This is Robert Jeffress. In response to the horrific attack on Israel, I've written a brand new book called Are We Litting in the End Times?
Go to ptv.org to order your copy. Powerful praying begins with a right relationship with God. In James 5 16, James said the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. When James wrote that, he could have been referring to Abraham. He could have been talking about David, a man after God's own heart.
But he wasn't. He was talking about Elijah. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. As a churchgoer, you've likely heard your pastor give persuasive arguments about the power of prayer.
But do you honestly feel like your prayers make any difference at all? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress offers several helpful tips that are based on Elijah's dramatic and effective prayer on Mount Carmel. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Just before we begin the message, let me hit pause for a moment and remind you about the upcoming Pathway to Victory cruise vacation to Alaska. It's taking place June 15th through 22nd, and I can't think of a better backdrop for worship and refreshment than the masterpiece God created in Alaska. Knowing that you'd prefer a truly Christian vacation experience, we're bringing along our own entertainment. Rebecca St. James will be on board along with vocalist Michael O'Brien, and we'll have a great time with comedian Dennis Swanberg as well.
So go to ptv.org and download the brochure, and most importantly, reserve your spot while there's still room. During the month of November, we've been giving our complete attention to the subject of prayer, and specifically how to engage in conversations with God that are meaningful and productive. And in conjunction with this study, I'm thrilled to offer you a brand new book from my daughter, Julia Jeffress Sadler. It's for the children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in your life. Her colorful storybook is called You Can Pray Big Things. At their earliest stages in life, kids want to engage God with their prayers, and this creative book will help them put words to their heart's desire. And when you give a generous gift today, I'm going to send a copy to your home. This book, You Can Pray Big Things, would be a great Christmas gift for the children or grandchildren in your life.
So be ready to write down our contact information at the close of today's program. But right now, let's turn our attention to a story in 1 Kings chapter 18. I titled today's message, Practice the Principles of Powerful Praying. A local Baptist church was adamantly opposed to a bar that was being constructed in their little town. Not knowing what else to do, they decided to have an all-night prayer meeting to pray against the bar. And not long after their prayer meeting broke up, lightning struck the bar that was under construction and absolutely consumed it in fire. The bar owner was furious, and he launched a lawsuit against the church, claiming they were responsible. The church hired an attorney, claiming they had no responsibility whatsoever for the loss of the bar.
The judge presiding over the case said, I don't know how this is going to turn out, but one thing is clear. The bar owner believes in the power of prayer, and the church does not. In our series, Choosing the Extraordinary Life, we're looking at Elijah's seven secrets for success and significance. And today, we've come to secret number five.
Perhaps it should be secret number one, and that is significant people learn how to unleash the power of prayer. And that's what we're going to talk about today and next time, about how Elijah is a perfect demonstration of someone who unleashed the power of prayer in his life. Our study of Elijah has brought us to 1 Kings chapter 18.
If you have your Bibles, turn there. We've come now to the most familiar episode in Elijah's life. When people think of Elijah, this is what they think of, the famous contest between the gods on top of Mount Carmel.
When we come to this story, some people like to focus on the feudal and the fanatical antics of the prophets of Baal. Other people focus on the miracle of the fire falling from heaven to consume the sacrifice of Elijah. But the real focus of this story is Elijah's prayer that brought down the fire of heaven. Yes, Elijah is to be commended for his courage in confronting these prophets of Baal and Asherah.
After all, he was outnumbered 850 to one. But the reason we're talking about this story almost 3,000 years after it happened was not because of Elijah's courage, but because of his faith in the power of prayer. And so today and next time, as we talk about powerful praying, we're going to look at the prelude, the prerequisites, the principles, and the practice of powerful praying. How's that for an alliteration?
But hopefully it's something that you'll remember. Let's first of all look at the prelude to powerful praying. Remember, the followers, the prophets of Baal and Asherah, Asherah was the female companion of Baal, these prophets of these false gods were sincere in their beliefs. They were as sincere in their beliefs as Elijah was in his belief in the true God. They were sincere, but they were sincerely wrong.
