Living Hope Fellowship Church

BEING EFFECTUAL

Training Material

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

BEING EFFECTUAL

Preface

(fervent prayer)

Sometimes it is hard to be a fervent servant, but we need to pray and believe God.  The men and women in the Bible were no different from you and me.  They ate, they slept, they struggled, and they had lousy days and good days. 

Elijah prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t for three years and six months.  He prayed again, and it rained!

Hebrews 1:7 says,   “. . . Who maketh . . . his ministers a flame of fire.”  If you get too close and you aren’t as hot as they are, you will get burned or catch on fire yourself!  God hates us to be lukewarm.  He wants us hot, fervent, and effectual in our prayer and in our lives as we work for Him.

I pray that God will turn up the heat on us that we might burn brighter.  God causes us to pray harder, that we will be effectual.  James 1:4 says, “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”  Let’s dig in and hammer it out in prayer with God and get the victory!

BEING EFFECTUAL

by Pastor Kevin Badgley      

          James 5:16 says, “. . . The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  How much is much to you?  How many times have you had to pray over something to conquer it?  Availeth means “gets done”.  God put this scripture in His Word. 

          God’s much is much more than our “much”!  God made the universe and all things therein.  When you get down and get real in prayer, it avails much.

Sometimes it is hard to be a fervent servant.  We need to pray and believe God.  James 5:17-18 talks about Elijah - “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.  And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.”

The men and women in the Bible were no different from you and me.  They ate, they slept, they struggled, and they had lousy days and good days.  Some of them had nagging wives and some of them had rotten husbands.  Some of them had hypocrites sitting beside them.  Some were afflicted and some were tormented.  Some bore the reproach of Christ and rejected all the riches Egypt had to offer. 

Elijah was subject to like passions as we are, but he PRAYED EARNESTLY.  Believe God and pray earnestly for your church, your family, the ministry, the area, and whatever the need.  Tell the devil to get off of your situation!  Believe God for revival.  When you start praying fervently, your inhibitions start leaving.  You get loud, and you don’t care if the neighbors hear. 

Elijah prayed earnestly, and he preached rough.  Preachers today would get more done if they weren’t so busy polishing the sermon that they take all the power out of it.  By the time they get done fixing it so you won’t get mad, it is so lukewarm that you don’t even know what they said.  If you don’t preach earnestly, in boldness, hitting a nerve, then don’t bother doing it at all. 

If you aren’t under pressure, you won’t get real.  That is why we go through some things!  If we have to hammer it out, it works on us to pray harder.  I think some of the things we go through aren’t necessary, except for one purpose - to make us pray through.  If we get hot enough for God, people will be getting saved right and left.  We are not mad enough at the devil to be effectual.  We need to find out what God wants us to do, and do it with everything we’ve got! 

We don’t need tactless idiots, but we do need more John the Baptists.  Get prayed up and ask God which person to talk to.  Tell them exactly what the Holy Ghost tells you in the same wording He gives you.  Don’t paper it or polish it, or it will turn backwards, and you will sound limp wristed.  A few times as it was coming out of my mouth I examined it and asked God if those were the words He wanted me to say, but when I looked at their face, I knew they were the right words. 

Just open your mouth and do it God’s way so it will be effectual.  Maybe you aren’t fervent enough.  Some may say that the music is too loud or the preacher is too loud or too long.  Some think we need to back off a little, because we may be intimidating the people.  I think we ought to go hotter, and further, and deeper.  We need to get more fervent than ever before, and tomorrow do even more.  Surely they will mock and scoff, but if I preach to you, and look you in the eyes, and God is talking to you, and you listen to God, they aren’t going to mock and scoff long.  They will get real or get out. 

We have to show the difference between the holy and the profane.  The world is looking for a difference.  Prophets have come and gone, and some have loved God, but they did not pray like Elijah did!  Loud does not always mean righteous, and effectual may be quiet. 

Look people in the eyes.  If may make them nervous, and they may be embarrassed, but that beats judgment day when they stand naked before God with sins hanging all over them, and their blood is on your hands. 

Too many times we don’t give people the full impact of the truth, because we are afraid it will run them further away from God.  If God gives you something for them, tell them!  They will respect you for it even if they hate you for it.  If you are prayed up in the Lord, and you die, you will be with Jesus!  Why don’t we get real?  Be careful not to get in self and hurt them. 

Elijah was subject to the same things we are.  What does subject mean?  They had to go through, be pounded by, and put up with – the same things.  Wicked King Ahab was ruled then, and we have some wicked rulers in our day and time.  If you get in prison, you can preach to the prisoners.  It could be that you can’t get to anybody in that crowd except that first they see you are ostracized, reproached, and made a fool of.  God can put you down low so you can talk to certain people about Jesus. 

God is looking for a people who are effectual.  Deuteronomy 32:36 says, “For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” 

Paul said in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. . . .”  If we don’t preach this gospel straight, we won’t have any power, and it won’t have any effect. 

Remember that God looks on the heart.  If you strain at gnats long enough, you will miss the camel.  God dealt with me once to get rid of the camels, and He would deal with the gnats.  Lots of gnats will be gone automatically if you get rid of the camel!  (See Matthew 23:24.)

The harder you pray, the tougher you are, and the more you have to put up with.  There is a difference in a man and what the enemy is doing in that man.  If you tell him the truth of the Word of God, it will set him free.  John 8:32 says, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  Verse 36 says, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

A person may get red in the face the first time and get mad and foam at the mouth the second time, but pretty soon they may come around and want you to talk to them.  It may be they won’t bother you anymore.  If God is dealing with them, it doesn’t matter how mean they get.  You keep on witnessing and believing God. 

