A local Baptist church opposed the construction of a bar in their little town and began an all-night prayer vigil, asking God to intervene. Later that evening, lightning struck the bar, burning it to the ground. The owner of the bar brought a lawsuit against the church, claiming that the church was liable for the bar’s destruction. The church hired an attorney, claiming they were not responsible. When it went to trial the judge said, “No matter how this case comes out, one thing is clear. The bar owner believes in the power of prayer and the church does not.”
We may chuckle at that story, but I do hope you are part of a church that believes in the power of prayer. In prayer, we get to engage in a conversation with the God of the universe, as well as seek His guidance and His forgiveness. But beyond all of that, through prayer we have the opportunity to move the hand of God to perform the supernatural.
I remember some years ago in a previous church we planned to build a new worship center. However, the only way we could make it work was to purchase a small street from the city that bisected our property. The city was opposed to allowing our church to purchase the street, and the project appeared doomed.
I had tried to cajole the city into granting the request or to find an alternative to using the street. Nothing worked. Then I had a novel idea—Why not pray about the matter? Early one morning I asked about one hundred of my church prayer partners to join me in our sanctuary to ask God to change the city officials’ hearts about the street. A few hours later, out of the blue, the city manager called the chairperson of our building committee to discuss selling the street, and within a few weeks the deal was done.
“When all else fails, pray!” is far too often the credo by which most of us live. Not Elijah. For this mighty prophet of God, prayer was as normal and necessary as breathing. Elijah had unshakable faith in the power of God—power that could only be accessed through prayer.
If you want to live a truly extraordinary life like Elijah—and I suspect you do, or you wouldn’t have made it this far in this book—then, like Elijah, you will learn how to harness the incredible power of God that flows into our lives through prayer.
Showdown on Mount Carmel
We have now come to the part in Elijah’s story that many people are familiar with—the winner-take-all battle with the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel. When most people read the story, they focus on the frenzied and futile antics of the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah or the miraculous fire from heaven that consumed Elijah’s sacrifice to Jehovah. We will look at both of these realities briefly, but the heart of this story is Elijah’s prayer that brought rain from heaven.
Certainly Elijah is to be commended for his boldness in confronting the false prophets of Baal and Asherah. I have stood on Mount Carmel and reflected on the sheer guts it must have taken for Elijah to engage in a contest in which he was outnumbered 850 to 1. But the reason we are still talking about this incident almost three thousand years later is not because of Elijah’s courage but rather his reliance on the power of prayer.
In this chapter, we are going to discover how we can tap into the same divine power that permeated Elijah’s life. We will look at the prelude, prerequisites, principles, and practice of powerful praying that are foundational to a significant life.
The Prelude to Powerful Praying
The prophets of Baal and Asherah were devout followers of their faith. They were as sincere in their beliefs as Elijah was in his—but they were sincerely wrong. Nevertheless, they were determined to prove that Baal was the only true god. The purpose of their lives was to glorify Baal, and the contest on Mount Carmel was just the way to do that.
As we saw with secret #4, Elijah told Ahab to gather the Israelites and Baal’s prophets on Mount Carmel, which lies between God’s land (Israel) and Baal’s land (Phoenicia). At one time, there had been an altar to Jehovah on the summit of the mountain, but since the reign of Ahab and Jezebel it had been torn down and the mountain renamed “Baal’s Bluff,” giving Baal the home-field advantage in this contest to see who was God.1
Baal’s apparent advantage was due to more than the mountain’s nickname. Carmel means “Garden Land.” It overlooks the Jezreel Valley, which when in full bloom is a patchwork quilt of green fields. But during the three-and-a-half-year drought, the valley had become brown and brittle. Carmel was known for its sudden storms of lightning and thunder—representations of Baal’s divine power and booming voice, according to those who worshiped him. And since Baal was worshiped as the fire god, the contest of fire should also have been to Baal’s advantage. A well-timed lightning strike could easily ignite the dry grass and start a fire, proving that Baal was alive and well.
