May 26th, 2026
by Rachel Mahoney
by Rachel Mahoney
A reflection on James 5:16-18, Elijah, and the kind of prayer that actually moves things
What makes prayer powerful? Is it the eloquence of our words? The perfection of our lives? Our theological credentials?
James gives us a surprising answer, and an even more surprising example.
Elijah. The prophet who called down fire from heaven, shut up the sky for three and a half years, and then, in what might be my favorite detail in all of Scripture, mocked the 450 prophets of Baal by suggesting their god might be asleep or otherwise occupied. The man had a gift for snark. I relate to him more than I probably should.
But James is not drawing our attention to Elijah's accomplishments. He wants us to notice something much simpler: Elijah was human, just like we are. Flawed. Inconsistent. Capable of extraordinary faith one day and extraordinary fear the next.
Right after his greatest victory, he collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die. The same man. The same God. The same story.
And yet his prayers stopped the rain and started it again. Full circle. The same broken person, still useful, still heard.
That is the point. That is the encouragement. Not that Elijah was exceptional, but that he wasn't.
RIGHTNESS VERSUS RIGHTEOUSNESS
We tend to assume that powerful prayer belongs to people who have their lives more together than we do. People who pray longer, sin less, and use better vocabulary when they talk to God. But that assumption misunderstands what James means by righteousness.
Pastor Isaac pointed out in Sunday's sermon that righteousness is not the same as rightness.
The religious leaders in Jesus' day had rightness down to a science. They had volumes of rules detailing exactly how far you could walk on the Sabbath and precisely what you could and couldn't carry. They were technically correct about nearly everything.
Yet Jesus said the righteousness of His followers needed to exceed theirs. How is that possible?
Because righteousness is not primarily about rule-keeping. It is about relationship. It is about being in sync with God, understanding His heart, His purposes, and His direction, and aligning yourself with them.
Vic has been working toward getting his CDL, so there have been driving videos playing in the background of our house for weeks. One thing I have reflected on lately is that you can follow every traffic law perfectly and still be driving in the wrong direction.
You can follow every traffic law perfectly and still be driving in the wrong direction.
Righteousness is about heading where God is heading, not just driving correctly. It is possible to be technically right and still miss the heart of God.
This is deeply freeing. It means the question is not, "Am I good enough to pray powerfully?" The question is, "Am I oriented toward God? Am I moving in His direction, even imperfectly?"
And the good news is that God is always at work drawing us further in that direction.
PRAYER AS PARTNERSHIP, NOT PETITION
Here is where I have to be honest about my own struggle.
My default mode in prayer is still too often, "God, here is what I am doing. Would You bless it?"
Being a planner and a lover of checklists, I come to God with my agenda, my plans, my preferred outcomes, and hope He will get on board. It is prayer as a divine rubber stamp rather than prayer as genuine conversation.
But the posture James describes, the posture Pastor Isaac often talks about, and the posture Elijah models is the opposite.
It starts with listening.
It starts with asking, "God, what are You already doing? Where are You moving? How can I join You in that?"
God does not need our information. He already knows everything about everything all the time. Prayer is not about updating His database or convincing Him to care.
Prayer is, in part, God's invitation to us to participate in what He is already doing in the world.
The Lord's Prayer models this beautifully. It begins with, "Hallowed be Your name," getting in sync with who God is. Then comes, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done," getting in sync with what God is doing. Only after that alignment do we bring our daily needs.
The order is not accidental. It is the shape of righteous prayer.
I am still learning this. Some mornings I get it right. Many mornings I do not. But the direction matters. The direction is toward listening before speaking, toward asking what God is up to before telling Him what I need.
THE CRASH UNDER THE TREE
I want to linger for a moment on what happened to Elijah after his greatest triumph because I think it is one of the most honest and underpreached moments in the Old Testament.
He called down fire from heaven. He defeated 450 false prophets. And then he ran, collapsed, and told God he was done. Finished. Ready to die.
And what did God do?
He did not rebuke him. He did not deliver a motivational speech.
He sent an angel with food and water and told him to sleep.
Twice.
Rest first. Eat first. The journey ahead is too much for you without it.
I am writing this at the end of a long school year, during a week I have intentionally kept quiet and set aside for rest, catching up on work that has piled up, finishing a blog post I have not written in weeks, and tackling the housework that gets neglected when every other kind of work takes over.
I am, in my own small way, sitting under the tree.
And reading this passage in that season, I find it remarkably tender.
God is not impatient with our crashes. He is not frustrated that we need to stop. He built rest into the fabric of creation because He knows what sustained output costs a human being.
The angel did not tell Elijah to pray harder or get back out there.
He told him to eat because the journey is long.
If you are in a crash season right now, tired in a way that goes deeper than sleep, running on empty after a long stretch of output, this passage is for you. And honestly, it is for me too.
Rest is not a failure of faith.
Sometimes it is an act of faith.
PRAYING FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE HURT YOU
Righteous prayer is not only about aligning ourselves with God's purposes for our own lives. It also changes how we approach the people around us.
There is one more dimension of righteous prayer worth naming because it is one of the hardest.
