21 Days of Fasting and Prayer Devotional: Mountains Will Move!Sample

Day 6: Just Like Us

In the New Testament, James makes an interesting observation about the story we looked at yesterday when he writes, “Elijah, for instance, human just like us, prayed hard that it wouldn’t rain, and it didn’t—not a drop for three and a half years” (James 5:17, The Message).

If we’re not careful, we can easily place the people in Scripture on a pedestal. We can feel they do life in a different dimension. But the Bible reminds us again and again of what James makes crystal clear—men and women who populate the pages of Scripture, like Elijah, were just like us. They had the same struggles. They had good days and bad days. They had wins and losses. They had ups and downs. They were just like us, but James includes a critical component of Elijah’s life that led him to experiencing God’s power in his life. He “prayed hard.”

God didn’t halt the rain because Elijah was such a great guy. God halted the rain because he prayed with faith-filled passion. For James, Elijah is a shining example of what he writes in chapter five and verse sixteen, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16b, NIV).

When we recognize that the heroes of the faith in the Bible were just like us, it will change the way we pray. We will pray with the confidence that the same God who came through for them will come through for us!