With the new year, many of us are eager to make changes. We may even seek to enlist some divine help in making those changes. A few months back I gave a series of messages called "Prayer That Changes Things" that I would like to reproduce here over the next few days. Consider them my attempt to help you with your desire to make changes in your life. -- Tod
Let me begin by telling you a story that comes out of Greek Mythology. (The first time I heard it, was not in a high school English class but from singer Jim Cole. And it inspired his wonderful song, Master of My Heart, which I recommend you find immediately.)
The Sirens are cannibalistic demons that sing beautiful music to sailors that pass by their island. The song was so beautiful that it would drive out any other thoughts except for a longing to hear more. The sailors would hear the songs, would fall in love with the Sirens and turn their boats to the shore. The boats would crash on the rocks and the Sirens would devour the foolish and fooled sailors.
When Odysseus sailed around the island, he put molten wax in the sailors’ ears so that they couldn't hear the Siren's song. He told the men to lash him to a pole so tight that he couldn't get loose and no matter what he said to not let him go and left the wax out of his ears, because he just wanted to hear the song. As they sailed around the cape, the sailors couldn't hear the song because of the wax. But Odysseus cried out to them he was so moved by the Sirens song. If he could have gotten free, he too would have sailed the ship to certain death, but strapped to the mast, tormented but safe, he sailed past the Siren Island.
I think that many of us are like Odysseus, dear friends. Sometimes, I am. We want to sail past the islands of destruction, but we still want to hear their song.
We want to be captain of our own fates, willing ourselves through the trials of life, but at the same time we feel tormented by the realization that we are seduced by the very things that could destroy the life we have worked so hard to create. We shudder at the thought of so many people who have ended up wrecked on the shore, and consumed by the very things they thought would bring them happiness. We are like Odysseus, strapping ourselves to the mast and binding ourselves to our busy schedules, our full lives, our attempts to immunize ourselves and especially our children against the seductions of this world. We wish that we could just pour wax in our kids’ ears and be held against our wills to keep from being devoured by that which we secretly desire. We fear that if we ever hear the song of the sirens, the lure of the world, the temptations of the flesh, that we will wreck everything that is good in our lives. And so we live tormented, trapped, strapped, and exhausted.
Oh we may have made it so far, but is this anyway to live?
I have already told you one story from mythology; let me tell you another one, a true story from the Scriptures. It is a classic story of a confrontation between good and evil, between faith and false gods. And let’s see if something about sounds familiar to us. I will narrate it, but if you want to follow along in the Bible, you’ll find it in 1 Kings 18-19.
Some two hundred years after David ruled Israel in its heyday, the kingdom had split in two and Israel was ruled by King Ahab. The Bible makes it clear that Ahab, though a Jew was not faithful to God. He was lured away into worshipping false gods by his wife Jezebel, who wielded her power and influence to corrupt Israel and to lead them to worship the false gods of the Baals, even to the pointing of seeing that the true prophets of God were put to death so that they would not speak against her.
And because of Ahab’s weakness and Jezebel’s faithlessness, the people of God began to worship both the One True God Israel and as well as the false gods of the Baals.
But in Israel at the time was one genuine prophet of God named Elijah. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a kind of Spiritual Heavyweight Ultimate Fighting Match. They would each make an altar of wood and on it lay a butchered bull. But instead of lighting the offering, Elijah all by himself challenges the 450 false prophets of Baal to call out to their gods to light the altar and consume the offering.
The prophets of Baal make their altar with the bull offering on it and all day long from morning until midday, 450 false prophets call out to Baal, “O Baal, answer us!” About noon, Elijah starts talking smack to them. “What’s the problem boys? Is your god meditating somewhere? Has he wandered away? Is he on a trip? Is your god sleeping? You better try harder if you are going to wake him up!” And they did, even cutting themselves and pouring out their own blood. But still the altar lay quiet. No fire, no big powerful god showing up, no matter how much they sacrificed their own flesh.
