Originally posted on January 18, 2023
THEME TEXT: 1 Kings 17:1 “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word."
Returning to our series we started two weeks ago on “A Great Start”. We’ve been talking about how important it is to have a great start right out of the starting gate. Using the Apostle Paul’s analogy of a race as pertains to the Christian walk found in 1 Cor. 9:24-27 (NLT), we’ve been talking about making sure that we run to win and that we have a great start in the race of life.
Let’s turn there. “Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.”
So, in a race, one of the most important things you can do to help yourself to win is to train how to get a great start. And we are at the beginning of the year, so we want to get off to a great start for 2023! And we are going to be looking at Elijah the prophet tonight, because he is someone who had an amazing start.
From the moment he appears in the scriptures, he has power with God, authority that overrules even the king of the nation, boldness and great favor with God. I don’t think anyone could deny that these things make for a great start.
So, how did he do it? How did Elijah get such a great start??
The only way to have each of these things working so powerfully in one’s life is through a close relationship with the Lord. How did Elijah get to this place in relationship with God?? Well, a few things are pretty evident.
1. Prayer. James 5:17 “Elijah 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 the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.” When the leader of the church in Jerusalem wanted to give an example of a person with a powerful prayer life, he chose Elijah. Elijah’s prayer life was considered powerful because it had powerful results. A prayer life is judged by its results. People who get no results when they pray often stop praying because they feel that their praying is useless. I cannot begin to tell you how many people have asked me to keep them in prayer, or to keep someone else in prayer. I understand that, but it is so important for you to develop your OWN prayer life and to do your OWN praying. Jesus said in Luke 18:1 that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” In other words, we should pray always. We should not be weary in praying. We should not lose heart in praying. We should not get exhausted in praying. But that we should pray until we get the results we desire.
Perseverance in prayer is so key. Praying until the situation is turned around. But there are two elements of prayer that is so essential that if they are missing, it’s guaranteed that the prayer will not bring any results.
What is the first essential element?
2. Faith. James tells us in James 5:15 that it is the prayer of faith that will save the sick. A faithless prayer won’t bring you any results at all. But the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. This is what made Elijah stand out. The Bible tells us in James 5:17 that Elijah was a guy just like the rest of us. But his earnest prayers stopped the rain in the entire nation of Israel for an entire 3 ½ years. And then he prayed again, and the rain came back.
How could he have possibly pulled that off?? He had faith that God would hear him. And he had faith that God would answer him.
Romans 10:17. But Elijah didn’t have the Bible. He had the Psalms and the Pentateuch, or the first 5 books of the Bible. That’s all he had to go on. And he took the testimonies that were in the Word of God at that time and appropriated them for his own situation. He figured the same God that could deliver the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage by parting the Red Sea to let His people walk through on dry land… could stop the rain from falling as a wake up call for His rebellious people.
Elijah looked at God’s testimonies and said, “Yeah, God can do this thing I’m asking!” Psalm 119:111 (ESV) “Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart.”
That is a faith builder. Look at God’s testimonies. If you don’t have any of your own to look to, look to the testimonies in the Word of God. That’s what Elijah did that give him such great results! When you’re finished with that, look to the testimonies of others. If you just do a simple google search of healing testimonies or miracle testimonies, you will find a lot of material to confirm that God is still working miracles and that Jesus saves.
That faith that Elijah built up by reading God’s word, also HAD to be exercised before he got to the level of spiritual development where we find him in 1 Kings 17:1. He had to have been exercising his faith long before then. You don’t walk into a gym the first time and bench press 350. It takes some building up to get to that. So, we know from the level of faith that Elijah had built up by 1 Kings 17 when we first see him mentioned in the scriptures, that he was a man who was well practiced in exercising his faith. Faith without works is dead, being alone. It’s not enough just to know the word of God. You have to be willing to put it into action. You have to be willing to take God at His word and trust Him to do what He said He will do. Without question.
Look at Elijah. He went BEFORE THE KING and said that there would be no rain or dew upon the land until he gave the word. What if he wasn’t in faith? What if he had walked out of the palace and then said, “Gee, I wonder if that’s gonna work??” If he had, there probably would have been another story a few verses later about how the king took off his head for insolence.
But, Elijah KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt. He knew his prayers before he got to the king held power. He knew that he had gotten an answer from the Lord about holding the rain back, and he knew it would stand.
How many of us are that confident about our prayers? If you’re not that confident, you CAN BE!! Start undergirding your prayers with the Word of God. Start praying MORE, not less. That way, you are developing your relationship with the Lord. Having conversations with the Lord. And then BELIEVE that He hears you, and that your prayers are being answered.
Now, this brings us to another component necessary for successful prayers and a great start:
3. Properly Directed Prayer. James 4:3 says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” There is a way to pray, and there is a way not to pray. From this passage of scripture, the Lord makes it very clear that when we pray prayers that are based upon lust or an unclean desire, we do NOT get results. He does not answer those kinds of prayers. For example, if Elijah had prayed that God would stop the rain upon his word so that King Ahab and all of Israel would know that he was a powerful man of God, and so that he could gain respect and power for himself, his prayer would not have been answered. This is what James meant by “ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” When people pray for things for selfish reasons, or for reasons that will allow them to enter into sin, God doesn’t hear those prayers.
Turn in your Bibles to 1 John 5:14-15 “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” When we pray outside of God’s will, we cannot expect Him to hear us. And if He doesn’t hear us, then He cannot possibly answer us. You cannot answer a question that you did not hear. Nor will God answer a prayer that He doesn’t hear.
So two great questions right here would be, so what is a prayer that God CANNOT hear, and what is a prayer that God CAN hear?