The church world is playing “mighty revival” throughout the world.  That revival is one of ecumenicalism, and instead of warring against the devil, you can get along with anybody!  That is not the revival God is sending.  Jesus said in “Matthew 10:34-35, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.”

Jesus will make your house run like an old jalopy some times.  You will have to pray over it more than ever before.  If you get saved, trouble at home or school may pick up 100 percent, depending on how hot you are for God!  Jack Coe said one time that if you get your temperature on 100 degrees, you can hatch chickens, but if you get it down to about 80 degrees they won’t hatch in the incubator.  He said there is no revival, and nobody is getting saved, because everybody has their temperature on 60 and 80 degrees or less instead of 100. 

I bind the spirit of the world that brings a false revival, a false religion, and a false ecumenical work to sweep your children into the hand of the antichrist.  I’m praying for God to bring judgment on the land and shut up heaven where they can’t hear from God, until they turn to the true Word of God, the King James Bible, and until they preach it hard and straight with fire.  The Bible declares in Matthew 3:12, “Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 

In Luke 3:16 John said, “. . . he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire:”  Hebrews 1:7 says,   “. . . Who maketh . . . his ministers a flame of fire.”  If you get too close and you aren’t as hot as they are, you will get burned or catch on fire yourself! 

Jesus makes the way, but you’ve got to walk it.  He gave us commandments, and we have to obey them.  John 14:6 says, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  You have to follow the example of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  You may walk some days, you may run some days, you may leap around some days, but other days you are going to get on your face and crawl.  You will think you aren’t making any advances, but James 5:16 says, “. . . The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” 

David embarrassed his wife one day.  Something makes me this way.  When I feel God, it just works on me.  Even if it is a day I’ve been crawling, I am still going to preach the truth of the Word of God.  Even if I am dragging, I still have to preach the gospel.  I don’t have a choice.  Frankly, I’m going ON for God.

Elijah met up with the prophets of Baal.  There they stood in all the glory of the government sanctioned church.  That is what the United States is coming back to, and they intend to get rid of the “cults”.  When they have only ONE “church”, they will be able to properly identify who is theirs and who is not!  They will try to force you to convert to the World Church.  Beloved it is at the doors. 

If we had preached a razor sharp, fiery hot message we wouldn’t have so many sinners.  We have to tell people the difference between the clean and the profane.  If they take out the blood of the lamb that Jesus gave for the remission of your sins in a “Bible version”, have nothing to do with it.  If someone says you can sin and still go to heaven, get away from the lying hypocrite.  If they say you can’t have revival because it has already passed away, remove yourself from them so that their unbelief won’t corrupt you. 

I will not preach to you a watered down gospel, and I won’t drag you to God.  Only Jesus can bring you to the cross.  God’s Word is true, and if we hold on, it will come to pass.  It cannot fail.  Men fail when they give up too soon.  They give up when their miracle is only a millimeter away.

The Baal prophets were with the organized religion of the government.  They stood face to face with Elijah.  He had no credentials, and he was a little rough around the edges with his leather girdle.  Even after he called fire down from heaven, he got discouraged and thought nobody was living for God but him.  However, there were 7,000 he didn’t know about. 

Elijah was subject to pulls and tugs.  You don’t have to worry whether or not the raven is coming.  He ate only because the ravens fed him.  God wants you to lean on Him, so He may take away every prop you have.

 Some of us could do ok as long as we had our health and mind.  Some would be ok if they kept their house or family in a tidy, little box.   Let God deal with them, and afflictions come, and let the devil hammer on them; they will think that they are going nuts.  Then they go to the altar, not for God to do a mighty work in their lives, but to get healed.  God will pick another way, so they go back to the altar and pray because they don’t want that.  Let’s pray through.

We have to start believing and praying effectually.  Dig in fervently and hammer it out with God.  Beloved, you don’t know how many times your conversation is already set in heaven with the one you are dealing with.  It is done at the altar.  You seek God for an hour, and you may get a three word quotation for the one you are dealing with, but that is with an hour’s worth of prayer anointing and it will get a hold of them. 

Too many times we want to pray three words to God, and deal with the person for an hour.  Neither you nor I can talk someone into getting saved.  They may say that they know they need to come in, one of these days.  Meanwhile, go home and pray and bind the devil.  Ask God to take the food from their belly, the sleep from their eyes, and the joy of sin out of their hearts.  Ask God to make them miserable, but spare their life. 

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man will bring fire out of heaven, multiply loaves and fishes, and it will transfigure to glory.  If we want to see cripples on their feet, they’ve got to see us on our knees!

I pray that God will turn up the heat on us that we might burn brighter.  God causes us to pray harder, that we will be effectual.  James 1:4 says, “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

Let’s quit resisting God, and work out our salvation with fear and trembling!

CONTACT INFORMATION:

PASTOR KEVIN BADGLEY

LIVING HOPE FELLOWSHIP, P. O. BOX 111, GRAND CHAIN, IL  62941

CHURCH / FAX (618) 634-2541

E-mail  livinghope@hughes.net

www.livinghopefellowshipchurch.org

These condensed Bible studies have been published to help new Christians in their new walk with the Lord.  Kevin Badgley, the author, is the pastor of Living Hope Fellowship Church.

This is a Living Hope Fellowship publication.