Author Archive for: meiling

Dare we think the unthinkable? That God will hear our prayers, that he will listen when we speak? If you were to pray a faith-empowered prayer, what would you say? Then say it! Let faith fuel your prayers. And let prayers put starch in your faith.

Will God give you what you request? Yes, he will. He may do so in a different form than you ask for or a different time frame than you prefer, but “it is [Jesus] who is the ‘Yes’ to all of God’s promises” (2 Corinthians 1:20 GNT).

Let’s renew our commitment to unreasonable, unquenchable, unthinkable prayer. Let’s ask God to resurrect hope that has perished and dreams that are buried.

When the child of Elijah’s friend died, the prophet prayed for the boy. “And God listened to Elijah’s prayer…Elijah picked the boy up, carried him downstairs from the loft, and gave him to his mother. ‘Here’s your son,’ said Elijah, ‘alive!’” 1 Kings 17:22-23 MSG).

The power of praying it through. Elijah believed in it. Jesus taught it. He told his followers “that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit” (Luke 18:1 MSG). Take the dead and dying portions of your life—the vigor that has faded, the faith that has dwindled—and lay them before the Lord. And next to them place our society, which seems sicker day by day.

The theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge called prayer “the greatest achievement of the Christian’s warfare upon earth.” If you want to take a stand against the enemy, hit your knees.

Elijah wasn’t equipped with unique-to-him abilities. He wasn’t embedded with superpowers. James says, “Elijah was a human being just like us. He prayed that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years!” (James 5:17 NCV). Elijah became Elijah by praying that way.

Let a man spend a night fasting and praying at the bedside of his sick child, and that father will not be the same man. Let a young mother pour out her complaint to God over the death of her young child, and that young mother will be forever changed. Let a church challenge God to purge sin and send revival, and there is no way that church will be the same.

Prayer changes the heart of the one who prays. And prayer touches the heart of the One who hears it.

When the son of his friend died, “Elijah stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him’” (1 Kings 17:21 NKJV). Elijah had no precedent upon which to base this prayer. Up to this point in Scripture, no person had been brought back to life. He did this because he believed in a living God.

There are occasions in which we rest in prayer. There are other occasions in which we wrestle in prayer. Elijah wrestled. Elijah did first what mattered most: he prayed…passionately, dramatically, thunderously. Let’s do likewise. Let’s heed the command of Scripture: “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God…” (Hebrews 4:16 NLT).