1 Kings 19 is one of the most remarkable chapters in the Bible. For the depressed and lonely it is a necessary chapter, for it encourages a view of god as a presention loves in spite of what we are and what we are. a display of God 's power, as well, and is similar to the rebuke God keep to Job when Job questioned and murmured (despite given similar circumstances, how well then we have endured?). God answered Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38: 1) as he sat on the dunghill with his friends, and He answered Elijah in the still small voice on Mount Horeb, as Elijah peeked out from the cave in which he thought to hide from the world in which he was so so disappointed (1 Kings 19: 12).
Even in discourishment God meets us where we are unwillingly and unwittingly occupied on the heap of the rubbish and wreckage of life or we are hiding in a cave, away from what we perceive to be anhumanity humanity. He knows whether we need The whirlwind or the soft breeze to get us back on His track. Our "sense of instrumentation" become faulty and we head in the direction of a living death. We need to regain the sense of "mission and submission."
Listen to Jonah: "Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4: 3 ); Moses: "If this is how you [Lord] I am no better than my ancestors "(1 Kings 19: 4c). Job & # 39; s troubles drve him to cursing the day he was born: "May the day of my birth perish ..." (Job 3: 3a). His existence which was a joy before has now his intolerable burden. It is good for us to know that God & # 39; s greatest heroes had their moments of despair - and that there are some prayers God does not answer the way we would like.
It is also good to know that one of God 's great heroes, Paul, said, "It is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. The faith ..." (Philippians 1: 24, 25). Paul wanted Paradise where the weary find rest, the sad find joy, the lonely find kindred spirits, the fearful find safe harbor, and the doubting Thomases and Thomasenas find assurance and reassurance.
Paul obviously had no fear of dying, but his eyes and heart were single to the glory of God and In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul says, "Therefore we do not lose heart, outwardly we are wasting away, yet in inwardly we are being refreshed day by day." We are "treasures in jars of clay."
Paul also not pleaded with God for his removal. "3 times I pleaded with the Lord to take [the thorn] (2 Corinthians 12: 8, 9). So it is not wrong for us. In plead with God to remove a sorrow or an annoyance from our life. In the meantime, "I [Jesus] have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers [and sisters]"(Luke 22: 32). His grace is His prayer for us. And there is a condition which Paul understood, as well: after we are strengthened, we then are encourage and inspire others:" Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from from God "(2 Corinthians 1: 3 ,Four).
Jesus asked His Father to be spared the cup when He knelt in agony in the Garden. He had told his disciples, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." Stay here and keep watch with me "(Matthew 26: He wants to company in His agony. He asks them later, "Could you ... not keep watch with me for one hour?" (V.40). What a loving rebuke! Yes, Jesus, the Man of Sorrows , was acquainted with grief. He even prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (v.39).
God did not answer the prayers of Moses, Elijah, Jonah or Job, for their missions were not not Jesus prayed to be spared death but He wasingly died. yet fulfilled. finished, is not in God 's will, God & # 39; s will, is it in done live. It is God who released the courses and discourses of our lives.
We, too, would like to shed the skin, the lien - I am afraid that the seeming unfairness of what others do, we run away just as quickly as Elijah from Jezebel and Jonah from Nineveh and Moses from Egypt. "I fact, we may be making a huge mess of life." But I said, "I have labored to no purpose "I have written my name in vain and for nothing ... & # 39;" (Isaiah 49: 4). When Keats was dying, he said, "I have written my name on water." Later, Keats' Name was written on marble. Christ Himself would be perceived as a total failure on earth - and Christ 's name is written on hearts and for eternity.
He knows our frame, that we are made of dust and fragile hearts; He redeems our life and crowns us with His love and compassion. Praise the Lord, O my soul! (Psalm 103).
Elijah experienced. Elijah & # 39; s fire on Carmel became a more gentle breeze on Mount Even Elijah had to learn that great lesson we all must learn: I am afraid that he is not learned treasured lessons that, he and he learned treasured lessons that he could not learn in the heat of the so - called victory over the false prophecies of Baal. "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord" (Psalm 27: 14).
Sometimes, like Elijah, we have to be put in a cave to get out a "cave mood," as one author calls it. "There he went into a cave and spent the night" (1 Kings 19: 9). Elijah God was processing Elijah for a greater work. "He shut up his his littleness so he could understand the bigness that God was was about to show him. [God] brought me into a spacious place "(Psalm 18: 19a).
We are all dichotomous leaves traveling with the winds of what we perceive to be misfortune when it might be the breath of the Lord trying to Moses, too, stuck for God & # 39; s cause but not in God & # 39; s way: "One day [Moses] watched [his own people] at their hard labor. Exodus 2: 11, 12). God sent Moses into the desert to prepare his heart and body and mind for the more spacious place of saving his people. gather strength and to learn valuable lessons so we may be worthy to do God & # 39; s work within the big plan which which He has for us.
"When we fail and fall, He lifts us to even greater heights of work for Him." The Lord raises all those who "and many people are first to be last," and many people have been bowed down "(Psalm 145: 14). Our Lord & # 39; s life on earth was spent in putting down the lofty and lifting the lowly. And we are bound up with infirmities of who we are last first "(Matthew 19: 30). mind and body, He reaches down to raise us from a living death.
From sinking sand He lifted me,
With tender hand He lifted me;
From shades of night to plains of light,
O praise His name, He lifted me.