The rules for the contest were simple. On one side, the prophets of Baal—all 850 of them—were to take an ox, cut it up, and place it on an altar. On the other side, God’s solitary prophet, Elijah, would do the same. (Remember, God’s other one hundred prophets were too afraid to show their faces and were in hiding.) Neither side was to set their sacrifices on fire. Rather, Elijah issued this challenge: “You call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD, and the God who answers by fire, He is God” (1 Kings 18:24).
After the preparations of the sacrifices, Baal’s prophets began their incantations and chants, crying out for Baal to send fire. Hour after hour—from morning until midday—the prophets danced around the altar. “But there was no voice and no one answered” (v. 26).
Of course no one answered! Baal had no voice box by which he could answer, no hands by which he could throw a lightning bolt to consume the sacrifice, and no heart by which he could sympathize with the obvious distress of his servants. Baal had nothing, because Baal was nothing. He was simply the figment of the godless imaginations of those who had rejected the knowledge of the one true God.
What was true of Baal is true of all false gods—anyone or anything that is loved more than the Creator of the universe. False gods are named “Baal,” “Asherah,” and “Buddha.” They are also named “money,” “sex,” and “career.” Regardless of their names, all false gods are impotent, just as the psalmist declared:
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel;
They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat. (Ps. 115:4–7)
At noon, when the sun shone at its brightest, Baal—the sun god—should have been able to ignite a simple fire and consume the sacrifice. But nothing happened. So Elijah thought he would have a little fun with Baal’s prophets: “Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27).
“Speak a little louder,” Elijah taunted. “If Baal is up in heaven, he may have a hard time hearing you!” Or perhaps Baal was “occupied” with other matters. Maybe he was deep in thought or distracted, not paying attention to all the hullaballoo on Mount Carmel. Or perhaps he had “gone aside”—a euphemism indicating that Baal was in the restroom. “Baal can’t be bothered because he’s sitting on a celestial commode!” Elijah teased.
Of course, Baal was not preoccupied, on vacation, or in the bathroom. He simply did not exist. But that didn’t stop his prophets from crying out even louder from noon until three o’clock in the afternoon. For three intense hours, they worked themselves into a frenzy, even cutting themselves to gain the attention of Baal. But nothing worked. Finally, their wails grew silent, and they lay on the ground exhausted. And still, “no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:29).
Now it was Elijah’s turn. Taking twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes when Israel was unified, he “repaired”—literally, “healed”—God’s altar (v. 30). Under the authority and authorization of God, Elijah “built an altar in the name of the LORD” (v. 32).2 He dug a trench around the altar, wide and deep enough to hold twenty-two quarts of seed.3 Then he arranged the wood and the ox for the sacrifice.
To add a little dramatic flair to the contest, Elijah commanded his men to find four large barrels, fill them with water from the Mediterranean Sea, and pour the water over the altar.4 If it wasn’t challenging enough for God to consume the sacrifice with fire, Elijah upped the ante. He ordered the men to drench the sacrifice three times, until the whole altar was soaked and the water was running into the trenches. By purposefully stacking the deck, Elijah was setting the stage for a dramatic demonstration of the power of the only true God.
The prelude to a powerful answer to our prayers is a seemingly impossible situation that motivates our prayers. God does not despair over our difficult circumstances—He delights in them! Why? The more difficult our situation is, the greater the opportunity God has to demonstrate His incomparable power. If you want to see God do something big, ask Him for something big!
The Prerequisites to Powerful Praying
Pagans think a certain way, so they pray a certain way. The prophets of Baal believed their god would pay attention to their request only if they engaged in a flurry of tortuous and religious mumbo jumbo. Christians often believe the same about our God—that long, tedious hours spent on our knees, pouring our hearts out before the Lord, is what it takes to get God’s attention. Not so.
Jesus explained why His followers do not have to pray like pagans (known as “Gentiles” in His day): “When you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matt. 6:7–8).
Sometimes, as I listen to Christians drone on and on when they pray in public, I wonder if God is as bored as I am. I’m sure He’s not, but I sometimes picture Him in heaven looking at His watch, wondering when this is going to end! God is not moved to act by the number or the choice of words we offer. However, the Bible does offer three prerequisites for unlocking the power of prayer.
A Right Relationship with God
When James wrote, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (James 5:16), he could have been referring to Abraham, the friend of God, or David, the man after God’s own heart. But he was not. James was describing Elijah. Elijah is a model of powerful praying because Elijah is a model of righteousness.
