James 5:12-20: in context

James closes his letter with counsel about prayer for every season: let the suffering pray, the cheerful sing, the sick call for the elders to pray over them. And he makes a striking claim about prayer's effect: the earnest prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much. To prove it, he points not to a superhuman figure but to Elijah: Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed that it might not rain, and it did not rain for three and a half years; then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain. An ordinary man's prayer held back and released the heavens.

James wants us to grasp that prayer is effective, and that God works through the prayers of ordinary people. His proof is deliberately chosen: Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He does not point to prayer as the privilege of spiritual giants, but to a man of the same frailties as we have, whose earnest prayer God honored with great effect. The point is not that Elijah was extraordinary but that he was ordinary, a man like us, and that God worked through his prayer. If God worked so through the prayer of a man with a nature like ours, then prayer is not the reserve of the exceptional; it is effective, and God works through the prayers of ordinary believers like us. This is meant to encourage us to pray, expecting God to act. We can doubt whether our prayers accomplish anything, feeling that we are too ordinary, our faith too small, our prayers too weak to matter. James answers that the earnest prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much, and that Elijah, whose prayer moved the heavens, was a man just like us. Our ordinariness is no barrier; God works through the prayers of ordinary people, and our prayers, earnest and offered in faith, accomplish more than we know. This should move us to pray, and to pray expecting God to work, rather than treating prayer as a formality that changes nothing. Jesus taught that we ought always to pray and not lose heart; and the reason is that prayer is effective, that God hears and acts. This searches whether we truly pray, and whether we pray expecting God to work. Do we neglect prayer, doubting it accomplishes anything, feeling too ordinary for our prayers to matter? James points us to Elijah, a man like us, whose prayer God honored, and assures us that the earnest prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much. We are ordinary, as Elijah was; and God works through the prayers of ordinary people. This calls us to pray earnestly and to pray expecting God to act, trusting that our prayers, though we are ordinary, accomplish much in the hands of the God who hears them.

Do I neglect prayer or offer it as a formality, doubting that my prayers accomplish anything because I feel too ordinary for them to matter, and can James's assurance that the earnest prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much, proved by Elijah, a man with a nature like ours whose prayer moved the heavens, move me to pray earnestly and expectantly, trusting that God works through the prayers of ordinary people like me?