I love Elijah! He’s a man that I would probably be able to
sit down with, share a pizza and maybe even a few stories with. Why? Because
honestly Elijah is a lot like me! He expects more from God’s people than he is
able to give of himself, he focuses on a problem and no the solution and he believes
that God can be maddeningly hard to get! Even God
says that His ways are not our ways and He really means it!
Let’s Read 1
Kings 19:9-15a
Some background on Elijah is that he’s a prophet, living
approximately 1000 B.C. to 700 B.C. He’s probably one of the most interesting
and colorful characters in the Bible, yet his life is filled with turmoil—one day
he’s up emotionally, and the next day he may be down and out. He’s called fire
from Heaven, stopped a drought through prayer and killed all the Baal prophet,
which is why he is on the run from Queen Jezebel. This is where our story
starts: It is this encounter with victory where Elijah is happy to know God. He’s
just killed the Baal prophets, he’s seeing the people of Israel starting to
turn back to their God…THEN…Jezebel hears that her prophets are dead and she
threatens to kill Elijah!
Much like our lives…we all have then encounters with God
where He breaks into our lives with power answering our prayers and wins our
trust by watering the garden of our faith, making it lush and green; then out
of nowhere chaos careens with apparent carelessness through our lives and the
world leaving us shattered. Or an unrelenting darkness descends; maybe an arid
wind we don’t even understand blows across our spiritual landscape, leaving the
crust of our soul cracked and parched. And we cry to God in our confused
anguish and he just seems silent. He seems absent. All God’s saints, if allowed
to live long enough, are led into the lonely, disorienting, weary wilderness.
Unfortunately, while we are there we tend to lament; for example:
- Job: “I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.”
- King David: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of groaning?”
- Jesus on the Cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
In his lesser known book A
Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis wrote: When you are happy, so happy you have
no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon
you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude
and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to
Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you
find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on
the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you
wait, the more emphatic the silence will become…”
However it is in these moments of silence that God may
really be answering our prayers. You see, like Elijah, we often think our problems
are too big for God and then we focus on the chaos and not the still small
voice. God doesn’t always speak in the miraculous—those big TA-DA moments. I
found myself in this position prior to coming to Clarksbury. A year ago, I was
a member of a large six campus church. I felt like I was growing in Christ and
that I was being allowed to use what I had learned in seminary to teach the
kids at church; I was happy.
Suddenly, the very people who introduced me to this church
stopped talking to me. I went to work one day and everything was fine and the
next my friend came to me and said “Let’s just say it’s [our friendship] over.”
The next Sunday, a mutual friend came to me and told me “The reason your
friendship ended is because everyone thinks you are crazy and need
psychological help.” I was heart-broken. I went directly to our minister
because our church had a peacekeeping by-law and I wanted to make use of it. So
I went to peacekeeping, and their celebrate
recovery group; where we’d have discussions about what forgiveness would
look like. However, my “friends” were never required to make an effort.
Eventually the senior pastor’s wife would tell me “Your job teaching children
isn’t as important as the keyboard player…you will need to find a new campus to
attend.”
That was the last time for nearly a year that I went to
church. When I was approached about church and my beliefs, I would say “I believe
God exists, that Christ died and resurrected—I don’t believe there are true
Christians in the world today. So many people are giving lip-service to the
title of Christian.” I had been hurt by people who said they belonged to God.
Chaos, had literally came into my life, turned my spiritual landscape upside
down.
During those 6 months, I approached God. Whether I was
sitting at home crying or at home yelling at God, like Robert Duvall in The Apostle—I was asking
God to give me answers and God was giving me the silent treatment. If you have been
in this place, then you know it takes a lot of effort and time to pray in the
silence; to present requests with prayer and supplication to God. For me, God
brought Christians into my life that would become my closest friends; my life
group, women who would continue to walk with me and wouldn’t allow me to
retreat into my own self-pity. God was teaching me not just through direct instruction
[His Word], but also through hints and subtle provocation.
When I speak of subtle provocation, I am talking about
various phone calls that came from friends asking me to come back to church or
inviting me to church. One such call came from a young woman named, Mary Grace,
“Rachel, I’d love for you to join me at church sometime.” I think I laughed and
made some snide remark. A few weeks later, I got a text from her. I decided “okay,
I’ll go, but I never have to return to church!” Needless to say I found a
community of believers that I am proud to call mine.
Elijah’s story doesn’t end with Jezebel threatening him and
his running away; God made a way to keep Elijah safe and then God appeared in
the silence and even though Elijah continued to focus on the negative, God
invited Elijah to join back in His eternal plan. Just as my story didn’t end with leaving the mega-church and
going through a chaotic time—God was using my time of silence to grow me and
then to invite me back into His eternal plan. I can honestly say I think in the
moments of silence I endured God was saying “Rachel, I want to give you
something better. Different people to grow with, other people to learn from.”
Maybe you feel like God is giving you the silent treatment
on something you want; instead of focusing on the negative and getting angry at
God, I want to encourage you to ask six questions: “Who, what, where, when,
why, and how?”
Then listen—even if it seems that God is being silent.
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