Notes: Break

This post was taken from an older blog of mine but has found its way into my thoughts again and indeed into my present reality. See Experience: Break

You know that story where God speaks to Elijah, after the wind, earthquake and fire shenanigans, through a quiet whisper? Well Christians always tell that story and talk about God doesn't just always work in the obvious but quite often some of the most important things He does can go unnoticed. Have you ever stopped to look into why God is speaking to Elijah in this verse or what Elijah had done before all this? (1 Kings 19)

Track back to 18, during the drought Elijah has just come out of hiding to confront the false prophets and King Ahab the rottenest king ever who all worshiped Baal. After Elijah asks God proves Himself and brings rain clouds, possibly two of the biggest success's of Elijah life. Now after confronting the nation and the king and after defeating 450 prophets of Baal and discovering that there were actually more prophets faithful to God he suddenly becomes afraid of one lady, the queen, and flees for his life only to ask God to "Take my life". Now he obviously would risk his life, as he did, for God and truth and after all that happened he would have defiantly hade faith in God to provide for him yet he ran. Why would a man with faith in God and in himself run?

I've always thought and discovered from experience that at times where I'm worried about something is usually because either I've lost faith in God or in myself. But now I think there come times where you just loose track of reality; stress and busyness can overwhelm us and we just have to run.

I'm also reminded so much of all the things that need doing, people that need helping and so on to the point where I feel guilty for stopping. When Elijah fled he ended up clearing his mind as I sometimes do by taking a walk. Now my walks last maybe an hour but Elijah's went on for 40 days and took him from Beersheba to Mount Sinai, that's about 300 miles. Now I know life's more up beat nowadays but that's a lot of thinking time, all because an angel of the Lord told him to. And all this just to be asked by God, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" was God taking the mick? All that travelling and not to mention being frightened like hell by winds, earthquakes and fires whilst you're on the top of a mountain just to make it worse.

Well after Elijah sums up the last 40 days of thoughts into a few sentences; how he's all alone and feeling sorry for himself God tells him a few good people he need's to appoint as kings and another as his successor (did I mention this was just after the death threat on Elijah, talk about rubbing it in.). So what have we learnt? I think that even (especially) in the successful times of our life we need to take time out to realise that God is there and so are other Christians, that actually if we disappeared of the face of the earth things would continue, the church would live on. The fact is we're small, really small, and we shouldn't get our sense of self worth by how much good we do. Of course we should do as much as we can and enjoy doing it but we need to draw our sense of worth from God and the simple fact that He loves us no matter what. Next time you take a Sabbath be it Sunday or a 5 minute break just remember that God loves you for who you are not what you do. Only then and after do you start to enjoy Christianity more. Because doing good can't even be a duty it has to be what we want to do.
- blog.myspace.com/esemaj