the power of prayers

the church had this sermon delivered by Dr Curt Lamansky on sunday and i've decided to share it online, though it won't be as good as the original message cos i've selective memory loss. but i'll still try to remember and share with you as much as i can.

the basis of this sermon is taken from one line in the bible which is from the book of James.

James 5:16-17
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on earth. 18Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The first line says "the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working."
and as you can see, i've singled out three main words.


firstly, what do we understand by the word "prayer"?

the most basic explanation of prayer is a conversation to God, where we ask for things we might need help with, or confess to our sins, or perhaps to ask for wisdom in handling a particular problem. and in the bible, it often encourages us to pray.

In the preceeding verses, James 5:13-15, it says,
"is anyone among you suffering? let him pray"
"is anyone of you sick? let the elders of the church pray over him"
the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.
and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
therefore, pray for one another and you may be healed.

so you see, in three examples, the bible already illustrates to us when we could pray.
and remember when i said prayer is a conversation to God?

imagine if we had a relationship with our loved ones the way we have with God.
we came home from work or school, then maybe talk a little around dinner, afterwhich we go to our rooms, play our computers, surf the internet, or spend time reading a book or watching tv. and maybe just before bed, we talk again for about 5 mins to them before doozing off.

if we kept up with this, a couple of days later, the wife would probably be asking "did i do anything wrong? why isn't he talking to me? is there someone else?"

so we must remember to pray often. i admit, i'm really bad at this part so i shall also learn to pray more often to God.


now the second word -- righteous
to be righteous is to be pure and godly. ie we must not have any evil intent of whatever we pray for. we must also pray for the right reasons as mentioned in James 4:2-3

James 4:2-3
2You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (desires).


the final word is power. why do prayers have great power?

because God is powerful and he is able to give us whatever we want, beyond the physical things in this world where we can imagine. cures for every possible disease, even the flesh eating bacteria in Auntie Jane's case which i'm sure we are all familiar with. bringing back people from a certain death, He is able to do it. But the most important factor of prayer, is that we ask for it.


Further down the verse, in 17, there is another key word. "Ferverntly." this means to keep praying and to be persistent in our prayers. we cannot just pray once and take it that God knows about it since we have mentioned it. No, we must keep praying, for anything and everything.

The bible illustrates this in Luke 11 where there is a short mention by Jesus, about the story of a man who had a visitor come at midnight. In those days, it was custom to provide some form of food to the visitor, like bread for instance, but this man had no bread in this house. and because it was midnight and in 1st Century, they didn't have any 7-Elevens back then. So this man went over to his neighbour and knocked on the door, asking to spare him three loaves of bread. But the neighbour did not want to wake up, and so told him "Do not bother me. The door is now shut, the children are with me in my bed and I cannot get up to get you anything."

Jesus then said, though the neighbour did not want to get up to give him anything, but because of the man's persistence, he will rise and give him what he needs in the end.

So what God is trying to show us, is that we must not only pray, but to pray persistently too.


Now back to the verse. In verse 17, the bible quotes us an example, of how powerful and effective prayers can be.

What do you think of when i mention Elijah? Most people would say he's a great prophet. But verse 17 starts of by saying, "Elijah was a man with a nature just like ours".

Elijah is just like you and me! he was a normal person!

To know more about this, refer to 1 Kings 17.

1Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the LORD the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." 2And the word of the LORD came to him, 3"Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." 5So he went and did according to the word of the LORD. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. 6And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. 7And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

To summarise, God instructed Elijah, who is from a poor town of Tishbe on the outskirts of the desert, to go into the king's palace and in front of the greatest man of the region at that time, to say unto him "it will not rain for 3.5 years"

Can you imagine what their reaction might be? They would probably laugh their heads off at the sight of this weird man telling the king such a thing. And remember, the king had the power to kill anyone at that time. If he says off with your head, that shall be it. But we know from the bible they let Elijah go out of the palace. They probably thought nothing of his outburst and just had a great time laughing.

Further info: The Israel rain pattern at that time rained from Oct till March, after which there would be no more rain for as long as 5 months. Assuming that Elijah said this to the king at the end of the dry spell somewhere near oct, where it hasn't been raining for more than 5 months anyway, no one would have given any serious thought about his words.

So Oct came. The rains didn't. and the farmers' crops that depended on it all withered and an entire crop cycle was ruined. So after 6 months of dry weather when it was supposed to rain, came the dry period of a further 6 months and one full year was wasted. There wasn't enough food nor water for the people and you would imagine people dying in the streets from salvation.

And when the next Oct came, again the rains didn't and this ruined their second crop production cycle. another full year was wasted.

This again continued for the 3rd year running and in total 3 crop cycles were wasted. But Elijah prayed for it to not rain for 3.5 years. So add another half year and what month will that be in?

March! And then it started raining.. when it wasn't supposed to!

Many people have commented, there are better examples to show the power of prayer, why did God pick this one.

I believe, the point they are missing is this -- when all this is happening, wouldn't King Ahab be sending his military out to hunt down Elijah, the man whom they had the chance to kill in the palace but allowed him to escape instead?

His people were starving and surely he would want to kill Elijah as he probably had believed he had put a curse on the land and that the only way to get rid of it was to kill him.

But the miracle of it all was -- God protected him. 3.5 years is a long time and he managed to stay hidden all this while, unharmed and was even provided for!

And this shows how God constantly takes care of us in everything that we do.

-derrick-
original sermon by Dr Curtis Lamansky.