February 23, 2025 • 37 mins
Does prayer really make a difference? James 5:16 tells us that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. But how do we pray in a way that truly works? Is there a difference between routine prayers and the kind that call down fire from heaven, bring healing, and transform lives?
Scripture is filled with examples of prayer that moves the hand of God. Elijah’s bold prayer on Mount Carmel wasn’t passive—it was expectant, unwavering, and filled with faith. When he prayed, God responded in a miraculous display of power. In James 5, we see another kind of effective prayer—prayer that brings healing, restoration, and reconciliation within the body of Christ. The Bible shows us that prayer is not just words; it’s an act of faith that connects us to the power and presence of God.
Join us as we rediscover what it means to pray with conviction, seek God with sincerity, and trust Him to do what only He can do.
Recorded February 23rd, 2025 Message by Pastor Tim Ward Scripture: James 5:13-20, 1 Kings 18:16-46
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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The story is told of a western town that had experienced a hard drought.
One of the local churches announced that they would hold a special prayer meeting to pray for rain.
On that night, the church building was packed, but the preacher told them to
go back home, that there would be no prayer meeting that night.
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Why do you think the preacher told them to go home, that there would be no prayer
meeting because they had come to pray for rain. Why do you think he told them to go home?
Because obviously nobody had come expecting God to answer because no one had brought an umbrella.
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Interesting, isn't it? The story may or may not be true, but it illustrates
that there's a very big difference between what we say about prayer and what
we actually believe about prayer.
We can pray all we want. We can talk to God all we want or what we think we should.
But do we really expect God to answer that prayer? If we did,
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we'd bring an umbrella when we pray for rain, wouldn't we?
And I think that if we actually believed that what we say we believed,
we would do a whole lot more of it.
We would pray a lot more if we really believed that prayer meant something and was valuable.
In the past few years, three of the major research organizations that conduct
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surveys in American life have done so.
They've done researches on America's prayer life.
Pew Research found that...
Focused on how often people prayed. And of the 35,000 people that responded,
they found that 55% said they prayed at least once a day.
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16% said they prayed once weekly.
6% said they prayed monthly, and 23% said they seldom or never prayed.
Sounds astonishing. And yet, Barna Research Group focused their survey on how people prayed.
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Of those who said that they prayed at least once in the last three months,
they found that 82% prayed silently by themselves,
13% prayed out loud by themselves, but notice that only 2% prayed audibly with
another person or group, and another 2% prayed with a church.
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Finally, life research drilled down on what people prayed for,
and I won't read all of these, but I would say if you compared this to most
churches' prayer lists, you'd find that it probably matches up pretty well.
We typically spend the most time praying for our family and friends.
82% of those said that they prayed for family and friends.
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74% said they prayed for their own problems and difficulties.
54% said that they prayed for good things that have happened to them,
thanking the Lord for that. and it goes on down the list.
If you look at church's prayer list, most of the time in local churches,
if you look at our prayer lists, what do we pray for?
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Bobby has a bunion.
Right? Isn't that what we pray for? We pray for physical ailments and things
like that, and that's really important. We should do that.
But we need to be seeking God's face in prayer for things that matter most in life.
Now, keep all these in mind, and let's see if our practices about prayer life
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line up with what God's Word says about prayer, because the truth is,
if they don't line up, then our practices need to change.
The book of James, which was written by James, who is Jesus' half-brother,
contains a lot of teaching about prayer.
And I'd like to start off by looking at James 5, verses 13 through 20.
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If you want to follow along in your scripture, you may do so.
If it says, is any among you in trouble? Let them pray.
Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is any among you sick?
Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with
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oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.
The Lord will raise them up. Prayer is not the magic thing.
Prayer is powerful, but it's only powerful because the one we pray to.
If they have sinned—now get this, it's in James, so it's in the Bible,
so it's got to be there. We've got to listen to it.
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If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Before we dive into
this passage, I want to remind you of some of the teaching James has on prayer.
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In James 4, verse 2, he says that one of the reasons we don't receive what we desire is we don't pray.
In other parts of his letter, he tells us if we lack wisdom, we should pray.
Notice that it doesn't show up at all on the list of things people typically
pray for. We don't normally pray for wisdom.
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Probably should. I know in our board meetings, we begin our board meetings asking
God to give us wisdom to make right decisions for our church.
If we're suffering, we should pray. Looks like we do that one pretty well.
And if we're sick, we should call our elders together to anoint us with oil
and pray for us. What about confessing our sins one to another?
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Hmm, that's a tough one. And most of us believe that God answers our prayers.
The Lifeway Research found that 83% of people believed God answered their prayers
at least some of the time.
So let's go back to the gap between what we say and what we do.
If we believe that prayers have such power, do we pray as often as we should?
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I have a nagging suspicion that we don't pray as much as we might think we do.
I also have a nagging suspicion that we don't pray as often as we should and
with as much faith as God desires.
The truth is pretty much everyone would probably agree that we don't pray as often as we should.
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And if you ask them why, most of the answers would come down to one of two things.
One, I don't know how to pray.
And two, I don't know what to say.
Actually, if you're thinking of prayer, most of the time when people need prayer,
they come to the pastor and say, Pastor, would you pray for me?
As if this all-powerful Oz standing up in the pulpit has the most powerful prayers
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to be able to pray for you.
God wants you to call upon his name.
It's common for many of us to feel we don't know how to pray or what to say,
and James understood that so.
So he gave us an example of how we should pray in this passage from James,
how we can pray and what we can pray like.
He pointed out the example of Elijah, who was a man who knew how to pray and
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received answers in his prayer.
It says this, Elijah was a human being, even as we are.
He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land
for three and a half years.
Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.
And he goes on to say, my brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander
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from the truth and someone should bring that person back,
remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save
them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
So in other words, If you want to have a good model for how to pray,
we look at how Elijah prayed.
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So that's what we're going to do today, this morning.
I want you to turn again in your Bibles, this time to 1 Kings 18.
And before we read this passage, I want to give you a little bit of a background
on this story. 1 Kings 18.
