James 1:2-4 (NIV) Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Right now you are probably seeing your problems and issues as being things that are trying to destroy you. They may be causing you to feel weak, defeated, and like a failure. But, Jesus wants you to understand that we had these same types of problems that you have and God made them our strengths. Jesus, helped us look at them as life-classes; they were used to teach us how to win over life’s issues. He helped us use the breakthroughs we got through winning over them to teach us how to help lots of other people.

Jesus, helped us work very hard to provide these things for you because we remember how much these things hurt us. That memory of pain has built a lot of love, compassion, and understanding in us. Since Jesus helped us see these issues and problems as life-classes, we allowed Him to teach us incredible principles through them. In other words, all that suffering and failure has been turned into a motivation and a training that we now are able to share with you.

Those things that currently look like they are taking you down, Jesus is able to use to help you learn how to win over and defeat. Power from God will pour into you and make you able to beat things that looked like they were beating you. The reason we know this is true is because it happened to us. Jesus used our situations of life to practice on so we could learn powerful spiritual principles. Once we stopped seeing ourselves as victims, we were able to become victors.

We hoped bad things wouldn’t happen to us; because, if it did, we only knew how to try to weather the storm. We didn’t know that we were empowered to HANDLE the storm. We now have a confidence and esteem that came out of a battle that we were able to win. We were able to move from great weakness, pain, defeat, sorrow, and doubt, into a power and victory we NEVER thought possible. We were in a condition that seemed to make it impossible for us to be able to do anything about our situation; but, we were wrong! Jesus taught us how to take the impossible and make it possible.

We didn’t see any hope for being able to be helped; but, Jesus started speaking to our damaged heart and causing it to hope again, believe again, try again, and look to the future again. It wasn’t easy; we had to reach out at a time when we didn’t feel like doing anything. It looked like this condition was going to be our way of life for the rest of our life.

Jesus offered us a system that helped us open our heart and pour out all the pain, failure, weakness, and doubt. He allowed us to tell Him all about what we were going through. He entered into a communication with us that not only listened and sympathized with us, He started giving us ideas, feelings, and power to get help with all that pain, failure, weakness, and doubt.

This process called prayer was and still is the spiritual procedure that God provided us that gave us all the results we have today. It was and is the way for us to open our heart and tell God all about how we felt, what we thought, and what we would like to have happen to us. It was and is so powerful that it gradually healed every area of our heart; and, it started to bring great events into our life.

We tried to get this type of healing by talking to our friends, counselors, or thinking it through in our mind. However, none of these methods were as powerful and effective as prayer. Jesus is going to be offering you some prayer examples for you to use to talk to your heavenly Father with. They are prayers God handpicked from David and other great people of prayer to put in His Bible.

Jesus will be using God’s prayer examples to help you see HOW to pray and WHAT to pray to your heavenly Father. He will be using the book of James as our guide for selecting these prayers. James was trained by Jesus personally; he was used by God to write the book of James in the Bible; and, he is a great teacher who yielded to the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit. So, let’s move on into our workbook and get started praying about those things we have learned so far.