Many people trip over the word righteousness. They assume, since they are not perfect, this verse means that God will not hear their prayers. But righteousness does not mean perfection. Instead, the Bible uses the term righteousness in two ways.
Sometimes the word righteous refers to “judicial righteousness.” At the moment we trust in Christ as our Savior, God declares us to be in right standing before His holy bench. To put it another way, the instant we acknowledge our lack of perfection and our complete reliance upon Jesus Christ for forgiveness, God declares us “not guilty” in the great courtroom of heaven.
Because Jesus has already endured the punishment we deserve, we never need to fear that God will one day dredge up our sins and hold us accountable for them. Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of double jeopardy—the legal notion that a person cannot be tried for the same crime after he or she has been acquitted of it. If you are declared “not guilty” for robbing a store, you can never be charged for that crime again.
Christ willingly endured the punishment we deserve; we have been acquitted from sin, and our death sentence has been commuted. We never have to worry about divine double jeopardy. That is why Paul confidently declared, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
But having a right standing before God means more than never having to face His judgment for sin. Judicial righteousness also radically changes our relationship with God. Instead of being slaves of sin, we are now children of the King, with all the privileges that accompany that relationship.
Let me illustrate how that truth relates to prayer. If a child in our church came up to me after a service and said, “Pastor, would you give me three hundred dollars to buy an Xbox?” my reply would be, “Go ask your parents!” As much as I may like that child, he or she is not a family member and I am under no obligation to answer that request.
However, recently, one of my girls asked me to help her and her husband with a down payment for their home. I listened carefully to her reasoning and determined that her request made sense, so I happily gave her the funds. Obviously, I wouldn’t do that for someone else’s child, but I was thrilled to do that for my child.
When you become a Christian, your status changes from being outside God’s family to being a member of God’s family. In Galatians 4, the apostle Paul explains that when we enter God’s family through faith in Christ, we have the same rights as God’s beloved Son, Jesus. He writes, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:6–7).
Abba is an Aramaic word denoting the intimate relationship between a father and his child. It could be translated “Daddy” or “Papa.” Because of our right standing before God, we do not have to approach Him with our requests as some distant deity but as a daddy who loves us. And since He views us as family members, we can know He listens just as carefully to our requests as He does to the requests of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Does that mean that God automatically says yes to everything we ask of Him? Of course not! God even said no to His Son, Jesus, on occasion. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pled with His Father to spare Him from the experience of the cross. When God refused to offer an alternative way to provide redemption for the world, Jesus acquiesced to His Father’s plan, saying, “Not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).
Realizing that God might not grant our request should not keep us from making the request—no matter how outlandish it may seem. Because of our right standing with God, we approach our heavenly Father with our requests—whatever they are. As the apostle John explained, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).
God answered Elijah’s prayers because he was a righteous man. But Elijah’s righteousness extended beyond his judicial standing before God. Elijah’s life also represented the second meaning of righteousness used in the Bible—which just happens to be the second prerequisite to answered prayer.
Obedience to God’s Commands
When the late author and pastor Norman Vincent Peale was a young boy, he found a cigar and decided to experiment with what his father had forbidden. When Peale saw his father approaching, he attempted to hide the cigar and distract his dad by pointing to a sign advertising a circus that was coming to town. “Dad, do you think we could go to the circus together?” Peale’s father replied, “Son, I’ve learned never to petition your father while you’re holding smoldering disobedience in your hand!” Good advice for all of us when approaching our heavenly Father with our prayer requests. Willful disobedience and powerful praying just do not mix.
Elijah understood this principle. That does not mean the prophet was perfect. James made it clear that Elijah was no plaster saint but instead “was a man with a nature like ours” (James 5:17). Because he was no spiritual superhero, he had his share of slip-ups, mess-ups, and screw-ups. Nevertheless, God regularly and powerfully answered his prayers. Why? Because Elijah was a righteous man. Scripture makes it clear, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (v. 16).
