16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.
18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
This is not a matter of saying the magic words and see good things happen. Certainly God is faithful, but I don't believe He responds positively to flippancy. He does want us to come into a deep, abiding love relationship with Him, in which we desire to please the Father and to honor our Savior. Prayer is the two-way method of communication that God has given to us, knowing we can come to Him, with the right heart and a faith perspective based on Scripture, confident that we will see Him move according to His will.
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Jesus said in John 15 that if we abide in Him and His Word abides in our hearts, then we can pray to Him, and He will answer our prayers. 1st John 5 offers a companion passage, which says:
13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
15 And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
We celebrate the gift of life and can give glory to the author of life when babies are born. Pastor João Prudêncio Neto and his wife, Karolinne, had experienced that - they were parents of one child, David, but it was apparent that they could not have another without special treatments; a recent Christian Headlines article spotlighted their story.
But, as the article notes, the pastor cried out to God, writing, beginning with Psalm 40:1, "I waited patiently for the Lord; He inclined to me and heard me when I cried for help...After I had our firstborn son David, I became infertile," adding, "My wife Karolinne Prudêncio was healthy and also dreamed of having another child. Until the Lord Jesus healed me, giving me life to produce another." The article says, "Neto added that he and his wife prayed daily for a miracle and attributed glory to God for the answered prayer 'without any artificial procedure.'"
Karolinne did, in fact, give birth earlier this year, and Christian Headlines notes, there was a video of João and David holding the newborn baby girl, Giovanna:
According to CBN News, the original video was posted to Instagram on March 4 by the father, João Prudêncio Neto, after his wife gave birth to "their miracle" daughter. At the time of its release, the clip received over 48,500 views.
And recently, the @baby_adorable page shared the video. Christian Headlines reported that it received "more than 1,100 comments and over 70,000 likes," adding, "The response was overwhelmingly positive as users flooded the comment section."
Pastor João says: "Giovanna's birth is not only a blessing to our family, but also to all those who dream of one day experiencing the miracle that only Jesus can do..."In processing this story, we can ask ourselves, what am I trusting God for? For whatever reason, we may find ourselves underestimating the power of God and the largeness of what He wants to do in our lives. We can pray and seek God, and allow Him to lead us in praying according to His will. I think it's perfectly OK to not only pray to him in the small things, but the big ones, as well. But we can be motivated to pray expectantly.
I believe that there is nothing too small to submit to God, nor anything too big to present before Him. The Bible tells us nothing is impossible with God, and that can encourage us when we consider that He is inviting us to come into His presence and approach His throne; Jesus has made that possible. God delights when we come before Him and bring our requests to Him; He loves us and, if we are humble and not asking selfishly, we can be confident when we pray, desiring that He receives the glory.
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