Sometimes we hear the prayers of others and they sound so good! The words seem to flow, the ideas are full of Biblical truth - it's hard to believe that God would not hear such a well-constructed and beautifully expressed petition!
Then we compare it with our own efforts - the way we stumble over our words and even when that doesn't happen, we never achieve the result that others do. "Surely, God would rather listen to them than to us," we say to ourselves. "My prayers are second class at best."
The Bible has much to say on this subject to correct such notions on our part. Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the publican? The Pharisee stood proudly before God and uttered his fine sounding words, exalting himself. The publican wouldn't look up but simply cried to God for mercy. Who did God hear? It was the publican who went home justified - the Pharisee had only prayed to himself.
Paul reminds the Corinthians that God didn't choose many mighty, wise (in the world's eyes), people of noble birth. Rather it was the foolish, the weak, the base and the despised that He chose, deliberately to shame those who thought they were something when they were nothing before Him.
In our text above, we are told that Elijah was no different to us according to his nature (in this case his feelings and desires) - and yet when he prayed God heard and stopped the rain for over three years, until Elijah prayed again.
What can we take away from these verses? Simply this - God does not hear our prayers because we have certain talents or particular merits that other believers do not have. He is not at all impressed with outward show in prayer - rather He searches the heart. If He sees a heart made righteous in Christ, He reads the yearnings and longings of that heart, however halting and flawed the spoken prayer may be. He hears us because of Jesus' merits and His worthiness and He answers us, not because we have performed a wonderfully eloquent petition, but because we rest on Jesus and our hearts long to see the glory of God.
If we do not pray in a prayer meeting because we believe others do it much better, or because we believe others will ridicule us for our failings in expression, then we have taken our eye off the ball - we are more concerned with how we appear to men than with earnest seeking after God. We have forgotten that 7 simple but sincere, heartfelt words, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner" will be heard and answered by God but what Spurgeon used to call "pretty, pious words" He will often overlook.
Let's allow these passages of Scripture dwell richly in our hearts this week, and serve as an encouragement to us to come before God in prayer and not be kept away by thoughts of our own inadequacy and unworthiness. We are all inadequate and unworthy, but our entrance to heaven was won by Jesus, Who provides everything we need to enter, to be heard and to be answered!