Elijah's Burning Prayer: Three Keys to Praying Without Covetousness

Introduction

This message from Matt Marvane, given at SOS Lyon church, picks up a story that began two weeks earlier: the confrontation on Mount Carmel. King Ahab reigns over Israel with his wife Jezebel, and together they lead the people into worshiping other gods, Baal and the Asherahs. So God sends the prophet Elijah to issue a challenge to the king: gather the whole people on Mount Carmel, along with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, and let it be seen who the true God is.

Elijah asks the people the same question studied in the previous message: "How long will you go limping between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." The people answer nothing. Of the 850 prophets summoned, 450 show up. The test is simple: two bulls, two altars, each side calls on its god, and whichever answers by fire is the true God.

The prophets of Baal begin in the morning. They dance, they cry out, "Baal, answer us!", and around noon Elijah starts mocking them: maybe your god is busy, literally gone to the bathroom, maybe he's asleep, maybe he's traveling. They redouble their efforts, cutting themselves until the blood flows. Nothing happens. Then Elijah takes his turn. He gathers twelve stones, symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel, to rebuild the altar that had been torn down, prepares the wood and the bull, digs a trench all around it, then has water poured over everything: over the wood, over the bull, until the trench itself is filled. As everyone knows, it's hard enough to light a fire when everything is dry, let alone soaked. Then he prays. And the fire of the LORD falls, consuming the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and even licking up the water in the trench. The people fall on their faces: "The LORD, he is God!"

From there, the preacher asks a simple question, one he will repeat three times: does God answer prayer? To answer it, he opens the letter of James and returns to the heart of Elijah's prayer.

Outline of the message

1. Prayer and covetousness: the struggle James 4 describes

• James 4:1-6 is addressed to Christians, not to pagans. And yet the text speaks of quarrels, fights, and covetousness: "You covet and cannot obtain… you don't have, because you don't ask. You ask, and don't receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures."
• The heart of the message: on one side, prayer; on the other, covetousness. Both pursue the same goal, obtaining something we don't yet have. When I pray, I place my faith in God to receive what I don't yet have. When I covet, I want what I see in someone else, and I'll do whatever it takes to possess it.
• "You shall not covet" is the last of the Ten Commandments. Covetousness is the root of all sin: it's exactly what happened in the garden of Eden. I want to know, I covet the forbidden fruit, I'm not satisfied with what I already have.
• Covetousness is a burning desire to possess, right now, for myself. With it comes the exclusion of others: we're ready to push, crush, and dominate to get what our heart covets. And it's a bottomless well: the more we have, the more we want. There is no satisfaction in the works of the flesh. Our entire consumer society runs on this very principle: manufacturing need so people think, "I have to have it, or my life won't work."
• James shows that God does not answer the false request, the hypocritical request, the one rooted in the passions of this world. We come before God, we ask, but deep down it's the covetousness of satisfying our flesh. It is possible to pray badly: "you ask with wrong motives."
• The key to the text is the humility of the one asking. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

2. How long will you keep limping in your prayer life?

• What James describes is exactly what Elijah was confronting the people about. One day your life is driven by your passions, the flesh takes over, and the next day you come back to ask God for things. One day I worship God, the next I worship Baal. It's simply not possible to satisfy both.
• Wanting to be a friend of the world is placing yourself as an enemy of God. It's not God who rejects us: God rejects no one, absolutely no one. But we can choose to set him aside, because of our attitude and the passions of the flesh.
• Why can't we love both? Because the world, too, demands to be loved. That's why James uses a harsh word: "adulterers." You say you love God, but you love someone else, you bow down before someone else. You are being unfaithful to God.
• God is a jealous God, one who shares with no one. His love is take it or leave it, certainly not to be shared. Like in a marriage: it's exclusive between a husband and wife. It's the same with God.

