The Punchy Epistle – James (iii) Dessert: Elijah

This is not a scholarly look at the Epistle of James. It’s not an investigation into authorship, manuscripts, historicity, debates over canonicity, or a re-hash of Luther’s famous dislike of its contents.

What I have in mind is a four-course meal, or more accurately, a three-course meal, with two starters.

If the Starters were Abraham and Rahab, and Mains were Job, Pud is Elijah

‘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…and he prayed again, and it rained, and the earth produced its fruit’

The context of this section is supernatural miraculous healing of the sick by God through the laying on of hands of the elders ‘and the prayer of faith will raise him up’. I was an elder in a local church for a few years. On one occasion, I was asked to visit a home with a mother and her son, the son was suffering from an inoperable growth on his neck as removing it surgically would have severed many facial nerves.

Two of us, as elders, went to the house. As I walked in, James’s instructions for confession of sins before prayer for healing came to mind. The boy and his mother confessed their sins to each other, including anger; they’d argued earlier that day. It was a sweet moment. We prayed and left. News circulated a week or so later that the growth had disappeared.

The reason I mention that is to make sure we’re dealing with the living God and not an intellectual approach to scripture – vitally important, though, that we do.

James’s first and very important point is that Elijah had a nature just like ours. This great hero of faith, the prophet who called down fire from heaven and who stopped and started the rain, who raised a widow’s dead son, and so on…had a nature just like ours, yours. He was just a man. He had so special powers. It was God working through Elijah. Therefore, God through us can do…well…anything He wants to do!

James’s second point is dynamite to many prayer meetings, huddled around various layers of man-made pretence of faith, or the language of politeness, or religious gobbledygook and jargon. James uses three words to punch a hole in our dreadful, woeful substitution for real biblical prayer: Effective. Fervent. Earnestly.

James’s third point is to use the example of Elijah seemingly controlling the weather with a word. It is SO important to realise that Elijah was a man just like you or me. Nothing special.

The clue to Elijah’s rain miracles is tucked away in the Old Testament, in 1 Kings chapters 17 - 19, the longer version of events that James summarises in his letter.

‘Elijah said to (King) Ahab ‘…there shall not be dew or rain for years except at my word’ 17v1.

A drought followed. Sometime later, Elijah prayed seven times before seeing a ‘cloud the size of man’s fist’ and told the King, Ahab, ‘Get your chariot ready and leave before the rain stops you’ 18v44.

‘…the sky became black with clouds and wind, and there was heavy rain’ v 45

How was Elijah able to do this? Is prayer a form of twisting God’s arm? Making Him bend to our will and desires? The clue is hidden midway through one verse, 1 Kings 18v15.

‘Then Elijah said, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to Ahab today’’’

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, an ordinary man, but he spent time ‘standing before the Lord’. It was in communion with the Lord of hosts that he heard the Lord and presented his prayers.

In verse 2 of chapter 17, just after Elijah had told King Ahab about how the drought would start and end ‘at my word’ we read ‘Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah’.

Jesus said, ‘My sheep know My voice’.

So, this is the punch. Effectual fervent earnest prayer is not a pretence of faith; it is, initially, standing before the Lord, often with nothing except a desire to pray. There is no revelation, no ‘word’ from God. We should pray earnestly until we receive revelation or a word from God, then we can pray, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven’.

On the occasion above, I heard the Lord remind me about these verses in James, and the boy’s healing followed on. I have also prayed for someone who is sick, without any sense of the word of God, and healing has not occurred. Once, I was a small group leader, and out of a sense of duty, I asked the group to pray for a woman with cysts on her ovary that were preventing her from conceiving. Weeks and months passed, and she was no better.

The Lord convicted me that I should go back and apologise to the group for giving the impression that I had faith for her healing, and asked the group to pray again. I confessed my lack of faith, but we prayed. One member of the group heard the word of the Lord and said very simply to the woman ‘you will be healed by Christmas’ which was a few months away. There was a sense of peace in the room. And that is what happened, no cysts by Christmas, and she went on to have children.

Finally, let’s put James’s first point in reverse. We have a nature just like Elijah. We are men and women with no supernatural power of our own. But we can ‘stand before the Lord’ and pray effectually, fervently (and, yes, you might do odd un-British things in your fervency, like shout, or, like Elijah, bend down and put your head between your knees, or lie prostrate, or kneel), and earnestly. Whilst we are there, in communion with God, through Christ, and in the Spirit, we may hear Him speak. Everything follows on from that.

ps I have been writing this since reading these verses yesterday and the day before, and I am also feeling the ‘punch’ of ‘before Whom I stand’. That is the word of the Lord to me. A renewed call to do just that. Probably, to start with anyway, to take it literally, and stand up, though I acknowledge it’s not physical standing that Elijah is alluding to, but going into the presence of the Lord as you would before a king or a queen. But I will be standing.