a man like Elijah

I just recently finished a book by Michael Catt, who is the pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA. The book is The Power of Persistance, and deals with the matter of prayer. I highly recommend this book, and am grateful for what it is doing in my life right now.
There were a number of lines and phrases that really spoke to me in this book, but one in particular has captured my thoughts. Catt writes about Elijah and his prayer life, and he makes this statement: “According to James, Elijah was a man just like us. But the question comes: Are we men just like him?”
Am I a man like Elijah? James uses Elijah’s humanity as an encouragement for me to pray like the prophet. However, as I study Elijah I am struck with how unlike him I am. For instance, I am struck by how counter-cultural Elijah was. Ahab, that “toad of a man who sat on the throne of Israel” (see "Pay-Day Someday" by R.G. Lee), had plunged the nation into an almost wholesale idolatry. The whole country it seemed had gone Baal-crazy. When you move from I Kings 16 to chapter 17, where we are introduced to Elijah, this hard-nosed, spirit-filled, God-called preacher, the contrast is striking. He stands out from the culture in a way that forces attention to what He says and what He does for God. I am afraid that as a preacher I am so run-of-the-mill, so immersed in my own culture, that I am not all that distinguished among the idol-crazed Israelites of today.
I am also struck by how confident he was. He stands up, and without flinching says, “As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word (17:1).” How is that compared to the speculative guesses and theological musings of most preachers today? I am envious of how Elijah publicly taunts the prophets of Baal at the showdown on Mt. Carmel. When they get no response to their charismatic carnival of prayer, the Bible says, “And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked (18:27).” In our day of ecclesiastical and ecumenical romance, everybody wants to hold hands with the heretics and court the affections of the apostates, but Elijah mocked them publicly.
Elijah may have been a man like me, but I am not sure that I am a man like him. However, the good news is that while I am no Elijah, I know Elijah’s God! My mantle and my ministry may be much smaller than his, but I know that the same God who called him, and upon whom he called is the same God I serve. With that in mind, what God did through Elijah he can still do today. The servants may change, but the Savior does not.