3. First key: "that they may know today that you are God"

• Elijah's prayer wasn't a simple prayer: it was a bold, courageous, defiant prayer. And God answered it. The preacher draws out three essential elements.
• First element: Elijah puts God first, just as Jesus taught his disciples in the Lord's Prayer. What matters to Elijah is that people recognize God for who he is, and that in the end everyone says: this is for his glory. A prayer succeeds when people see the answer and have eyes for only one thing: God.
• No one knows God perfectly. God is immeasurable: he can't be measured or confined to the reach of our intelligence, however brilliant it may be. Trouble begins when we try to make God fit the image we have of him. You hold one piece, I hold another: that's the richness of the body of Christ. You've gone through trials I've never faced, you've seen God be faithful there, and that proves to me that my God is far bigger than what I already know of him.
• Let's not limit God to our own experience alone. He is even greater than what he has already done in your own life up to today. Sometimes it's easier to understand him by listing what he isn't than by trying to define him.
• Elijah's desire is that the people would truly know again who God is, this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel whom they had already known and experienced, but whom they did not yet know well enough. If you want an effective prayer life, start by humbly acknowledging that you don't yet know him well enough, and that it matters to you to know him, and that the people around you know him too. The foundation isn't covetousness, it's humility.

4. Second key: "that I am your servant"

• Not a superhero, not a great preacher, not someone who performs feats: a servant devoted to his master. When people see me, they shouldn't see me, they should see my master. This is the model Jesus gives in the Gospel of John: "him who sent me," and "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father."
• The preacher tells the story of a young slave girl sold at auction, terrified, chained. Two men drive up the price, then a third arrives and places a bid no one can top. He takes her to a blacksmith, has all her chains removed, and tells her: "You are free. I bought you to set you free." She walks away, then after two minutes realizes she is free, turns around, runs back to the one who redeemed her, and falls to her knees: "Since you have set me free, I will serve you all my life."
• That is exactly what we experienced when Jesus came looking for us. He paid the price no one else could pay. Faced with that price, my place is at the feet of the one who redeemed me, to serve him all my life.
• God gives grace to the humble: he answers the prayer of humble hearts, of those who position themselves as servants of the Father's will. "I just want them to see how wonderful you are, that it's beautiful to serve you, and that it makes them want to as well."
• The preacher's biological father has a tattoo on his wrist that says "no God, no master," done before his conversion. And yet, for more than 40 years, he has served God with all his heart. Along the way: getting a nice verse tattooed on your wrist won't by itself make you a true servant.

5. Third key: "I have done all these things at your word"

• Let everyone know that what Elijah does is not in his own name. Elijah doesn't exist in this prayer: everything is for God's glory. The fire that falls has absolutely nothing to do with him, and when the people fall to their knees, they are not worshiping Elijah, they are recognizing the LORD.
• The preacher quotes Ruben Saillens, a French poet and evangelist from the late nineteenth century: let us rally around the center. The center is not the church, nor the clergy, nor tradition, nor even the Bible: it is Christ. But since Christ is the center of the Bible, like the tree of life in the middle of the garden, we cannot come to Christ without walking through the garden of Scripture. The letter kills, but the Spirit of Christ gives life.
• Hence the question: do I pray according to the Word of God, according to his desires, according to his will? If your prayer life isn't effective, maybe it's because you're praying wrong. You have to pray in faith in God's promises, and to do that you have to know them: fix your eyes on the Word, dare to dig into it, give it your time.
• Our actions are always the fruit of a thought. Even the biggest sins, before they happened, were thought through many times over: they are things we nourished. The best way to know God is to make it the sole pursuit of your life: to know him, to submit to his Word, to obey it.
• 1 John says that his commandments are not burdensome. Obeying God is a grace and a privilege: thanks to Jesus Christ, I can finally bend the knee before such greatness. The Word of God is an extraordinary garden: let's walk through it every day, breathe it in, eat and drink what is found there.