They were sincerely wrong in their belief in the power of Baal. And so God wanted to clear up the matter once and for all. And he moved in Elijah's heart to propose this contest on the top of Mount Carmel.
The rules of the contest were very simple. Elijah stood on one side, the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah stood on the other. Each would take an ox and cut it up and put it on their respective altars without lighting the fire. Now look at verse 24. Elijah said, then you, that is prophets of Baal, call on the name of your God and I will call on the name of the Lord and the God who answers by fire.
He is God. And all of the people answered and said, that's a good idea. Verse 25, so Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one ox for yourselves and prepare it first for you are many. And call on the name of your God, but put no fire under it. Then they took the ox which was given them and they prepared it. And they called on the name of Baal from morning until noon. That's from 9 a.m. until noon saying, oh Baal answer us.
But there was no voice and no one answered. And they leaped about the altar which they made. You have these false prophets begging Baal to answer them, but he doesn't answer from 9 until noon. Now remember, noon was when the sun shone the brightest.
Certainly this could have been a time for an instantaneous fire to lap up their sacrifice, but it didn't happen. Look at verse 27, and it came about at noon that Elijah mocked them. He made fun of them. And he said, hey, call out with a loud voice for he is a God. Maybe he's a little hard of hearing though. Maybe he needs to turn up his hearing device. Or maybe he is occupied. That's why he's not answering you. Or maybe he has gone aside. Some commentators denote that that Hebrew phrase gone aside refers to, I guess I can say it, going to the bathroom.
That's what they were saying. Maybe the reason your God isn't answering is he's occupied in that sense. He's gone to the bathroom. Or maybe he's gone on a hunting journey.
Maybe he's asleep or he needs to be awakened. Well, that mocking just sent them into a frenzy. Verse 28, they started yelling louder.
They started cutting themselves, engaging in self-mutilation, thinking that Baal would be impressed by all of that. Look at verse 29, and it came about when midday was past that they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention. And now it's Elijah's turn. Verse 30, then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. So all the people came near to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord. Literally, he healed the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down.
Then verse 31, and Elijah took 12 stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, Israel shall be your name. And so with those stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar, large enough to hold two measures of seed. We understand why he built the altar, to put the sacrifice on it, but why did he build a trench around that altar? Because as we'll see next time, Elijah decided to stack the deck against his God, Jehovah. He tried to make it as difficult as it was possible for that fire to consume the offering. Elijah ordered the servants to go down to the nearby Mediterranean Sea and bring water up and to douse that ox in water. And then Elijah ordered them to do it a second time and a third time until there was so much water that it was overflowing the altar and filled up the trench around the altar.
What Elijah was saying was, I'm going to make this as difficult as possible so that when this fire comes, there'll be no doubt where it came from. And that's the prelude to powerful praying. The prelude to powerful praying is a difficult, impossible situation. That's what we see being created here, a difficult situation. You know, God does not despair over difficult situations.
He delights in them. Because difficult situations are an opportunity for God to provide and prove his supernatural power. Now, before we see how God answered Elijah's prayer in a spectacular way, let's look at the prerequisites to powerful praying. Before we can expect God to answer powerfully, there are three conditions or prerequisites to powerful praying.
What are they? Number one, a right relationship with God. Powerful praying begins with a right relationship with God. In James 5, 16, James said, the effective prayer of a righteous man, a righteous person, can accomplish much. But when James wrote that, he could have been referring to Abraham, who was a friend of God. He could have been talking about David, a man after God's own heart.
But he wasn't. He was talking about Elijah. If you read James 5, you'll find in the next verse, he uses Elijah as the example of a righteous person whose prayer accomplishes much. So what does it mean to be righteous? Well, it means to be in a right relationship with God. That's what righteous means, a right relationship with God.
Now, this is gonna make the Bible a lot clearer to you if you'll remember this. People trip over this word righteousness. The Bible uses righteousness in two distinct ways.