Righteousness, therefore, refers not only to our right standing before God (judicial righteousness) but also to our right acting before God (ethical righteousness). Judicial righteousness describes what God does for us by declaring us not guilty and placing us in His family. Ethical righteousness refers to how we obey God after we become part of His family. Make no mistake about it: obedience to God’s commands is a prerequisite for answered prayer. As Peter said, “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (1 Pet. 3:12).
Ethical righteousness does not mean we act perfectly all the time—that is impossible. But living righteously denotes both the desire and the direction of our life. A truly righteous person—the kind of person God listens to—has made pleasing God the primary desire in his or her life. That does not mean that person can always pull it off, but at least he or she wants to. Having the desire to obey God requires cultivating a distaste for sin.
But beyond our desires, righteousness also refers to the direction of our life. I am glad that God does not evaluate my life by the major blunders I have made. Aren’t you? Instead, God looks at the general trajectory of our lives—are we moving closer to Him or farther away from Him? Fortunately, God did not judge the whole of Elijah’s life by his one colossal failure of faith after Mount Carmel (an event we will examine in the next chapter). Instead, God declared His servant to be righteous because Elijah acknowledged his failure, received God’s forgiveness, picked himself up, and resumed his walk with God.
What about you? Is your primary desire in life to please God? Are you determined to root out any disobedience in your life, or do you still cherish secret sins? Is the general direction of your life moving closer to or farther away from God?
Your answers to these questions reveal whether you are a righteous person and can expect powerful answers to your prayers.
An Unshakable Faith
Throughout the Bible there is an inseparable link between faith and answered prayer. Here are just a few examples:
But what does it mean to pray “in faith”? This is where many Christians get it wrong. They have been taught that faith is a synonym for positive thinking. They believe that if they can conjure up enough positive persuasion that God will do what they want Him to do, then God will reward their positive belief with a positive answer. Their prayers are reminiscent of the little engine that could: “I think God will, I think God will, I think God will!”
That is not faith; that is presumption. Prayer is not forcing God’s hand to do what we want Him to do. Faith is believing God will do what He has promised to do. As we will see in the next section, Elijah could confidently pray for God to send fire on Mount Carmel because he was following God’s command to engage in such a contest.
When you pray for a raise in your salary, physical healing for your child, or a promotion at work, you may or may not be praying according to God’s will. That does not mean you should not ask for those things. In those cases, praying with faith means boldly asking and quietly trusting in God to do what is best.
But when we pray for the reconciliation of a broken relationship, power in sharing the gospel with an unsaved person, or victory over an alluring temptation, we can have the confidence in knowing—as Elijah did—that we are praying according to God’s revealed will. And that confidence provides power to our prayers.
The Principles of Powerful Praying
Unlike the prophets of Baal, Elijah did not need to engage in hysterical antics. No incessant pleading, no cutting, and no dancing around the altar. Instead, the prophet of the true God approached the altar and, with reverence and confidence, offered this simple, sixty-two-word prayer:
O LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word. Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that You, O LORD, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again. (1 Kings 18:36–37)
Elijah’s attitude and prayer reveal three principles of powerful praying—principles guaranteed to bring the fire of God’s power down from heaven when we pray.
Approach God with Confidence
Remember the rules of the challenge: the deity who consumed the sacrifice with fire was the true God. The prophets of Baal had their chance, and all that came from heaven was thundering silence. It was now Elijah’s turn to approach the altar (1 Kings 18:36).
When I hear a friend say something that borders on the blasphemous, I sometimes joke, “Let me move out of the way. I don’t want to get hit by lightning when God zaps you.” But that is not what Elijah said or did. He did not move away from the altar; he moved toward it. By his actions he was saying, “God’s a dead-eye shot. The sacrifice will burn; I won’t.” What confidence Elijah had in the Lord!
When you have an intimate relationship with God, your confidence to speak with Him about anything grows. Paul reminded the Ephesian believers that they had “boldness and confident access through faith” to come to the Lord (Eph. 3:12). And the writer to the Hebrews tells us that our faith in Christ is our VIP pass to the throne room of heaven and that we ought to “have confidence to enter the holy place” (Heb. 10:19).
Because of my jam-packed schedule, and for security reasons, people off the street cannot pop in to see me in my office. Requests for appointments are carefully screened before they are scheduled. But my wife and daughters know they can come into my office at any time for any reason—even if it is just to say hi. Why? Because they are the people I love and trust most in the world. They are family!
