The brother of Jesus is giving his readers a tutorial on the subject of prayer. (He had seen some serious demonstrations of prayer, we might recall, growing up around the man who turned a boy’s lunch into an all-you-can-eat buffet for five thousand.) James points to the famous drought story I just cited, then makes a staggering connection—you are no different than Elijah. That’s his purpose in using the phrase, “Elijah was a man just like us.” James is trying to disarm that religious posture that so often poisons the value of biblical stories: Well, sure, that was so-and-so [in this case Elijah] and they were different than us. Nope. Not the case. Actually, James makes it very clear: Elijah was a human being just like you.
In other words, you can do it too.
This post is an excerpt of the book, Moving Mountains written by John Eldridge of Ransomed Heart Ministries. You can find this resource here: http://ransomedheart.com