Sometimes when you read the word righteous or righteousness, it's talking about our judicial righteousness, our judicial righteousness. Before we are saved, we are guilty before God, deserving hell. But the moment we trust in Jesus and Jesus alone for our salvation in the great courtroom of heaven, God swings the gavel down and declares us not guilty. We become not guilty. Our standing before God has changed from sinners deserving hell to believers deserving heaven.
And it's all because of what Christ does for us. And so our standing before God instantaneously changes. We are seen as righteous, not guilty. That's what I mean by judicial righteousness.
Romans 8 one says, there is therefore now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. The moment you trust in Christ as your savior, you are no more judicially righteous ever than that moment you were saved. It is a permanent, irrevocable standing we have before God. Now, when we become a Christian, when we experience that judicial righteousness, that not only changes our standing with God, but it changes our relationship with God. No longer are we strangers to God. No longer are we the enemies of God, but we become children of God. When God declares us not guilty by our faith in Christ, we become a part of God's forever family. And it changes God's attitude toward us, especially when it comes to prayer. That gives us confidence in coming to God. In fact, we are on the very same level with God, Paul says, as God's own son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, does that mean God is gonna answer every prayer request we have? No. He didn't answer every one of Jesus' prayer requests.
Did you know that? When Jesus was in the garden, we saw, he prayed for deliverance from the experience of the cross. God said, no.
No, that's not my plan for you. But we do have the confidence when we pray to God if we are judicially righteous, that God hears us and will answer according to his will. John said it this way in 1 John 5, 14.
Now, this is the confidence which we have before him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. When the Bible says Elijah was a righteous man, it first of all referred to his judicial righteousness. He was in a right standing with God because of his faith in God's forgiveness. But that term righteousness has a second use in the Bible. Beyond judicial righteousness, it sometimes refers to ethical righteousness, or sometimes I call it practical righteousness.
It's the way we act after we're saved. Judicial righteousness refers to our right standing before God. Ethical righteousness refers to our right acting before God. And that leads to a second prerequisite for answered prayer, obedience to God's commands.
Make no mistake about it. God hears and answers the prayers of those who obey him, and he turns away from the prayers of those who disobey him. In 1 Peter 3, verse 11, remember the word of God says, turn away from evil and do good. Verse 12 says, for the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. God honors the prayer of the righteous. Pastor, are you saying you have to be perfect in order for God to answer your prayer?
No. When I talk about ethical righteousness, I'm not talking about perfection. That's impossible for any of us. But ethical, practical righteousness involves two things.
Write them down. First of all, it involves the primary desire of our life, the primary desire of our life. Somebody who is truly righteous has made pleasing God the focus of his life. You know, in 2 Corinthians 5, 9, Paul says, therefore, whether we are at home or absent, our desire, our ambition is to be pleasing to him. Somebody who is righteous has as his primary desire in life the desire to please God.
Doesn't mean he always pulls it off, but he always wants to pull it off. Secondly, practical righteousness refers to the primary direction of our life. Are we moving toward God or away from God? Aren't you glad God doesn't judge us by one or two episodes in our life?
We all have mess-ups, slip-ups, and major screw-ups in our life. Oh, God doesn't judge us by single events, but he does judge us by the general direction of our life. Is the trajectory of our life moving toward God or away from God?
How about you? As you look at the righteousness in your life, what about the desire of your life? Can you honestly say that the greatest desire you have is to please God?
What about the direction of your life? As you look over this past year or over the past five years, are you moving closer to God or are you moving further away from God? Those who experience powerful answers to their prayers are those who are in a right relationship with God. Not just judicially, they're saved, but also practically they're obedient. There's a third prerequisite for powerful praying and that is an unshakable faith.
And here's the question. What does it mean to pray in faith? And this is where so many Christians get it wrong. So many Christians today equate faith with positive thinking.
They think if they can just believe that something is gonna happen hard enough, if they believe it hard enough and long enough, God will be forced to answer their prayer. Remember that little children's story we all read? I think of it often when I think about this, the little engine that could. Remember the little engine?
