A still small voice
In 'Of hope and biscuits', you found yourself holding on to the last crumbs in a packet of biscuits, hiding beside brooks and being fed by ravens. Yes, you challenged kings, shut up the heavens, dueled on behalf of the Lord, brought a dead child back to life - let anyone name it, you did it. You were consumed by a passion only you and the Lord knew about. But of course! You were God's own answer - one of the Old Testament's greatest and most powerful prophets to Israel's worst king. A king, who, through his marriage, publically and officially endorsed immoral and idolatrous worship.[Baal was the chief male deity of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians, who symbolised the productive forces of nature, ie in effect, he was believed to control weather. Asherah was the wife of Baal in Canaanite mythology, whose worship involved sexual rituals - it is reasonable to assume that the worship of the 'Sacred Feminine' given in Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' stemmed from the worship of Asherah. ]
You showed them! You were burning for the Lord - yours was no candle flame; yours was a raging fire! A classic challenge, that destroyed 450 prohpets of Baal and 400 of Asherah, ultimately proving to the people through rain after 3 yrs of drought, that Baal was impotent and the Lord God was supreme! Can you picture yourself now? It's okay. Maybe you haven't challenged a king - quite possibly due to the fact that there aren't a lot of kings anymore and indeed, one of the greatest empires of the world we know today is ruled by a frail old queen. But the Lord knows what you've done. You've stood for the Lord, gone boldly where no man had hithero gone before. Psalm 66:12 You were ridden over by men. You went through fire and through water. You were consumed by a passion for the Lord. And because God listened to your prayers, you single-handedly led a nation back to the God who made them what they were.
But...
Maybe you should have seen it coming. Of course, the queen was not going to smile graciously and offer you the throne! She, predictably, was mad. Stark, raving mad. I Kings 18:4 tells us that she'd massacred every other prophet fo the Lord during Elijah's absense, except for a hundred that a devout believer named Obadiah saved(, but that's another story).
One message - one threat from her sent you running? C'mon, gimme a break. She killed the Lord's prophets, and you made the score even at Mt. Carmel. What made you so despondent?
To say I was surprised would be a HUGE understatement. Here was someone who'd accomplished things that made a king scream "Help me mommy!" (the 'mommy' in this case being the queen Jezebel) and yet...
I just could not fathom it... until I read I Kings 19:10. You see, one of the mightiest and most powerful prophets in the Old Testament felt lonely. "...for the children of Israel have... killed Your prophets with the sword and I alone am left; and they seek to take my life."
Havent you felt this way? Actually, are you feeling lonely right now? Maybe you've done things that made Satan bang his head into the wall in shame, but now, the once raging fire is suddenly nothing but a candle in the wind?
If so, cheer up. There's news for you. The Lord knows. He knows your plight. And He's here. Yes, He's here and so near you can feel His presence. Elijah walked 40 days and nights to the place where Moses got to see a glimpse of the Lord's glory. There on the mountain, where God had showed His glory to Moses in spectacular ways. But no, not that for elijah, or you and me. He wasn't in the wind. He wasn't in the earthquake. He didn'e come down in fire. No Mr. Elijah or whoever you are, He spoke - not the thundering voice of many waters we hear in the book or Revelation, but a still, small voice. To this discouraged and despondent prophet, God responded in gentleness. That still, small voice told Elijah... that he was not alone.
Do you feel lonely? Do you stand in a crowd and yet feel all alone? You may not know, but there are 7000 others whom the Lord has kept so you won't feel lonely. Read I Kings 17-19. Of course, the Lord is almighty, all powerful, but He is a gentle God. A God whose shoulders you can always weep on. He knows your deepest wounds and your darkest fears, and He responds gently. He ain't in the earthquake, the wind or the fire. He's just a still small voice... but are you listening?
posted by Finney @ 11:30 PM
1 Comments:
To hear the STILL SMALL VOICE..U need to be STILL...The complaints u have,doubts you have all shud be STILL.Good way of presenting the truth
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