PARCELS OF PRAYER

James 5:16 NLT … The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

Well I’ve sent off my last parcel full of love and Christmas gifts for those who receive them far away, and hope they like them.😊 As I was posting my parcels I felt the Lord was saying our faith filled prayers for people are like parcels. They go out packed with God’s anointing to change their lives, to give them hope and bring about His purposes.

What a great thought and it encourages me to pray more when I imagine them like parcels the people will receive, even if they never know we prayed for them! Some prayers are like secret parcels that we send out in faith, knowing our God is faithful and He answers our prayers. 

We sometimes write ‘Fragile’ or ‘Handle with care’ on the outside of a box and God knows about our fragile situations, and we can trust Him to always handle our parcels of prayer with care. Even when they’re quick ‘envelope’ prayers, our verse says they’re all effective.😊

Sometimes we join with others to believe together for the parcel to be received with great joy when the answers come quickly, but have you ever had a parcel get lost in the post? It can be stressful, waiting for the postman to find it and make sure it’s delivered! In the same way we sometimes feel like our prayers have been lost somewhere in the postal department of heaven but actually they haven’t, they’re just being processed!

So next time you pray for someone, whether they’re secret parcels or not, big or small, let’s do it with faith in our hearts. We know our God hears every prayer of faith and He will answer them in His good time with His great power packed in the box to make them happen, so we can have great expectation for wonderful results.😊 In Jesus name. Amen.

Photo: Phil Hearing on Unsplash

HE GOT UP AND WENT THE WRONG WAY!

Jonah 1:3 NLT But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord…

Last week we looked at the thought God wants us to ‘Get Up” because He has restoration for us, but in today’s verse we read how the Lord told Jonah to ‘Get up’ and go to a town that needed rescuing. Unfortunately, Jonah didn’t want to do it and he ran!

Maybe that rings a bell with some of us, when we’ve been challenged by the Lord about something and we’ve felt like burying our head in the sand, or just ignored what God was saying. It’s a bit like Jonah running in the opposite direction to get away from what the Lord said.😊

You may even have already gone in the opposite direction, or just done nothing by default, thinking you could escape the challenge, but Psalm 139 reminds us there is nowhere we can go that God doesn’t know where we are. The wonderful thing about it all is God’s love and mercy are vast and they’re for you and me.

I’m so grateful God gives us second and multiple chances. It’s our choice, but when we read Jonah’s story we realise he affected other people and put them in jeopardy by going the wrong way. 

God is obviously not letting this go, and whatever He is saying to each one of us, whether it’s personal or for the benefit of others, if we’ve been running from it, or we feel like we’re drowning like Jonah did, today is a good day to turn around and allow God’s mercy and grace to minister to us and believe the Lord only has good plans for our lives, to bless us and not to harm us. God only wants the best for us.😊

So this week, as we keep walking towards Christmas, may we all decide to get up and go in the right direction, not the wrong one, and do whatever He has said, that will not only bless ourselves, but those around us as well.😊 In Jesus name. Amen.

Photo: Possessed Photograph on Unsplash