Praying Like Elijah - Episode #11

The Prayer Podcast with Jan L. Burt

Hey there! Welcome to The Prayer Podcast with Jan L. Burt (that's me!) Welcome to this episode of The Prayer Podcast. I’m thankful that you are here today and super excited about today’s show because the Bible verse that I’ll be referencing is so good when it comes to our praying. And I am ready to pray this verse over you at the end of today’s show. Ready? Alright, let’s dig in!

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James 5:13-18 NLT

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Elijah was a human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years. Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops.

• When is prayer needed? When you are suffering hardships, when there is sickness, when you have sinned and need to confess (and per the Bible, confession is a NEED, not an option, not a choice, not take it or leave it…but a NEED, your need and my need when we have sinned.)
• Who should pray for us? The elders of the church when you are sick. The promise here is that then the Lord will make you well. Does the Holy Spirit use the word WILL here with carelessness or mere happenstance? Or does He mean what He says and says what He means? Remember, when God says WILL, He means WILL. Don’t put a comma or a question mark where God has placed a period…and there is a period at the end of this sentence: Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. PERIOD.
• What to do when you are happy? Sing praises. Are we doing that? Consistently? With regularity? Can we put this singing of praises into practice until it becomes second nature, like breathing, to sing praises to our God whenever we are happy? I say we give it a go!
• What about sins? Confess your sins to each other. And pray for each other so that you may be healed.
• Righteous people who pray earnestly - this is where we find great power in prayer which produces wonderful results. Anybody ready to pray like Elijah, to live in a state of prayer until the answer comes, which is what Elijah did? And in the case of wickedness in a nation, wickedness in the leadership which the people are subject to, anybody willing to pray like Elijah prayed for there to be a consequence, which did indeed lead to suffering, this three and a half years of no rain with the sky shut up, zero rain, serious hardship, it ought to have forced the people into a corner where they had to choose God over the pagan Baal worship that was pushed upon them by a wicked king and his wicked wife, Jezebel…sadly, they pretty much left Elijah to do all the hard work and only after God showed up and showed off and showed out did they declare the Lord to be God…But are we willing to have some tough consequences when we pray for God’s name to be honored and revered and treated as holy? And in turn, are we willing to pray in prayer, to stay in a birthing prayer posture, until our faith becomes sight and the mountains move and God gets glorified in big, big ways? Who will be in your family, in your house, in your church to pray like Elijah? (Man, this gets me excited…this makes me want to start some kind of ministry of prayer retreats or prayer events or pray nights in as many churches as possible, for us to step up and pray like Elijah did! Because James promises that we can have answers to prayers just as Elijah did. But that will never happen if we don’t pray like Elijah did.)