Ordinary People & Their Extraordinary God
11/4/25 Bible Thought (James 5)
I recently heard former navy seal, Chadd Wright, share on a podcast concerning navy seals:
“We are just ordinary people with an extraordinary desire.”
He has completed some amazing missions in his life and incredible physical feats of endurance, but not because he is superhuman or really special in any sense. He just does not quit.
In a similar way, Christians are simply ordinary people with an extraordinary God.
We see this reality so clearly in James 5 as the apostle draws his letter to a close with a powerful admonition concerning prayer:
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (Jas. 5:16, emphasis added).
Then, he grounds this claim that prayer is powerful in the Old Testament example of Elijah from 1 Kings 17-19:
“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (Jas. 5:17-18).
I think it is helpful and necessary for us to remember that apart from Jesus Christ the Scripture consists solely of ordinary people whom God chose to use in amazing ways.
Even if you look at examples like Noah, Daniel, and Job who were known to be righteous people, they were not superhuman. They just had a strong desire to please God that was proven through their actions. They were not more or less human than we are.
Then comes Elijah. If anyone in the Scripture is human, it is Elijah.
At one point in his life, Elijah experienced one of the most awesome displays of God’s power when fire fell from heaven to consume his offering proving that Yahweh was God and Baal was not. Even more, God answered Elijah’s prayer to bring rain after a three-and-a-half-year drought.
Yet shortly thereafter, when the queen threatened his life, Elijah ran away, threw a big pity party, and asked God to kill him. God had just worked incredible miracles on two separate occasions for Elijah and yet he still leaves with his head hung low in defeat.
I find it fascinating that both Elijah and Moses, the two guys who appeared at the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus Christ had both at one point asked for God to take their lives! They were human, just as we are, and they struggled just as we do.
Now, God does not kill Elijah. Interestingly enough, he ends up becoming one of two men from biblical history that does not die. Consider the great irony of that prayer being ungranted!
Instead, God has Elijah take a nap and get some food. That is about as human as it gets. You could put Elijah in a Snickers commercial, “Elijah, you are not yourself when you’re hungry, have a Snickers.”
Yet, God Almighty, through this man’s prayers dried up rain in Israel for three and a half years, spitting in the face of the false god Baal. Elijah was about as ordinary as it got, but he served an extraordinary God.
The same God that created the universe, spinning planets into motion, telling the sea where to stop, and causing great mountains to rise, lends his ear to us in prayer. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.”
If we have access to such great power in prayer, why would we neglect to use it?
We might not feel special, and honestly, that is true. We are not that special—but we serve the Lord of heaven, and nothing is too hard for Him (Gen. 18:14). This God, whom special does not even begin to describe, condescends to listen to us pray and that truly is special.