Welcome to Friday and to our final day of sharing this verse:
“The effective fervent prayer of a righteous couple availeth much” or in modern paraphrase:
“The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.” From James 5 v 16

 Welcome to Thursday’s reflections. We are sharing our experiences around this verse from James chapter 5 v 16
“The effective fervent prayer of a righteous couple availeth much” or, in a modern version
“The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.” 
Today we want to share what fasting has come to mean to us.

 Welcome back to our week of finding out about how to pray for other people. As it says in the letter James wrote “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous couple availeth much”.
 Or a modern paraphrase is:
“The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.” It is James 5 v 16.

Thank you joining with us on the second day of talking about praying for others.

Our verse of the week, and title, is from James 5 v16:

The effective fervent prayer of a righteous couple availeth much

Or a modern paraphrase is:

The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.

Dave and I are bringing you the reflections for this week.

Once I was asked “How do you know what to talk about when you lead a service?”

The answer was easy, it is always something that has been on our mind, in our hearts and taking our attention for several weeks.  That is how the Lord confirms what he wants us to say.  We don’t do studies; we share our experiences.

This week, what we would like to share is this verse: James 5 part of verse 16:

The effective fervent prayer of a righteous couple availeth much

Calming the storm…
This week, we have thought about Fear – and that promise that runs through our Scriptures, that we don’t need to be afraid because God is with us.  We have spent time with Abraham, Joshua, and Psalm 46, our Christmas story characters. Hopefully, we have been reminded that this promise of a life that is free of fear through God is possible.

Do not be afraid…
We have been thinking this week about ‘fear’ – that resounding message throughout Scripture ‘do not be afraid’ comes to us from story, after story in the Bible.  Perhaps the phrase appears most in the Christmas story.

 Fears...
We are continuing to think about fear – more specifically to remind ourselves that we are told to not be afraid!

Trouble, stress, worry – fears of life - these things are never far away. Even in the easyiest moments of life, we still have things that don’t work out how we expect or want. It seems that, whoever you are, life without trouble, stress or worry is not possible.

It is very easy for us to get caught up in the lie that life should be easy, that when things go wrong, in some way, we are facing persecution, being picked on, singled out – the cry, it’s not fair! 

Worries...
As we think about fears, I wonder what your fears are at this time - 

Health – finance – war in Europe – Covid – Fear for a family member – fear of change – fear of a decision to be made – fear of responsibility – 

I wonder what fears you and I have – we live in un settled and changing times, don’t we.  We seem to be swinging from one world crisis to the next.  Pandemic, fuel shortages, new normal, political unrest, death of our monarch, financial chaos, war in Europe.

Yet, of course, we are not unique – every age, culture had it’s worries, changes, wars and famines.  Perhaps, we have be spoilt, with the stability we have enjoyed here in the West for most of our lifetimes. 

Phobias…

Following on from Sunday’s reflection on ‘Fear’ we will continue to consider our fears this week.

What are you afraid of?

Fear can dominate our lives, overwhelm our decisions, leaving us frozen – unable to act, leaving us wanting to run away or hide.   Some of our fears we are happy to share – but others, perhaps are deep-seated – perhaps we have never shared them with anyone.  Maybe even sometimes we have a sense of fear that we can’t really name.