Elijah by F B Meyer

There is a wonderful prayer in 1 Kings 18 that I have never really thought about before. "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me O Lord hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou hast turned their heart back again." Elijah stood before King Ahab and told him to bring all the people who opposed the Lord to Mount Carmel. There were 450 prophets of Baal and another 400 who ate at Jezebel's table, ie they were her own private prophets. In the prayer Elijah prayed we can see he had a real passion for God. He didn't care what would happen to himself. All he wanted was for the people to realise who God was. So often when we are playing our part in God's kingdom we are only interested in our own little part, our own little church, our own outreach to people that we become blinkered to everything else that is going on around us. It is no wonder that we have such a small measure of success. We need to learn to trust God no matter what. Elijah was convinced that he was just a tool in God's hands. He was totally yielded, surrendered and emptied. So often it is all about what we want to do with our lives. We plan things without thinking too much of whether it is what God wants us to do. We miss out on God's blessing and working in our lives because we are too busy doing what we want, what brings us happiness for the here and now. Elijah wanted to know what God's plan was. God knows the end from the beginning. Remember when the Children of Israel were in Egypt under Pharaoh - 400 years living there and they were slaves for another nation. Yet God had a plan in mind, a man in mind in fact to bring about that plan. Then when they were in the wilderness and God supplied the manna to feed them every day, the people had to listen and obey exactly. The manna would only fall when they followed the instructions to the letter. Too often we drift through life not thinking about anything but our own happiness for the here and now - but what about tomorrow? Will we have a tomorrow? What then? To know God's plan is the secret and that can be revealed in various ways - circumstances for instance or when we do things because we feel it is right to do them. In each of these situations, when we pray and ask God for help the way ahead will be revealed just as it was for Elijah, but only one piece of the puzzle at a time. Elijah knew what would happen when the prophets of Baal turned up. It was a test for both he and them. Elijah knew that God would light his altar but not theirs. He knew that the people would come to their senses when they saw this real life act of God's power before them. Do we have the faith of Elijah? Do we pray specifically or generally? Elijah waited for the people to arrive but he just didn't sit about. He prayed and pleaded for the people to see who God was. As a result of all that preparation in prayer when it came to the crunch God answered Elijah's prayer and the evidence was seen in the fire that consumed the altar. For Elijah God was a reality in his life - wouldn't it be wonderful to know that same reality today. To have hope beyond today. To not just live for the moment and hope things will be OK tomorrow. Wouldn't it be awful if one person believed in God and the other didn't, for them to both to get to the end of their lives and realise what awaits them - for the one who believed there is hope and heaven for eternity but for the other there is nothing but hell fire and they believed all along that at the end of it all that is life and it is finished. To realise too late that all their living for the moment in this life was wasted. Think of the story of Lazarus in the New Testament. He was poor and lay in the gate of the rich man. Both died but it was the rich man who regretted his life. He begged for someone to go back and warn his own brothers not to live the way they were at present because after that they would end up where he was and it was definitely not the place to be. That rich man remembered his previous life, he knew and experienced the reality of the fires of hell, he knew he had people in his previous life to warn but you know what is the most saddest thing of all - he couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't go back and tell his brothers, he couldn't even get a glass of water to cool his tongue. What an awful existence to experience.