How do we pray for people who have wounded us?
Our instinct is to dress up our grievances in prayer language.
"God, help them see what they did."
"God, give them what they deserve."
Which is often just asking God to vindicate us while pretending to intercede for them.
A more honest prayer sounds something like this:
That prayer is righteous not because it is perfectly gracious, but because it is honest about its own limitations and aligned with God's heart rather than our wounds.
It is getting in sync with a God who loves the person who hurt us just as much as He loves us.
That is hard.
It is also holy.
SEVEN TIMES
When Elijah prayed for rain after three and a half years of drought, he did not pray once and walk away.
He sent his servant to look for clouds seven times.
Seven times the servant came back with nothing.
Seven times Elijah stayed on his knees.
Not every prayer calls for that kind of persistence. But when we are genuinely in sync with what God wants to do, when we are praying in alignment with His purposes rather than merely our preferences, there are seasons to press in, to stay, and to keep sending the servant back to the horizon.
And when the servant finally spotted a cloud the size of a man's hand, barely a smudge on the sky, Elijah knew.
Not because the cloud was impressive.
Because he trusted the faithfulness of the God he had been praying to.
The size of the answer did not matter.
The character of the One answering did.
That is what righteous prayer looks like in practice.
Not perfectly articulated.
Not always immediately answered.
Not free of doubt, exhaustion, or crash seasons under trees.
But persistent, aligned, and rooted in the faithfulness of God rather than the adequacy of the one praying.
You are just as human as Elijah.
That is not a limitation.
According to James, that is exactly the point.
The power was never in Elijah.
It was always in the God who listened.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Is your prayer life currently shaped more by what you want God to bless, or by what God is already doing?
What would it look like this week to start your prayer time with listening rather than asking? To pause and say, "God, what are You up to? How can I join You?"
Try it once today and see what happens.
A PRAYER
Lord, I confess that I come to You more often with my agenda than with open hands. I confess that I talk more than I listen and that I am more comfortable telling You what I need than asking what You are doing.
Forgive me for the times I have used prayer as a way of managing outcomes rather than meeting You.
Teach me to be in sync with You, with Your heart, Your purposes, and Your direction.
And in the seasons when I am sitting under the tree, exhausted and empty, remind me that You are not frustrated with my limits. You built rest into the fabric of things. Meet me there. Feed me. And when I am ready, send me back out, not in my own strength but in Yours.
Amen.
What makes prayer powerful? Is it the eloquence of our words? The perfection of our lives? Our theological credentials?
James gives us a surprising answer, and an even more surprising example.
"The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are." ~James 5:16-17
Elijah. The prophet who called down fire from heaven, shut up the sky for three and a half years, and then, in what might be my favorite detail in all of Scripture, mocked the 450 prophets of Baal by suggesting their god might be asleep or otherwise occupied. The man had a gift for snark. I relate to him more than I probably should.
But James is not drawing our attention to Elijah's accomplishments. He wants us to notice something much simpler: Elijah was human, just like we are. Flawed. Inconsistent. Capable of extraordinary faith one day and extraordinary fear the next.
Right after his greatest victory, he collapsed under a tree and asked God to let him die. The same man. The same God. The same story.
And yet his prayers stopped the rain and started it again. Full circle. The same broken person, still useful, still heard.
That is the point. That is the encouragement. Not that Elijah was exceptional, but that he wasn't.
The point of Elijah's story is not that he was exceptional. The point is that he wasn't.
RIGHTNESS VERSUS RIGHTEOUSNESS
We tend to assume that powerful prayer belongs to people who have their lives more together than we do. People who pray longer, sin less, and use better vocabulary when they talk to God. But that assumption misunderstands what James means by righteousness.
Pastor Isaac pointed out in Sunday's sermon that righteousness is not the same as rightness.
The religious leaders in Jesus' day had rightness down to a science. They had volumes of rules detailing exactly how far you could walk on the Sabbath and precisely what you could and couldn't carry. They were technically correct about nearly everything.
Yet Jesus said the righteousness of His followers needed to exceed theirs. How is that possible?
Because righteousness is not primarily about rule-keeping. It is about relationship. It is about being in sync with God, understanding His heart, His purposes, and His direction, and aligning yourself with them.
Vic has been working toward getting his CDL, so there have been driving videos playing in the background of our house for weeks. One thing I have reflected on lately is that you can follow every traffic law perfectly and still be driving in the wrong direction.
You can follow every traffic law perfectly and still be driving in the wrong direction.
Righteousness is about heading where God is heading, not just driving correctly. It is possible to be technically right and still miss the heart of God.
This is deeply freeing. It means the question is not, "Am I good enough to pray powerfully?" The question is, "Am I oriented toward God? Am I moving in His direction, even imperfectly?"
And the good news is that God is always at work drawing us further in that direction.
PRAYER AS PARTNERSHIP, NOT PETITION
Here is where I have to be honest about my own struggle.
My default mode in prayer is still too often, "God, here is what I am doing. Would You bless it?"
Being a planner and a lover of checklists, I come to God with my agenda, my plans, my preferred outcomes, and hope He will get on board. It is prayer as a divine rubber stamp rather than prayer as genuine conversation.
