My friend Dr. James Dobson has described the ordinary life most men live:
The straight life for a working man is . . . pulling our tired frame out of bed, five days a week, fifty weeks out of the year. It is earning a two-week vacation in August, and choosing a trip that will please the kids. The straight life is spending your money wisely when you’d rather indulge in a new whatever; it is taking your son bike riding on Saturday when you want so badly to watch the baseball game; it is cleaning out the garage on your day off after working sixty hours the prior week. The straight life is coping with head colds and engine tune-ups and crab grass and income tax forms.1
This description, with a few variations, is just as apt for women as well. What Dr. Dobson calls the “straight life” I call the “ordinary life”—the kind of life most people experience from “the womb until the tomb.” But I have a sense that the reason you picked up this book is because you want something more than an ordinary life. In fact, I bet you picked up this book because you desire a life that is marked by true significance. Haven’t you ever wished that your brief time on earth could have a greater purpose than the daily grind? If you are like most people, your answer to that question is a resounding yes! Guess what? God wants more for you than the humdrum as well.
No matter who you are or what your circumstances might be, God desires to transform your ordinary existence into an extraordinary life.
Now, I know some of you may be thinking, I am nobody from nowhere. What can I do? No one has ever heard of me and never will.
I understand your skepticism. It is natural to wonder, What can I do? I’m just one person. But never underestimate the difference one person can make in the world. Neither fame nor fortune is a prerequisite for having a significant life. God is in the business of using the ordinary to do the extraordinary.
If you find that hard to believe, consider the life of Edward Kimball.
Ed was a Boston carpet salesman and a Sunday school teacher at Mount Vernon Congregational Church. He taught teenage boys the Bible. One eighteen-year-old boy in his class did not seem interested in spiritual matters, often falling asleep in church and having complete ignorance of the Bible. Ed was concerned about the boy’s spiritual destination, so he screwed up his courage one April morning and determined to share the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection with this young man, who worked as a clerk in Holton’s Shoe Store in downtown Boston.
Ed was no seasoned evangelist—in fact, he was so nervous that he initially walked right past the store, reconsidering his plan. Maybe talking about Jesus while the young man was at work was not the appropriate time or place. Maybe he should wait. But something inside of Ed said now was the time.
He offered a quick prayer under his breath, turned on his heels, and went through the door. He found the clerk in the back of the store. Placing his foot on a shoebox and a hand on the boy’s shoulder, Ed said, “I came to tell you about how much Jesus loves you.” They talked for a few minutes, and then the clerk knelt and professed his faith in Christ. Later, the clerk wrote about that moment, “I was in a new world. The birds sang sweeter, the sun shone brighter. I’d never known such peace.”2
Ed left the shoe store rejoicing that God had used him—a simple carpet salesman—to share the good news of Jesus with this eighteen-year-old shoe clerk. But Ed could not have imagined how his one act of faithfulness would impact millions of lives during the next two centuries.
The young man Ed spoke with that day was Dwight L. Moody, who went on to become one of the greatest evangelists in the nineteenth century. Moody later counseled another young man by the name of J. Wilbur Chapman on the assurance of his salvation. Chapman became a Presbyterian minister and evangelist who greatly influenced an ex-baseball player by the name of Billy Sunday. With his brash and flashy style, Sunday led thousands upon thousands to Christ during his evangelistic crusades.
In 1924, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy Sunday held a rally during which many men and women were saved. Out of that campaign came the formation of the Charlotte Businessman’s Club (CBMC), which continued to evangelize that region of the state. In 1934, the CBMC organized a series of meetings in Charlotte and invited Mordecai Ham to preach. It was at one of those meetings that another fifteen-year-old young man committed his life to Christ. His name was Billy Graham—a man who preached the gospel to more people around the world than any other evangelist.
In 1953, two years before I was born, in Dallas, Texas, Billy Graham held an evangelistic crusade during which my mother gave her life to Christ. In a very real sense, I am a follower of Christ and serving in ministry today because of an ordinary nineteenth-century carpet salesman in Boston who allowed himself to be used by God in an extraordinary way.
Through his simple choice to follow God’s leading into a shoe store, Edward Kimball made an incalculable difference in the lives of millions of people he would never meet. Nothing we know about Kimball suggests his immeasurable impact on the world can be attributed to abundant wealth, unusual giftedness, or phenomenal charisma. Instead, Ed Kimball was an ordinary person who simply made himself available to God . . . much like another man named Elijah who lived nearly three thousand years ago, in a world like our own.
