Keys to a Powerful Prayer Life a 4-Day Plan by Joy OguntimeinSample

Key 2: Pray Prayers That Aim To Glorify God

Read: 1 Kings 18:30-37

One of the most iconic cinematic scenes is from the 1976 movie Rocky. Rocky Balboa runs up the 72 stone steps leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art entrance. When he reaches the top, he raises his hands in victory, jumps up and down, and punches the air in celebration. He feels not just excited but victorious. I wonder if that’s how Elijah felt on the top of Mount Carmel as God demonstrated that He was the one true God.

Elijah was seemingly outnumbered. It was Elijah and God against the 450 prophets of Baal (a false god that the people worshiped). Yet Elijah was #unbothered! After mocking Baal and his prophets and upping the ante, he said a simple and short prayer: Answer me, Lord! Answer me so that these people will know that You, Yahweh, are God and that You have turned their hearts back.” (1 Kings 18:37) He asked God to reveal to everyone that He is the true God. He asked for God to be glorified.

If we’re honest, sometimes our prayers are filled with many different self-motivated objectives: fulfilling our interests, impressing other people, or even just checking a box on our religious to-do list. Elijah prayed others would know that Yahweh is God and there is no other God in heaven or earth. His request was unapologetically rooted in a desire for God’s power to be on display and for His greatness to be enlarged before everyone on that mountain, especially the Israelites, so that they would return to their first love.

Powerful prayers are simple and rooted in a desire to see God glorified. As we pray for miracles, let us pray people will see that God is real and that God will receive all the glory, honor, and praise.

Pray: Dear God, I want others to experience the loving relationship I have with You. Do great things in and through me so that others can know that you’re real. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.