Elijah's Greatest Weapon

Based on 1 Kings 17-18

Khen Lim




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The Bible is chock full of people whose testimonies are essentially centred on prayer. Of the many, the one classic examples was Elijah whose story about challenging Baal is the centrepiece of how he sought to save Israel from its idolatrous obsession. Here is certainly a man whose prayers are so powerful that even James said so voluminously (Jm 5:17-18), pointing to a righteous man who always listened to and was answered by God.

In Elijah’s story, the Israelites bore witness to a humiliating miracle against the prophets of Baal and a strong vindication that Yahweh was indeed God of Israel. The fire had befallen the prophet’s sacrifice at his request and in a turnaround of their faith, the people renounced Baal and slayed the prophets of the false god. However the best of Elijah only came when he told the people that God was always in control over everything in the realm of human and nature itself. Therefore the devastating drought and resulting famine were indeed sent by God and no one else, Baal notwithstanding. And if they were from God, it was also only through Him that they would end.

God’s purpose for the prolonged drought and resulting famine was to obliterate Baal’s fraudulent claims (1 Kgs 17:1), twisted claims that were vacuously conceived. The Lord knew that out of the whole of Israel, only 7,000 did not worship Baal (19:18):

“As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives – the God I serve – there will be no dew or rain during the next few years until I give the word!”

Until that point, the Israelites had turned to Baal as the god to bring forth storms and rain and because nothing materialised, they imagined that he must have been away on vacation or sleeping in. Maybe he had a late night out with some fellow gods! And so when the autumn rains arrived in October, people would say that Baal had awoken and gone active once more. In all of this, the people had trampled on God’s sovereignty. They had ignored the premise that He was the Creator of all creations.

By using the 3½-year drought and famine to prove a point, God was basically waiting for the moment to show His people that the longer the disaster dragged on, the more apparent it was that Baal was nothing they claimed he was and that, in the end as it was at the beginning, Yahweh was the One True God. And so through this magnificent story, we can take a peek at Elijah’s prayer in 1 Kings and perhaps pick a few interesting points to consider:

A prayer steeped in faith (18:41)

“Then Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go get something to eat and drink, for I hear a mighty rainstorm coming.’”

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Here is the interesting point. Nobody either heard or saw anything that resembled an approaching torrential rain and yet Elijah said there was one coming. Or perhaps we might imagine that Elijah might have heard God resonating his soul with His promise of things to come. Elijah’s faith was so evident that because he could hear God’s promise where others couldn’t, he knew the rain would come even before it was physically visible (Heb 11:1).

Elijah believed that faith in prayer is a belief that the answer is already here beforehand. He knew God would deliver because he fully understood and embraced His promise. If we pray the way Elijah did, our prayers would be unimaginably powerful and nothing would ever thwart us!

A Prayer in Humility (18:42)

“So Ahab went to eat and drink. But Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel and bowed low to the ground and prayed with his face between his knees.”

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Elijah might have been bold to the point of brazen in the eyes of the people but before God, he was submissive and humble. As it is with those among us who are true believers, we can follow Elijah by adopting the right spirit of humility. 

We can be bold, knowing that we have the right to go before God and seek Him but not to the point of demanding from Him things to be done. We often see this with modern-day evangelists and preachers whose boldness look falsely impressive before a wide-eyed audience because they do not humble themselves before God.

A Prayer of Persistence (18:43)

“‘Then he said to his servant, ‘Go and look toward the sea.’ The servant went and looked, then returned to Elijah and said, ‘I didn’t see anything.’ Seven times Elijah told him to go and look.”

Even as he buried his head between his knees praying humbly before God (v.42), he despatched his servant to the peak of Carmel to look out for rain. But of course he always returned with negative results. Still it was only Elijah whose faith reserved him the sound of fast-coming deluge but yet, his servant, like all others, was impervious to it.