We can have that same confidence and access when we come before our heavenly Father. We do not need to have a preapproved agenda or even an appointment. We can confidently come into God’s presence whenever we want because we are family.
Have you ever wondered how Elijah dreamed up this contest with the prophets of Baal and Asherah? Was he feeling especially aggressive one morning after a couple extra shots of espresso in his coffee? No. Elijah tells us the source of the challenge in his prayer: “Let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word” (1 Kings 18:36).
God is the One who gave Elijah specific instructions about the contest on Mount Carmel. Though he received God’s commands privately, Elijah believed them with certainty, which ignited the power of his praying.
When we pray for God to do what He has already promised to do, we too can pray with absolute confidence. The apostle John writes, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).
Maybe you are thinking, If God would be that specific in revealing His will to me, then I could pray like Elijah and experience dramatic answers to my prayers too. I understand that sentiment. There are items on my prayer list right now that I am asking God for daily—sometimes hourly. These requests are all good things related to my family, my church, and my ministry. But I cannot say with absolute confidence that they are part of God’s plan for my life. So I keep asking with confidence—with the assurance that God will do what is best, not that God will necessarily say yes to my requests.
However, there are other requests on my list that I know with absolute certainty God is going to answer, because these requests are based on His divinely revealed will. For example, this morning I prayed with confidence that God would empower me to stay morally pure because this is God’s will: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4:3).
One recent Sunday morning I had very little confidence in the effectiveness of the sermon I was about to preach, not because of the sermon but because of the calendar. It was a holiday weekend, and I was certain few would be in church. Additionally, I assumed those who were there would be too distracted by the festivities of the season to listen attentively. But before the service, I knelt before God and said, “Lord, this message is based on Your Word, and You promised in Isaiah 55:11 that Your Word would ‘not return to [You] empty, without accomplishing what [You] desire.’”
When I walked into our worship center, it was jam-packed. As I preached I sensed God’s power behind every word. And when I invited people to trust in Christ as their Savior, I was genuinely surprised at the number of people who visibly responded to my invitation on a holiday weekend.
There is nothing wrong in praying for the things we are interested in. We can know that our heavenly Father listens attentively to our requests and answers according to His loving and perfect will for our lives. But when we pray about the things God is interested in, then we can be assured He will answer positively and powerfully. That truth leads to a final principle for powerful praying.
Focus on Glorifying God
Elijah had dedicated his life to proving that the Lord was the only true God. Remember, as we saw earlier, Elijah’s name meant “The Lord is my God.” It should be no surprise that central to Elijah’s prayer on Mount Carmel was the desire that all of Israel might conclude that the Lord, not Baal, was God. He prayed, “O LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God. . . . Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that You, O LORD, are God” (1 Kings 18:36–37).
Elijah’s desire was to demonstrate God’s glory to the world. It ought to be our desire as well. And one way we can demonstrate God’s glory is by declaring God’s holiness.
As a child, I loved singing the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” in church—not because of its theological content but because it was one of the shortest songs in the hymnal. Any Sunday night we sang it, we were sure to get out of church early!
But as I grew older, I came to love the hymn because it represents a transcendent truth about the nature of God—that His holiness is beyond comprehending. The hymn is based on Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly throne in which he heard the angels crying out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isa. 6:3).
The repetition of a word—holy, in this case—is one way the Hebrew language emphasizes the importance of a word. The word holy comes from the Hebrew word quodesh, meaning “separate,” “cut from,” or “apart.” When we say God is “holy,” we are saying God is “separate” or a “cut above” anyone or anything else in creation, which is why He alone is worthy of worship.
Elijah’s prayer on Mount Carmel was that God would use him to demonstrate God’s holiness to the world. That request was in alignment with one of God’s great eternal purposes throughout history: the declaration of His holiness—His separateness—so that people will worship Him.
