power in my prayer

For the last few weeks I've had the children’s Christian song by Dave Godfrey called “power in my prayer” stuck in my head. It goes like this: “there’s power in my prayer, there’s power in my prayer, James 5:16 you know what I mean, there’s power in my prayer.”  So I decided to look up the verse in the bible.  James 5:16 states “therefore, confess your sin to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”  The song and verse is clearly telling me to pray as it holds great power. But why do I need to pray? Surely if God is omniscient (all knowing) then he must know everything I want and need, without needing to say anything.   Anyway, even when I do pray it doesn't mean I get what I ask for, so how is it so powerful?   

                 I began answering that question by acknowledging that am 100% certain that God is all -knowing and all -power full and therefore doesn't need our help for anything.   But God asks us to pray for our own sake, he wants us to build a relationship with him. Like when a father asks his young child to help him with his DIY project, the father is perfectly capable of doing this task alone and in fact the child could be more of a hindrance to him, but he uses the task as a way of bonding with his child, in the same way being involved with the work that God is doing through prayer, helps us to bound with God.   We are closer to God as we are involved in what he is doing.   We must also remember that as God is all-knowing and we have limited knowledge, he knows far more then we about what we need and therefor e we should trust in him to provide and not come to him with a wish list that we expect to be for filled, after all, the joy in prayer isn’t the things we get out, but building a relationship with God and working alongside him.  

Once I get a song stuck in my head I have to listen to it so that I will sing it no more, and so I looked it up online. By doing this I was reminded of anther one of Dave Godfrey’s   songs and a time when his children stood at the front of my church and sang this: “as I trust in you, you give me peace within, so I look into your face and say, daddy I need you” for me that’s how you should pray, seek God for guidance and support in all, for he is our Daddy listening and comforting,   there really is power in my prayer.   

Abby Clark is on the yfcone eta drama program

She is based in Radcliffe with the Methodist church