James 5.16-18 speaks of the power of righteous prayer and uses Elijah to illustrate. Elijah's righteous prayer altered the meteorological system for three years, preventing rain. Then, after the three-year drought, he prayed again and nature submitted to his prayer plea.
Do you truly believe your prayers can alter the natural course of events? For instance, if the doctor has told you that you have a terminal illness, do you truly believe that God is not limited by the diagnoses of modern medicine?
Richard Foster's classic work The Celebration of Discipline speaks of the power of righteous prayer.
In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray? We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that. The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference. The apostle Paul gladly announces that we are "colaborers with God"; that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events (see 1 Corinthians 3.9). It is Stoicism that demands a closed universe, not the Bible.
