Elijah and the mountain

I just would like to share a few thoughts from our sermon on Sunday evening. I unfortunately had to work a nacht dienst on Saturday evening and so missed the morning service but i was able to attend the evening service and was treated to a very wonderful sermon. We had Rev. Lankheet as a guest pastor and he spoke on the text of I Kings 19:1-18 about Elijah and his experience with depression and God's encouraging of his beleaguered servant and his subsequent call to service and action. The morning sermon mostly focused on the first 9 verses, while the afternoon service focused on the last half of the text where God has now encouraged and fed his servant and has now had him journey up to Mount Horeb aka Sinai where He gave the commission and law to his people so many years prior. There were several ways God could have spoken to Elijah but he chose to use a still small whisper to bring his message. Often times we look for a big huge thunderclap or writing in the sky to tell us what God is up to in our lives, but He often chooses to work through means we don't necessarily expect to bring His purposes to fruition. He mentioned that God is not a genie in a bottle, whom we can summon at our pleasure and command to do our bidding but that He is sovereign and almighty and will work in His own way. A line that kept coming up was "be still and know that I am God". So often in our lives, we get so busy and caught up with life and the things we think are important but don't take time to slow down and hear the still small whisper which tells us what we need to hear.

The other point that was brought up was that God chooses to use us to fulfill His purposes but He will ultimately work His plan in spite of us. This struck me as strange when i first heard it but i suppose it means that He is God and we are the servants, the ones He chooses and can use but doesn't have to. But the flip side is also this, that after He encouraged and supposed His weary servant, He gave him work to do and Elijah was not to just sit back and let God do all the work. He chooses us, chooses us to work for Him and chooses to use us for His purposes. What a joy to be a chosen one of God. May He grant us the ability to hear Him when He calls in that still small whisper.