As we will discover, Elijah was a man from humble beginnings who lived in Israel during some of the kingdom’s darkest days. He could have settled for an ordinary life, claiming his culture was too depraved and he was just one person. Yet, despite his circumstances, Elijah chose to fulfill God’s unique purpose for his life—and, as a result, he made an indelible impact on his world.
A Tale of Two Crumbling Cultures
Let’s be honest: the prospect of making an impact on our increasingly anti-Christian culture appears bleak. We look over the horizon of the American landscape and see nothing but desolation and despair. Sometimes we get discouraged, thinking, Things have never been this bad before! When we read in the Bible about men and women of faith like Abraham, Moses, Sarah, and Elijah, we think, Being godly was much easier back then without the temptations of the internet, the distractions of technology, and the challenges of parenting in a pagan world.
It’s true that we are eyewitnesses to a culture in decline. Today, we are increasingly pressured to bow to the god of immorality. Secularism is slowly and relentlessly crushing theism as the predominant ideology. And laws, no longer based on godly principles of truth and morality, are being enacted and enforced without regard for individual beliefs.
Yet the very same could have been said of the Israel in which Elijah lived in the ninth century BC. As dark and menacing as our culture is becoming, in reality there is not that much difference between our world and Elijah’s. When we travel back in time to the days of Elijah, we discover that the age in which he lived was just as dangerous and decadent as our own. Although Elijah lived in a nation that was sliding further into ungodliness each passing day, he resolved to change the world rather than allow the world to change him. In the pages that follow, we are going to discover how this ordinary person made the choice to have an extraordinary life.
The Dark World of Ancient Israel
Elijah’s story, recorded in the book of 1 Kings, opens and closes with death—the deaths of David and Ahab. In between these two funerals is about 150 years of history that tells the story of a nation that rejected God and fell headlong into national ruin.
It all began with Solomon, David’s son and heir. “King Solomon loved many foreign women” (1 Kings 11:1). Because of Solomon’s voracious sexual appetite—he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines—he violated God’s command against marrying foreign women (Deut. 7:1–3). The Lord knew that the king’s disobedience would cause the people to “turn [their] heart away after [foreign] gods” (1 Kings 11:2). Nevertheless, Solomon ignored God’s commands and “held fast to [his wives and concubines] in love” (v. 2). He set up pagan places of worship for his many wives (vv. 4–8), which began a series of destructive events that culminated in civil war and the division of the nation.
The northern kingdom, which retained the name Israel, slid into ruin as it fell deeper and deeper into idolatry. Jeroboam, the northern kingdom’s first ruler, instituted bull worship, much like the worship of the golden calf in the wilderness (12:25–33). Building on Jeroboam’s wickedness, each successive king persisted in pursuing idols and sexual perversion.
But nothing could have prepared the Israelites for the reign of King Ahab (c. 874–852 BC). Ahab’s father, Omri, was a skillful king, moving Israel’s capital from Tirzah to Samaria (1 Kings 16:21–28). However, the writer of 1 Kings focuses not on Omri’s political achievements but on his idolatry. “Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, and acted more wickedly than all who were before him” (v. 25), so he was cut off and “Ahab his son became king [of Israel] in his place” (v. 28).
If you were one of Ahab’s political insiders or a citizen more concerned about your pocketbook than about your prayer book, then the days under Ahab did not look so bad. In fact, Ahab’s reign of twenty-two years appeared stable compared to the previous sixty years that had been filled with bloodshed and assassinations.
Unlike his father’s administration, Ahab’s reign was marked by peace and prosperity. Ahab and the nation benefited from a trade deal his father had negotiated with Phoenicia, and shipping boomed—along with the royal treasuries of Phoenicia and Israel. Under Ahab it could be truthfully said, “There was a chicken in every pot and a chariot in every garage.”
However, God is not impressed by a nation’s GDP (gross domestic product) but by its GBP (godly behavior product)—and by that standard Ahab and Israel were running a serious deficit! Ahab was uniquely evil, doing “more to provoke the LORD God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (v. 33). Translation: Ahab ticked God off more than any other monarch in Israel’s history. What made Ahab Israel’s MDP (most despicable player) in God’s eyes? He married a woman named Jezebel:
It came about, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians. (1 Kings 16:31)
The marriage of Ahab and Jezebel was a political pact between Omri and Ethbaal that accounted for Israel’s financial prosperity. But in spiritual terms, the marriage catapulted Israel into its darkest days. Like Solomon before him, Ahab’s marriage to an idol-worshiping wife turned his heart away from the Lord.
