Editor's note: Enjoy today's devotion from Unbreakable Courage by Max Lucado.
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Rebecca has spent the last two years in pain. “On a scale of one to ten,” the doctor explained to me, “she is a twelve every day.” Pretty tough challenge. But Rebecca is a tough kid. She is ten years old. She has fudge-brown hair, eyes that sparkle, a weatherproof smile, and a Book of Miracles.
Homemade sketches hung on the hospital room walls. A covey of stuffed animals took up the couch. Someone had sent a cookie bouquet. I eyed it.
Rebecca’s pancreas has shut down. After a dozen operations and changes in medication, no solution is in sight.
Rebecca needs a miracle.
According to her, she has enough to fill a book.
“Mommy.”
Her voice was groggy.
“What, honey?”
“Can you show Pastor Max my Miracle Book?”
It’s a spiral notebook with weathered edges and adorned with crayoned flowers, stars, and an occasional clown. In the handwriting of a child, miracles:
I slept all night last night.
Daddy snuck a puppy into the hospital.
Mommy is going to place a Christmas tree in the corner.
If I were in her place, I’d catalog the misery, discomfort, and difficulties. Her body is in revolt. Her parents are concerned. The doctors are confused. But not Rebecca. She itemizes the miracles and thanks God for each. She is going to pray it through.
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Long after the kids are bathed and put to bed, Sara stares at the bills. The water payment was due last week. Rent is due next week. The electric company threatens to disconnect the power if the money isn’t received by Tuesday.
Tuesday is tomorrow.
Sara’s salary from her day-care job covers her monthly expenses. But doesn’t something always happen? The brakes go out. A pipe leaks. The kids get sick. So tonight she looks at the bills and then at the checkbook balance. Too many of the first. Not enough of the second.
She stares out the window of the small apartment and wonders where to turn. She used to turn to drugs. The guy in the apartment two doors down sells oxycodone. Ten dollars a pill. One pill is all she needs. Ten dollars is all she has. But pills caused this mess. Her drug abuse caused her husband to leave and her former boss to fire her. Sara weighs her options and makes her decision. She dials the number.
“I know it’s late,” she says.
“Never too late for you,” her friend replies. “I told you to call, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. Well, here’s the deal. I’ve got bills I can’t pay. I’m feeling really weak tonight. You think we could...” Her voice trails off.
“Pray? That’s my job, right?”
The old Sara numbed the pain. The new Sara is learning to pray about it. A woman she met at rehab has pledged to pray with her. She takes the lead. “Lord, we need help tonight.” The prayer wasn’t long or fancy, but it was enough.
Sara fell asleep without pills.
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No verse in the Bible promises the absence of struggle. Quite the contrary. Scripture is stained with tears, problems, injustices, immorality, and wars. Tough times come with life.
But troubling times don’t have to take the life out of your life.
God gives us this invitation: “Pray it through.”
“It” is what troubles you, fatigues you, shames you. “It” is the future you can’t control, the disease you can’t heal, the job you can’t stomach, the rage you can’t tame, the economy you can’t boost, the lawmaker you can’t stomach.
“It” won’t have the last word. God will. And God’s Word tells us to pray it through.
Prayer slaps handcuffs on the culprit. Prayer marches the problem into the presence of the One who can solve it. Prayer faces “it” by facing God immediately, consistently, doggedly, and hopefully. Prayer confesses: “God can handle it. I can’t. But He can. Since He can, I have hope!”
Elijah modeled this. Our prophet is remembered as an example of radical prayer.
He prayed that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years! Then Elijah prayed again, and the rain came down from the sky, and the land produced crops again. — James 5:17–18 NCV
He is living proof that
when a believing person prays, great things happen. — v. 16 NCV
Our study of the power of the prophet resumes with sad news.
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse and finally stopped breathing. — 1 Kings 17:17
There is so much about the story we do not know. How long had Elijah lived with the widow? What was the boy’s illness? We are not told. But the detail we are told is heartbreaking. The boy had “no breath left in him” (NKJV). Maybe it began with a headache or a sore throat. His mother sent him to bed to rest. When she checked on him, the boy was ablaze with fever. She tried every remedy but couldn’t cool him down. She sat at his side all night. He groaned. She mopped his brow. His breath became labored. She held him close. She’d already lost a husband; she couldn’t bear to bury a child.
But he began to drift from her. He didn’t respond to her voice. His limbs grew limp. His breath became shallow and skin pale.
She implored, “Don’t go! Don’t go!” But he did. He had no breath left in him.
