The Power of Prayer

By Dave Storey

I love how the Bible describes Elijah as a man just like the rest of us, but we also know that he prayed fervently. Though we always have prayer meeting on Wednesday nights, sometime last November I sensed that we should also be praying on Saturday nights – to have a time when people could just come and gather near the front of the church and pray for the next day’s services, and that God would show up with convicting power, as mentioned in John 16:8.

A few weeks after we started having prayer on Saturday nights at our new church in Blackville, New Brunswick, we witnessed God’s movement in the life a young woman named Jennifer. Just like a lot of people who grew up in churches around here, she was a Baptist and had “religion,” but she wasn’t genuinely converted. That Sunday night she was really broken and responded to the invitation I extended after warning people to flee from wrath to come, to be born again. The Holy Spirit convicted her that she was religiously lost, and her mother recommitted her life to Christ, too!

I think that when people come and pray, it invokes the Holy Spirit’s presence. When we ask God to show up, we can expect Him to move. Sometimes it will be conversions of the lost; sometimes convictions for believers. It really boils down to us coming to God; not too much happens if we’re not seeking His face.

Dave Storey is a North American missionary serving in Doaktown, New Brunswick, Canada.