Still the prophet was persistent, determined to see it through that the rain would come soon. He was not dissuaded and as he kept prayerfully pushing on, he knew his confused servant would soon return to affirm his expectation. It isn’t surprising that with such faith, Elijah would be alone since the others wouldn’t understand his insistence. With faith like that, we must be prepared to walk alone as well.

Elijah teaches us that our faith should be such that others might not see the fruits of because their eyes cannot see what our faith encourages and compels us to. By hanging on and persisting, he knew he would finally receive God’s blessings in a way that is reminiscent to how Jacob would not release the angel of the Lord from his grip until he received His blessing (Gen 32:26).

A Prayer of Focus

Like David in Ps 5:3, Elijah prayed with bold expectation but also with unerring focus. He was specific in what he wanted – rain – and that was exactly what he received. It’s as if he only needed no more than an arrow to hit the bull’s eye. He was that confident and precise in what he needed from God, no less.

As it is with Elijah and David, we must also learn not to spray a multitude of arrows to hit the one target. Instead, one arrow, with careful aim, is all we need. With God, we must pray to make our mark by focusing with all our strength and might, focusing on exactly what we need and nothing more. We must pray so specifically and at the forced exclusion of all else because otherwise, our prayers will be rendered meaningless through our lack of concentration. In other words, if we don’t understand our own prayers, let’s just stop wasting God’s time listening to us.

Pray to Succeed (18:44-45)

“Finally the seventh time, his servant told him, ‘I saw a little cloud about the size of a man’s hand rising from the sea.’ Then Elijah shouted, ‘Hurry to Ahab and tell him, ‘Climb into your chariot and go back home. If you don’t hurry, the rain will stop you.’’ And soon, the sky was black with clouds. A heavy wind brought a terrific rainstorm, and Ahab left quickly for Jezreel.”

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As soon as his servant confirmed the sighting of a distant cloud rising from the sea, Elijah knew it absolutely to be the rain that he had prayed to God for. He didn’t have any doubts and he didn’t need any third-party confirmation. He also did not wait for the cloud to loom larger before he acted on it. Instead he wasted no time telling Ahab to get moving before it was too late.

To the servant, it was a cloud, not the rain. Yet his master knew otherwise even if the science of the day was primitive at best. Unlike his servant, Elijah’s faith helped him to understand that the torrential downpour would come from a seemingly harmless little cloud. All he had to do was to believe what he asked and he would then receive. In Mk 11:24, Jesus says, “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” The word therein is ‘received,’ in past tense – we are to believe that we have already received the answer; therefore when we do that, it is ours.

To what end? Does that mean God will answer our prayers simply because we believe? Or is it merely because our faith is abundant to the brim? The apostle John doesn’t think so. In Jn 14:13, Jesus says, “You can ask for anything in My Name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father.” And therein lies the answer. When our prayers are answered, it is for God to receive the glory and for sinners to witness it.

In Elijah’s story, the prophet did not invent the event and then orchestrated the presentation to God, crossed his fingers and hope the rain would come. Instead he knew that by his faith, even as he prayed, the rain would already be around the corner, coming even before anyone else knew.

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Our world today has many different variations to the existence of Ahab and Jezebel. We still have idolatry except it is magnitudes worse but it is also far more subtle than Elijah’s days. Other than the odd Satanic worship we hear, much of pagan worship might not be so visible in an outwardly Christian society but millions upon millions throng after the modern gods of the world that come in the form of material wealth, fame and vanity, hedonism and licentiousness and all the desires of the flesh. With all of these bombarding our senses, learning about God takes a very distant second place, if at all.

Elijah the Tishbite, of Gilead, was a human being not unlike any of us. He lived vested in his hopes and dreams of a better future. Like us, he also possessed strengths and weaknesses but one thing set him apart to so many of us and that is, he was a man best defined by his deep faith in God. 

In modern Christianity, our faith pales so distinctly to someone like Elijah. On the merits of Christ, we have privileges that we lack understanding of. We conduct our lives way so out of character with what God had intended for us to because we have very little idea of how or what we should pray for.