Prayers that God cannot hear are prayers borne out of selfishness (James 4:3), prayers that will aid you to sin (Acts 8:18-22 NLT), prayers that will cause harm to His faithful children, or prayers from someone who has unconfessed sin in his heart: Psalm 66:18 (NLT) “If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” Unconfessed sin is a HUGE prayer blocker! But the best thing to do is not to beg someone who you THINK has a closer walk with God than you do to “keep you in prayer.” The BEST thing for you to do is to CONFESS you sins to God! 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
God wants fellowship with you! He wants a good relationship with you! He doesn’t want you avoiding Him and sending Him messages through somebody else! He wants to be close to YOU.
So, if you have been finding that your prayers have not been getting results, these are a couple things that you need to check. This brings us to a fourth thing that gave Elijah a great start:
4. Holiness. In 1 Kings 18:21, Elijah takes a stand for holiness among the people of God. Turn there in your Bibles. “Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” But the people were completely silent.” One of the definitions for “holiness” is “apartness”. It carries the idea of being set apart for the Lord. When Elijah confronted the children of Israel here, he was challenging them to be set apart to the Lord, and to the Lord only. He wasn’t being a hypocrite. He set himself apart to be loyal to the Lord alone and he wanted the children of Israel to follow suit. This was the whole reason why he called for the drought in the first place – to get their attention, so that they could stop serving other gods and serve the only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Note how his holiness made him want others to be holy as well. He wasn’t sitting in a corner somewhere, talking about how he was better than everybody else because he had set himself apart for God. He wanted others to be holy too. This is how you can tell the difference between people who have God’s holiness and people who are self-righteous. Self-righteous people have a condescending attitude, and are perfectly content to sit in their “I’m better than you” position. But people with God’s holiness have a desire for others to join them in their love for the Lord… Which leads me to the fifth thing that gave Elijah a great start:
5. Zeal / Passion With Purpose. We know from Elijah’s story that he was a man who had great passion and zeal for the Lord. He had a conversation with God in 1 Kings 19, and in that conversation, he stated that he thought he was the only one left on God’s side. “I have zealously served the LORD God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”
This zeal or passion gave rise to his purpose: to turn the people of Israel back to the Lord. When your main purpose in life is to glorify God, to honor God, to serve God, you obligate God to back you. You obligate God to bless you. Turn in your Bibles to Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Each person on the planet has a God ordained purpose. When you find it and begin walking in it, it becomes a source of joy and peace, and it spurs you on to good works. It leads to passion and zeal, because you know that it is the thing that you were created to do. And when you are doing anything that pertains to it, it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like LIVING. And you don’t mind throwing all you have and all you are behind it. It’s a blessing to find and to know your purpose in life. Here’s a humongous clue from the scriptures- it should have SOMETHING to do with promoting God’s kingdom. (Quick prayer for everyone on the broadcast, that for anyone and everyone who is not walking in his purpose, that the Lord would reveal it to him, and that the Lord would confirm His purposeful call in those who are already operating within their purpose.)
Your passion and zeal will lead you to the last item on my list for things that led Elijah to have a great start:
6. Boldness. Elijah had a combination of things that contributed to his boldness. First, his prayer life was solid. Which meant that his relationship with the Lord was solid. Which meant that he had a sure foundation and a clear understanding of what he was to do and when before he moved on anything. Boldness doesn’t just appear out of the thin air. Yes, some people are born with more of a bold personality than others, but no one is bold without a sure footing on something.
A professional fighter steps in the ring with boldness against an opponent he has never fought before because he has confidence in the effectiveness of his training. If he hadn’t trained, he would NOT be getting into that ring.
And a Christian does not have boldness against the forces of the enemy without having spent time in the Word, learning about his authority in Christ. Elijah had boldness because he spent time in the presence of God, learning God’s personality enough to say, “This is what God will back me doing” and “This is what God will back me saying.”
He had boldness because he had confidence in the God he was representing. He saw a job that needed to be done, and he willingly volunteered to do it. SOMEBODY had to step in and remind these people who God was! SOMEBODY needed to publicly and strongly oppose the Baal worship in the nation. Elijah signed up for the job and it pleased God. And he was able to act with boldness because of it.
He had God’s total backing and therefore he could be totally bold. He had no hidden agenda or ulterior motive. He had a pure love for God that demanded he do something to stop these people from mistreating his God. And it became a powerful demonstration of God’s power that we are still talking about, millennia later.
So, let’s recap:
· Elijah had a great start! It’s the beginning of the year and we too, want a great start!
· Elijah’s great start was attributable to several things:
1. A Strong Prayer Life. He stayed in the presence of God and developed a strong prayer life that gave him the confidence he needed to do what is deemed impossible.
2. Faith. Without faith, no one’s prayers can be effective. Elijah believed God could do things that had never been seen on the earth before. And you know what? He was right!
3. Properly Directed Prayer. He didn’t pray amiss. He had pure motives that allowed his prayers to be both heard and answered.
4. Holiness. Elijah lived a righteous life. Therefore his prayers could be heard and answered. Unconfessed sin hinders prayers- it can keep God from hearing them altogether.
5. Purposeful Passion. Elijah had an enormous amount of zeal for God, and it made God back him with signs and wonders.
6. Boldness. All of the things we just mentioned allowed Elijah to walk in great boldness. He knew his God, and he knew his mission. And he KNEW. He could NOT be stopped. Dan. 11:32 “The people who know their God shall be strong, and shall do exploits.”
All of these components put together make for the foundation of a great start in this Christian race! Let’s see to it that we go hard for God this year, and watch what amazing things He will do for us as we press in for a GREAT START!!!