He had prayed for what God had promised. He had certainly prayed with clarity, with precision, and with passion, fervently. But the answer was not immediately given even to Elijah. Let that be an encouragement to you. Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, I’ve got to say, I do find that encouraging. Sometimes my prayers aren’t answered right away. Yeah, that’s right. And I think that’s when we get tempted to give up. Now, I’ve asked the Lord for this a number of times. There’ll be folks listening to us today who have been praying for 20 years or perhaps more than that, perhaps for the conversion of a son or a daughter. And it just gets discouraging sometimes. And Elijah’s perseverance is a wonderful encouragement. You know, when Jesus said, ask, seek and knock, the tense in which he said these things is, ask and go on asking, seek and go on seeking, knock and go on knocking. Jesus says to us, we ought always to pray and never give up. Now, I want to give an encouragement in that regard. If you’ve been praying for a long time and you have not yet seen the answer, then today, hear the word of God as an encouragement to you not to give up. Elijah did not give up and he received a wonderful answer to prayer from the Lord. That is encouraging. So let’s continue with today’s message. It’s called Prayer 101. And we’re in the first book of Kings chapter 18. Here’s Colin. I want to offer to you today seven observations from this story. And unusually, we don’t usually do it this way, but they happen all to begin with the letter P. We don’t often have an alliterative outline for a message we do today. So here are seven P’s of effective prayer. And I put them into a sentence that I hope might be useful to you. And it’s simply this. Position yourself in private to pray what God has promised with precision and with passion and with persistence. And I know some of you are going through counting up. There are indeed seven words that begin with the letter P in that sentence. We’ll touch on all of them, though not in the same order. Let’s begin here. Elijah prayed for what God had said he would do. And there’s a principle here that we can apply to our own prayers. And it’s simply this. To cultivate the practice of praying what God has promised. I want to encourage you in that today. To cultivate the practice of praying for what God has promised. And here’s how you do that. You use the Bible to fuel your prayers. When you go into your room and you close the door, take your Bible with you. Pray with an open Bible. And as you read the Bible, turn what you are reading in the Bible, what God is saying to you, turn it back to him in your prayers. You will find this wonderfully refreshing for your prayer life. So I’ll give you an example. I was reading from Daniel and chapter 12 and verse 3. Just this verse in reading through a few verses from Daniel. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above. And those who turn many to righteousness shall be like the stars forever and forever. So that little verse that just popped out of the first part of Daniel in chapter 12, reading these few verses, is telling me a couple of very important things. That God wants his people to be wise and that God wants his people to turn many to righteousness for them to have influence. There are two things that I can pray in regards to myself because I can think immediately of situations in which I really need wisdom. And I can think of situations in which I long to be an influence in helping someone find the right path. I can see ways in which I need that in my own life. Then I begin to pray for others. I think of some missionaries. I think of folks within the family. I think of others who are on my prayer list at a particular time. And here are two things that are going to apply in all kinds of different ways into their sphere and give me something fresh to pray. And then tomorrow or the next day, as I pray for some folks again, there’s something else in the scripture that I read. And it provides fresh fuel for prayer, to begin to pray fresh things in relation to the word of God, to pray back what God has said. See, otherwise, how do you pray for people faithfully for 20 years just saying, God bless them, God bless them, God bless them? You run dry, don’t you? You need fuel. And the word of God is going to be the fuel for your prayers. Think of it this way. Engines run better when there is fuel in the tank, right? You think about starting up one of your small engines. Make sure there is fuel in the tank before you start the engine. The fuel of the engine of prayer is the word of God. Put the fuel of the word of God in the tank before you crank up the engine of prayer and it will help you and it will refresh your prayer and it will give you a way of responding to the word of God as you bring it back to him in prayer. So I’m saying position yourself in private to pray what God has promised. Work on this this week. See how you do with letting the scriptures be fuel for your prayer