God is still looking for men and women who, like Elijah, are passionate about declaring His holiness to the world. When I was in high school, I read the biography of George Müller, the founder of a great orphanage in Bristol, England. He recorded in his prayer journal over fifty thousand specific prayers that were answered by God. Once, he had run out of money and was not able to purchase milk for the children in his orphanage. Instead of panicking, he started praying. While he was still on his knees, he heard a knock at the door. He arose from his prayer and opened the door to a man who explained that his milk cart had broken down in front of the orphanage. The man wondered if Müller’s orphanage could use the milk before it spoiled!5
Müller, like Elijah, had unlocked the foundational secret of powerful praying: focus on glorifying God.
The Practice of Powerful Praying
Most people look on the contest between God and Baal as the climax of 1 Kings 18. Not so. In many ways, it is merely a prelude to the last few verses of the chapter. The chapter opens with a divine promise: “Go, show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the face of the earth” (1 Kings 18:1). Elijah obeyed, and even though God subsequently consumed the animal sacrifice with fire, He had not yet brought the promised rain.
So, just as Elijah had prayed for the drought to begin and fire to fall, he now prayed for the drought to end and rain to fall:
Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he crouched down on the earth and put his face between his knees. He said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” So he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go back” seven times. . . . In a little while the sky grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a heavy shower. (1 Kings 18:42–43, 45)
Elijah’s prayer on Mount Carmel during the dramatic contest illustrates the importance of approaching God with confidence, praying according to God’s will, and focusing on God’s glory. Elijah’s second and rain-producing prayer reveals four practical principles for praying effectively and powerfully.
Pray Privately
Recently, I was answering questions from a group of engaged couples in our church. One person asked, “Pastor, would you tell us how you and Amy have learned to pray together over the years?” I decided to be honest with them. “We haven’t and we don’t. In fact, except for a few rare instances in which one of our children was facing a crisis, we don’t pray together regularly.” You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. I knew what they were thinking: Nothing builds spiritual unity in a marriage more than praying together. Maybe, but the purpose of prayer is not building unity in marriage or even building unity among Christians. Prayer is a conversation with our heavenly Father, a conversation more times than not best conducted privately.
When we are praying aloud in front of others, it is far too easy to become distracted by the wrong concerns: the choice of our vocabulary, the length of our prayers, or the reaction of others to what we are saying. That is why Jesus advised that we pray in private: “When you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6).
That does not mean we should never pray in front of others. Jesus occasionally prayed publicly, often before He performed a miracle, such as the feeding of the five thousand or the raising of Lazarus from the dead. But the secret of Jesus’s extraordinary life and ministry was the priority He placed on private time spent in conversation with His Father. In fact, the day after the busiest day of His ministry, we find these words: “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there” (Mark 1:35).
If anyone could have made a case for sleeping in the next day after a jam-packed day of ministry, it could have been Jesus. But the Lord’s alarm went off early, and He prayed. My mentor, the late Howard Hendricks, used to say, “If prayer was so essential for Jesus, the perfect Son of God, how much more vital is it for people like you and me!”
Jesus had a regular time (“in the early morning”) and a location (“a secluded place”) where He regularly met with God—and so should we. While talking with God throughout the day should be as natural and frequent as breathing, there needs to also be an uninterrupted time and place where we meet with God.
It really does not matter when or where you make your regular appointment with God. You may not be a morning person—that’s fine. Your time can be after lunch or before you go to sleep. Your location may be a favorite place in your backyard or in a comfortable chair by your bed. When I was younger, there was a park by our home where I often met with the Lord. Now it is by the couch in my office at work. Although I pray publicly—sometimes in front of thousands of people—it is those private appointments with God that have nurtured my relationship with Him.
The same was true for Elijah. Yes, he prayed publicly for God to send the fire from heaven and consume the sacrifice—and God did just that. But it was in the solitary moments with God that the Lord answered Elijah’s prayer for rain.
My friend David Jeremiah notes that only one-ninth of an iceberg is visible above the water; the other eight-ninths is below the surface where no one can see it. Our prayer life should be the same way. Only a fraction of our praying should be done publicly. Those who have uncovered the secret of powerful intercession do the bulk of their praying in private.
Pray Honestly
In his secret, second prayer, the text records that Elijah “crouched down on the earth and put his face between his knees” and called down the rain (1 Kings 18:42). The Hebrew word for “crouched” is the idea of someone stretching on or throwing themselves to the ground. It is the same verb used in 2 Kings 4:34 when Elisha “stretched himself” over the lifeless body of a young boy and prayed for the Lord to raise him from the dead by sending breath. In the same way, Elijah stretched himself over the ground and prayed for the Lord to raise the land from the dead by sending rain.
