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When Elijah prayed, James tells us, the Lord shut up the sky for three years and six months. Elijah prayed again, and the heavens poured rain and the land was restored.
Elijah clearly prayed according to God's will. But how did he know? Did Elijah decide to pray for drought after God said, "I'm going to send a drought"? Was it just dumb luck?
More relevantly, is this something we should be able to do? Or is it only for great Old Testament prophets?
James goes out of his way to emphasize that Elijah is no different from us: He wasn't superhuman but was "a man with a nature like ours." James encourages us to can try this at home.
But how? How can we be so attuned to God's will that we can pray for a dramatic meteorological change, and it happens? As we’ll see in the sermon this morning, this depends ultimately on the work of the Spirit and the Son in us. We are able to pray according to the will of God because the Spirit who knows the deep things of God from the inside is now in us; we can know God's purposes because we have the mind of Christ.
This is not automatic. Every Christian has the Spirit, but not every Christian is in tune with God's purposes in the way Elijah was. Every Christian has the mind of Christ, but not every Christian knows what to pray for or sees his prayers answered in this dramatic fashion. How do we get in tune? Through immersion in Scripture, through consistent prayer over many years, through learning the Psalms, through obedient faith and faithful obedience, we mature until our desires imitate God's desires, our thoughts His thoughts, our prayers His will.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 07:30 AM
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