In looking at the lives of various biblical people there are many things that we can find to be of great benefit to us personally if we apply the principles.
Whether we realise it or not, God is continually maturing us and taking us through life for better things. For the Christian who genuinely yields the life to God, that one should find that their heart’s desires originated in God, and that they have within themselves a few plans along the lines of their calling. In Proverbs 16:1 scripture says: “To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue.” Philippians 1:6 says that “being confident of this one thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Also in Hebrews 12:1-2 we find that we are to concentrate on the life that we are called to and “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher (or perfector) of our faith.”
In a study of the life of Elijah we can see the obvious things that he did when he came on to the scene in I Kings 17. He was miraculously fed by ravens in a lonely spot, he was the channel of a miracle for a widow and her son during a famine, and then restored the child to life when he died. He then went on to be God’s man of power for the nation and defeat the prophets of Baal to turn the nation of Israel back to God.
This life of Elijah that is seen was really produced by a life of preparation that is unseen, not so much as one like a student going to bible college beforehand, but that of a preparation that is continual and one that is productive “along the way”. Just as an iceberg has a certain amount of it above water level (approx. one seventh) there is really the mainstay of it that is not seen underneath in the cold dark waters of a less desirable environment. Yet whilst an iceberg may. make a dramatically beautiful scene for some antarctic explorer to photograph, it is the substance below that holds it steady in the variable conditions of the icy wastes of those regions where the scene can change from a becalmed stately situation to a raging blizzard within a short period of time. In recent times the story of the Titanic has held predominance in the movie world, and we should remember that it was not the obvious jagged peak of that iceberg that caused the ship to sink, but it was that underlying substance that nothing could break, that did it.
In our lives it is imperative that we recognize that our life is hid with Christ in God as Colossians 3:3 says, from where we have our inner life stabilised to be able to withstand any titanic situation.
Whilst I’m writing here for the Christian, it is to be realised that God often gives us example lives of purpose to encourage us, and we are ourselves also to be examples to the non-Christian. God builds believe-ability in people’s lives to show us that He will take us onwards and complete things as much as we allow Him to. He doesn’t ask folk to just get a ticket to heaven and do nothing for the rest of life till Jesus’ returns. He doesn’t make us robots either, as we all have a destination and purpose if we will be open to God and make the right responses.
Most preachers emphasise the Great Commission and tell folks to go into all the world and do some great spiritual stuff that sounds really impressive, which may be right. But it’s probably better to start where you are and work on things from there. God mentions in James 5 that Elijah was a man of like nature as ourselves with his various hopes, a calling, some training perhaps, and yes, he was scared of a woman.
But nonetheless he was one who made progress and gradually rose to achieve much.
The particular aspect of your personal calling often means preparation, and under God ,will generally be profitable along the way. Wise parents train their children to do housework , which may at times be “play” but is more often a chore to them. To parents, something profitable is done even if it’s not perfect. But later on the children will do their own housework, and plenty of it.
Returning to our iceberg example, we shall consider something of the sub-surface preparation of Elijah that readied him for things that he never expected to come, but in which his faith caused him to be the victor over.
While we may consider this example life let us look for the principle rather than try and have identical experience to prove our spirituality.
If you are not familiar with the record of Elijah it would be most worthwhile reading I Kings 17:2.
Elijah started out with a mission to one king Ahab — a good start, reaching someone whom he probably felt was important to himself, and God, and the nation. But for all of his great preaching the king made no response. It seemed that nothing was achieved. But Elijah was in the ministry — big deal.
Next, we find that God sends him to the brook Cherith, where we find the “above surface” story of the ravens feeding him. The sub-surface story is one of Elijah having plenty of time to reflect on his calling, check out the scriptures, have worship times and pray for it not to rain for some years. He didn’t just sit around and “wait for Jesus to come”. It was time for personal changes on the inner man; patience, obedience, and developing faith and trust in God rather than in his personal ability or church program.
After the brook dried up Elijah is sent to… Oh no, some out of the way place. God must be kidding. But accepting God’s direction he went to Zarepath — out of bounds, and to a widow. Here he learns to apply what he learnt previously, and as God fed him, so he now feeds others, and the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil did not fail . He became a life passer-on-er. He learnt to operate a few things in the realm of faith confession and prophecy.
He was not proving God, rather God was proving him. He was not ministering to whom he originally set out to, but at least he got a couple of people saved and his prophecy came true. But sadly things went wrong and the boy died. All this ministry in some little backwoods church and the thing dies down. But despite all the criticism, he picks up that seemingly dead one and goes into the hidden place, up in the loft. He prayed three times, and he would have prayed seventy times seven if he’d had to, but God was good and he had a resurrection. Well this is something. What a relief. With no big accolade from any crowd in this region or no great voice from heaven Elijah may have thought that this was all there was to it, and that all he had to do now was to just look after this miracle flock for God -nice and cushy. But he was most likely still praying solidly that there would be no rain.
