The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my mind and heart in 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. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops."
Why did the Lord answer Elijah's prayers? James tells us, The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." James 5:16b. Our standing of righteousness before God, that is, our "rightness" before him, our "fitness" to approach him in prayer causes our prayers to be powerful and effective because God is powerful and effective.
When Elijah confronted Ahab with the news of a drought, we are told some things about Elijah. When he said there would be "neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word" 1 Kings 17:1, we find he was not acting on his own. In verse 2 we are told, "the word of the Lord came to Elijah". I understand this to mean that as a prophet, the Lord spoke directly to Elijah with some things he had to say and wanted to do. To this day I still marvel at the fact that God speaks to mankind at all. "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" Psalm 8:3-4.
We are told that Elijah listened to the Lord and "did what the Lord told him." 1 Kings 17:5. When the Lord told him to go somewhere, he went, verses 8-10. We see the same thing in 1 Kings 18:1-2. Elijah not only believed what the Lord told him, but he trusted and acted on what the Lord told him and ordered his life by it. Here is observed the truth James gives in James 2:22 about Abraham, "You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.
In 1 Kings 17 we read of the miraculous feeding of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and her son. As we read of her son's death, we see Elijah trusting, turning to God and calling out to him to spare the son. There we read "The Lord heard Elijah's cry, and the boy's life returned to him, and he lived."
Listening to the Lord, trusting in him, and acting on what he says are all marks of "the righteous man", the man of faith, as demonstrated by Elijah, the man James points to as one whose prayers were answered. My "take-away" on this is I need to be in the Scriptures, trust in what God says there and do what he says if I have a desire to see the Lord respond to those things I bring before him.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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