{"id":5949,"date":"2015-06-14T01:23:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T01:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=5949"},"modified":"2015-06-14T01:23:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T01:23:31","slug":"effective-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/5949\/effective-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Effective Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">A recent &#8220;Pearl of the Day&#8221; br\u200bought up an issue I was praying about today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I have been pondering today and asking God why\u200b,\u200b in some cases\u200b,\u200b when I want to pray\u200b,\u200b I can&#8217;t feel the spirit of prayer.\u200b \u200b It really bugs me. \u200b \u200bThrough\u200b the years\u200b,\u200b I have often witnessed the Lord having different people pray in different situations\u200b,\u200b and it all was perfect, so I know that side of the issue.\u00a0 But when I remember the scripture \u200bthat &#8220;\u200bmen ought to always pray and not to faint\u200b&#8221;,\u00a0 how do you fit that thought with the \u200bPearl\u200b that says \u200b&#8221;<em>every unanswered prayer decreases your faith\u200b&#8221;\u200b\u200b?<\/em>\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Lord\u200b,\u200b send us a spirit of prayer\u200b,\u200b which has faith with it that changes things\u200b!\u00a0 W\u200bhen this happens\u200b,\u200b you know things are changing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Wendell<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000;\">\u200b===========<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000ff;\"><em>Hi Wendell,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000ff;\"><em>For just about every observation about life found in the Bible, there is something else in the Bible that acts as a counterweight to it, and gives it balance.\u00a0 And we can embrace both sides, both statements, without contradicting ourselves.\u00a0 No one statement can encompass all that there is to an issue.\u00a0 As for the issue of prayer that you mentioned, I think that both statements are true, and taken together, they give us a well-rounded understanding.\u00a0 Men ought always to pray, as Jesus&#8217; parable taught, and every unanswered prayer weakens faith, as my father taught.\u200b\u00a0 The answer is in your last sentence; that is, for God to lead us in prayer, by the Spirit, so that what we pray carries weight in heaven.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000ff;\"><em>Thank you for the question.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000ff;\"><em>Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pastor John, A recent &#8220;Pearl of the Day&#8221; br\u200bought up an issue I was praying about today. I have been pondering today and asking God why\u200b,\u200b in some cases\u200b,\u200b when I want to pray\u200b,\u200b I can&#8217;t feel the spirit of prayer.\u200b \u200b It really bugs me. \u200b \u200bThrough\u200b the years\u200b,\u200b I have often witnessed the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}