THINGS ARE NEVER AS THEY SEEM!

How often have we refrained from doing something, or convinced ourselves that the situation was more than we could handle, because we were so preoccupied by what we saw in front of us?

Elijah was such a man. After tremendous victory over the Baal gods, he finds himself cowering under a tree, because of the fire-breathing Jezebel. Certainly a woman you wouldn’t want to trifle with, after slaughtering the prophets of the LORD, yet in proportion to his recent task and victory at the hand of God, his reaction seems disproportionate. He sulks under a tree and prays that the LORD would take his life!

In the next while an angel of the LORD comes and replenishes his strength, and has cooked him some delicious cakes and supplied him with some fresh H2O. He did this not once but twice, in between feeds Elijah sleeps. After the second time he arises and goes in the strength of that food for 40 days and 40 nights.

After this time he encounters God on Horeb the mountain of God. The same mountain where Moses was commissioned to deliver the nation of Israel out of bondage. This mountain was a place of revelation, and commissioning.

It was at this mountain where both men would pour out their fears to the LORD, and it was the same place where God would speak to them, give them strategy,and empower them for the role that would in the natural seem absurd. It was a place where they were given heavenly perspective.

I don’t think the objective of the passage is for us to create a theology of angels being able to cook; however, tempting that may be. The passage is powerful in-so-much as Elijah, when he came to the end of himself, exhausted from life’s demands, could only find restoration in the solitude of communion with God. He had to come away and readjust his perspective; he needed to tune into heaven; to heavens frequency. Once he did he could then go on to accomplish what God had purposed for him, refreshed, equipped and strengthened (1Kings 19).

Where is the place that you go to when everything has become too much? We need to be intentional in our spending time away from doing; to just being; listening, allowing heaven to realign our thinking and give us refreshment and new strategies to move forward in what God has called us to do.

Find a place, mark it, protect it jealously, go there regularly, and linger there, till God releases you to move.