you pray for the sick or you decree over your finances or family, or you speak over your child and it doesn’t happen? So why is it that you pray and you don’t see results?
The man of God revealed that It is because faith works by Hope. If your hope is not in place, your faith will be crippled. There are churches based on the hope that say no matter what you are going through, you will make it through. Just hold on. It is good but if you stop at that point, you will not see results. Hope doesn’t change things but hope will give you something called earnest expectation. “Expectation is the mother of manifestation. There are a lot of people with faith but not hope,” he said.
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