Jezebel made a sport of hunting down and killing God’s prophets (18:4). And at the top of her hit list—for reasons we will soon discover—was an ordinary man named Elijah.
Why is Jezebel the only queen named in the list of Israel’s kings? She was the real power behind Ahab’s throne. Ahab made no moves without first consulting Jezebel. We would say that she wore the pants in the family.
The fact that Ahab—a man with the backbone of a chocolate éclair when it came to Jezebel—allowed his wife to entice him into Baal worship is the reason that the writer of 1 Kings recorded that it was “a trivial thing” for Ahab “to walk in the sins of Jeroboam” (16:31). In other words, the sins of Jeroboam were child’s play compared to the heinous sin of Baal worship introduced by Ahab and his wife Jezebel.
Baal was the sun, rain, and fertility god of the Canaanites—their chief god. His name means “lord” or “owner.” Jezebel was the one who introduced Baal worship in Israel. Jezebel’s father was the king of the Sidonians—a people at the center of Baal worship. And when she married Ahab, Baal worship was part of her dowry.
What made Baal worship so odious was the belief that Baal was greater than God, the Creator of heaven and earth. According to Baal worshipers, Baal controlled the environment and brought about climate change. Baal worship was accompanied with horrific sexual perversion, self-mutilation, and child sacrifice.
Idols of Baal were often made of hollowed-out sheet metal. Fires were placed either underneath the idol or within its belly, and children were placed either inside the belly of the idol, where they slowly roasted to death, or in the outstretched arms of the idol, where they slowly burned to death. Baal worshipers sacrificed their children to the god who promised to bring the warmth and rain needed for prosperity in an agricultural society.
This was the god Ahab and Jezebel worshiped and enticed the Israelites to serve as well. In fact, Ahab was so sold out to this pagan deity that he built a temple to Baal in the capital city of Samaria and erected a wooden likeness of Baal’s female consort, Asherah (1 Kings 16:32–33). Ahab and Jezebel were such devout followers of Baal and Asherah that they regularly entertained up to 450 priests of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah in their ivory palace (18:19; 22:39).
This was the world of ancient Israel—a depraved and dangerous place to live, especially if you worshiped the one true God. However, the darker the night, the brighter the light! It was against this dark background of immorality and idolatry that God would place His diamond of hope—an ordinary man named Elijah.
Extraordinary Attributes of an Ordinary Person
Elijah burst onto the scene when it appeared that God was in retreat. From a human perspective, God had been dethroned, and Baal—along with his puppet king, Ahab—now reigned over Israel. Evil ran rampant throughout the nation, unchecked and unchallenged.
But Elijah refused to sink into despair. He knew God would never be defeated. Though it seemed that things could hardly have been worse in Israel, God was not caught off guard or surprised by Ahab’s wickedness. At just the right time—at Israel’s zero hour—God raised up the right person.
Elijah was not afraid to stand toe-to-toe with the king of Israel. Don’t misunderstand: Elijah was no spiritual superman. The New Testament writer James describes Elijah as “a man with a nature like ours” (James 5:17). That means Elijah was an ordinary person who struggled with the same issues that you and I battle. He experienced fatigue, got depressed, wrestled with temptation, and at times doubted the goodness and even the existence of God. Yet Elijah made an extraordinary impact on his world, becoming one of Israel’s most famous heroes, because of three attributes that characterized his life.
Elijah Was a Man of Passion
When Elijah appeared in the pages of Scripture and introduced himself to Ahab in 1 Kings 17:1, he told the king that he served the living God. This was not only a dig at the dead god Ahab served but also an expression of Elijah’s passion for the one true God. In fact, God was more alive to Elijah than were Ahab and Jezebel.
Furthermore, this power couple who thought they controlled Israel were as temporal as blades of grass that die within a year. But Elijah served the King who was eternal. He lived with an overwhelming sense of God’s presence that fueled his passion for God. Twice Elijah said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts” (1 Kings 19:10, 14).
Elijah was a man consumed with God. He was passionate about upholding God’s reputation in an unbelieving world. Elijah’s passion burned especially hot against Ahab, Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal who were deceiving Israel by denying the true God and elevating a false god.