At the time this was recorded, or what it was recorded about,
The king of Israel was a man named Ahab, and he was married to a Philistine woman named Ahab.
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Jezebel. You know that name, right?
How many kids nowadays do you hear named Jezebel?
Probably not many, because we find out what this woman was like.
Jezebel had a reputation for wickedness, and partly because of her influence,
Ahab and the nation of Israel had fallen into a kind of hybrid paganism.
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So they apparently still prayed to Yahweh, but they also worshiped pagan gods of Baal and Asherah.
And so, because of their disobedience, God sent Elijah to tell Ahab,
excuse me, tell King Ahab that he and the nation of Israel would be punished with a drought.
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Israel, or excuse me, Elijah tells Ahab in 1 Kings 17, verse 1,
it says, Now Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe in Gilead said to Ahab,
As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives whom I serve,
there will neither be dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.
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And after Elijah had said this to King Ahab, the Lord sent him away for a period of three years.
And at the end of the three years, God sent Elijah back to King Ahab and offered a challenge.
Elijah versus the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mount Carmel.
And all of Israel gathered at the foot of the mountain, and they heard Elijah
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confront them and their false gods.
And we pick up the reading in chapter 18, verse 16 through 46.
It says this, Eli of Suram passage. What happened there?
There we go. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet
Elijah. When he saw Elijah, he said to him, is that you, you troubler of Israel? No.
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I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, but you and your father's family have.
You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals.
Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring
the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.
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So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount
Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, How long will you waver between
two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.
But if Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing.
Then Elijah said to them, I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left,
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but Baal has 450 prophets.
Asherah had 400.
Get two bulls for us. Let Baal's prophets choose one for themselves and let
them, cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but do not set fire to it.
I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it.
Then you call up on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the
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Lord, the God who answers by fire. He is God.
Then all the people said, what you say is good.
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one of the bulls and prepare it
first. Since there are so many of you, it's going to take all day for you guys to prepare this.
Call on the name of your God, but do not light the fire. So they took the bull
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given them and prepared it.
Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon.
Baal, answer us, they shouted, but there was no response. No one answered,
and they danced around the altar they had made.
At noon, Elijah began to taunt them. Now, this gets me. I love this.
I wish I had the guts of Elijah, standing there in front of 450 prophets of Baal who are cutting up.
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A cow, a bull, and dancing around, calling on their gods. And he says, shout louder.
Surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling.
Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened. One of the passages where it says,
or busy, refers to him going off to the side as which, what,
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basically going to the latrine.
So he stepped aside. Maybe your God is just busy, okay?
And so he was really taunting them hard, you know?
So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears as was
their custom until their blood flowed.
Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for
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the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.
Then Elijah said to the people, come here to me.
They came to him, meaning they left where the 450 prophets of Baal were, and came over to Elijah.
And it says, they came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord,
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which had been torn down.
Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob,
to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, Your name shall be Israel.
With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench
around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed, and that's like four bushels full, okay?
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He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood.
Then he said to them, fill four large jars of water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.
By the way, a large jar of offering that we learned from one other lesson we
had probably contained about 23 gallons of water, a large jar.
So 160 pounds of water poured onto the, so he said, fill four jars with water
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and pour it on the offering and on the wood.
So do it again, he said, and they did it again. Do it a third time,
and they did it a third time.
So that's 12 large jars of water poured on the altar.
The water ran down around the altar and even filled up the trench.
At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed,
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Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,
let it be known today that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant and
have done all these things at your command.
Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you,
Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.
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Now, if you remember, we've said before, if you look at all the Old Testament,
a lot of times what Jesus, what God has been saying throughout is,
even in the Exodus of Israelites, is, so that they may know that I am God.
And here he is, these people will know that you, Lord God, are God.
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And so then he goes on, then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice,
the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, the Lord, he is God.
The Lord, he is God. Now, I think I've shared this before with you.
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The words, the Lord, he is God in Hebrew would be el-iyah, el-iyah.
The Lord is God, the Lord is God.
We pronounce the man's name Elijah, but it would actually be pronounced El-Eah, El-Eah.
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So when the people were shouting out El-Eah, El-Eah, it sounded like they were
saying his name, but they're saying the Lord, he is God, the Lord,
he is God. That's what Elijah's name meant.
And so the people were shouting this out and proclaiming that God is who he says he is.
Let them know that I, that the Lord your God is God.
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And then Elijah commanded them, seize the prophets of Baal, don't let anyone get away.
They seized them and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishan Valley and slaughtered there.
And Elijah said to Ahab, go eat and drink, for there is the sound of heavy rain.
Now this is after three and a half years, remember, of no rain.
So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel,
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bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees.
Go and look toward the sea, he told his servant. And he went up and looked.
There is nothing there, he said.
Seven times Elijah said, go back.
And look, the seventh time the servant reported, a cloud as small as a man's
hand is rising from the sea.
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So Elijah said, go and tell Ahab, hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.
Meanwhile, the sky blue grew black with clouds, the wind rose,
heavy rain started falling, and Ahab rode off to Jezreel.
I love this part, too. Isn't this—I mean, I love the Old Testament. It's great.
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I mean, I ran cross-country track, but not quite this fast.
Anyway, the power of the Lord came on Elijah, and tucking his cloak into his
belt, he ran ahead of Ahab in a chariot all the way to Jezreel.
And it tells the story there. The story is amazing when you think about specifically.
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This was the challenge that God gave to the Israelites through Elijah.
He said, how long will you wait between two opinions? If the Lord is God,
follow him. And if Baal is God, follow him.
Most of you know what happens next. As we say, the prophets of Baal built the altar.
Elijah built his, rebuilt the altar of the Lord.
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And they both laid out their sacrifices. as they went on and the challenge began,
and it seemed as no matter how much the prophets of Baal lashed themselves and slashed themselves,
blood flowed, but fire didn't fall.
But then when Elijah prayed, he said, Lord, the God of Abraham,
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Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that
I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.
Notice he didn't say, God, why did you put me here all by myself in front of all these prophets?