For giving us something to think about it may be even our portion in life that we realise that we’ve come along a bit in life and struggled through and responded to the difficult things in ‘God and seen some resurrection in a ministry. But primarily it is in private prayer that great things happen.
The sub-surface message here is that in God
1. Things take time… we find God for ourselves, not in the group, or Church.
2. God proves us, tests us, puts us under pressure, turns us from self dependency to Christ dependency.
3. God proves himself to us He comes through. His word prevails. Luke 1:37
This life of Elijah’s was not just preparation. Some good things happened along the way. And now it seems that he’s done his bit, he’s in the wind down stage, not much is happening, but he doesn’t mind. At least he’s in tune with God and doesn’t run after helping lots of folks. He had a resurrection, but he had recognition from God himself. We could leave it there, but there is more as time passes and it’s on to… would you believe it, back to the original objective as we move on to chapter 18 and facing king Ahab. But how will he handle this situation ?
We now find that Elijah sends Obadiah to the king Ahab. Elijah had learnt to control the power that was given to him by God, not push his ministry on to people. So he gained the respect of Obadiah who obeyed him. In chapter 18 verse 17 when Ahab met Elijah it is Elijah who calls the shots in the battle for the minds of the nation of Israel. He set up the altars of sacrifice, the prophets of Baal do their thing, and eventually Elijah calls down fire on the altar. Miraculous!
Elijah went through a lot of preparation and was now able to run a big campaign in which the nation was resurrected from spiritual death under Baal. That is resurrection.
He had learnt to harness the power of God at his disposal, and take the preparation in private before he performed in public.
We need to learn to accept preparation, even a holiday… well, that is scriptural. I’ve observed that most ministry starts small, but comes into it’s own much later; but then it’s much bigger and more effective. We start out in our ministry, our calling, and think of our ministry for God but we may have to do some dying to our self, our ambition, the glamour, and acclaim. After all it is His ministry. If there has been a death, then when a resurrection comes that is something better – God’s life is the only thing that really counts for something to be of eternal value in any ministry. I’ve found that when we live for someone else then we live better, especially when it is for the Lord. Romans 11:18 says that it is “from him ,through him, and to him.” We only ever have any real ministry if He gives it to us, but then we will handle it carefully, wisely, and profitably — His ministry. You can make commitment to that, with all that is entailed in the trials, tests, delays, and time.
The game of cricket
Some other vital aspects of the story should be considered from a different viewpoint, but firstly I will relate something of the famous game of cricket before we proceed.
At the beginning of the year 2000 the test match player in the Australian team (Justin Langer) had been going for many hours and was approaching his century. I happened to be relaxing for a moment at about 4 pm on the day and watching the match on TV. He was on 95 runs and after a few minutes reached 98, but it took another 25 minutes to reach 100. Well he got his standing ovation and I thought that as usual after reaching that goal the concentration drops off a little and he would go out within the next 10 or so runs, so I went out to do some other chores. Next day, at about noon I came in for lunch and tuned in again to see what the score was, and found that he was still in and was going for 200. Well he made it, and went on to reach some 229 or so before being dismissed. He hadn’t lost his cool even on the hot wicket, and so has gone into the record books — the first man in the new century to score not just a century, but a double century plus. How does this relate to Elijah? Let us see.
Someone once said If you think training is expensive, consider ignorance. Well it should be realised that Elijah went through quite a training preparation for what he had to handle in both the mental as well as the physical realms. Although not much is said about his physical strength, we must recall that he lived through drought conditions – in remote situations.
His preparation was not done in the main city of Jerusalem, or even in the next important towns like Hebron or Bethel or… He first went outside the circle to the east of Jordan, then far west to Sidon at the beach to a widow, a heathen… how low can you get? I mean, this is not bible school. Or is it?
Would your preparation mean that you wash feet, clean the church toilets? — Well that’s one place that people need to come away from feeling relieved and refreshed. But all this training led up to the next step for Elijah – The Big one. This assignment involved dealing with 400 Satanic emissaries, the enemy, the prophets of Baal. And as scripture tells, he killed them, himself. What strength, and from a prophet, not even a warrior as one of David’s mighty men. It was a great victory. He had delivered Israel.
Next, Elijah prays for rain and has the strength (in the Spirit of God) to run some 20 miles to beat the chariot of Ahab into town. He ran on revelation. He had life and ability from God’s Spirit.
That’s a lot of mental and physical stamina, but actually it was his high level of training and contact with God in the previous three or so years that helped. But we do run low on energy at times and get spiritually drained.
