Confidence in the All-Powerful God
By Geoff Eckart
Just three months after becoming lead pastor at Daybreak, something disheartening happened. I wasn’t prepared for it. I stood in our atrium on a stormy Sunday morning, witnessing a sight that a pastor doesn’t want to see—more than ten buckets positioned in an attempt to catch all the rain pouring through our leaky roof.
We needed a solution—and fast!
Just four days before I led one of what I was calling our “secret” prayer meetings. These are unannounced, word-of-mouth, invite gatherings. About 50 of us were there, and someone felt prompted to pray for our building. We actually prayed for a new roof because ours was 30 years old. This prayer request was a several hundred-thousand-dollar request.
And we prayed for a several hundred-thousand-dollar answer.
And then four days later it looked like our roof was going to collapse!
Little did we know how God would radically answer this bold prayer for a new roof. Unbeknownst to us, at the same time someone in our congregation (who had no idea what we were praying for) dropped in our offering the largest check in our church’s 30-plus-year history—the week after “flood Sunday.”
God had provided for our roof!
Another Bold Prayer
Listen to Elijah’s prayer in 1 Kings 18:36–37:
At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”
Time and time again, I’ve seen God answer bold prayers. And I bet you have too. There are no formulas for how and when God chooses to answer our big, bold prayers. But I’ve noticed a few common threads:
A desperate need A “regular” person A bold request
Let’s look more closely at each thread.
A Desperate Need
When the need is obvious and the solution is not, that seems to be a scenario ripe for God to move. Elijah understood what hung in the balance. The fate of Israel was up for grabs at this pivotal moment in time. And although most people didn’t see that, Elijah did. And this desperation drove him to step into a very precarious position.
In your life, when the need might seem obvious, keep in mind that it might appear so only to you. As an intercessor, God will give you a vision for the great need that only you can see. That can feel overwhelming. When you see the great need, you will feel the desperation. And sometimes seeing this need can tempt you to feel crushed beneath the weight of it.
But allow this need to drive you to intercede beyond yourself into a belief that God is “able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).
A Regular Person
In James 5:17–18 we read, “Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops” (emphasis mine).
James points out that Elijah was a regular human being, just as you are. In other words, he was no different. It’s truly outlandish to allow ourselves to think that we could be on the same spiritual plane as Elijah. On the surface, it’s an outrageous thing to consider. How could we be in the same “spiritual league” as the mighty Elijah?
But over and over in Scripture—and in my life experience—another common denominator to seeing God answer big, bold prayers is the involvement of what I call “regular” people. These are people with flaws, issues, and faults that you might think disqualify them from drought-inducing or drought-ending powerhouse prayers.
But it is these same regular folk who are fully aware that, despite their shortcomings, God is still God. And despite their weaknesses, they know God can provide the miracle.
One of the greatest privileges of my life was to meet Jeannine Brabon, the person I consider as the intercessory catalyst for the Asbury Revival of 1970. I spent several days with her in January of 2020, 50 years after this outbreak of prayer that shook the nation and a generation of young people. Jeannine was soft-spoken, gentle, and a surprisingly pleasant yet “normal” person. Seeing this side of her gave me more respect for her. It reminds me that God uses ordinary people for extraordinary purposes.
A Bold Request
The combination of the need Elijah saw, along with him being a normal, flawed person, along with the addition of a bold ask of God, made for a moment that is one of the most vivid in all of Scripture. Elijah prayed and put God on full display. So much so that there could be no mistake from the believer or the skeptic—God was the One in control.
Ask big. Ask bold. And stand back in awe and wonder!
In 2010, I started our national ministry called Claim Your Campus. We were desperate for resources to meet the need of the vision of student-led prayer at middle and high schools across America. Three other couples helped me and my wife Arianna as we prayed and planned a 5K-race that would fundraise for the ministry.
At our first planning meeting I asked, “How many people do you think we could naturally get to come to our event?” The consensus was around 500.
Then we prayed and asked God to give each of us an attendance number to pray for, believing that if that number were to happen, it could be only God’s favor. Each wrote a number down, without knowing what anyone else was thinking. We all sensed the same number: 1,000!
We had a desperate need: schools needing prayer!
We were “regular” people; we had no experience and no resources to humanly pull in 1,000 people for our event. We had a bold request: “God, bring 1,000 runners to our race!”
On August 28, 2010, we held our event. And 2,200 runners registered and showed up for our race. Only God!
Remember these keys to bold prayer:
- Don’t be afraid when you see the great need.
- Don’t be afraid when you don’t feel qualified.
- Don’t be afraid to ask God big, bold prayers.
He is waiting.
GEOFF ECKART is lead pastor of Daybreak Church in Hudsonville, MI. He is also the new chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee.