Because what he said was, I am here, I'm your servant, and basically said,
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you're more powerful than anything else there is.
So answer me, Lord, answer me. So these people will know that you,
Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back to you.
In the book of James, he gives Elijah as an example of prayer.
So let's look at what this means.
What can we learn from Elijah's prayer that makes it such a good example for us?
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First, prayer that works takes work.
Prayer that works takes work. Notice how he prays in verse 42.
He says he prays bowed down with his head between his knees.
Now, in preparation for this sermon, I conducted extensive research.
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And I'll tell you, well, I did extensive research.
It said he bowed down. That's a difficulty. He bowed down with his head between his knees.
So I'm telling you, it's really hard to breathe this way.
It's really hard to pray. It's a very difficult, painful position for prayer,
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It's even going to be more difficult to get up.
But I thought about that with that prayer. Yep, thank you. I almost need some help.
Anyway, I thought about that as I was thinking that.
Can you imagine? I mean, that was the posture for prayer in the Middle East,
and it still is in many cases.
But it says he bowed down with his head between his knees.
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You notice what I discovered?
That's a really hard position for prayer. I mean, we don't want to go to that
much difficulty, do we? we kind of want to just say, okay, God,
do this, God, do that, and we kind of go on our way.
But the proper posture for prayer is in a complete state of helplessness without
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him. I've often heard somebody say that the best posture for prayer is upside down in a well.
You have nothing else to do but pray, right? So when we're in a complete state
of hopelessness and helplessness before the Lord, knowing that only he can answer things,
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that's the best posture for prayer.
Now, there might be many possible theological reasons why Elijah prayed in this
fashion, but my personal conclusion is Elijah was using this painful posture
to help himself focus on the prayer so nothing else came into his mind.
When he bent down with his head between his knees.
He did not see anything else around him. The only thing he could do was concentrate
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on calling out to God and leaning on him.
He didn't want to be distracted by anything else, and the discomfort kept his
mind focused on what he was talking to God about.
You'll also notice that when he was bowed over in prayer with his head between
his knees, he had to ask the servant what was happening because he wasn't looking
around. He had to ask the servant.
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What do you see? Go out and look. I'm going to stay here with my head between
my knees calling out to God.
He was so intent on pleading with God that he would not even look up to see if God had answered.
I'm not saying that we all need to pray like this. I'm not saying that we should
all go in this place and just bow down with our knees,
head between our knees, but we should be bowing our hearts in a position of
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absolute dependence on the Almighty God.
The second thing we see is that prayer that works takes persistence.
In verse 43, if you assume that Elijah is praying for rain every time he sends
his servant out to look for the seed, it's not that he does it once,
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twice, or even three times.
No, he prays continually.
He's praying continually, and he sends his servant out seven times to look to see what's happening.
Now, I don't know where they are in this. I don't know how close.
Well, Mount Carmel is still quite a ways from the sea.
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So I don't know how far the servant has to run, if he has to run all the way
out toward the sea to be able to see with the storms coming,
or if he can see from top of Mount Cornell. But it says he goes out seven times,
and it was the seventh time that he sees what?
A cloud as small as a man's hand in the sky.
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Hallelujah. God's answering prayer with a cloud the size of a man's hand.
Would you have that faith?
But Elijah did. and he knew what was happening.
Now, some people say that seven indicates is not the absolute number that he
sent him out, but seven indicates complete lengths.
So he sent him out as many times as it took until he saw the cloud as small as a man's hand.
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Maybe that's the case. We don't know. But C.S.
C.H. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, says this, Prayer pulls the rope down
below, and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir
the bell, for they pray so languidly.
Others give only an occasional jerk at the rope.
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But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and
pulls continually with all his might.
Why should that matter to God? Why should it matter that we work at our prayers?
Why should we care that we pull on the bell rope of heaven? because when we
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work at our prayer, it shows the answer matters to us.
It shows God that we are really fervent about what we're doing.
Likewise, Elijah worked, thank you, Adam, worked at his prayer.
Another word for work is travail. It sounds like it's just almost painful, the idea of travail.
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But Elijah worked at his prayer, and he made it his business to pray.
The third thing we see is that prayer that works takes risk.
Elijah didn't simply ask God to bless Israel. He didn't ask for Bobby's bunion to be healed.
He was asking for rain, rain that had been stopped for three and a half years,
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and God had said that when you command the rain, it will come.
And it was at this time he prayed specifically for answers that could be measured.
How often do we pray general prayers that cannot be measured or proven to be
answered? Lord, bless our church.
Lord, bless our pastor and his wife, especially his wife, because she has to deal with the pastor.
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And I'm glad you all pray those prayers, believe me. But how do we prove those
things, whether they've been answered out?
How do we prove that the church has been blessed? How do we prove that your
pastor and his wife have been blessed?
Sometimes I think we pray that way because we might even have doubt that God
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can specifically answer prayers.
Not only did Elijah pray for rain, but he let everyone around him know he was expecting rain.
He told his servant to go look for rain.
Even more than that, he told wicked King Ahab to get ready for it. It was coming.
Some people will say that it was going to rain sooner or later,
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so that really wasn't an answer to prayer. it hadn't rained or due for three and a half years.
Yeah, sooner or later it's going to happen, but how did Elijah know when to
specifically confront King Ahab and Jezebel and the prophets of Baal and Asherah?
Furthermore, others say that the plagues in Egypt were just natural occurrences
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that compounded on each other.
Well, if that's the case, how did Moses know exactly when they were going to
occur, to tell the Pharaoh that's what was going to happen.
Now, it might make us a little nervous to pray with specificity because we're thinking,
well, if I pray specifically in my prayers and God doesn't answer them,
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won't that damage my faith?
And if other people know that I'm praying specifically, then God doesn't come
through, won't that damage their faith? Shouldn't I be worried about God's reputation?
Shouldn't I let him just fill in all the blanks? Well, that's true,
but in Tony Evans' book, Kingdom Woman, which he co-wrote with his daughter, Crystal Evans Hurst,
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Tony talks about an evangelistic crusade that he spoke at several years ago
at the University of South Carolina football stadium.