Elijah had got his 100 runs on the board so to speak and was then at a critical point. He had to keep his concentration up. It was directly following this victory that then comes the (almost) personification of Satan himself through the one controlling the king, his queen, the wicked Jezebel with her very real threat of death to Elijah. He ran for his life a day’s journey to quit. What happened to his concentration? Couldn’t he go on and get more runs on the board. Had he really run out of stamina?
It is here that we consider what is probably the most vital part of anyone’s ministry.
God knows that there is more that we can do when we rely on Him, and so Elijah is sent some food, bread and water, by an angel. We need a heavenly life source to carry us on through the next stage of our calling. We require The Word. Elijah travelled some 130 miles (180 km) for 40 days and nights. He was told twice to make an effort to eat the food because his journey was so long. And we also should absorb the Word before going into more important things. While we will miss some of-the story here, we will go on to find that his next assignment was to anoint three men for certain tasks. This is moving into the 200 runs mark. Are we in such a state of preparedness to bring about an anointing that will be perpetuated in some situation? Will we be getting our 200?
In review, we notice that the first mission and it’s preparation is re-active, to bring correction to a sinful situation and people. But the second mission and its preparation is pro-active, to re-create and set up a new situation to take people on through the leadership of Elisha. The first was negative, the second was positive.
In the concluding portion of Elijah’s story we find a similar attitude of mind and obedience to God’s voice as when he began (good foundations). Although he thought he had to go right to the top and preach, he had to learn to sometimes go outside the normally accepted areas of ministry. That may be humiliating for some people. And now… in a similar vein of thought we find that he had a physically downward journey from the town of Gigal in the north above sea level, down through the various villages to cross Jordan, way below sea level. This was not a journey to a high priestly court in the plateau of Jerusalem, but apparently the opposite, again to a region of death (to self) as the name Jordan means in Hebrew. Then the chariot took him up.
He was prepared to pass on his ministry to someone else who had exhibited similar determinational characteristics. As was the custom and principle in Old Testament times, the firstborn son of a father received a double portion of blessing, so too did Elisha find such to be his case for he performed twice as many miracles as Elijah.
Whilst we read in the New Testament of the prophet John the Baptist having the spirit and power of Elijah to be the one who ushered in the Lord Jesus Christ, we see a similar attitude in John who said that He must increase, and I must decrease, willing to lose his ministry to usher in another. Jesus’ call in Luke 9:24b is whoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. It is important that we try and look beyond trying to have some great power ministry of Elijah or some similar person. Jesus never said to follow any of the Old Testament greats and have their spirit but he told his disciples to tarry in Jerusalem to receive the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament, as great as things seemed, there were limits. Elijah had 7 miracles, Elisha 14. But for the New Testament folks the Holy Spirit has no limits. We can expect more if we are to follow the Lord Jesus and let His mind be in us… and take upon ourselves the attitude of a servant, even though we are sons.
As Jesus considered it of such high importance to pass on his ministry and to pray as he did in John chapter 17, and for every Christian to be endued with the power of the Holy Spirit, we also should hold such in due respect; and we should also be aware of the importance of being able to be in such a state to pass on something of the life of Christ to ones that follow.
Lastly, even though seemingly as an adjunct in this paper, we notice that while the record is primarily about Elijah, he felt that he was alone in it all. Yet there were 7,000 other folks who stayed true to God and there were also a couple of other unnamed prophets threaded throughout the text, each having a vital place and purpose. Sometimes our life may seem lonely, but our reliance is to be solidly in God. Better still, if we can get heaps of support with other Christians let us do so. I’m not saying that folks should live a lonely life for that would be contrary to scripture, but that as we have looked at this single example life, we should see that God prepares us as an individual even though there are others around us.
The application for us at whatever stage we are in is to realise that as James 5 says, Elijah was a man with like make up as us, yet, when yielded to God achieved phenomenally. And so James does encourage us to be earnest in prayer and life but with greater commitment and realising that available to us is not just the spirit of Elijah, but the Holy Spirit from God Himself. He is our support, our drive, and that we have some marvellous things ahead and should aim to pass on the life of Christ Jesus to others.
Let us make the most of every situation, however small or large. There will be some really encouraging rewards along the way, just as a cricket player gets to 50, then a century. But also aim for 200, that realm where you have opportunity to touch God and hear His quiet voice after the big storm and wind have passed, and live in pro-action to pass your mantle of ministry to the following generation. Jesus passed to us his holy spirit. So let us pass on as pure a life as is fitting that there be no genetic defect in those who take up that mantle of the nature of the things that God has done in our life.
This page Copyright © 2000 Ross Knight. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://peterwade.com/.
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