6. The answer: God answers when your heart burns for him

• 1 John 5:14-15 gives the answer to the question asked three times: "This is the boldness which we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he listens to us. And if we know that he listens to us, whatever we have asked, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him." According to his will: not my will, not my covetousness.
• You ask: what is his will? Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you, ask and you will receive, in his Word.
• Yes, God answers when your heart burns to give him glory, to advance his work, so that the world may know he is God. He answers "shape me, prune me, change me, transform me," and the prayer that his Word be held in honor, that our lives make others want to study the Word for themselves.
• If you seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and his righteousness, you won't even need to pray for the rest anymore: God has said he will give it to you besides. Like the sparrows of Matthew 6, you won't have to worry about whether you'll have food. Your concern is to advance God's kingdom, and you know that behind the scenes, God takes care of you and gives beyond what you can think or imagine.
• The preacher's wish for 2026: that each person would enter into this new dimension. Not praying according to covetousness ("I'd like this, I'd like that"), but praying according to the heart of God. "Lord, shape me. Change me by your Word. Give me a revelation of who you are. Let the world around me see and know that you are God. Let the fire fall. Let me be consumed." That is the prayer God is waiting for.

Key takeaways

• Prayer and covetousness aim at the same thing, obtaining what we don't have. But you can't pray sincerely while still clinging to the passions of the world: that's asking with wrong motives (James 4:3).
• God rejects no one. We are the ones who can set him aside by limping between two opinions, one day God, the next Baal.
• First key to burning prayer: God first, for his glory, humbly acknowledging that we don't yet know him well enough.
• Second key: positioning ourselves as servants of the one who redeemed us at a price no one else could pay. God gives grace to the humble.
• Third key: acting and praying according to the Word of God. God answers what is asked according to his will (1 John 5:14-15).

Personal application

1. When you pray, what is your real goal deep down: that God be recognized for who he is, or satisfying a desire of your flesh? Where is covetousness hiding in your requests?
2. Is there an area where you're "limping between two opinions," one day driven by your passions, the next asking God for things?
3. Do you humbly acknowledge that you don't yet know God well enough? What have you discovered about him through the testimony of a brother or sister who went through something you haven't?
4. When people watch you act, speak, and think, do they see you or your Master? What would it look like, concretely, this week, to place yourself at the feet of the one who redeemed you?
5. Do you know God's promises well enough to pray according to his will? What time will you set aside to walk through the garden of Scripture this week?

Verses cited

• 1 Kings 18:20-39: the confrontation on Mount Carmel and Elijah's prayer
• James 4:1-6: "you ask with wrong motives"; God gives grace to the humble
• Exodus 20:17: "You shall not covet"
• John 14:9: "He who has seen me has seen the Father"
• James 1:25: looking closely into the perfect law
• 1 John 5:3: his commandments are not burdensome
• 1 John 5:14-15: the assurance of being answered when we ask according to his will
• Matthew 7:7: ask, seek, knock
• Matthew 6:26-33: the birds of the sky; seek first the Kingdom

Frequently asked questions

Does God always answer prayer?

According to 1 John 5:14-15, we have this assurance, that if we ask anything according to his will, he listens to us, and we know that we have the petitions we have asked of him. So God answers prayers made according to his will, not according to our covetousness. James 4:3 makes clear that we can ask and not receive because we ask with wrong motives, to satisfy our own pleasures.

What is the difference between prayer and covetousness?

Both seek to obtain something we don't yet have. Prayer places its faith in God to obtain it; covetousness is a burning desire to possess, ready to crush others, and never satisfied. James 4 shows that we cannot pray sincerely while still clinging to the passions of the world: that's asking with wrong motives.

What are the three keys of Elijah's prayer on Mount Carmel?

In 1 Kings 18:36-37, Elijah prays that people would know that the LORD is God (God first, for his glory), that he himself is God's servant (the humility of the one asking), and that he has done all these things at God's word (obedience). Elijah doesn't exist in this prayer: everything is for God's glory.