A movie by the title of The In-Laws came out in 1979. There was a re-make of it in 2003, but my favorite version is still the original one. It featured Alan Arkin as a conventional dentist and Peter Falk as a manic character who claims to be a government agent. Their kids are about to be married, but on the day before the wedding, Peter Falk manages to implicate Alan Arkin in a series of misadventures that take them as far as Central America. While there, they wind up as prisoners of a local dictator, who decides to have them executed by a firing squad. As General Garcia is putting blindfolds on the two Americans, he asks the Peter Falk character a question. His question was this: “Are you a praying man?” The implication, of course, is that, if he is in fact a praying man, he’d better get busy and make things right with God. I can’t remember what Peter Falk said, but I have never forgotten the question.
It’s a good question, isn’t it? “Are you a praying man?” Or, “Are you a praying woman?” We are going to talk about prayer today. We’re not going to say everything there is to say about it, of course; there isn’t enough time. But I am going to share with you some biblical principles about prayer that may be a little challenging. At least, they’re that way for me.
I’ve titled my remarks Effectual Fervent Prayer, words that come from the King James Version’s rendering of James 5:16. The English Standard Version is accurate but doesn’t have the same flourish. It says simply, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” But there is a noticeable dignity that the King James has that more modern translations don’t have. Just listen to it: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Do you hear the resonance in that?
The Greek original behind the words “effectual” and “fervent” is actually one word. It’s the Greek term from which we get our English word energy or energetic, and it simply means that something is working. So, what James is talking about here is prayer that works. Wouldn’t you like to be able to pray that way, so that, when you pray, you have the confidence that your prayers are effective, that they’re working? What would that look like?
James gives us an example. He directs our attention to Elijah, the ninth century prophet in the Northern Kingdom. If you recall, in our reading from 1 Kings we heard about the very incident that James references here. Elijah prayed that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it didn’t. And there was a severe drought. Then he prayed again, and the heavens were opened and the rain came. And the drought was over.
What was it about Elijah that caused James to think of him? He implies that Elijah was a “righteous person,” but he doesn’t even come close to suggesting that he was some sort of spiritual superman. In fact, he tells us that “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.” He possessed the same frailties and limitations that plague us. And yet his prayers worked. How come?
I want share with you three principles for effectual fervent prayer, for prayer that works – principles that come right out of the pages of Scripture, in fact, right out of the account of Elijah in 1 Kings.
The first principle is this: Effectual fervent prayer comes from a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the way things are, what we might call a holy discontent. Now notice, I said holy discontent. I’m not talking about being unhappy with your life and the way things have fallen out for you. If we don’t like the circumstances we’re in, we may need to consider the possibility that God has put us there to show us something we need to learn. His big agenda is not making us happy; his big agenda is making us holy. And he may have to make us terribly unhappy to make us holy.
When I say that we are to be dissatisfied with the way the things are, what I mean is: the way things are from God’s perspective. This world is messed up because, the way things are, they don’t honor God. And you and I need to pray that we will be deeply grieved by that reality. In the Lord’s Prayer we say, “Hallowed be thy name.” But his name is not hallowed. It’s not revered. It’s not regarded with respect.
When Elijah shows up in 1 Kings 17, we find him addressing Ahab, the king of Israel. And Ahab is a wicked man. He has disobeyed God’s commandments and he has led his people to disobey them. He is married to the pagan queen Jezebel and, at her request, he has erected temples and altars to her false gods, Baal and his consort, Asherah. And when Jezebel decided to have all the prophets of Israel’s God slain, Ahab did nothing to stop her. He encouraged her in her murderous pursuit to eradicate God’s name from the landscape.
If you took an opinion poll back in those days and asked people what they thought, what do you think they would have said? Let me tell you what they would have said. They would have acclaimed Jezebel as the best thing that had ever happened to Israel. They knew the first commandment – the one that says, “You shall have no other gods before me” – but they didn’t care. They welcomed the worship of Baal and Asherah. You know why? Baal and Asherah were fertility gods. If you sacrificed to them and praised them and worshiped them, they would guarantee good crops and a favorable market. You see, it was all about the economy. It was all about money. Well, not exactly. Since Baal and Asherah were fertility gods, their worship involved temple prostitution. So, it wasn’t hard to get a crowd out for church.
