Elijah’s heart for God’s people is soaked in the love for displaying God’s great glory. Truly he was a man devoted to the calling of God on his life. As a prophet of the God most high, he had to forsake all comfort. The same seems pretty universal for all of God’s chosen prophets. They are spoken a call by God that they are to carry forth with blind faith, neither resting in the comforts of their home land or in the routine of their everyday lives. Indeed they are a people sojourning in a foreign land who know not where their next meal or bed will be. Instead they puth their unwavering trust and faith in God’s call on their lives. They trust that what God has apportioned for them to do, he will do. God alone gives strength when we have none. Even the comfort they possessed was not their own; it was a gift from God sustained by Him and Him alone.
We see this incredible faith that God has gifted Elijah with in beautiful dance as he confronts Ahab and the Baal and Asherah worshippers in 1st Kings. Remember that the words Elijah spoke could have been considered treasonous to the king and left him without a heartbeat. But Elijah’s faith in God’s plan and purpose was unshaking:
“When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “is it you, you troubler of Israel?” And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals”…And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” (1st Kings 18:17-18, 21)
Then comes the famous account of God’s revelation to the people. It is only by God’s grace that he continues to reveal himself to an ever stubborn and wholly wayward people:
“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that i am your servant, and that i have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord are God, and that you ahve turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.” (1st Kings 18:36b-39)
The incredible trust and faith of Elijah in God’s purpose brought about a moment of Glory in God’s name. It returned a wayward people back to their God whom they were created to display as the only true and glorious God. Elijah’s faith recalled a nation from the worship of a false God to the exalting of the true Lord. How we might desire the same faith and courage of Elijah in call God has placed upon all of our lives to display him as the most glorious thing ever in life. May we, in the same spirit of faith, call forth the nations to wholly rely on the sovereignty and grace of the Lord. May we find the strength to be an examle of God’s grace as we are ever turned from our old self into the new creation that God has called us to become. How sweet are the stories of God’s faithful in History. May we be spoken of as having the same faith long after we are seated in Heaven crying aloud with all the angels, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty” (Revelation 4:8). Amen.
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