Things Revealed

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

James 5:16

There’s a line that we cross when we become believers in Jesus Christ. Our general sense that there is a God and a heaven gives way to a realization—a revelation—that Jesus is God incarnate and the Kingdom of God is real. And with that revelation comes another: We are not God. More than that, we cannot become God. There is no "God within” to discover and no getting in touch with our own divinity, because we have none. There is rather, a God to recognize, to receive and to get to know intimately. The problem is that he is not like us.

Most people, even believers, have a tendency to make God in their own image, even though God said “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...” When looking at world history, current events or our own troubles and losses, we frequently judge God’s performance based on outcome. If things work out, God is taking care of business in much the way we would if we were God. If they don’t work out, we wonder about God's motives: Why would he allow our financial losses, marriages to fall apart or the injustice of a child dying? In the last hundred years alone, how could he permit 6 million Jews to perish in concentration camps, 20 million to die in the Soviet Gulag and tens of thousands to be killed by terrorists who murder at will without concern for God’s wrath or vengeance, and worse, seemingly without consequences. He could have prevented all of it.

But the God of Heaven and Earth who was God yesterday when things were going fine, is the same God today and will remain God tomorrow when things are not so fine. To those who are confused and perplexed he declares, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways...As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” That doesn’t mean we stop trying to understand him. It means we can never understand him completely.

Yet as baffled and sometimes disappointed as we are by his mysterious ways, we are still made in his image, empowered by his Holy Spirit and set apart for his purposes. And among his purposes are that we be a people of prayer. A people who trust that God hears and answers our prayers, even when the answers are not to our liking. Just as we trust that God hears us even when our prayers are not to his liking.

Look at James and John.

When Jesus was not welcomed in the Samaritan Village, James and John, who were still figuring out their part in God’s work in the earth (like most of us), asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” It says that Jesus “turned and rebuked them.” That wasn’t the answer they were looking for, but then their's wasn’t the prayer he was looking for.

Now look at Abraham: When the Lord made known to him what he was about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah (probably the inspiration for the prayers of James and John), “Abraham approached him and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?’” And in their conversation (prayer), the Lord accepted Abraham’s proposals again and again as Abraham sought mercy for Lot and his family, to the point that God answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” Unfortunately, even among Lot’s extended family, ten were not to be found and the cities were destroyed.

Moses approached God in much the same way. When the Lord’s anger burned against Israel for making and worshipping the golden calf, he told Moses: “your people” have become corrupt. “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” Rather than yield to the inevitability of the Lord’s wrath and accept his great-nation proposal, Moses interceded for the people of Israel. He reminded God that they were “your people,” that he had delivered them from slavery and that the Egyptians would say it was his plan to kill them all along. And he finished with this plea: “Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.” It says “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”

Such is the power of the effectual fervent prayer of a "righteous man." Abraham was a righteous man. He didn’t save the city, but his prayers saved Lot. Moses was a righteous man. His prayers didn’t save those who worshipped the calf and indulged in their every lust, but they saved the rest of God’s people and his brother Aaron.

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a righteous man or woman. The word says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We might not always have the right prayers, but when we do we move in the power of God. And we always have the right to petition the King. More than that, among the lost and a world cast adrift, we have an obligation to petition the King. This is how the Lord put it to Solomon:

[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

The world may not have a prayer, but we do.

Pray for the lost. Pray for this nation. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for healing. Pray for revelation. Pray for renewal. Pray for revival. “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

The effectual fervent prayers of a righteous man availath much. But only if he prays.