The weather report had predicted rain.
In fact, it had said there would be a horrific storm.
More than 25,000 people had already gathered in the stadium and were waiting
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for the crusade to begin when they saw the storm clouds begin to form around the stadium.
So Tony and the other leaders and organizers of the crusade wanted to pray that
God would hold back the rain.
He writes, we went downstairs into a small room, gathered together and began to pray.
Of course, we prayed things like, dear God, please hold back the rain.
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And if it's your will, Lord, could you hold back the rain, please?
Yet in the midst of all of us praying, a petite little woman named Linda came forward.
Perhaps she had gotten frustrated with the prayers of the so-called professionals.
The preachers and the leaders.
Whatever the case, Linda stood up and asked, do you mind if I pray?
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What else could we say but go ahead so linda prayed lord your name is at stake
we told these people that if they would come out tonight they would hear a word
from god we told them they would hear from you now if they come and you let
it rain and you don't control the weather then you will look bad.
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We told them that you wanted to say something to them, and if you don't keep
back what you can control, the weather, someone will say your name is no good.
And then she threw a line in a line that caused us all to look at each other
out of the corners of our eyes.
She says, therefore, right now, I ask in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for
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the rain to stop for the sake of your name, Father.
With that, we opened our eyes.
Eyebrows went up. We could all say, all we could say and think was,
whoa, did she really just pray that?
Following the prayers, we all went up and sat on the platform.
The sky had now become entirely black behind us.
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A guy who had been assigned to communicate directly with the weather bureau
said, the showers are coming.
They are heavy storms, thunderstorms, and they're coming right at us.
There's nothing we can do to stop them. It was now 7 o'clock p.m.
And the music was beginning, he says.
It's time to start the crusade. When massive thunder and lightning started appearing
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all around us, people began to stir in their seats.
Someone even started to get up and open their umbrellas, and Linda was up on
stage with the rest of us, and a quiet look of expectation covered her face.
Then something happened, Tony goes on to write, then something happened that
I have never seen once in all my life.
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The rain rushed toward the stadium like a wall of water, yet when it got to the stadium, it split.
Half of the rain went on one side of the stadium, half of the rain went on the
other side, and when it got around the other side of the stadium,
it joined back together and went on.
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And all the while, Linda sat there with a confident look on her face.
The rest of us, the preachers and the leaders, the professionals, looked at each other.
And then we looked at Linda, and Linda looked straight ahead.
I believe God paid special attention to Linda's prayer because she had great
faith, and she knew that God's name was at stake.
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I remember a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Well, I wasn't there personally.
But I remember the story of a storm on Sea of Galilee when Jesus was asleep
in the back of the boat, and a storm came up around them.
And the disciples woke him up and said, aren't you afraid we're going to drown?
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And Jesus stood up and spoke to the storm, and it disappeared.
And God's name was praised.
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? I think God paid special attention to
her prayer because she had great faith, but she was also concerned that God's name would be profaned.
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Fourth thing, prayer that works takes understanding of God's will.
And that is prayer that works takes understanding. God wanted to send rain on Israel.
That's why Elijah had come back. And 1 Kings 8, verse 1 tells us,
after a long time in the third year,
the word of the Lord came to Elijah and said, now go back and present yourself
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to Ahab because I'm ready to bring rain on the earth.
Appeared with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, talking with Jesus.
Of course, his prayer works.
But we're talking about me.
Yes, we're talking about me. So if you look at some of the powerful prayers
in Scripture, you'll find that they all mentioned either a specific promise
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God has made, an outcome God was known to favor,
how answering this prayer would result in praise to him, and how God's answering
of the prayer would affect him and how they would witness.
When we pray, we need to think about why God should want to answer our prayer.
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When we pray, the scripture says, when we pray in Jesus's name, it will be answered.
That doesn't mean we say our Hail Mary prayers and say in the name of Jesus.
That means we pray in the powerful name of Jesus, knowing that what we're praying for is in the will of God.
We don't pray for selfish things. We pray for what God wants and what God wants to bring.
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Fifth thing we see is that prayer works, that works, takes righteousness with God.
And that's where a lot of us think the catch is.
Maybe you get to this point and you feel a little cheated. There you go.
I knew there was a catch. I can't pray with the same result of Elijah because
I don't have the faith of Elijah and I'm certainly not a righteous man.
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Elijah was a God's prophet. but he was one of the few people in Scripture that
God records as not dying.
In fact, we see the Scripture where Elisha watched him being taken to heaven in a chariot of fire.
He appeared with Moses at the Mount of Transfiguration.
Brothers and sisters, the only thing that made Elijah anything is the same thing
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that we have access to, God's imputed righteousness.
On our own, our righteousness, the scripture says in Isaiah 64,
verse 6, says our righteousness is like filthy rags.
Righteousness is being right before God, it's cleanliness. And our righteousness is like dirty rags.
Can you imagine changing your oil and wiping your hands all over the rags?
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You ever tried to get those clean again? Doesn't happen, does it?
Our righteousness is like filthy rags, but Jesus died on the cross so that we
could receive his righteousness.
In fact, 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin
for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.
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God made Jesus to be sin for us, take on sin for us, so that we might be righteous.
That's why James 5, verse 16 says the prayer of a righteous man has great power
as it is working because we aren't operating under our own power.
We're operating and working under the power of Christ.
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So we need to pray that we will be people of righteousness, people of God's
name, so that as we pray and talk to God,
he will answer our prayers, which is his will. We need to be doing that.
D.L. Moody, in his book, Prevailing Prayer, quoted Bishop Joseph Hall saying,
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It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are,
nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they are,
nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they be, nor the music of our prayers,
how sweet our voice may be, nor the method of our prayers, how orderly they may be,
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nor even the theology of our prayer, how good the doctrine may be, which God cares for.
For fervency of spirit is that which avails much.
Let me close in reading from James chapter 5 again.
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray.
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Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.
Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over
them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.
The Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
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Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous man, a righteous person, is powerful and effective.
So how are you going to pray from this day forward?
