God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (2 Tim 1:7). As Christians, we are to be powerful, because we are bought by the blood of Jesus and God gives us power through our relationship with him.

James 5:16-18 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. 17 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”
There is power in prayer, but our prayers are sometimes not powerful – reason – there is no power, which in turn is dependent on righteousness. We lose out on the power, for lack of righteousness.

So we need to take a decision saying “it is foolish for me to be
unrighteous and lose out on this power!”

So then let us first try to understand what is righteousness. From various scriptures that talk about it we can draw a simple definition.

Definition : Righteousness : Discerning(distinguishing) what is right from wrong, using the word of God and doing what is right.
Heb 5:13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

To be righteous we need to be able to distinguish good from evil. In most cases it is very clear what are the right things to do. Let us list down some of the things that are right :

(i) Daily prayer time

(ii) Daily Bible Study

(iii) Sharing our faith

(iv) Fellowship with other brothers and sisters

(v) All the virtues of being RIGHT : (R)ealness,
(I)ntegrity, (G)odliness,
(H)onesty, (T)ruthfulness

Let us also list some of the things that are not right

(i) Sinning – Lust, Lies, Pride, Theft, Deceit, Dinking, immorality, Smoking,
Slander…

(ii) Laziness

(iii) Lack of compassion towards the poor and the lost.

Based on this if we examine ourselves, we would be appalled at our own
unrighteousness. And we lose out on the power of righteousness.

Illustration : We had this full power when we were first baptized because of the righteousness bestowed upon us through his gracious justification (Rom 3:21). The light bulbs in the room are glowing with complete power as of now. Imagine the voltage reducing slowly.. the bulbs become dim, tube lights go off and fan revolves at a snail’s pace! A lot of us are like this because of not having the power.

We got to hate to lose out without this power. Do we love losing? We set our own boundaries in doing the right things. We are not hard on ourselves, we make excuses like I’m married, getting old, hectic job, I worked hard so far so I need to rest etc.

James 5:17-18 Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would
not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18 Again
he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.”
We’ve got to remember only the “cross” as our boundary. Jesus was
giving and righteous even on the cross. We got to learn to be harder on
ourselves. Devil knows our weaknesses, tell us lies and makes us set boundaries to work hard. We got to go to bed thinking did I really worked hard and sleep in peace having worked our very best…….

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