We Are What We Believe

Elijah had just won a decisive victory over the pagan gods Baal and Asherah at Mount Carmel. In a great display, he had called the fire of God down from heaven in front of the people thereby showing people who the true God was. In the aftermath of his display, he had killed around a thousand of the prophets of these false gods. He should have been feeling good with himself and confident in the power of God. However, shortly after this great display, he receives a message from the Queen Jezebel who threatens to kill him like he killed the prophets of the heathen gods she worshipped. Instead of being confident of the God who had just displayed such naked and awesome power on his behalf, Elijah runs away from the threat of the queen, abandoning his servant along the way.

Elijah ends up in the wilderness in Beersheba in the country of Judah, far from Jezebel’s reach and falls down tired, asking God to take his life. While resting under a juniper tree, God sends an angel twice to feed Elijah for the journey ahead. After a long journey, God catches up with Elijah in a cave. God then asks Elijah what he’s doing there in the cave. Just like he asked Adam where he was after he had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and his eyes were opened and he knew he was naked, God was not asking Elijah a question he didn’t already know the answer to. Elijah then launches into a sob story of how he had been quite zealous on God’s behalf and everybody had abandoned God and he was the only one left serving God. God then tells him to stand on the mountain so that he could speak with him. While on the mountain, a strong wind, an earthquake and a fire pass by Elijah. The Bible says that while these things passed by him, God was not in it. It was until a still, small voice was heard that he heard God’s voice. When God spoke, it was to ask the same question he had asked at first. Again Elijah answered God with the same story of victimisation and abandonment he had rehearsed earlier. After this God gives him instructions on the people to anoint and to prepare himself for death.

At times we all go through circumstances that debilitate us. Circumstances like anxiety, depression, fear and other negative emotions come to test us and to try our faith and belief in God. They come to taunt us, to make us doubt the presence of God and his saving power. They want us to forget the numerous God has come through for us. Ultimately, they want us to confess negatively and speak words that agree with the circumstances we are going through. While the Bible says God was not in the wind, earthquake or fire, I believe those phenomena were sent by God to remind Elijah of his awesome power that was available to Elijah if only he could correctly discern what was happening. Instead of seeing God’s power at work, all Elijah could see were his present circumstances (which were temporary) and he therefore could not see the power of God. The Bible urges the weak to declare that he is strong and for the poor to declare that he is rich because of what the Lord has done. This is about recognising that while we go through things in life, the things we go through do not define us. What defines us is what God says we are.

God didn’t want Elijah to die. I believe he still had a lot for Elijah to do. However there was nothing God could do because of what Elijah believed about himself. Even after seeing a display of the awesomeness of God, he still could not look past his circumstance to lay hold of God’s goodness and grace by faith. Hence he died. We live in a fallen world and most and generally it’s a terrible place to live. But God want’s us not to look at the world with natural eyes, seeing those things that are temporary. He wants to look with eyes of faith to those things that are eternal, resting our hope and trust in him.

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers and LOST, BUT FOUND.

How Do You See God?

While doing my devotion a few days ago, I came across the premise that while there is an innate desire to worship God in every man, we will not be able to truly praise or worship him with our lives or in word, song and dance like the fathers of the faith unless we get a true understanding of who he is. According to the writer, if we think God is some faraway being who is not too concerned about our lives but just wants obedience from us, we will never be able to truly worship God. I agree.

Moses grew up realizing that there was something special about him. His real father was a prophet while his mother came from a family of prophets. He grew up in Pharaoh’s palace where he learned governance and administration but he always knew where he was from. He felt the desire stir in heart to deliver his people but he missed God’s leading and timing. In the end he ran away from Pharaoh’s wrath and ended up tending sheep, a far cry from being a prince of Egypt. Moses must have been traumatised by his experience. However, when Moses met God his life changed. From an insipid cowering shepherd, he became a god to the most powerful monarch in the then known world. He led millions of Israelites from Egypt in one while ruining the economy of Egypt. He spoke with God face to face. The Bible says God showed his acts to the children of Israel but to Moses he showed his ways. God later described Moses as the meekest man that ever lived.

One of my favourites in the Old Testament was Elijah. Elijah definitely knew God and had a right perception of God. Whenever Elijah spoke to a king in his days, you would usually find the expression “the God before whom I stand” as part of his comments to that king. He was always conscious of the fact that he stood before God whether in the palace or pit. He famously called down fire not only on a sacrifice to God but on two different battalions of soldiers that came to arrest him. Even though somewhere along the line Elijah got afraid of Jezebel, from the Bible we know that along with Enoch, Elijah was not allowed to taste of physical death.

Peter and ten of the Apostles walked with Christ for three and a half years. By the time he died, resurrected and went to be with the Father, those who met them realised that these men had changed. Before meeting Christ, quite a few of them were uneducated. However by the time the three and a half years were over, something had changed. Paul never met Christ physically but by revelation. From being a zealous persecutor of the church, he became the pre-eminent teacher of the Gospel of the Kingdom. From their letters that we read in the Bible, we know that all of them were worshipful, thankful men. Their lives and the things they did by obedience were acts of worship. All these men had something in common. They either met God physically or by revelation. And their lives never remained the same. According to Dr. Mike Murdock, you cannot meet with God and remain the same, unless you met with an impostor. I believe they were able to do the things they did because they had a right perspective of God which led them to worship and obedience.

The book of Revelation shows us a picture of everything in heaven, from the elders to the four living creatures, from the innumerable company of angels to the saints in heaven; we see a picture of never ending worship. However, we haven’t yet reached that zenith were we know God totally and we are known totally. While on earth, the Bible tells us that we see darkly as if in a mirror. However, that is not an excuse to press on to know more of God, to have a right perspective him. Paul, as great as he was still pressed on to know more of God. The Holy Spirit has been sent to us to show us Christ and the father. The thought of whether I have the right perspective of the father is one that has continually engrossed my mind these last few days. Like Paul, I want to know him, even as I am known that I might worship him like Michael W. Smith said with my love, my life, my all.