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What the Bible says about Elijah's Dose of Reality
(From Forerunner Commentary)

1 Kings 19:2-3

Jezebel, after hearing of his exploits, had threatened his life, and Elijah fled to Beersheba. Why? Some commentators feel that he ran, not in fear, but out of conviction that he needed to commune with God. He may have thought that, after the tremendous works on Mount Carmel, the whole nation would be converted—but now he was in danger of losing his life! His expectations and God's purpose did not coincide by a long shot. Like us, he did not always know where God was leading him and His people. His apparent lack of success and his doubts drove him to seek God's counsel in the wilderness.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Elijah's Dose of Reality

1 Kings 19:7-8

God sent the angel back again with more food from heaven with an explanation of its purpose: "because the journey is too great for you" (verse 7). To paraphrase the angel's reason, he said, "You need more strength to do what is beyond your natural abilities." God often calls upon us to do more than we humanly can, but He always supplies us with the strength to do it. After this, Elijah understood what God wanted of him, and he made his way to Mount Sinai (verse 8).

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Elijah's Dose of Reality

1 Kings 19:10-18

Possibly in the same cave where Moses saw God (Exodus 33:17-23; 34:4-7), Elijah finally vocalized to God why he had fled to the wilderness: In his zeal he felt alone, rejected, and ineffective (verse 10). By God's blunt response, it seems that He had decided that Elijah needed a quick and effective dose of reality.

In the tremendously powerful wind, earthquake, and fire, God showed that though He causes or allows great works that destroy, punish, or expose the ungodly, His greatest work is elsewhere. He was in the "still small voice" (verse 12). He does His most astounding and effective work in the background, working His salvation in (Psalm 74:12), and giving His gifts, His grace, to His people (Ephesians 4:7). In a sense, He told Elijah He is "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (II Peter 3:9).

Undaunted, though humbled, Elijah still insisted that he was alone, rejected, and ineffective (verse 14). Almost curtly, God gave the prophet something to do, though nothing on the scale of his former work (verses 15-17). But before He sent Elijah away, God reminded him that in his self-absorption he had forgotten all the other people with whom He had been working. "Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him" (verse 18).

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Elijah's Dose of Reality


 




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