Let's stand. Heavenly Father, as we close this service, as we begin our focus
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on prayer and move toward the season of Lent, our prayer has to be fervent.
It has to come from a righteous heart. It has to be seeking your will.
So, Father, we pray that you would help us to pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
The story is told of a western town that had experienced a hard drought.
One of the local churches announced that they would hold a special prayer meeting to pray for rain.
On that night, the church building was packed, but the preacher told them to
go back home, that there would be no prayer meeting that night.
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Why do you think the preacher told them to go home, that there would be no prayer
meeting because they had come to pray for rain. Why do you think he told them to go home?
Because obviously nobody had come expecting God to answer because no one had brought an umbrella.
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Interesting, isn't it? The story may or may not be true, but it illustrates
that there's a very big difference between what we say about prayer and what
we actually believe about prayer.
We can pray all we want. We can talk to God all we want or what we think we should.
But do we really expect God to answer that prayer? If we did,
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we'd bring an umbrella when we pray for rain, wouldn't we?
And I think that if we actually believed that what we say we believed,
we would do a whole lot more of it.
We would pray a lot more if we really believed that prayer meant something and was valuable.
In the past few years, three of the major research organizations that conduct
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surveys in American life have done so.
They've done researches on America's prayer life.
Pew Research found that...
Focused on how often people prayed. And of the 35,000 people that responded,
they found that 55% said they prayed at least once a day.
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16% said they prayed once weekly.
6% said they prayed monthly, and 23% said they seldom or never prayed.
Sounds astonishing. And yet, Barna Research Group focused their survey on how people prayed.
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Of those who said that they prayed at least once in the last three months,
they found that 82% prayed silently by themselves,
13% prayed out loud by themselves, but notice that only 2% prayed audibly with
another person or group, and another 2% prayed with a church.
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Finally, life research drilled down on what people prayed for,
and I won't read all of these, but I would say if you compared this to most
churches' prayer lists, you'd find that it probably matches up pretty well.
We typically spend the most time praying for our family and friends.
82% of those said that they prayed for family and friends.
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74% said they prayed for their own problems and difficulties.
54% said that they prayed for good things that have happened to them,
thanking the Lord for that. and it goes on down the list.
If you look at church's prayer list, most of the time in local churches,
if you look at our prayer lists, what do we pray for?
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Bobby has a bunion.
Right? Isn't that what we pray for? We pray for physical ailments and things
like that, and that's really important. We should do that.
But we need to be seeking God's face in prayer for things that matter most in life.
Now, keep all these in mind, and let's see if our practices about prayer life
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line up with what God's Word says about prayer, because the truth is,
if they don't line up, then our practices need to change.
The book of James, which was written by James, who is Jesus' half-brother,
contains a lot of teaching about prayer.
And I'd like to start off by looking at James 5, verses 13 through 20.
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If you want to follow along in your scripture, you may do so.
If it says, is any among you in trouble? Let them pray.
Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is any among you sick?
Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with
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oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.
The Lord will raise them up. Prayer is not the magic thing.
Prayer is powerful, but it's only powerful because the one we pray to.
If they have sinned—now get this, it's in James, so it's in the Bible,
so it's got to be there. We've got to listen to it.
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If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Before we dive into
this passage, I want to remind you of some of the teaching James has on prayer.
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In James 4, verse 2, he says that one of the reasons we don't receive what we desire is we don't pray.
In other parts of his letter, he tells us if we lack wisdom, we should pray.
Notice that it doesn't show up at all on the list of things people typically
pray for. We don't normally pray for wisdom.
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Probably should. I know in our board meetings, we begin our board meetings asking
God to give us wisdom to make right decisions for our church.
If we're suffering, we should pray. Looks like we do that one pretty well.
And if we're sick, we should call our elders together to anoint us with oil
and pray for us. What about confessing our sins one to another?
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Hmm, that's a tough one. And most of us believe that God answers our prayers.
The Lifeway Research found that 83% of people believed God answered their prayers
at least some of the time.
So let's go back to the gap between what we say and what we do.
If we believe that prayers have such power, do we pray as often as we should?
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I have a nagging suspicion that we don't pray as much as we might think we do.
I also have a nagging suspicion that we don't pray as often as we should and
with as much faith as God desires.
The truth is pretty much everyone would probably agree that we don't pray as often as we should.
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And if you ask them why, most of the answers would come down to one of two things.
One, I don't know how to pray.
And two, I don't know what to say.
Actually, if you're thinking of prayer, most of the time when people need prayer,
they come to the pastor and say, Pastor, would you pray for me?
As if this all-powerful Oz standing up in the pulpit has the most powerful prayers
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to be able to pray for you.
God wants you to call upon his name.
It's common for many of us to feel we don't know how to pray or what to say,
and James understood that so.
So he gave us an example of how we should pray in this passage from James,
how we can pray and what we can pray like.
He pointed out the example of Elijah, who was a man who knew how to pray and
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received answers in his prayer.
It says this, Elijah was a human being, even as we are.
He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land
for three and a half years.
Again, he prayed, and the heavens gave rain and the earth produced its crops.
And he goes on to say, my brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander
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from the truth and someone should bring that person back,
remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save
them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
So in other words, If you want to have a good model for how to pray,
we look at how Elijah prayed.
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So that's what we're going to do today, this morning.
I want you to turn again in your Bibles, this time to 1 Kings 18.
And before we read this passage, I want to give you a little bit of a background
on this story. 1 Kings 18.
At the time this was recorded, or what it was recorded about,
The king of Israel was a man named Ahab, and he was married to a Philistine woman named Ahab.
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Jezebel. You know that name, right?
How many kids nowadays do you hear named Jezebel?
Probably not many, because we find out what this woman was like.
Jezebel had a reputation for wickedness, and partly because of her influence,
Ahab and the nation of Israel had fallen into a kind of hybrid paganism.
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So they apparently still prayed to Yahweh, but they also worshiped pagan gods of Baal and Asherah.
And so, because of their disobedience, God sent Elijah to tell Ahab,
excuse me, tell King Ahab that he and the nation of Israel would be punished with a drought.
