“He did it”
James 5:16-18
By: Pastor
June 27, 2018 – WN
The phrase “of a righteous man” makes all the difference in the world in these set of verses.
We have not prepared our self in the righteousness part of prayer; we have the words down by that it is, and we expect God to hear our prayers.
We want answers to our prayers, but many times we quit before we get an answers.
Elijah did not start praying the day he prayed the rain would stop, he had a prayer life before then.
Elijah was not a new man to prayer.
He focused himself and got himself to where he needed to be so that he could pray.
- The reality of this man
The reality of this man is that he was a man, not some superhuman being, but a man just like us.
He was a man just like us. He had the weakness of being a man.
If Elijah can do it, so can we.
He had flesh just like us.
We focus on the victories of men that we forget their weaknesses.
He prayed through his depression and his discouraged times.
We will get in those dull times, those times when nothing is happening in our life.
In the middle of the darkest times of his life, God sent an angel down to him.
We are going to have to deal with us being a man or a lady.
- The resemblance of who this man was like.
God puts a resemblance of us to him in these verses.
The phrase “like passions as we are” mean he had the same feelings, the same affections, and to resemble.
God put that phrase there because He wants us to keep going back in prayers.
One of the greatest prayer warriors in the Bible got discouraged, and so will we.
- The request.
The request was that it might not rain. He prayed about it not raining, he did not talk about it.
Elijah spent time getting himself right before he tried to get Israel right.
We must deal with us before we ask God for something.
He did not talk about it, he did it.
Before he prayed he cleaned his hands with the Word of God.
We are not staying by the water long enough. We want God to answer our prayer with a dirty vessel, and that is something God will not do.
The result is what matter.
The Christian life is a battle life.
The difference between some people is that they are living a righteous life.
The answer to his prayer is before what we read in the Bible, we just read the results.
People that do not pray cannot earnestly pray. Earnest praying is from someone whose been praying.
Elijah was by himself; nothing stopped him from praying.
- The results.
“And it rained not” for 3 ½ solid years.
Elijah lived in the same place everyone else did who was going through this dry spell.
The brook dried up because he prayed.
Elijah was willing to suffer with his own prayer.
Through it all Elijah never stopped praying.
When things are not answered now like we want them, we tend to forget all the other answered prayers that God has answered for us.
3 ½ years of no fruit, and Elijah was willing to live through it to get God’s people right with God.
Don’t give up praying; keep fighting even when we fell like nothing is happening.
But he prayed; he just did it.
The devil will do his best to get us to stop praying. He will tell us we are just wasting our time.
Elijah prayed and God stopped the rain.
We cannot do it, we just have to get our self right with God and let Him do the work.