Happy twenty fifteen! Wow. Honestly, I feel that every year comes
and goes quicker and quicker. It must be an aging thing. Anyway, I hope that
you all had a very blessed new years and that you spent it with people that you
love.
Well today, though I went to bed near the proximity of four am due
to “new year’s” “festivities,” I decided to nonetheless wake up at a very
early hour to spend time with my wonderful God.
What would result from just starting, what I thought, was a little
prayer of thanks, that I did not expect to last more than a few minutes, became
an amazing time of seeking and pursuing and yearning for more of God.
It was during this long and blessed time with my Father, that he
placed the book of first Kings on my heart.
Just to digress for a moment, now that I think about it, when I
spend time with God and he places a certain book of the bible or a certain
scripture on my heart, I like to imagine Jesus walking around a huge library
while I patiently wait on a circular rug. Perhaps a red rug. Yes, a red rug
seems nice. He carefully skims the columns of books on the shelves, and
sometimes he even goes unto the huge ladder attached to the massive shelves in
order to reach the books at the very top that nearly reach the ceiling. When
he finds the exact book that he has been looking for, he makes his way towards
me, cracks the book open, and begins to read me the story.
This is how I feel when I pray to God. I wait and I patiently pray
until God finds the right book of the bible or the right scripture or the right
lesson that he wants to read/teach me about and then he gives it to me.
Sometimes it takes a while for him to find the book, but when he finds, the
story or the lesson or the teaching, the time spent with him is always worth
the wait. Which is pretty ironic actually, because that’s kind of what I read
about in first Kings today.
My main focus in this book, were chapters seventeen and eighteen.
Even while I write this, I just think about how good God is for sending this
book to me via the Holy Spirit. Even more so to specifically start at chapter
seventeen. I thought that I was just selecting a random chapter to start at but
the Holy Spirit knew exactly where he was taking me.
What I personally received from these two chapters, was the
incredible commitment to God that Elijah had, specifically when it came to
prayer.
Now, before getting into Elijah and his incredible commitment to
God via prayer, just for some background information and to summarize it as
briefly as possible, Elijah came to this woman’s home because God told him that
the woman would be able to provide him with food and water during the drought.
Even though she said she did not have any food just “a handful of flour in a
jar” and “a little oil in a jug,” it was nowhere near enough to feed Elijah
herself and her son. Elijah told her that that the flour and the oil would not
run out until God brings the rain. And so it was, the flour and the oil did not
run out and they were able to eat every day.
In first Kings Chapter seventeen verses seventeen through
twenty-four, it reads,
“17 Sometime later the son of the woman who owned the house became
ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. 18 She said to
Elijah, ‘What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of
my sin and kill my son?’
19 ‘Give me your son,’ Elijah replied. He took him from her arms,
carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. 20
Then he cried out to the Lord, ‘Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on
this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?’ 21 Then he stretched
himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, ‘Lord my God, let
this boy’s life return to him!’
22 The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to
him, and he lived. 23 Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the
room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is
alive!’24 Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God
and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth’ (New International
Version. 1Ki.17.17-24).
Elijah doesn’t say “this wasn’t my God!” or “how is this my
fault?” Instead he takes the boy to the “upper room” and begins to pray. Now,
it does not say how long Elijah was up there praying, but he went up there with
complete faith and determination that God was going to bring the woman's son back to life.
No matter how long it would take Elijah to pray to God to raise this boy
back from the dead, he was going to stay in God's presence until it did.
How many of us can say that we pray until God speaks to us or
until God moves? Personally for me I find it very difficult to remain in
prayer, especially if I feel God is not moving or speaking to me, but it’s when
we endure past those feelings that God sees our faithfulness and our
determination and out of his grace, he blesses us.
It’s just like the library illustration.
God is trying to choose which way to bless us the best. Yet many
times, we get “so” “tired” of waiting for God to pick out a “story” that we go
out and try to find or make our own.
In first Kings Chapter eighteen verses forty-one through forty-six
reads,
“41 And Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go, eat and drink, for there is the
sound of a heavy rain.’ 42 So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah
climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between
his knees.
43 “Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went
up and looked.
‘There is nothing there,’ he said.
Seven times Elijah said, ‘Go back.’
44 The seventh time the servant reported, ‘A cloud as small as a
man’s hand is rising from the sea.’
So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go
down before the rain stops you.’”
45 Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a
heavy rain started falling and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. 46 The power of the
Lord came on Elijah and, tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab
all the way to Jezreel” (New International Version. 1Ki.18.41-46).
There is so much in this portion of scripture.
For one, Elijah had a tremendous amount of faith. He told Ahab to
go eat and drink because it was about to rain, but in the next few portions of
scripture one could clearly see by the many times that Elijah sent his servant
to check if he saw anything, there was not a cloud in the sky.
Despite what human eyes could see Elijah continued to pray and he
sent his servant to go check a total of seven times.
Seven.
The number seven has very important significance in the bible. The
number seven symbolizes something complete or full. In this portion of
scripture Elijah demonstrated and understood the power of complete and
persistent intercession when he prayed without ceasing on behalf of the land
and the people that were suffering because of lack of water.
On the seventh time that Elijah sent his servant to check, toward
the sea something amazing happened. The servant said, “A cloud as small as a
man’s hand is rising from the sea.” Well yeah a cloud the size of a
human hand may not have been much, but it was a start, and more than that, it
symbolized something even greater.
The hand could mean various things, but I like to believe that the
cloud that was in the shape of a hand was the hand of God. And, not only was he
bringing the rain that he promised Elijah, but he was bringing
something else that the people of the land desperately needed.
In scripture, the pouring of rain symbolizes God’s outpouring of
his spirit. When we pray and seek God, not only do we find him, but if wait on
him long enough for him to speak to us, he pours out his spirit on us as well;
just like Elijah when he prayed for the woman’s son, and when he prayed for
rain.
Today when I prayed, I did not intend to pray for long, and in all
honestly I did not know what to expect, but I did find God and the “story” that
he had for me. As a result of just continually praying and seeking I not only
found him, but he blessed me with the wonderful gift of his word, and the opportunity
to be able to write this post for you.
So with this New Year, I just want to challenge you. If you
earnestly want to see a difference in your relationship with God, and you
really want to draw closer to him, seek him.
Commit to him.
Wait on him.
Even when you feel like you are not getting anything, sit on that
red circular rug and trust and know that the same way that God came to Elijah, every
time without fail, he will come to you.
“but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint”
(English Standard Version. Isa. 40.31).
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