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Israel, or excuse me, Elijah tells Ahab in 1 Kings 17, verse 1,
it says, Now Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe in Gilead said to Ahab,
As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives whom I serve,
there will neither be dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.
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And after Elijah had said this to King Ahab, the Lord sent him away for a period of three years.
And at the end of the three years, God sent Elijah back to King Ahab and offered a challenge.
Elijah versus the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mount Carmel.
And all of Israel gathered at the foot of the mountain, and they heard Elijah
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confront them and their false gods.
And we pick up the reading in chapter 18, verse 16 through 46.
It says this, Eli of Suram passage. What happened there?
There we go. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet
Elijah. When he saw Elijah, he said to him, is that you, you troubler of Israel? No.
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I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, but you and your father's family have.
You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals.
Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring
the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.
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So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount
Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, How long will you waver between
two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.
But if Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing.
Then Elijah said to them, I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left,
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but Baal has 450 prophets.
Asherah had 400.
Get two bulls for us. Let Baal's prophets choose one for themselves and let
them, cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but do not set fire to it.
I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it.
Then you call up on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the
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Lord, the God who answers by fire. He is God.
Then all the people said, what you say is good.
Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one of the bulls and prepare it
first. Since there are so many of you, it's going to take all day for you guys to prepare this.
Call on the name of your God, but do not light the fire. So they took the bull
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given them and prepared it.
Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon.
Baal, answer us, they shouted, but there was no response. No one answered,
and they danced around the altar they had made.
At noon, Elijah began to taunt them. Now, this gets me. I love this.
I wish I had the guts of Elijah, standing there in front of 450 prophets of Baal who are cutting up.
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A cow, a bull, and dancing around, calling on their gods. And he says, shout louder.
Surely he is a god. Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling.
Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened. One of the passages where it says,
or busy, refers to him going off to the side as which, what,
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basically going to the latrine.
So he stepped aside. Maybe your God is just busy, okay?
And so he was really taunting them hard, you know?
So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears as was
their custom until their blood flowed.
Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for
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the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.
Then Elijah said to the people, come here to me.
They came to him, meaning they left where the 450 prophets of Baal were, and came over to Elijah.
And it says, they came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord,
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which had been torn down.
Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob,
to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, Your name shall be Israel.
With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench
around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed, and that's like four bushels full, okay?
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He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood.
Then he said to them, fill four large jars of water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.
By the way, a large jar of offering that we learned from one other lesson we
had probably contained about 23 gallons of water, a large jar.
So 160 pounds of water poured onto the, so he said, fill four jars with water
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and pour it on the offering and on the wood.
So do it again, he said, and they did it again. Do it a third time,
and they did it a third time.
So that's 12 large jars of water poured on the altar.
The water ran down around the altar and even filled up the trench.
At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed,
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Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,
let it be known today that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant and
have done all these things at your command.
Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you,
Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again.
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Now, if you remember, we've said before, if you look at all the Old Testament,
a lot of times what Jesus, what God has been saying throughout is,
even in the Exodus of Israelites, is, so that they may know that I am God.
And here he is, these people will know that you, Lord God, are God.
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And so then he goes on, then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice,
the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, the Lord, he is God.
The Lord, he is God. Now, I think I've shared this before with you.
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The words, the Lord, he is God in Hebrew would be el-iyah, el-iyah.
The Lord is God, the Lord is God.
We pronounce the man's name Elijah, but it would actually be pronounced El-Eah, El-Eah.
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So when the people were shouting out El-Eah, El-Eah, it sounded like they were
saying his name, but they're saying the Lord, he is God, the Lord,
he is God. That's what Elijah's name meant.
And so the people were shouting this out and proclaiming that God is who he says he is.
Let them know that I, that the Lord your God is God.
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And then Elijah commanded them, seize the prophets of Baal, don't let anyone get away.
They seized them and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishan Valley and slaughtered there.
And Elijah said to Ahab, go eat and drink, for there is the sound of heavy rain.
Now this is after three and a half years, remember, of no rain.
So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel,
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bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees.
Go and look toward the sea, he told his servant. And he went up and looked.
There is nothing there, he said.
Seven times Elijah said, go back.
And look, the seventh time the servant reported, a cloud as small as a man's
hand is rising from the sea.
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So Elijah said, go and tell Ahab, hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.
Meanwhile, the sky blue grew black with clouds, the wind rose,
heavy rain started falling, and Ahab rode off to Jezreel.
I love this part, too. Isn't this—I mean, I love the Old Testament. It's great.
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I mean, I ran cross-country track, but not quite this fast.
Anyway, the power of the Lord came on Elijah, and tucking his cloak into his
belt, he ran ahead of Ahab in a chariot all the way to Jezreel.
And it tells the story there. The story is amazing when you think about specifically.
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This was the challenge that God gave to the Israelites through Elijah.
He said, how long will you wait between two opinions? If the Lord is God,
follow him. And if Baal is God, follow him.
Most of you know what happens next. As we say, the prophets of Baal built the altar.
Elijah built his, rebuilt the altar of the Lord.
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And they both laid out their sacrifices. as they went on and the challenge began,
and it seemed as no matter how much the prophets of Baal lashed themselves and slashed themselves,
blood flowed, but fire didn't fall.
But then when Elijah prayed, he said, Lord, the God of Abraham,
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Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that
I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.
Notice he didn't say, God, why did you put me here all by myself in front of all these prophets?
Because what he said was, I am here, I'm your servant, and basically said,
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you're more powerful than anything else there is.
So answer me, Lord, answer me. So these people will know that you,
Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back to you.
In the book of James, he gives Elijah as an example of prayer.
So let's look at what this means.
What can we learn from Elijah's prayer that makes it such a good example for us?
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First, prayer that works takes work.
Prayer that works takes work. Notice how he prays in verse 42.
He says he prays bowed down with his head between his knees.
Now, in preparation for this sermon, I conducted extensive research.
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And I'll tell you, well, I did extensive research.
It said he bowed down. That's a difficulty. He bowed down with his head between his knees.
