Elijah's prophets of Baal shouted, cut themselves, and performed desperately to force God's response. Nothing happened. The speaker warns against treating prayer like performance, arguing that real power comes from surrendering to the Holy Spirit, not from striving or noise.
Here's a word of caution. Stop praying like the false prophets. It was a spiritual showdown. Elijah challenged the false prophets of Baal and Asherah, saying, you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The God who answers by fire, he is God. To try to get their false gods to respond, the false prophets shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice, but there was no response. No one answered. No one paid attention. They attempted to get a supernatural response to their human efforts. Though not as drastic, we as Christians have our own version of this. We think that we have to beg God to respond as if he's holding back until we shout louder, jump higher, or cry more. But we can't conjure a move of the Spirit by ritual or discomfort for discomfort's sake. Noise does not equal power. Surrender to the Holy Spirit, not striving, yields power.
