Victory Comes In the Mourning

Praise the Lord!I pray everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving holiday and that we all will continue to show God our gratitude by living a life pleasing and acceptable to Him. My wife and I had a wonderful first Thanksgiving together. she cooked a sumptuous traditional meal for the both of us. It was truly a blessing, a day I will never forget.

I'd like to share with you all something God laid on my heart a few months ago that blessed me and I hope will bless you.

         Victory Comes In The "MOURNING!" 
Eccles. 7:4                             The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Have you ever noticed that the smallest turnout of the week at church is prayer night? On Sunday the people come streaming in dressed up in their fancy clothes and fancy cars, at some churches every Sunday looks like the Easter Parade. Bible study brings out a nice crowd, very studious with everybody carrying their big study bibles, commentaries, topical bibles and note pads.

Then comes prayer service and what you get is a couple of prayer warriors, they come ready to do battle fully equipped with a desire to pray and a workman like attitude. They are not concerned about how they look or what title they have. All they know is they need to get before the Lord and weep, moan or cry out, whatever it takes to get their prayer through and get the victory.

The bible says men ought to always pray and “faint not”. Jesus gave us one of the greatest examples of prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He travailed until sweat poured off him “as drops of blood” he then humbled himself and said “never the less not mine but thy will be done.” David a man after Gods own heart was a praying man, Elijah, Samuel, Elisha, Nehemiah, Paul, the list goes on and on, they were all praying men. Prayer is work. It is not glamorous or high profile. In military terms prayer warriors are the “grunts” they do the heavy lifting behind the scenes so that the rest of the soldiers can reap the benefits. The bible says “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” unfortunately today’s church is not willing to invest the time it takes to establish a prayer life and a real relationship with God. Some churches have even cut out prayer all together feeling it is not worth “wasting” the electricity.

  Prayer is something you can feel, not only spiritually but physically. If you’ve ever walked into a place where a lot of prayer has taken place you can feel the consecration, the reverence to and the presence of the Lord. That doesn’t happen overnight. Effective prayer requires getting humble and completely open before the Lord exposing ourselves, realizing who He is and who we are in comparison, realizing our righteousness is as “filthy rags” in his sight. God says in his word
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I here from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2nd Chronicles 7:14)

The word says “weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning” Getting “naked” before the Lord might not always be fun but when it’s over there is a healing joy and victory waiting for you. The world has a saying “It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it” but the word tells us prayer can be a tough job but we all need to do it to have victory in our lives and power throughout the body of Christ. So when your planning your schedule for the week don’t forget to include prayer.

       God Bless You, Brother Darrell, a Watchman