So I'm telling you, it's really hard to breathe this way.
It's really hard to pray. It's a very difficult, painful position for prayer,
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It's even going to be more difficult to get up.
But I thought about that with that prayer. Yep, thank you. I almost need some help.
Anyway, I thought about that as I was thinking that.
Can you imagine? I mean, that was the posture for prayer in the Middle East,
and it still is in many cases.
But it says he bowed down with his head between his knees.
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You notice what I discovered?
That's a really hard position for prayer. I mean, we don't want to go to that
much difficulty, do we? we kind of want to just say, okay, God,
do this, God, do that, and we kind of go on our way.
But the proper posture for prayer is in a complete state of helplessness without
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him. I've often heard somebody say that the best posture for prayer is upside down in a well.
You have nothing else to do but pray, right? So when we're in a complete state
of hopelessness and helplessness before the Lord, knowing that only he can answer things,
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that's the best posture for prayer.
Now, there might be many possible theological reasons why Elijah prayed in this
fashion, but my personal conclusion is Elijah was using this painful posture
to help himself focus on the prayer so nothing else came into his mind.
When he bent down with his head between his knees.
He did not see anything else around him. The only thing he could do was concentrate
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on calling out to God and leaning on him.
He didn't want to be distracted by anything else, and the discomfort kept his
mind focused on what he was talking to God about.
You'll also notice that when he was bowed over in prayer with his head between
his knees, he had to ask the servant what was happening because he wasn't looking
around. He had to ask the servant.
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What do you see? Go out and look. I'm going to stay here with my head between
my knees calling out to God.
He was so intent on pleading with God that he would not even look up to see if God had answered.
I'm not saying that we all need to pray like this. I'm not saying that we should
all go in this place and just bow down with our knees,
head between our knees, but we should be bowing our hearts in a position of
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absolute dependence on the Almighty God.
The second thing we see is that prayer that works takes persistence.
In verse 43, if you assume that Elijah is praying for rain every time he sends
his servant out to look for the seed, it's not that he does it once,
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twice, or even three times.
No, he prays continually.
He's praying continually, and he sends his servant out seven times to look to see what's happening.
Now, I don't know where they are in this. I don't know how close.
Well, Mount Carmel is still quite a ways from the sea.
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So I don't know how far the servant has to run, if he has to run all the way
out toward the sea to be able to see with the storms coming,
or if he can see from top of Mount Cornell. But it says he goes out seven times,
and it was the seventh time that he sees what?
A cloud as small as a man's hand in the sky.
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Hallelujah. God's answering prayer with a cloud the size of a man's hand.
Would you have that faith?
But Elijah did. and he knew what was happening.
Now, some people say that seven indicates is not the absolute number that he
sent him out, but seven indicates complete lengths.
So he sent him out as many times as it took until he saw the cloud as small as a man's hand.
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Maybe that's the case. We don't know. But C.S.
C.H. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, says this, Prayer pulls the rope down
below, and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir
the bell, for they pray so languidly.
Others give only an occasional jerk at the rope.
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But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and
pulls continually with all his might.
Why should that matter to God? Why should it matter that we work at our prayers?
Why should we care that we pull on the bell rope of heaven? because when we
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work at our prayer, it shows the answer matters to us.
It shows God that we are really fervent about what we're doing.
Likewise, Elijah worked, thank you, Adam, worked at his prayer.
Another word for work is travail. It sounds like it's just almost painful, the idea of travail.
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But Elijah worked at his prayer, and he made it his business to pray.
The third thing we see is that prayer that works takes risk.
Elijah didn't simply ask God to bless Israel. He didn't ask for Bobby's bunion to be healed.
He was asking for rain, rain that had been stopped for three and a half years,
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and God had said that when you command the rain, it will come.
And it was at this time he prayed specifically for answers that could be measured.
How often do we pray general prayers that cannot be measured or proven to be
answered? Lord, bless our church.
Lord, bless our pastor and his wife, especially his wife, because she has to deal with the pastor.
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And I'm glad you all pray those prayers, believe me. But how do we prove those
things, whether they've been answered out?
How do we prove that the church has been blessed? How do we prove that your
pastor and his wife have been blessed?
Sometimes I think we pray that way because we might even have doubt that God
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can specifically answer prayers.
Not only did Elijah pray for rain, but he let everyone around him know he was expecting rain.
He told his servant to go look for rain.
Even more than that, he told wicked King Ahab to get ready for it. It was coming.
Some people will say that it was going to rain sooner or later,
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so that really wasn't an answer to prayer. it hadn't rained or due for three and a half years.
Yeah, sooner or later it's going to happen, but how did Elijah know when to
specifically confront King Ahab and Jezebel and the prophets of Baal and Asherah?
Furthermore, others say that the plagues in Egypt were just natural occurrences
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that compounded on each other.
Well, if that's the case, how did Moses know exactly when they were going to
occur, to tell the Pharaoh that's what was going to happen.
Now, it might make us a little nervous to pray with specificity because we're thinking,
well, if I pray specifically in my prayers and God doesn't answer them,
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won't that damage my faith?
And if other people know that I'm praying specifically, then God doesn't come
through, won't that damage their faith? Shouldn't I be worried about God's reputation?
Shouldn't I let him just fill in all the blanks? Well, that's true,
but in Tony Evans' book, Kingdom Woman, which he co-wrote with his daughter, Crystal Evans Hurst,
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Tony talks about an evangelistic crusade that he spoke at several years ago
at the University of South Carolina football stadium.
The weather report had predicted rain.
In fact, it had said there would be a horrific storm.
More than 25,000 people had already gathered in the stadium and were waiting
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for the crusade to begin when they saw the storm clouds begin to form around the stadium.
So Tony and the other leaders and organizers of the crusade wanted to pray that
God would hold back the rain.
He writes, we went downstairs into a small room, gathered together and began to pray.
Of course, we prayed things like, dear God, please hold back the rain.
(28:37):
And if it's your will, Lord, could you hold back the rain, please?
Yet in the midst of all of us praying, a petite little woman named Linda came forward.
