Low Expectations in Prayer

The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. -- James

Scripture never ceases to shock and rebuke me.

I'm a normal man who lives in a normal time. I read of heroic giants of the faith in the Holy Scriptures, but I manage to maintain modest expectations of myself... and my modern, normal god. I certainly can't expect to live and walk in the shadow of the Almighty God of the prophets! Why, was I not taught that Elijah lived in special times when a special God followed quite different policies than those now in effect?

“Wrong!” says James, “Elijah was man just like <you>.”

A righteous man reasons and reacts with the attitude and mind of Christ. A righteous man requests what God wants and intends to do. God hears His own will in the voice of the righteous man and does it. Elijah was a righteous man, spoke the will of God into the situation in Israel – and God did it.

The clear voice of James, and the whole of the New Testament, is that God's expectation of righteousness in the life of a man, be he Elijah or me, has changed neither jot nor tittle – since forever. I am called to be a righteous man, to think and react like Jesus Christ, and to speak His Word into the situations of life. God, who never was nor shall be “modern” or “normal,” will do His Word.

And there is the power of God through prayer – and the end of my comfortable, low expectations for my normal, suburban, evangelical self.