and see how it brings freshness to you. Look for one thing that you could say, I could pray that for myself and for others. Number four, position yourself in private to pray what God has promised. As soon as we talk about what God has promised, the question that obviously arises is, well, if God has already said a thing, why do I need to pray it? If God has already made a promise, what is the purpose of prayer? And that question will have occurred to you, I’m sure, as it occurs sometime to almost every Christian and the answer actually is very, very simple. It is that God decrees not only what will happen, but also how it will come about. God determines not only ends, but he also determines the means by which they happen. The what is the promise of God, but the how involves our prayers. So far from making our prayers redundant, God’s promises tell us what we should ask. They direct us with regards to our asking. A.W. Pink puts this very beautifully. This is, I think, a quote that’s well worth writing down and remembering. He says, God’s promises are the mold into which our prayers are cast. That’s beautiful. Here’s this mold, and the mold is the promise of God, and I’m to cast my prayers into that mold. We’ve just described how that might be done as you bring the scriptures as the fuel into your praying. God’s promises tell us what we should ask for. And here is the greatest encouragement, surely, in relation to our praying. That God has willed, what God has willed in his promise, he brings into effect through your prayers. That brings huge significance to this wonderful ministry of prayer that is open to every Christian believer and is God’s calling to you as well as to me today. Number five. Position yourself in private to pray for what God has promised with precision, with precision. And I’m drawing this observation from James in chapter five where we’re told that Elijah prayed very precise prayers. He prayed that it might not rain. That’s a devastating prayer to pray, but it couldn’t have been clearer. Then James says he prayed again and heaven gave rain. So Elijah was very clear in what he asked God for. Are you clear in what you are asking God for? What would be three things that you are asking God for at this time? What are you asking God for yourself? What are you asking God in relation to the church? What are you asking God for in relation to the advance of the gospel which is at the center of the vision that we pray for together? Is it clear? It’s a good thing, by the way, when you have prayed and you finish praying, you get up, you go through, you make yourself a cup of coffee and then ask yourself this question, what did I ask of God today? Can you answer that question? Many of you, I’m sure, get bombarded with emails. Does anyone here think they get too many emails? Do I have an agreement on that? I get lots of emails and you have to find a way of sorting them. One of the things that I just find very useful is to distinguish between emails that need a response from me and others that are simply information. Obviously, when you make that distinction, you go with the ones that need a particular response and you deal with the ones that are simply information at a later time. Now, think about that in relation to prayer. Don’t send up prayers to heaven that are information only. You know that kind of prayer. Lord, you know this and you know he’s been there and she’s been here and you know this. Yes, he knows. He doesn’t need the information. Offer prayers that ask for a response. Offer prayers where there is something that you are looking for God to do. He has said to you, ask. Jesus said on more than one occasion, he said to a blind man and then he also said to James and John, he asked this great question, what do you want me to do for you? What do you want me to do for you? If Jesus Christ were to appear before you today and to ask you that question, what would you say? What do you want me to do for you? And I guess most of us might come up with an immediate answer, someone that we want in our family circle to come to faith or someone who has a great illness and we would ask for them and then Jesus would say yes, but what do you want me to do for you? Karen and I took a trip a while back around Lake Michigan and up to Lake Superior with two dear friends and we got into a conversation in the van about that question, the four of us. What would you say to Jesus Christ if he were to say to you today, what do you want me to do for you? And that conversation took us all the way from Lake Huron to Lake Superior. It is a harder question to answer than you may think and when you come up with an answer then ask yourself the question, is that really the most important thing? Jesus said to a blind man, what do you want me to do for you? You think the answer is obvious, he’s a blind man, he wants to see. But you say, is that really the biggest thing? Was there something bigger that that man could have asked of the saviour of the world? And when you’ve been in heaven for 10,000 million years, will the thing that seems biggest to you now seem the biggest thing to you then? What do you want me to do for you? Be specific in your ask, but ask. You are coming to a king, large petitions with you bring for his grace and power are such that none can ever ask too much. I’m in the presence of someone with great resources I will ask. What will you ask in the presence of the King of Kings? And we’ll continue with two more Ps in a moment. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and we’ll continue in a moment with the message, so please stay with us. It’s from 1 Kings chapter 18 and it’s entitled Prayer 101, part of our series, The Surprising Influence of a Godly Life. Remember, if you ever miss one of our broadcasts, you can always catch up online, go back and listen again, or go to listen to any of our previous broadcasts. Just go to our website, openthebible.org.uk. Back to the message now, here’s Colin. Number six, position yourself in private to pray what God has promised with precision, but also with passion. And I take that from James chapter 5 and verse 17, where we’re told that Elijah prayed fervently, he prayed fervently, literally translated, literally translated, the words there are, in prayer he prayed. He prayed fervently, in prayer he prayed. It’s a very helpful little phrase. It’s actually a Hebraism, a Hebrew way of speaking. When Jesus spoke to the disciples about the Passover, he said, I have eagerly desired to eat the Passover with you. Literally what he said was, with desire I have desired to eat the Passover. Isn’t that beautiful? With desire I desire this fellowship with you. And the same form is here, Elijah, in prayer he prayed. In prayer he prayed. He didn’t just say a prayer, in prayer he prayed. He prayed fervently. In other words, there was life, there was energy, there was faith, there was engagement in his prayer. It is easy for the best Christian to fall into a kind of spiritual drowsiness in which we pray with little life and little energy and little desire and there is little power in such prayer. Elijah’s prayer was different. He prayed with life and with vigor. He prayed fervently. In prayer he prayed. Someone wrote these words. I found them helpful. I often say my prayers, but do I ever pray? And do the wishes of my heart go with the words I say? I may as well kneel down to gods of wood and stone as offer to the living God a prayer of words alone. For words without the heart the Lord will never hear, nor will he to those lips attend whose prayer is not sincere. So, Lord, teach me what I need, and teach me how to pray, and do not let me seek thy grace, not meaning what I say. Number seven. Position yourself in private to pray what God has promised with precision and with passion and with persistence. And I take this obviously from verse 44 when we’re told that it was the seventh time that Elijah sent his servant before he saw the cloud that was just the size of a man’s hand on the horizon. And that speaks to us about Elijah’s perseverance in prayer. He had prayed for what God had promised. He had certainly prayed with clarity, with precision, and with passion, fervently. But the answer was not immediately given even to Elijah. Let that be an encouragement to you. He sends his servant. Here’s Elijah, and he’s rolled up like a ball, and he’s praying, and he’s interceding, and he’s pleading the promise of God. And he sends his servant to the brow of the hill where he can look out down over the horizon and out to sea as you can from Mount Carmel. And he looks out, and he comes back, and he says, there’s nothing, there’s not a sign of a cloud. Just like it’s been for three and a half years. Elijah prays some more, says to the servant, you go again, have another look. The guy goes running off to the horizon, has another look. He’s exactly the same. He comes back. Elijah, there’s still nothing. Elijah says, well, you better go running again. Elijah carries on praying. The guy goes on running. He comes back. The fourth time, he knows what Elijah’s going to say. He’s nearly exhausted running. And the fifth time, then the sixth time. Some of you have been praying with passion, with fervor, with precision for someone or something that deeply burdens your heart. And you’re not on the sixth time, nor on the 60th time, nor even on the 600th time. And you’re beginning to wonder, will this ever happen? And you wonder if there’s any point. And the word of the Lord Jesus comes to you afresh through the scriptures today. Remember, he said this to his disciples, that we ought always to pray and never give up. And thank God that Elijah didn’t give up on the fourth or the fifth or even the sixth time. The servant goes the seventh time as the great man is there, rolled up on the ground, interceding. And he sees a little cloud the size of a man’s hand, just a little mist. And he comes back and he tells Elijah, well, there hasn’t even been a little bit of mist that’s been seen for the last three and a half