Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there while he went on a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life. (1 Kings 19.3–4)
I find this experience of Elijah’s deeply evocative and tremendously challenging.
This man had just called fire down from heaven. This man had prayed, and it didn’t rain for three years. This man ran faster than the king’s chariots.
God was obviously with him. God answered his prayers. God gave him supernatural power.
We would say he was blessed; he was powerful, and he was successful. He had influence. He had power. He had the respect and fear of the king.
And yet, after his most significant victory, he was discouraged, depressed and defeated...
If this great prophet experienced such negativity in his life — don’t you think we might, too?
Maybe we can learn something to help us in our current struggles from his experience.
Perhaps we might ponder these: Yesterday’s victories are insufficient for today’s battles.
Today’s troubles have to be fought and solved today. Elijah had been mightily used by God…. yesterday.
But today is another day.
Let’s look at a bit of context.
When we read about Elijah at the start of 1 Kings 19, we see Jezebel had just sent word that she would kill him, so he was running for his life.
Now, Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal wit
h me, be it ever so severely if by this time tomorrow, I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Elijah was afraid and ran for his life
It says he fled into the wilderness, sat under a juniper tree and said in despair in I Kings 19:4:
“I have had enough.”
Have any of you ever felt the same? I know I have. It’s a common experience for us to come to the end of our tether and feel like we can’t go on.
Elijah goes to sleep without wanting to wake up the next day. Does that feel familiar?
But an angel of the Lord came to Elijah and ministered to him until he was strong enough to go up to Mount Horeb.
Mount Horeb is where God spoke to Moses and changed his life forever — where God came and made a covenant with them.
This is very significant in understanding what Elijah was doing.
When Elijah was in the deepest despair of his life and at the lowest point, he ran to Mount Horeb because he wanted to get to the place where God spoke to his people.
Even though Elijah was at this low point of despair, God still had a plan for his life, and if we read further into 1 Kings, we see that the latter part of Elijah’s life was more significant than the former.
Elijah couldn’t see what God had in store for him.
When we are in the cave of depression, anxiety and fear, it closes our eyes to the truth and gives us a distorted view of God’s plan for our life.
That is the view that Elijah had that day.
Perhaps some of us are in that same cave of depression, fear and anxiety.
You wonder how God will ever use you. You wonder if He has forgotten about you. You wonder if you are the only one feeling this way and if God even cares anymore.
Let’s read on a bit further.
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”Then, a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.And after the fire, there came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face, went out, and stood at the mouth of the cave.
You may have given up on yourself, but I want you to know that God hasn’t given up on you.
He still has something for you to do. The first step is to come out of the cave.
And then to experience that still, small voice afresh
My prayer for all of us today is that each one of us has the reassurance that God has not forgotten about us.
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