Book Excerpt

"Arise and Eat "

One of the unfortunate things about being a Christian is that sometimes you're made to feel certain emotions are not acceptable. If you're a naturally joyful, happy, peaceful person, that's spiritual. Well, what if you're not any of these things? Does this mean you're not spiritual?

Elijah, that great Old Testament prophet, reached a point during his ministry where he wanted to die (I Kings 19:4). Jonah reached a point where he wanted to die (Jonah 4:3). Paul reached a point where he wanted to die (2 Corinthians 1:8).

This tells me something: that you can love God along with the best of them and still have a setback in your life so complete that all desire for living is completely removed from you.

There are those who say it is wrong for a Christian to feel depressed, but I think that opinion is irrelevant. Look, if you're so emotionally beat up that you're actually asking for death, no amount of people telling you it's wrong to feel that way will change anything.

In fact, the more you are told it's wrong to feel this way, the worse you're going to feel. Now, in addition to being in despair, you'll also feel that you're letting down the Lord, your brothers and sisters, and the rest of the universe. The more people tell you how you should feel, the more your pit just gets deeper and deeper.

I believe I can show you a way out of that pit. I want to share with you how our Great God of Love ministered to Elijah in his own time of utter despair.

It Was One Of Those Days

In the eighteenth chapter of 1st Kings, Elijah was probably at the most powerful point in his life. He had just had a head to head confrontation with wicked King Ahab of Israel concerning his pagan prophets of Baal. In a contest with Elijah, King Ahab's prophets sang, shouted, danced and afflicted themselves all day long trying to get their god, Baal, to come and consume their sacrifice with fire. It didn't happen.

But, when Elijah built his altar and even drenched it with water, the Lord God of Israel triumphantly came down and consumed with fire his sacrifice. In that emotional high point, the people were at a fever pitch and fell upon the prophets of Baal, slaying them all. What an incredible day of power!

King Ahab gave the bad news of the days' events to his even more wicked wife, Queen Jezebel. Together these two had tried to exterminate all the true prophets of the living God from the land simply because they didn't like what they were saying. In response to this unexpected defeat, Queen Jezebel sent the following message to Elijah:

"So may the gods do to me and even more if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time."

In other words, Jezebel was declaring, "Elijah, you've got about 24 hours to live." What a startling change of events! In less than twenty four hours Elija's pinnacle of victory was turned into a death sentence.

Regardless of how we think it should be, here's how life really is: we can have our best day ever in Jesus Christ and the next day have our worst. I'm so glad to know we have a good and powerful God Who ministers to us in the real rough and tumble of life. Many times we make our own reality absolutely miserable because we attempt to live on the basis of theory. Our theories usually deny the existence of real problems or they offer some quick prayer-and-confession-fix.

As a result, when trouble comes knocking on our door, we don't know how to deal with it because we assume, if we're living as good Christians, we theoretically should not be in trouble. The Apostle Peter is a classic case in point of how your best day can become your worst day in the blink of an eye.

Remember when Peter declared, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."? Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father Who is in heaven' (Matthew 16:16-17). Now drop down a few lines in your Bible to where Jesus told His disciples He was going to Jerusalem and there He would die.

Peter responded by crying out "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You." Jesus then declared to "blessed" Peter, "Get behind me, Satan' (Verses 21-23). Peter went from being commended by Jesus to being rebuked by Jesus for being in league with the Devil, all in the space of a few short lines.

That's the way it happened to Peter and sometimes that's the way life happens to us. One moment we can be on the mountain top, thanking God for all His blessings. Then, in a flash, life can turn on us so badly that we are unable to see any blessing or reason for living at all.

There are so many ways this can happen to us. First of all, of course, we have an enemy, the Devil. You better believe he'll try his worst to work you over and, oddly enough, it's often on the heels of some big breakthrough or blessing that we are the most vulnerable to his evil attacks.

Perhaps we're riding high on a big victory and we let our guard down. Maybe we're becoming puffed up and the blessing we just received needs to be met with a lesson in humility. Sometimes it's the mercy of God that sticks out the Almighty Foot sending us sprawling into next week, so we can once more walk humbly and be directed back to Jesus.

Here's Elijah, absolutely thrilled with this fantastic victory over the prophets of Baal, and Jezebel says, by this time tomorrow she will have him killed. I'm sure some people would say, "After what Elijah just witnessed, he'll just shake this threat right off." Right? Wrong.

Do you recall what James wrote in the fifth chapter of his letter? He said, "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours" (verse 17). In other words, Elijah was a regular person. He wasn't some super-saint, always walking three feet off the ground. I believe the sooner we give up this idea of super-saints, the better off we are going to be. Regardless of what you think Elijah should have done, the Scripture says when he heard about Jezebel's vow, "He was afraid and arose and ran for his life" (I Kings 19:3).