"...The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." James 5:16, NKJV

In our family worship times this week, we've been reading through Philippians, and a familiar but oh so necessary spiritual truth has been brought to our attention:   God calls us to invest ourselves in others' interests, not just our own (Phil. 2:4).  Call it service, ministry, or the you-first way.  Paul calls it "the mind of Christ" (v. 5) that we can let the Spirit re-create in us.  And in our home, it's a spiritual principle that we frequently remind ourselves of, especially when sharing gets hard -- sharing toys, chores, turns with the bathroom sink, you name it.  Something we've realized this week is that God intends for us to experience  tremendous blessing in investing ourselves in others' interests (vv. 1-2).  In other words, as we seek to bless others, we ourselves will be blessed.   But what if we take that one step further?  In light of our church's recent focus on prayer, and particularly intercessory prayer for others, could it be that as we seek to pray for others, we ourselves will be blessed?

James gives us an incredible assurance about the power of prayer:  "the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much" (Ja. 5:16).  I like how one version puts it:  "The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results" (NLT).  And on top of that, James shares this promise in the context of praying for one another, i.e. intercessory prayer.  In other words, significant things really do happen when we pray for others -- healing, salvation, forgiveness, wholeness, even resurrection and restoration (vv. 13-18)!  Praise the Lord that fervent prayer for others' needs is in fact effective!  But there's more.  What I'm starting to realize is that the "wonderful results" produced by intercessory prayer are not only seen in the lives of those for whom we pray, but those results are seen in our own lives when we pray!

The invitation to engage intercession is really an invitation to experience transformation.

Think of the distraught father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus (Mk. 9:17-18).  He interceded for the healing of his precious child with fervency and a tinge of hesitancy:  "...But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us" (v. 22).  Was the boy delivered from demons?  Yes!  But more than that, the father himself was delivered from his unbelief.  They BOTH walked away whole -- the son with a newfound freedom, the father with a newfound faith.  Intercessory prayer changed his life too.

I love how Ellen White highlights the personal impact we experience when we pray for others and work for their salvation:  

"As we seek to win others to Christ, bearing the burden of souls in our prayers, our own hearts will throb with the quickening influence of God's grace; our own affections will glow with more divine fervor; our whole Christian life will be more of a reality, more earnest, more prayerful" (Christ's Object Lessons, 354).

What "wonderful results" (Ja. 5:16, NLT) does God want to produce in your life through intercessory prayer for others?  Let's keep praying, and let's keep praying for others.  And as we do, may we find our hearts resuscitated by the grace of God and our whole Christian experience to be more alive and real!