Psalms 108-110; James 4
(Psalm 107 was read on Day 271)

I’m going to depart from my usual big picture approach and share a personal story which highlights only one verse from today’s reading… And that one verse is not from Psalm 110 (one of the most amazing Messianic Psalms – one in which Jesus, himself, uses to prove his divinity). Rather, I’ve chosen a verse buried in the plethora of wisdom sayings in James. So here goes…

I and my three children were involved in a horrific vehicular accident in which my middle daughter was critically injured. She was life-flighted from the scene. Upon arriving at the hospital, they immediately performed a CT scan of her body. The CT scan showed massive bleeding and swelling in her brain. Her eyes were fixed and dilated.

The neurosurgeon on call performed an emergency craniectomy in which he removed a portion of her skull and inserted an intraventricular drain – both of which were done to relieve the pressure in her brain. Once the pressure began to decrease, my daughter’s eyes became responsive to light.

She survived the surgery, barely. The surgeon informed my husband that she might not make it through the night.

That night, as my husband was lying beside her hospital bed, he awoke to see a friend, standing and praying over our daughter. It was 2am and dark in the ICU room – but there he stood, praying.

He wasn’t alone. Countless others prayed for our little girl. The church held special prayer meetings for her. They called the congregation to fast. People in our community, school and neighborhood prayed and prayed and prayed.

She made it through that first night. Then the doctor informed us that things would get worse before they got better. So many came to see her in the ICU – and each one prayed for her life.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16, NIV).

By God’s grace, our little girl survived. Did the prayers of God’s people affect the outcome? According to James, yes, because prayer is effective. Will God always answer our prayers so quickly and affirmatively as he did for my daughter? No.

Prayer is a mystery. It’s hard to reconcile the effectiveness of prayer and God’s sovereignty. Personally, I get frustrated when my prayers seem to be ineffective as I watch marriages dissolve, children abandon the faith and loved ones die. But regardless of my limited understanding, while Jesus was on earth, He commanded us to pray. And he not only commanded us to do it, he also stressed the importance of persevering in it.

My daughter survived, but she lives with a severe traumatic brain injury. I feel like I ask God over and over again to help my daughter recover. Will God answer all of my prayers this side of heaven? No, probably not. But Jesus told us to pray, so we pray.

I think He knew that in the face of seemingly unanswered prayer, we would need that extra encouragement to persevere. I believe perseverance is key. So regardless of how I feel about the effectiveness of my prayers, I ask God to help me persevere in prayer. Because somehow – in the spiritual realm – in a way that I can’t comprehend… prayer works.