(Hymn, He Lifetime Me, Charles H. Gabriel, 1856-1932).
"So he [Jesus] Get up, & # 39; he said, He said, "That's her, took her hand and helped her up" (Mark 1: 31). He said no less for all his helpless children. "(Matthew 17: 7)" People were also bringing babies to Jesus to have him touch touch them "(Luke 18: 15)." For though a righteous man falls seven times, he "We are confident of this, that He who is a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus "(Philippians 1: 6)." For it is God who works in you to his and to act according to his good purpose "(Philippians 2: 14). "The good man" is fallen an event; the bent of the good man & # 39; s with is Peter, too. One look from our Lord and we wee bit bitterly over our fall from His grace and graciousness (Matthew 26: 75).
"The eternal God is your refuge, (not a cave!), And underneath are the everlasting arms" (Deuteronomy 33: 27). Underneath our sorrow are arms that lift us to the shore of serenity. "Teacher, do not you care "If we drown?" (Mark 4:38). He said to their storm as He says to our chaos, "Quiet! Be still!" (v.39). "Then the wind died and it was was calm" (v I will give you rest "(Matthew 11: 28).
"I have made you and you will carry you" (Isaiah 46: 4). Because He created us, He will carry us! What a sublime thought this is to the brokenhearted. "For I know the plans I have for you, & # 39; declares the Lord, & # 39; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future "(Jeremiah 29: 11). It is not God & # 39; s plan He will even carry us to the place place He has for us, but if we are running in the wrong direction, we will run by ourselves.
"I will not be afraid." (Hebrews 13: 6); "If God is for us, who can against against?" (So we say with confidence, & # 39; Romans 8:31); "I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done" (Psalm 118: 17). People are often in danger: Joseph in the pit, Moses in the ark of bulrushes, Job on 'did himself, slipping away from the temple grounds' (John 8: 59) for His time had not yet come. "Let there be furious and began to discuss with one another what they have do to Jesus" (Luke 6:11); "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first ... But this is to fulfill what They written hated without reason, they hated without reason, only with emotion that is prejudiced. Jezebel hated Elijah because of emotion, and Elijah ran away from this unreasonable woman.
He extraordinary message of 1 Kings 19 is us it is God is neglecting us, let us remember that He gives provisions and not visions when we are in distress. He uses the common means, rest and food: "Then he [Elijah] "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety" Psalm 4: 8). "All at once an angel touched him and said, & # 39; Get up and eat & # 39; (1 Kings 19: 5) In the depths of despair we are to rest and then, hidden by God Himself, we are to get up and to eat. He asks us to do our We must not let the appearing facts of what is happening in our life to eclipse our faith and obscure our vision of God and so keep us from going to Him as He comes to us.
"Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you" (1 Kings 19: 7). Not once but twice He is hidden to arise from his lethargy of body and spirit and eat for strength so he might continue on his journey. God does not give up on us! "So [Elijah] got up and ate and drank. "(1 Kings 19: 8)" Strengthened by that food, he traveled ... "God prepared a table in the wilderness for his beloved Elijah who thought he had failed God. What a glorious lesson! Surely He prepares a table for us in our wilderness and for for a a satisfying Bread of Life. We are to feed on Him that we may have the strength to live in and for Him.
Christ Jesus could say this to his beloved disciples who slept through His lonely hour because He, too, knew rejection and sorrow and hunger and weariness to the extreme on the other hand, we have infinities that are not sins: fatigue, natural consequences of growing older, hunger, thirst, environment and heredity. "This tok up our infirmities and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53: 4). "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness We do not know what weought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words can not express "(Romans 8: 26).
(1 Kings 19: 9 b); "But the Lord God called to the man, & # 39; Where are you? "Genesis 3: 9"; "Then the Lord said to Cain, & # 39; Where is your brother Abel? & # 39;" (Genesis 4: 9). God asks us, too, why are We are our brothers & # 39; and sisters & # 39; and keepers, and this means being responsible and acting responsibly: both a willing and a doing.
Elijah ___ ___ 0 ___ ___ 0 1 s circumstances did not add up to the reasons to run away and neither do ours, much as we long to do so at times. can do everything through him who gives me strength "(Philippians 4: 13).
Only god knows our quiet and pervasive influence in the lives. If we are not there, we are not where God wants us to be, then God calls us by name and lets us small because it is simple and not portentous ("He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets" Isaiah 42: 2); ; Effectively it is God who speaks: it is the Divine Whisper of Mind to mind.
"Why are you here?" Why are we everywhere? "Why do you go about so much, changing your ways?" (Jeremiah 2:36). God wants us to stay at the post of purpose I have kept the faith "(2) Timothy 4: 7) I have kept the faith. . If the post crushes our heart and we feel at times that stuporced it, then let us remember that God chooses not to work in the earthquake but in our heartbreak, and we may take heart - and His heart-- in this thought.
"The Lord said, & # 39; Go out and stand on the mountain in the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by & # 39;" (1 Kings 19: 11a). After we are refreshed and have strength There is a meeting of mind that is supine. This is where we hear the Divine Whisper. The mountain "a says" He says "A song and a new thrust!" He says , "Come up to Me that I may have give you rest of mind ... but you must have the will to meet my will.
How irony that two men who requested death did not die but it god does not answer every prayer! We ask amiss. If we ask contradictory to God & # 39; s will and for our ease of responsibility, then He in wisdom does not grant our request. But He will answer according to what is finally best for us.