Christian writer A. W. Tozer knew something of this passion and how it separates some Christians from run-of-the-mill believers—to say nothing of the rest of the world. Tozer wrote:
The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all, we step out of the world’s parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way.3
Elijah was such a man “out of step with the ways of the world” but in perfect step with the ways of God. And if we are to make a difference for God in our world, as Elijah did in his, then we need to continually fuel our burning passion for following Him.
Elijah Was a Man of Purpose
Elijah understood that it was God who set the direction of his life. It was God who called Elijah to be a prophet. It was God who placed His message in Elijah’s mouth. And it was God who would ultimately hold Elijah accountable for his faithfulness to that purpose.
Because Elijah had a purpose that came from the Lord, he knew he had nothing to fear from Ahab. Elijah was a living illustration of Proverbs 28:1: “The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
In Elijah, Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:28 were on full display: “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Courage comes from the certainty of a calling. As someone has said, “Every man is immortal until his work on earth is done.” Elijah—like all of us—had God-given work to do. And he knew that no one—Ahab, Jezebel, or even hundreds of false prophets of Baal—could touch one hair of his head until that work was finished.
Elijah Was a Man of Prayer
The foundational secret of Elijah’s success was his belief in the power of prayer. We learn of this from James: “Elijah . . . prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit” (James 5:17–18).
The key phrase is “prayed earnestly,” which can be literally translated “prayed with prayer.” Don’t misunderstand what James is saying. God does not answer our prayers because we squeeze our folded hands so tightly they turn white or because we spend so much time on our knees that they are bruised. To pray earnestly means praying habitually and continually, like breathing.
Do you have to remind yourself or have a doctor admonish you to take a breath? Hopefully not! For Elijah, prayer was not a painful discipline that had to be developed or a last resort after everything else failed. Instead, talking with God was as natural as breathing. And, like breathing, he prayed continually rather than sporadically.
The apostle Paul communicated the same idea when he commanded the Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). The Greek word translated “without ceasing” was used to describe a persistent or hacking cough—one that seems to grab you by the throat and refuses to let go. Elijah prayed and prayed and prayed, speaking with the Lord throughout the day—like an uncontrollable cough. And that simple, continual practice of conversing with God was instrumental in the extraordinary accomplishments of this ordinary man.
The Secrets of True Significance
God can transform your life from ordinary to extraordinary, just as He did with Elijah. As far as God is concerned, there can never be enough Elijah-like men and women walking the earth, standing for His truth, and upholding His glory. How does such a transformation take place?
In the chapters that follow, we will explore the seven secrets of significance, which are resolves you and I must make in order to experience the incredible life God desires for us.
Secret #1: Discover Your Unique Purpose
Every follower of Christ has a general purpose in life—to bring God glory and to enjoy Him forever. But each of us also has a unique purpose that answers the question, “Why has God placed me in this world?”
Elijah’s life offers clues to how we can answer that question in our own lives. Elijah’s unique purpose was serving faithfully as a prophet of God, confronting a wicked king and queen, and calling his nation back to the worship of the true God. Your call is probably different, but, like Elijah, you have a specific purpose in life. In the next chapter, we will discover two questions that will help you determine God’s unique purpose for your life.
Secret #2: Determine to Influence Your Culture
The first reaction of many Christians to an increasingly anti-Christian culture is to retreat, like a turtle pulling its head and legs into its shell. And though holy huddles—hanging out only with other Christians—offer safety and security, they communicate to the outside world an attitude of “us four and no more.” To put it bluntly: holy huddles tell the world it can go to hell.
In contrast to the silo spirituality that so many Christians practice today, Elijah stepped out and determined to make a difference in his world. And what a difference he made! Elijah’s example reminds us that God has left us on earth to influence the world, not to isolate ourselves from it.
Secret #3: Wait On God’s Timing
No matter how old we are or how much life experience we have, no one likes to wait. We think of waiting time as wasted time. It’s not—especially when we are waiting on God. God’s most significant people learned how to wait, even if they had to wait a long time. Elijah had an extended period of waiting and training before his climactic showdown with the prophets of Baal.
You might be a student studying for a career that seems out of reach, a pastor ministering in obscurity, or a single adult wondering whether a mate will ever cross your path. But whoever you are and whatever you are waiting on, God hasn’t forgotten you. Our heavenly Father is not interested in microwave Christianity or microwave Christians. It takes time to develop Elijah-like men and women.