But the posture James describes, the posture Pastor Isaac often talks about, and the posture Elijah models is the opposite.
It starts with listening.
It starts with asking, "God, what are You already doing? Where are You moving? How can I join You in that?"
God does not need our information. He already knows everything about everything all the time. Prayer is not about updating His database or convincing Him to care.
Prayer is, in part, God's invitation to us to participate in what He is already doing in the world.
Prayer is not about getting God to join our plans. It is about learning to join His.
The Lord's Prayer models this beautifully. It begins with, "Hallowed be Your name," getting in sync with who God is. Then comes, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done," getting in sync with what God is doing. Only after that alignment do we bring our daily needs.
The order is not accidental. It is the shape of righteous prayer.
I am still learning this. Some mornings I get it right. Many mornings I do not. But the direction matters. The direction is toward listening before speaking, toward asking what God is up to before telling Him what I need.
THE CRASH UNDER THE TREE
I want to linger for a moment on what happened to Elijah after his greatest triumph because I think it is one of the most honest and underpreached moments in the Old Testament.
He called down fire from heaven. He defeated 450 false prophets. And then he ran, collapsed, and told God he was done. Finished. Ready to die.
And what did God do?
He did not rebuke him. He did not deliver a motivational speech.
He sent an angel with food and water and told him to sleep.
Twice.
Rest first. Eat first. The journey ahead is too much for you without it.
I am writing this at the end of a long school year, during a week I have intentionally kept quiet and set aside for rest, catching up on work that has piled up, finishing a blog post I have not written in weeks, and tackling the housework that gets neglected when every other kind of work takes over.
I am, in my own small way, sitting under the tree.
And reading this passage in that season, I find it remarkably tender.
God is not impatient with our crashes. He is not frustrated that we need to stop. He built rest into the fabric of creation because He knows what sustained output costs a human being.
The angel did not tell Elijah to pray harder or get back out there.
He told him to eat because the journey is long.
The angel did not tell Elijah to pray harder. He told him to eat because the journey is long.
If you are in a crash season right now, tired in a way that goes deeper than sleep, running on empty after a long stretch of output, this passage is for you. And honestly, it is for me too.
Rest is not a failure of faith.
Sometimes it is an act of faith.
PRAYING FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE HURT YOU
Righteous prayer is not only about aligning ourselves with God's purposes for our own lives. It also changes how we approach the people around us.
There is one more dimension of righteous prayer worth naming because it is one of the hardest.
How do we pray for people who have wounded us?
Our instinct is to dress up our grievances in prayer language.
"God, help them see what they did."
"God, give them what they deserve."
Which is often just asking God to vindicate us while pretending to intercede for them.
A more honest prayer sounds something like this:
"God, I am not unbiased here. I am wounded, and I cannot see this person clearly. Would You give them what they actually need, not what I think they deserve? I submit to Your wisdom, not my preferences."
That prayer is righteous not because it is perfectly gracious, but because it is honest about its own limitations and aligned with God's heart rather than our wounds.
It is getting in sync with a God who loves the person who hurt us just as much as He loves us.
That is hard.
It is also holy.
SEVEN TIMES
When Elijah prayed for rain after three and a half years of drought, he did not pray once and walk away.
He sent his servant to look for clouds seven times.
Seven times the servant came back with nothing.
Seven times Elijah stayed on his knees.
Not every prayer calls for that kind of persistence. But when we are genuinely in sync with what God wants to do, when we are praying in alignment with His purposes rather than merely our preferences, there are seasons to press in, to stay, and to keep sending the servant back to the horizon.
And when the servant finally spotted a cloud the size of a man's hand, barely a smudge on the sky, Elijah knew.
Not because the cloud was impressive.
Because he trusted the faithfulness of the God he had been praying to.
The size of the answer did not matter.
The character of the One answering did.
That is what righteous prayer looks like in practice.
Not perfectly articulated.
Not always immediately answered.
Not free of doubt, exhaustion, or crash seasons under trees.
But persistent, aligned, and rooted in the faithfulness of God rather than the adequacy of the one praying.
You are just as human as Elijah.
That is not a limitation.
According to James, that is exactly the point.
The power was never in Elijah.
It was always in the God who listened.
The power was never in Elijah. It was always in the God who listened
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Is your prayer life currently shaped more by what you want God to bless, or by what God is already doing?
What would it look like this week to start your prayer time with listening rather than asking? To pause and say, "God, what are You up to? How can I join You?"
Try it once today and see what happens.
A PRAYER
Lord, I confess that I come to You more often with my agenda than with open hands. I confess that I talk more than I listen and that I am more comfortable telling You what I need than asking what You are doing.
Forgive me for the times I have used prayer as a way of managing outcomes rather than meeting You.
Teach me to be in sync with You, with Your heart, Your purposes, and Your direction.
And in the seasons when I am sitting under the tree, exhausted and empty, remind me that You are not frustrated with my limits. You built rest into the fabric of things. Meet me there. Feed me. And when I am ready, send me back out, not in my own strength but in Yours.
Amen.
Rachel Mahoney
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