Maybe you can relate. You didn’t lose a child, but you lost a dream, a parent, a dear friend. Her son had no breath in him. In your case your future has no hope in it. Your career has no potential in it. Your marriage has no joy in it. Have you felt what she felt? If so, you won’t judge her reaction. Even though the prophet had done nothing to warrant her anger, she faulted him.
The woman said to Elijah, ‘Why did you ever show up here in the first place—¬a holy man barging in, exposing my sins, and killing my son?’ Elijah said, ‘Hand me your son.’ He then took him from her bosom, carried him up to the loft where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. — 1 Kings 17:18–19 MSG
I see a metaphor in this moment. What if Elijah holding the dead boy is a picture of you and me in the midst of a sick society? Think about it. So much has died. Integrity among our leaders. Morality in our movies. Fidelity in our families. And meaning: Did you know that nine out of ten young people in Great Britain believe that life has no meaning?1 Nine out of ten! What happens when 90 percent of a generation find no reason to live? Anxiety happens. Anger happens. Depression and despair happen. Suicide happens.
We, like Elijah, have been handed a corpse. Heartbeat? Gone. Pulse? Undetectable. Something needs to be done.
Elijah shows us what to do. [He] carried him to the upper room where he was staying and laid him on his bed — 1 Kings 17:19.
Note what he didn’t do. He didn’t react to the widow’s reaction. He didn’t question her behavior. He understood that she was hurting and gave her grace. We’d be wise to do the same. We Christians tend to point fingers. We tongue-lash the entertainment industry. We look down on unbelievers when they behave like unbelievers. Might we do better if we imitated Elijah?
Grace was his gift to the mother. Prayer was his strategy for the tragedy.
Then he prayed,
“O God, my God, why have you brought this terrible thing on this widow who has opened her home to me? Why have you killed her son?” Three times he stretched himself out full-length on the boy, praying with all his might, “God, my God, put breath back into [the boy’s] body!” — v. 21 MSG
- Elijah was silent before the mother, but he was resistless before God.
He stretched himself out on the child — v. 21 NKJV. He extended his adult body over the lifeless form. Let this child’s soul come back to him — v. 21 NKJV. Elijah had no precedent upon which to base this prayer. Up to this point in Scripture, no person had been brought back to life. He didn’t learn to pray like this in Prophet Training 101. He did this because he believed the Lord God of Israel lives (1 Kings 17:1 NKJV).
Elijah believed in a living God.
Everywhere else, death. The land was dead from the famine. Livestock were dead from the drought. Crops were dead from thirst. The hope of the mother was dead. The boy was dead. But Yahweh was alive! Since God was, in Elijah’s book, alive, and since the boy was, in Elijah’s bed, dead, he took the case of the latter to the former. “He stretched himself out on the boy three times” (1 Kings 17:21).
There are occasions in which we rest in prayer. There are other occasions in which we wrestle in prayer. Elijah wrestled. Once was not enough. Twice was inadequate. Three times he pleaded.
Moses prayed in this manner. He beseeched God to change His mind and not destroy the Hebrews.
Moses begged the Lord. — Exodus 32:11 NCV
I see him striding back and forth before God like an attorney before the bar, pleading his case.
So the Lord changed His mind and did not destroy the people as He had said He might. — Exodus 32:14 NCV
Let’s not miss the profound lesson that Elijah and Moses teach us.
Both did first what mattered most: They prayed. Not only did they pray; they prayed passionately.
Dramatically. Emotionally. Thunderously. Elijah on the boy. Moses on the ground. Begging. Pleading.
For many people this is a new concept of prayer. We think of speaking softly before God or “talking to the man upstairs.” But agonizing before God? Storming Heaven with prayers? Pounding on the door of the Most High? Wrestling on our knees with God? Isn’t such prayer irreverent? Isn’t such prayer presumptuous?
It would be had God not invited us to pray as such.
So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. — Hebrews 4:16 NLT
We do not swagger into God’s presence, but neither do we cower. We are not bossy in our prayers, but neither are we mousy in our requests. We take courage and step confidently into the front door of the throne room of God, having been invited by Him and escorted in by his Son.
We embrace God as Father, kneel before Him as Lord, and earnestly make our requests known, not because of what we have achieved, but because of what Christ has done.
Jesus spilled His blood for us. We can pour out our hearts before God.
Excerpted with permission from Unbreakable Courage by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
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Your Turn
Pray! Pray when the wind is at your back and life is simple and calm. Pray when it’s chaotic and desperate and you can barely keep your head above water. Come before God and pour out your heart! ~ Devotionals Daily