It was going up the hill, chugging along, saying what? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, and it makes it to the top and over. A lot of people think prayer is like that. Okay, here's what I want to happen.
I really want this to happen. So Lord, I think God will, I think God will, I think God will, I think God will, I think God will. And then God's gonna act. That's not faith, ladies and gentlemen.
That's presumption. That's not what faith is. You know what faith is in the Bible? Faith is believing that God will do what He has promised to do and acting accordingly. That's why Elijah had such confidence in God. God had already revealed to him, as we'll see next time, what he was to do on top of Mount Carmel.
God had told Elijah about this contest. And when Elijah prayed, he was praying in faith, believing that God would consume that sacrifice just as He had promised to do. What does that mean for you and me to pray in faith?
Well, listen to this. When we pray for a child or a loved one to be healed from a physical disease, when we pray for a promotion at work, when we pray that a relationship important to us might be healed, we may or may not be praying according to God's will. We just don't know. In those instances, God's will is best seen in the rearview mirror by what happened. So in those situations when we don't specifically know what God's will is for physical healing, for restoration of a relationship, for material benefit, what are we supposed to do? You know what it means to pray in faith in those situations? It means to boldly ask and quietly trust in God's will. To pray with faith doesn't mean we don't ask God. It means we boldly tell God what is in our heart.
Lord, this is what we want. But then we quietly trust that God will do what is best. Not my will, but your will be done. That's what you call praying in faith. However, when we pray that God would give us power in sharing the gospel with an unbeliever, when we pray that God would give us victory over temptation and sin in our life, when we pray that God's name would be glorified in our lives, we don't have to have any doubt because we are praying according to the will of God. And that gives us confidence in our prayer. The same kind of confidence and power Elijah experienced on Mount Carmel when he offered that simple prayer that brought down the fire from heaven. A prayer that we're going to look at in detail next time.
Maybe you're listening today and you're clutching on to a deep longing, perhaps about a relationship or an unrealized dream. Those issues belong at the feet of Jesus. To help you learn more about calling on God in prayer, I want to send you a book that's written by my daughter, Julia Jeffress Sadler. In her book, Pray Big Things, Julia does a masterful job of telling her own story and then she helps you know how to present your needs to God. Now, you might already have a copy of Pray Big Things. I'm pleased to tell you that Julia has written another book on prayer and this one is exclusively for the children you love.
Our children and grandchildren carry the most tender prayer requests in their hearts and as grown-ups, we need to help them put words to their prayers. This creative storybook is called You Can Pray Big Things and it will entertain and instruct your children. So, when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, you're going to receive two books on prayer.
Both are written by Julia. One is for adults and it's called Pray Big Things. The other new book is for children called You Can Pray Big Things. Finally, I want you to understand that when you give, you'll be touching a life through your generosity.
For example, I heard from a father in Ohio who said, Pastor Jeffress, my teenage daughter and I are using the Pathway to Victory resources as part of her homeschool lessons. Her mom left us a couple of years ago and my daughter is struggling with how to forgive. We are listening to your teaching to help her cope with the pain. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for your encouragement today. And remember, when you give to Pathway to Victory, God is using your generosity to help families just like this one.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. When you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you a copy of You Can Pray Big Things. That's the brand new children's book by Julia Jeffress Sadler. Plus, we'll also include Julia's book for adults, Pray Big Things. Ask for both resources when you call us toll free at 800-844-7200. Or call us toll free at 866-999-2965. Or visit online at ptv.org. And when your gift is $75 or more, you'll also receive the Prayers That Really Work teaching series on both CD and DVD.
Perfect for a small group Bible study or Sunday school class. But this offer will end on Friday, so please be sure to get in touch right away. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go to ptv.org. You could write to us, here's the address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. When you're going through a troubling issue, is prayer your first line of defense or has prayer become a last resort? Learn how to practice powerful praying. That's Wednesday on Pathway to Victory. With Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
