“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.” James 5:16-18 This story is from 1 Kings 17 and 18. Elijah, as you may know, was a prophet during the reign of Ahab who was an unbelievably bad king of Israel. Elijah’s name means “Yahweh is my God.” In this story, Elijah prayed that it would not rain, and the rain stopped for 3 years. Elijah was set up by God to combat Baal worship in Israel and so He was determined to declare God as the Lord of All and to prove that He answers prayer. The reason he was determined to pray for a drought was because in those days there was idolatry in the land, and they were worshiping the false Canaanite gods. One of the main ones that they were worshiping was named Baal. Baal was known as the Storm God and they would pray to him for rain. Elijah wanted to prove that the Lord God was the Almighty God and there were no others. So, he prayed that there would be drought and, sure enough, there was drought in the land for three years. This made it glaringly obvious who was the Lord Almighty and that it was He who answers prayer.
Elijah was a man of prayer and had a remarkably close relationship with the Lord. He spoke to the Lord often and the Lord worked miraculous wonders through him. He was no different that you or I, the difference was his relationship with God. Prayer is all about relationship. The Lord wants us to spend time with Him because He loves us. It says in the word that our prayers are like incense to Him. In Revelations 5:6-12 it says:
“Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
In Psalm 141:2 the Psalmist proclaims: “Let my prayer be set before You as incense, The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” In the tabernacle of God, which was set up at the guidance of Yahweh to Moses at Mt. Sinai, there was an altar of incense. This beautiful altar was to have incense burning on it every morning and every night by the Priest of God who tended the tabernacle. The Altar of Incense was to be set right before the veil that led to the Holy of Holies. God wanted to teach them, through this discipline, to be praying often and to keep their hearts pure and to be consecrated to God for service. This was to allow them to see that Prayer is especially important to God and is a sweet-smelling aroma to Him. He wants us to pray often because he delights in them. Prayer is our greatest weapon because it accesses the throne of God. It says in the word that whatever we bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven. This is the power of God available to us. This equips us to be able to live in His presence no matter what happens around us. This is an incredibly powerful tool to enable us to live by faith.
After three years of drought, the Lord told Elijah to present himself to Ahab the King and He would send rain. The Lord was setting the stage for one of the most miraculous recorded events in the bible. This is where the Lord used Elijah mightily to demonstrate God’s awesome power where he defeated the prophets of Baal by challenging them to have their God call down fire on a sacrifice and then making it abundantly clear who was God when the Lord sent down fire from heaven to consume the completely waterlogged sacrifice that Elijah set up for Him. It is an incredible story in 1 Kings 18 where Elijah called all the people to witness this event on Mt. Carmel. This was to declare to them who the King of Heaven truly was. After the prophets of Baal had been executed, Elijah said to Ahab: “Go up, eat and drink; for there is the sound of abundance of rain.” He then went up on Mt. Carmel again and prayed seven times. After the seventh time of prayer a cloud appeared and then there was a torrential downpour! The Lord had brought the rain so that the land would bear fruit again. Baal was a fertility god that they supposed was needed to bring the crops, but it was the Lord God who truly provides. We always seem to try everything else and then when all else fails we turn to God. What a waste of time! We should go to God first for all our needs because He truly does provide.
There are some illustrations for us in that it took seven times for the Lord to answer Elijah’s prayer. We need to be persistent in prayer. God does not always answer our prayers immediately although He often does. Jesus gave an example when He spoke of the persistent widow in Luke 18:1-8. The purpose of this parable was to encourage us to persevere in our prayers against all odds. He wants us to keep knocking. He wants us to believe that He is a faithful God, but He wants us to cultivate this relationship with Him. He said that if we knock the door will be opened to us. He does not say that if we knock the door might be opened to us, but that it WILL be opened to us. If we seek, we will find, if we ask it shall be given to us. His ways are so far above our ways, though that sometimes He doesn’t answer our prayers in the way that we thought they should be answered. This does not mean that He doesn’t answer them, but to the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.
We don’t know the timing of God or the purpose, but we do know that He is faithful and true. Let us draw near to the throne of God and pray. God Bless You!
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