If you’re like me, the importance of prayer in your life comes and goes. I’m always communing with God in my heart but specific, directed prayer comes and goes. I’d like to give you some profound, mystical reason why I flow in and out of directed prayer but I think I just get busy and don’t take the time. However, there are times where I do feel the leading of the Lord to pray in the spirit, or with specific words, over a specific matter.

Recently I felt the Lord give me some instruction on prayer. It was more what to think than what to pray, what to think while praying to be more specific. It started with something James said, “the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

The first thing I did was look up “availeth.” I moved on to look up all the words in James’ statement. Here’s what I found…