It’s tragic how easily we can miss the
main ingredient in effective prayer.
In our sin, we’ve been rewired to
focus on us — on the steps we should
take for our prayers to be heard. We
have this bent toward believing that
every result is born from method. If
something works for somebody, we
want to know what that somebody is
doing.
We’ve developed the assumption that
if we can just strip it all down to a
reproducible process to put into
action, then the results will multiply.
While this applies to certain things, it
doesn’t apply to prayer — or at least
that’s not the vision the apostle James
gives us. The main ingredient in
effective prayer is emphatically not us.
Many of us find James 5:16 to be a
familiar verse: “The prayer of a
righteous person has great power as it
is working†— which is also translated,
as an ESV footnote spells out, “The
effective prayer of a righteous person
has great power.â€
This is one of those coffee-mug verses.
It’s commonly understood like this: Be
righteous, and your prayers will work.
It’s what I used to think. But that’s the
skim-milk meaning. It’s what happens
when we fly by the text without
questions. Our broken bent is to make
the burden of this passage something
to do with us. We simply settle to think
that, if we want our prayers to be
effective, then we need to be
righteous.
But this reading doesn’t hold up.
First, look at the context surrounding
James 5:16 . James’s whole point is that
prayer is effective. He asks in
James 5:13 , “Is anyone among you
suffering?†Then he replies, “Let him
pray.†What about cheerfulness? Or
sickness? Or sin? In each case, James
encourages his readers to pray. Why?
Because prayer is effective, which
means, God hears his people and acts
on their behalf.
Then, in the beginning of verse 16,
because prayer is effective
(James 5:13–15 ), he says, “Therefore,
confess your sins to one another and
pray for one another, that you may be
healed†(James 5:16 ). To make it even
clearer, he follows this with, “The
effective prayer of a righteous person
has great power.†That line is the
second portion in a double dose of
support for our praying. James’s point
is to repeat his theme to pray because
prayer is effective. His concern is not
how prayer is made effective, but that
prayer is effective. And then verse 17
comes to ground that point.
James 5:17 then brings in Elijah.
“Elijah was a man with a nature like
ours, and he prayed fervently.â€
What does Elijah have to do with our
praying? Does it mean that Elijah was
righteous and his prayers worked, so
we should be like Elijah for our
prayers to work too? Is that what he is
saying?
No way.
Look at the book. James says that
Elijah was a man with a nature like
ours. He was just a man. He was like
us. He had a nature like ours. And
being just a man, being like us, having
a nature like ours, he prayed fervently
and God heard. The point is not that
we should be righteous at the
extraordinary level of an Elijah, but
that he was normal like you and me.
James doesn’t say for us to be like
Elijah for our prayers to be answered,
but that Elijah was like us and his
prayers were answered — therefore,
pray.
This means that the locus of effective
prayer is not us, but God. Prayer has
less to do with the specifics of how we
say what we say, and more to do with
the one to whom we are saying it.
We pray as ordinary people who have
an extraordinary God. We’re just
normal, you and I. We’re just normal
like Elijah. Prayer is effective, not
because of great men who pray, but
because of a great God who in Christ
graciously hears his people.
He’s the main ingredient. So, pray.