Perhaps she had gotten frustrated with the prayers of the so-called professionals.
The preachers and the leaders.
Whatever the case, Linda stood up and asked, do you mind if I pray?
(28:59):
What else could we say but go ahead so linda prayed lord your name is at stake
we told these people that if they would come out tonight they would hear a word
from god we told them they would hear from you now if they come and you let
it rain and you don't control the weather then you will look bad.
(29:20):
We told them that you wanted to say something to them, and if you don't keep
back what you can control, the weather, someone will say your name is no good.
And then she threw a line in a line that caused us all to look at each other
out of the corners of our eyes.
She says, therefore, right now, I ask in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for
(29:42):
the rain to stop for the sake of your name, Father.
With that, we opened our eyes.
Eyebrows went up. We could all say, all we could say and think was,
whoa, did she really just pray that?
Following the prayers, we all went up and sat on the platform.
The sky had now become entirely black behind us.
(30:04):
A guy who had been assigned to communicate directly with the weather bureau
said, the showers are coming.
They are heavy storms, thunderstorms, and they're coming right at us.
There's nothing we can do to stop them. It was now 7 o'clock p.m.
And the music was beginning, he says.
It's time to start the crusade. When massive thunder and lightning started appearing
(30:25):
all around us, people began to stir in their seats.
Someone even started to get up and open their umbrellas, and Linda was up on
stage with the rest of us, and a quiet look of expectation covered her face.
Then something happened, Tony goes on to write, then something happened that
I have never seen once in all my life.
(30:46):
The rain rushed toward the stadium like a wall of water, yet when it got to the stadium, it split.
Half of the rain went on one side of the stadium, half of the rain went on the
other side, and when it got around the other side of the stadium,
it joined back together and went on.
(31:07):
And all the while, Linda sat there with a confident look on her face.
The rest of us, the preachers and the leaders, the professionals, looked at each other.
And then we looked at Linda, and Linda looked straight ahead.
I believe God paid special attention to Linda's prayer because she had great
faith, and she knew that God's name was at stake.
(31:29):
I remember a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Well, I wasn't there personally.
But I remember the story of a storm on Sea of Galilee when Jesus was asleep
in the back of the boat, and a storm came up around them.
And the disciples woke him up and said, aren't you afraid we're going to drown?
(31:50):
And Jesus stood up and spoke to the storm, and it disappeared.
And God's name was praised.
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? I think God paid special attention to
her prayer because she had great faith, but she was also concerned that God's name would be profaned.
(32:12):
Fourth thing, prayer that works takes understanding of God's will.
And that is prayer that works takes understanding. God wanted to send rain on Israel.
That's why Elijah had come back. And 1 Kings 8, verse 1 tells us,
after a long time in the third year,
the word of the Lord came to Elijah and said, now go back and present yourself
(32:36):
to Ahab because I'm ready to bring rain on the earth.
Appeared with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, talking with Jesus.
Of course, his prayer works.
But we're talking about me.
Yes, we're talking about me. So if you look at some of the powerful prayers
in Scripture, you'll find that they all mentioned either a specific promise
(32:58):
God has made, an outcome God was known to favor,
how answering this prayer would result in praise to him, and how God's answering
of the prayer would affect him and how they would witness.
When we pray, we need to think about why God should want to answer our prayer.
(33:19):
When we pray, the scripture says, when we pray in Jesus's name, it will be answered.
That doesn't mean we say our Hail Mary prayers and say in the name of Jesus.
That means we pray in the powerful name of Jesus, knowing that what we're praying for is in the will of God.
We don't pray for selfish things. We pray for what God wants and what God wants to bring.
(33:43):
Fifth thing we see is that prayer works, that works, takes righteousness with God.
And that's where a lot of us think the catch is.
Maybe you get to this point and you feel a little cheated. There you go.
I knew there was a catch. I can't pray with the same result of Elijah because
I don't have the faith of Elijah and I'm certainly not a righteous man.
(34:04):
Elijah was a God's prophet. but he was one of the few people in Scripture that
God records as not dying.
In fact, we see the Scripture where Elisha watched him being taken to heaven in a chariot of fire.
He appeared with Moses at the Mount of Transfiguration.
Brothers and sisters, the only thing that made Elijah anything is the same thing
(34:28):
that we have access to, God's imputed righteousness.
On our own, our righteousness, the scripture says in Isaiah 64,
verse 6, says our righteousness is like filthy rags.
Righteousness is being right before God, it's cleanliness. And our righteousness is like dirty rags.
Can you imagine changing your oil and wiping your hands all over the rags?
(34:55):
You ever tried to get those clean again? Doesn't happen, does it?
Our righteousness is like filthy rags, but Jesus died on the cross so that we
could receive his righteousness.
In fact, 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that God made him who knew no sin to be sin
for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.
(35:16):
God made Jesus to be sin for us, take on sin for us, so that we might be righteous.
That's why James 5, verse 16 says the prayer of a righteous man has great power
as it is working because we aren't operating under our own power.
We're operating and working under the power of Christ.
(35:38):
So we need to pray that we will be people of righteousness, people of God's
name, so that as we pray and talk to God,
he will answer our prayers, which is his will. We need to be doing that.
D.L. Moody, in his book, Prevailing Prayer, quoted Bishop Joseph Hall saying,
(36:01):
It is not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are,
nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they are,
nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they be, nor the music of our prayers,
how sweet our voice may be, nor the method of our prayers, how orderly they may be,
(36:22):
nor even the theology of our prayer, how good the doctrine may be, which God cares for.
For fervency of spirit is that which avails much.
Let me close in reading from James chapter 5 again.
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray.
(36:43):
Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.
Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over
them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.
The Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
(37:05):
Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous man, a righteous person, is powerful and effective.
So how are you going to pray from this day forward?
Let's stand. Heavenly Father, as we close this service, as we begin our focus
(37:28):
on prayer and move toward the season of Lent, our prayer has to be fervent.
It has to come from a righteous heart. It has to be seeking your will.
So, Father, we pray that you would help us to pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
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