A Heartless Prayer

JAMES 5:16-18

One may declare of Elijah’s petition, “what a heartless prayer”! But was it indeed so? We must rightly conclude that desperate situations call for desperate measures.
Elijah’s whole-hearted desire for God’s honor was the motivating factor in his earnest petition. Otherwise the prayer would have been a heartless one, for it asked for hardships in the nation which would bring many deaths and much difficulty. Famine and draught would be the result of no rain for that long period of time. But, it was in the will of God, for God had previously warned in His Word that this would be the consequences of turning away from the true and living God and worshipping and serving false gods. So, Elijah was simply asking the Lord to act according to His Word. (Deuteronomy 11:16-17).
God is more interested in making us holy than He is making us happy, as important as that is to Him. He loves to give His children good gifts as a loving Heavenly Father.
So, Elijah is in tune with God’s heart for His own people when he requests this petition. He has natural sympathetic feelings for his nation, but God’s honor exceeds his natural affections. He had a true set of values and was motivated by them to pray for God’s glory over the comfort of men, himself included.
We must realize that Elijah himself was also discomforted by this terrible draught, he had to be protected and provided for in a special way, to survive. It would interrupt his routine as it would all the people; he was not exempt from the suffering and hardship. Despite all of that, he prayed for God’s glory, he knew, as we should know, also, that prosperity is not only material, there is spiritual prosperity and it is primary. The great desire of the spiritually minded prophet was that Israel would worship and serve their God and that should be our desire for His church.
In His Wonderful Name,
Pastor Ed Bowen