Missing the Big Picture

Elijah was just an ordinary guy. We think of him as a great prophet, of course, because God used him mightily. But he also was a great prophet who had bouts of depression. At one point, he didn’t even want to live another day.

But Elijah knew how to pray. James tells us, “Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops” (James 5:17–18 NLT).

So pray with passion. Pray with fervency. Don’t just offer up a ho-hum, generic prayer: “Lord, save the world, or whatever.”

No, pray for your nation. Pray for your state, for the city you live in, and for your government officials. Pray for your family, your friends, and those in your sphere of influence. And pray that God will send a great spiritual awakening.

The Devil doesn’t want you to do this, by the way. Satan doesn’t want a spiritual awakening. His strategy is to divide and conquer. He would love for us to be divided over race or politics or some other issue so that we argue over minutiae and miss the big picture.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2 NKJV).

People are dying without Jesus, and the church is debating other issues. It’s time for us to wake up and remember that the gospel is more important than anything. The gospel is more important than our preferences. It’s more important than our politics. It’s more important than anything else. The gospel is our message to our culture.