The Greek word translated afflicted doesn't mean the result of sickness and disease. It means "troubled."
If
you're in trouble, you need to pray. That's what the Word says. Notice
it didn't say your pastor needs to pray for you or your friends need to
pray for you. It says you need to pray.
Too
often we try to find a quick fix to our problems by asking everyone
else to pray for us. There's nothing wrong, of course, with having
others pray for you, but you'll never get your life to a place of
permanent victory until you begin to pray yourself.
The biggest
church in the world is in Seoul, Korea. It's pastored by Dr. David Cho,
and the last I heard, it had more than 700,000 members. How did that
church grow to be so large? According to Dr. Cho, the key is prayer. Not
just his prayers but the prayers of his people. Praying is a way of
life in that church. They have a place called Prayer Mountain where
thousands of people come every day to pray.
I once heard Dr. Cho's
mother-in-law on television talking about the emphasis they put on
prayer. She said that when their church members are in trouble, when
they have marriage problems or problems in their personal lives, before
anything else is done, those church members are told to go and fast and
pray for 24 hours.
We need to
do more of that here in our churches in the United States. We need to
quit training our people to run around asking others to pray for them
and train them instead to do their own praying.
You
see, if I pray for God to solve one problem for you, you may enjoy
success for a while, but then another problem will come along because
you'll still be making the same old mistakes that got you in trouble the
first time. But if you buckle down and do that praying for yourself, if
you discipline yourself to start searching out the things of the
Spirit, you'll get permanent answers. You'll learn how to make
adjustments in your life that will keep those problems from cropping up
again.
If you have made Jesus
your Lord, you have access to the throne of Almighty God. He has every
solution to every problem you'll ever have, and He's just waiting for
you to come to Him, so He can give you the answer. It may take some
private time alone with Him for you to hear it, but He will never
disappoint you.
Don't depend on others to do your praying for you. Go personally to the throne of God today.
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