The Days of Elijah Part 10

9. There will be times that others will not understand our prayers.

Often I have found that prayer meetings are a burden and I have asked myself why that is so. Prayer should be a time of great pleasure rather than a burden. What happens at so many prayer meetings is that we come with a list of requests and people expect that we will pray for those requests. How do you pray for someone who has cancer or someone who is going through a difficult time? If we pray as Paul did for the church at Ephesus we would spend little time in public praying for the physical needs and pray for their spiritual growth and their relationship with God. When an unbeliever asks for prayer and we pray for their relationship with God they cannot understand why we saw that their primary need was their salvation and not their physical need.

In Micah 6:8 the Lord tells us what is expected of us: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” If we are to act justly then we are to seek justice for all people, even those that we do not agree with. Some people will judge us that we are not seeking justice for certain groups of people but that should not be the case. If we seek justice for the unborn some will judge that we are not seeking justice for women. When we pray for the unborn some will judge that we are praying against rights for women. We can expect to be misunderstood in cases like this. We are to pray for mercy for ourselves and for others. How can we pray for mercy upon those who are enemies of the truth? There will be those both in the church and outside the church that will not understand our prayers.

When Elijah prayed for judgment there were those in his day, and there are today, who stand in judgment of Elijah. Elijah was concerned with the glory of God and not what others thought of him.