Then the story really gets interesting… Elijah takes an old altar to Yahweh that Jezebel had thrown down. He picks up twelve stones to represent the tribes of Israel. Out of the stones he makes an altar and around it digs a huge pit. He places the bull on the altar and then he tells the people to fill up four huge jars of water and pour them on the altar, then they do it again, and a third time. He literally drenches the altar, the wood, the stones, and the offering.
And then he prays…just prays. No shouting, no wailing, no self-mutilation. Just prays. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
And a fire bolt comes from heaven. The flames consume the offering, consume the wood, consume the stones, the fire licks up the water overflowing out of the trench. And in 1 Kings 18:39 we read, When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.”
Now I had to tell you that story to tell you this. AFTER this huge victory, do you know what happened to Elijah? Did he go on to confront Ahab and Jezebel? Did he start a revival in Israel? NO.
And this is the most surprising part. The disappointing part. The disturbing part. The part that somewhere within us, we all understand, but we wish we didn’t.
Elijah gets word that Jezebel now wants him dead, and what does he do? Does he say, “Hey lady, bring it on. Have you seen what my God can do?” Does he stand in the middle of the challenge and finish the job by confronting the Heretic Queen? No. He hears that Jezebel is coming after him—and he flees. Something about Jezebel making their spiritual confrontation personal, takes the fight right out of Elijah.
He leaves town, he leaves the country, he leaves the ministry and he sit down under a tree and prays to die.
In 1Kings 19:4-8 we read,
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6 He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8 He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 9 At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.
Notice, that Elijah is discouraged, wants to die and cries out to God and what does God do? First he cares for Elijah. He gives him food and lets him sleep. Now here we are. A man of God is alone with the Lord and God comes to him and hears the prayer of his heart. God listens not only to the words of his lips and the discouragement of his soul, but to the deeper longing that has probably been building in Elijah for years. And in the encounter with God face to face, everything changes.
But what exactly is that? What does change?
But notice what he doesn’t change. Notice what he doesn’t do? Does God solve Elijah’s problem? You know, take out Jezebel? NO. He doesn’t. And this is different than we expect, isn’t it?
We think that if God is going to change anything, he is going to change our circumstances don’t we? Many of us think that that is the primary purpose of prayer: Getting God to change stuff. God, this is your world, so please change it. Please, change my husband, change my kids, change my circumstances. Take care of my boss, give me an extra two hours every day and two days of every week so that I can fit everything in. Multiply my pay check, change the economy, fix the housing market, let me win the lottery. Give me my first college choice, be popular at school, get kids to like me, let me get the perfect job or find the perfect spouse, or have perfect kids. Eliminate all temptations, all trials, all turmoil. Inoculate my family from ever experiencing pain or having problems, God, just change—everything.
My friends, this series is about learning to pray in such a way that things get changed. It could be in the middle of hard, personal circumstances where it seems like some enemy wants to destroy our life as we know it. It could be in the middle of great blessings, of tremendous opportunities, of life in all its complexity, it makes us wonder “where is the life that we have lost in the living.”
Over the next few posts we will look at a myriad of circumstances that are as different as all of our lives, but the one thing they will have in common is that we know that something needs to change. And indeed, sometimes, graciously, almost miraculously God does change our circumstances, but what we will see is that over and over again, we will keep coming back to this reality:
The prayer that changes things is the prayer that changes us.
In the film, Amazing Grace, we follow the life of William Wilberforce, a young man who had been taught the Christian faith as a child by John Newton, eventually after a season of wandering away from faith, he recovered it in a powerful way. He worked within the halls of government to bring about first the abolition of the slave trade and eventually the abolition of all slavery in the British Empire. It took 46 years to accomplish it, but without the bloodshed of civil war or revolution, Wilberforce led his country to abolition of slavery years before it happened here. 
In a scene in the film one of his domestic servants asks Wilberforce if he has "found God." 
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