years. And then verse 45, we read in a little while, the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. So dear friends, here are seven Ps of effective prayer. We see them on the screen. Maybe you’d like to say them together with me. Position yourself in private to pray what God has promised with precision and with passion and with persistence. And what we’re learning from Elijah is that this kind of praying avails much. Lives were changed through this kind of praying from Elijah. And lives will be changed through this kind of praying for you, because God ordains not only the ends but also the means. And your praying plays a part in the bringing about of the very purposes of God here and around the world. Because we are God’s fellow workers. Now, just one more thing before we’re through, and it’s simply this. James tells us one more thing about Elijah, that he was a righteous man. And he tells us that it is the prayer of a righteous man that is powerful and is effective. That does not mean, of course, that Elijah was perfect. He certainly wasn’t. We’re going to see next week, God willing, that he came to a point where he didn’t even see any point in his own life. And maybe some of you have been there. And yet, this man, who at one point became so low, is held up to us as the model for our praying. So you say, how was he righteous? How was he righteous? Matthew Henry says this beautifully. He who prays must be a righteous man. Not righteous in an absolute sense. But righteous in a gospel sense. I love that. What that means is simply this. Everything that we’ve said about prayer today, we’ve got to write over the top of it. In Christ. In Christ. Effective prayer only happens in Christ. It happens as your sins are washed. It happens as you hunger and thirst after righteousness. It happens as God’s Holy Spirit fills you. God will accept you before he accepts your prayer. So you must offer yourself to him before you offer your prayer to him. The order is important. Ask him to cleanse you. Ask him to fill you with his Spirit and to renew your heart. Tell him that you’re tired of the sins that have been clinging to you for so long. Ask him to clothe you with the righteousness of Jesus Christ so that as one who follows him, you may be effective in the ministry of prayer. And then in Christ, position yourself in private to pray the promises of God with precision and with passion and with persistence. That’s a great reminder that we should position ourselves to pray in private with precision, passion and persistence. Message called Prayer 101 from our series, The Surprising Influence of a Godly Life. And if you ever miss any of our broadcasts, please go to our website. There you can catch up with this broadcast or any of the previous ones completely free to download from the website. You can also find the messages as podcasts. Go to your favourite podcast site, search Open the Bible UK and there, subscribe to us and you’ll receive regular updates. Open the Bible Daily is a series of short two to three minute reflections written by Pastor Colin Smith and read by Sue McLeish. Sue was in the studio recently and I asked what people were saying to her about Open the Bible. Well, it’s early days, but several comments I’ve received are encouraging. One came from a young mother who’d recently given birth to her second child. She’d been worried that she wasn’t finding time for her normal Bible reading and study. But Open the Bible Daily had proved to be just the right length and content for her at this time. Oh yes, and then I received an email a few weeks back from a much older friend Oh yes, and then I received an email a few weeks back from a much older person who’d started listening regularly to Open the Bible Daily and had already recommended it to several of her friends. So David, how can people find the podcast? Well Sue, you can find the podcast on any of the regular podcasting sites. Just search for Open the Bible UK and look for the purple banner. Subscribe to the podcast and you’ll receive Open the Bible Daily every day on your device. David, I’ve been thinking. Some people may want to read the text of Open the Bible Daily whilst listening to the audio. Is it possible they can do that? Well Sue, if they want to read the text at the same time, the best place to find that is actually on our website. That’s openthebible.org.uk There you can listen to Open the Bible Daily being read by you and read the text at the same time. Just click on the menu item resources and then on Open the Bible Daily. Then there’s just one more click. Click on listen now and you’ll see the text appear underneath the media player. For Open the Bible and for Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick and I very much hope you’ll join us again soon. Whatever you’ve experienced and whatever you may be going through, you’ll find someone in the Bible who has been through something like it. Find out what happened when darkness came over Elijah’s soul. That’s next time on Open the Bible.