How do you think Elijah assessed all this? He was deeply grieved by it, sorely dissatisfied with the way things were. So, what did he do? He prayed. He prayed that the name of God would be vindicated and honored. He prayed for a drought. What a thing to pray for! But here’s the irony in it. Baal was supposedly the storm god, the guarantor of rain in season. How else could he guarantee abundance and plenty? He would make it rain. But, you see, it is the Lord who makes it rain – or not – and Baal is powerless to do anything about it if the Lord decrees otherwise.
If the first principle of effectual fervent prayer has to do with holy discontent, the second principle has to do with holy desires. Prayer is effective when it looks to God for things to be the way they should be – and when it looks to God for the way we should be.
What would you be willing to endure to promote the fame of God’s name? I want you to see what Elijah endured, something we need to know. What we need to know is: When God brings judgment, God’s people are impacted by it right along with everyone else. The drought for which Elijah prayed affected him as much as it did anyone. But his desire for God’s glory was greater than his desire for his own comfort.
When the drought first started, God sent Elijah east of the Jordan to the brook Cherith, where he would have plenty to drink, and the Lord ordered the ravens to bring Elijah food. But eventually the brook dried up, and Elijah’s survival was at risk. So, God sent him to the home of a poor widow in Zarephath. The woman was down to her last bit of flour and oil – just enough to make a small loaf of bread that she and her son could eat and then that was it. They would wait to die.
But Elijah prayed, and the Lord made it so that the jar of flour never ran out and the jug of oil never grew empty. And Elijah stayed with the woman. They didn’t have beef tenderloin to put on the table or anything like that, but they did eat. God provided for them.
What I want you to see is the severe conditions that Elijah endured because of his prayers for God’s glory. He could have complained about the menu. He could have grumbled about the heat and the scarcity and the sheer discomfort he had to put up with. But he didn’t care about those things. What he cared about was God. God most of all. God first and foremost. His desires were not for his advantage; they were holy desires. We need to ask God for holy desires – so that what we want, more than anything else, is that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And to want that even if it’s inconvenient for us and costly to us.
Someone has said, “Prayer is not a way of getting man’s will done in heaven; it is a way of getting God’s will done on earth.” That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pray for what we need. We should. The Bible instructs us to. “Do not be anxious about anything,” it says, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Even in the Lord’s Prayer, we are taught to say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” But we need to understand that, when Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer as a model, he gave us six petitions, and the first three – the first three – have to do with God’s glory: praying that his name will be hallowed, that his kingdom will be hastened, and that his will be done. It’s only then, when we have our priorities straight in our own heads, that we are to ask for our own needs. And even then, we’re not asking for red sports cars and shiny baubles. We’re asking for daily bread, for mercy, and for God’s help in the hour of temptation.
What prayer really is – what effectual fervent prayer really is – it’s a school in which we learn to pray, not for what we want, but for what God wants – and to pray for it until it becomes what we actually do want. The second principle of effectual fervent prayer is the fostering of holy desires.
The third principle is this: As we pray, we make a discovery, actually three discoveries: (1) that nothing of lasting value can be had apart from God; (2) that anything gained apart from God is not worth having and will eventually disappoint us; and (3) the thing we must want most, that we must learn to want most – and pray for the most fervently – is nothing less than God.
In 1 Kings 18, God sent Elijah the prophet back to Ahab the king with news that the drought would soon be over. After more than three years, there would be rain. And you will notice in verse 42 that Ahab went off to eat and drink. But Elijah did what. “He bowed himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees.” He prayed. And you know what he prayed for? He prayed for what God said would take place. And he sent his servant to look off toward the sea for any sign of rain. Seven times he sent him to look. And all the while he prayed. He prayed that God would do what God said he would do. And the seventh time, the servant returned and said, “There’s a little cloud shaped like a man’s hand.” And Elijah found Ahab and said to him, “You’d better get home. There’s going to be a deluge.” And, sure enough, the “the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.”
Prayer, you see, isn’t us telling God what we think he needs to hear so that things will be what we want them to be. Effectual fervent prayer, that is. Effectual fervent prayer is learning to want things to be the way God wants them to be and asking him to make it so.
