Elijah’s Crisis of Faith

1 Kings 19

            What is odd is the timing: Elijah has just won a great victory on Mt. Carmel and the now he is fleeing into the wilderness in despair. On the one level, it makes sense because queen Jezebel has just threatened him with death.  That will rob any victory of its sweetness. On another level, we have to wonder, shouldn’t Elijah—whom the Lord had just delivered from the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah—trust the Lord to deliver him from this threat, too? If only it were that easy!

            It has been my experience that we are often most spiritually vulnerable after a victory, or a blessing. Maybe we let our guard down, relax, and forget that Satan doesn’t stop, that his hatred is relentless. I don’t know exactly. I just know that for me at least a spiritual high is often followed by a spiritual crash.

            Maybe part of it is what we expect from the Lord. Elijah’s experience of the Lord on Mt. Horeb is important. The Lord is not in the powerful wind or the earthquake or the fire. We expect great and mighty wonders, so we don’t hear the gentle whisper. But the Lord’s greatest act is the cross, on which Jesus, who throughout the Gospels has taught at length, has only seven little things to say. The greatest thing that God has ever done was accomplished in relative quiet.

            As I reflect on lifetime of following the Lord, it seems to me that the most spiritually stable times have been those when I have attended to His word the closest. Not in a professional way, which is a constant temptation for a pastor—to assume that preparing to preach and teach and write is the same as devotionally listening for God’s voice. Maybe we should look for fewer Mt. Carmels and more Mt. Horebs, less flash and more still, small voice, less miracle and more of God’s Word…