Why is Elijah’s posture during this prayer significant? This was no folded-hands, “now I lay me down to sleep” kind of prayer. Instead, Elijah was passionately pouring out to God what was really in his heart—that God would end the drought and send rain.
Too often we censor our prayers, thinking, God wouldn’t want me to ask for that. So instead we offer up “safe prayers,” not prayers that could be labeled as “selfish prayers.” We pray for missionaries or starving children in faraway lands. Yet the apostle Paul encouraged us to pray about anything and everything that truly concerns us. He wrote, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6).
Yes, we should pray for those things we know God desires: the conversion of unbelievers, God’s glory in the world, reconciliation of broken relationships, and our own moral purity. But we should also be honest with God about the other things we desire.
Tell God what is really in your heart—not just what you think should be in your heart. After all, He already knows! Just make sure you add to that request—no matter how audacious it seems—a sincere addendum: “Not my will, but Your will be done.”
Few of us experience immediate and dramatic answers to our prayers on a regular basis. But Elijah did, and here is one reason why: he prayed with laserlike specificity. When James encouraged Christians to pray for healing for those who were ill, he encouraged them to pray specifically, noting, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (James 5:16). Then, in the next verses, James illustrates what an “effective prayer” is by Elijah’s example:
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 earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit. (vv. 17–18)
Whenever Elijah prayed, he pleaded with the Lord to grant very specific requests: the drought in Israel for three years, the raising of the widow’s son from the dead, the fire to fall from heaven on Mount Carmel, and the rain to pour on Israel again.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the main reason we are hesitant to pray with specificity is that we do not want to embarrass God or disappoint ourselves when He does not answer our requests. So we pray generally (“bless this” and “bless that”) without ever experiencing the exhilarating joy of answered prayer or the disappointment of unanswered prayer. There is nothing extraordinary about that kind of living.
Let me encourage you to do something I have done for years. I keep a prayer journal in a spiral notebook. I divide each page into two columns, labeled “My Requests” and “God’s Answers.” Through the years, I have recorded all my requests to God (and used them as a guide for my praying). When God answers that request with a yes or no, I record it under “God’s Answers.” Occasionally, when I am discouraged, I flip through my journal and the cloud of discouragement dissipates as I remember God’s supernatural intervention in my life. But I am equally encouraged when I read some of the “no” answers to my prayers and see how God had a better plan for my life than I could have ever imagined.
Perhaps one reason you are not experiencing dramatic answers to your prayers is that you are not boldly asking God for anything. Remember, “you do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2).
Pray Persistently
Sometimes God answers our specific request immediately, just as He did when Elijah prayed for Him to consume the animal sacrifice on Mount Carmel. Other times God delays His answer, just like He did when Elijah prayed for the rain to return to Israel. Look at the account again:
Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he crouched down on the earth and put his face between his knees. He said to his servant, “Go up now, look toward the sea.” So he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” And he said, “Go back” seven times. It came about at the seventh time, that he said, “Behold, a cloud as small as a man’s hand is coming up from the sea.” (1 Kings 18:42–44)
Just imagine what might have happened—or not happened—had Elijah stopped asking God for rain after the first or sixth time, reasoning, This isn’t working. Rain is obviously not part of God’s will. Elijah and the entire nation would have missed God’s supernatural blessing had he not persisted in prayer.
The same is true for you and me. One reason we miss out on an extraordinary life is that we give up too easily in our praying.
If you want to experience an extraordinary life, then it is essential to learn how to pray at all times and not lose heart (Luke 18:1). Do not just pray when the answer seems possible but also when the answer seems impossible. And do not just pray a “one and done” prayer. Keep on praying until God answers with a definitive yes or no—just as Elijah did while alone with God on the top of Mount Carmel.
When we are faced with an impossible situation, there are many steps we can take—and should take—to change our situation. But those who choose an extraordinary life have learned the truth expressed by A. J. Gordon: “You can do more than pray, after you have prayed. But you can never do more than pray until you have prayed.”6