Secret #4: Burn the Ships
If you decide to pursue an extraordinary life, then there will come a time when you must be prepared to go all in. As the saying goes, you must be willing to “burn the ships,” eliminating all possibility of retreat. Hedging your bets and holding back is not an option when God is ready to move forward.
Elijah went “all in” when he challenged the priests of Baal to a winner-takes-all match on Mount Carmel. The stakes could not have been higher. Israel’s future, not to mention Elijah’s own life, hung in the balance. This was Elijah’s burn-the-ships moment. In this chapter, you will discover how you can be ready for yours.
Secret #5: Unleash the Power of Prayer
Someone has observed that you can do much more after you have prayed, but you can do nothing of significance until you have prayed. Survey the Scriptures, and you will discover that those men and women who stood tallest for the Lord were those who knelt lowest before the Lord. And Elijah was no exception.
The New Testament writer James uses Elijah as Exhibit A of how to pray persistently, precisely, and powerfully. Using Elijah’s prayer life as our model, we will learn how to experience God’s power in our lives through prayer.
Secret #6: Learn How to Handle Bad Days
Elijah was not a super-saint but a normal person who even as a sold-out servant of God had to battle despair, depression, and doubt. One moment we find this man courageously standing for God on Mount Carmel, and soon after we find him curled up in a fetal position, wanting to die.
You and I are going to have experiences like that—periods of time when we doubt the goodness, the wisdom, or even the existence of God. Everyone who pursues an extraordinary life is going to have to deal with his or her share of bad days that include everything from flat tires and sore throats to genuine crises of faith. Elijah’s life offers some practical and profitable ways to navigate these discouraging periods in our lives.
Secret #7: Live with the End in View
Perspective is one of the most difficult things to gain and maintain. With the hectic pace of life in the twenty-first century, it is tempting to get so caught up in today that we never think about tomorrow.
Not Elijah. He knew his time on earth was very limited. Elijah knew that when his work on earth was finished, God’s work on earth would continue. So Elijah made provisions for his departure by training a successor. People who choose extraordinary lives live each day as if it were their last and make adequate preparations to ensure their godly legacy will outlast them. In this final chapter, we will discover how to do that by following Elijah’s example.
A Majority of One
Someone once said, “One person with courage makes a majority.” That was true in Elijah’s day, and it is true in ours as well. On September 11, 2001, Welles Crowther, an ordinary young man, became a majority of one. He was simply known as the man with the red bandanna, and writer Peggy Noonan told his story on the fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City.4
Welles received the bandanna from his father when he was a child. Dressed in his first suit, Welles stood as tall as he could while his father placed a white handkerchief in his breast pocket and the red bandanna in his back pocket. As Noonan tells it, “One’s for show, [his father] said, the other’s for blow.”
Welles worked as a junior associate for Sandler O’Neill, in the south tower of the World Trade Center, on the 104th floor. Whenever Welles took the red bandanna from his pocket, his coworkers would tease him about being a farmer. His usual reply was, “With this bandanna I’m gonna change the world.”
The plane that struck the south tower ripped through floors 78 to 84. With his red bandanna tied around his face, Welles made his way down to the 78th floor, where he saw a group of people, some badly injured, waiting for the elevator. He picked up a woman and told the group to follow him to the stairwell. Eighteen floors below, the air began to clear. He placed the woman on the floor and told the group to continue down. He then turned and went back up.
When Welles got back to the 78th floor, another group of people was there waiting. Through the fire and smoke, they heard a voice: “Everyone who can stand now, stand now. If you can help others, do so.” And he guided another group to the stairwell.
No one knows how many trips Welles made to the higher floors or exactly how many people he saved. Recovery personnel discovered his body six months later, in the lobby of the south tower. He was found lying beside many firefighters, at their command post, and was only identified because of his red bandanna. Welles Crowther had made it down and could have run for his life. Instead, he gave his life for others.
God placed us on earth to do as Welles did—and as Elijah did—to rescue people. Our culture is decaying and dying. One day, this entire planet will be destroyed by fire, and many will lose their souls by following false gods who offer no hope of escape. Jesus Christ is the only Way of escape from this world into the next world, and He has given us a mission to point as many people to Him as possible, without regard for our own popularity, prosperity, or life. The secret to an extraordinary life is understanding God’s purpose for our lives and then living it, just like Elijah.
When we pursue God’s purpose, He will transform our ordinary existence into an extraordinary life. Nothing could be more significant than that.