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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