A study of 1 Kings 19
The following study was presented at a Presbytery of Pickering elders and ministers retreat, a day-long event on Feb. 3, 2024.
I remember it so vividly I can almost feel the pain in my throat again. I had just finished my exams at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. It was the end of an intense term, filled with lots of activities. My wife Irene was expecting our first child, and she’d travelled ahead of me, up to our new home in Seattle on the airplane. And my job? My job was to pack up the contents of our apartment, rent a U-Haul truck, and drive about 1,200 miles to our new home in Seattle.
A friend of mine named David drove in a car in front of me, and the plan was that I would follow him in the truck. David had a friend in northern California where we could spend the night. We figured we could drive all day until about 10 that night, spend the night at his friend’s house, and then drive all the next day to Seattle.
I began the trip with a lot of enthusiasm. The weather was breathtaking – a hot, sunny, southern California day with fabulous blue skies. I was a bit tired. I’d stayed up late the night before packing. But when we set out, I was filled with anticipation about the journey ahead. But there was one slight hitch in my plan. I had a sore throat that was starting to get worse. Soon, I became frustrated with the U-Haul truck, because I couldn’t get the thing going faster than about 45 miles an hour (70 in kms). It had a governor on it which kept the engine from going any faster. It wasn’t a big deal, but it meant that our traveling time would be a lot longer than I expected.
About 5 p.m., driving through the blazing deserts north of Los Angeles, my head started to hurt. As the minutes ticked away, my head started throbbing and my throat was really getting sore. By 8 p.m., just as the desert was beginning to cool down, I noticed my temperature was beginning to heat up — I had a fever! By 10 o’clock I felt sick. I took some aspirin and prayed. But my fever kept climbing and my head was throbbing.
At that moment, I wanted to turn back. And yet we’d traveled too far to do that. And of course I had to keep driving. We were in the middle of nowhere, and David in the car in front of me was the only person who knew how to get to our friend’s house. And this was long before the advent of cell phones to call David and tell him my plight – I just had to keep driving! Surely, I thought, we had to be getting close to the house. Surely, I could jump into bed soon. And yet we kept driving, driving, driving as it got later into the night. Midnight. 1 a.m. 2 p.m. We didn’t arrive at our friend’s house until 3:30 in the morning. I felt worse at that moment than any other time in my life.
I was totally drained. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. The trip had begun with such excitement and adventure! But now, exhausted and sick, I wondered why I’d ever left Pasadena! Have you ever been totally tapped out like that? Where you feel you can’t go one step further, you can’t give even a minute more?
In his book Ordering Your Private World, retired pastor Gordon MacDonald of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts has written in a similar way about a late-night, dark-road experience when the journey he was taking became wearisome, mindless, and seemingly pointless. And he links these feelings to our relationship with the Lord. He writes (italics added for emphasis):
I have sensed that many people claiming a Christian commitment are careening down an unmarked road of life . . . We believe that the road is going somewhere, but we’re not sure where that somewhere is or how we will be certain when we’ve reached the destination. In transit we move at a dangerous kind of top speed, because we think that will quicken the time of arrival. And with every mile we . . . grow increasingly frustrated and tired.
Occasionally we hear of fellow travelers on that same road who crash, and we wonder why they weren’t smart enough to keep in the lane. Others simply seem to disappear as if they had driven off on a side road and had found another direction. But the majority [of us] keep pressing on ahead, unable to turn back but unsure of what’s ahead. And the further we go, the wearier we become.
Can you relate to those words, elders and pastors? I know I can. Despite our best intentions, there are seasons in our lives when our zeal is drained, when we lose heart, when the fire of our Christian experience burns down to mere embers or even cold ashes.
I know that all of us long to experience the presence and reality of God in our lives. We want to be faithful and joyful disciples of Christ. We really do yearn to love and serve the Lord and the people in our congregations and neighbourhoods.
But the trouble is, it’s easier to talk about spiritual passion than to find it. And once we find it, it’s hard to maintain it. There’s no short-cut “1,2,3 formula” that automatically provides us with passion and energy to sustain a deep relationship with God. There’s no magic prayer or program that can preserve us from seasons of spiritual dryness. As MacDonald says, we’re trying harder, working longer, breathing heavier, and getting wearier. We can find ourselves feeling exhausted, angry, bored, or simply numb.
“There’s no magic prayer or program that can preserve us from seasons of spiritual dryness.”
We can grow tired of our fellow Christians, tired of the faith, tired even of God. Have you ever felt like that? I know I have. The abundant life in Christ which we know is real and true sometimes turns into a weariness, a dullness of spirit. The fire has gone out and there’s no passion left.
The biblical character Elijah felt like that. Elijah was a remarkable Old Testament prophet of God, a rough, tough, stern, John-the-Baptist kind of man. He came from Gilead, a desolate part of ancient Israel. The people from Gilead were the Scottish Highlanders of Palestine. Fierce and proud. God-fearing and plain-speaking.
In a legendary power encounter between the gods of Baal and the God of Israel, Elijah single handedly called down fire from heaven and the Lord defeated 450 pagan priests who worshipped Baal. It’s one of the most gripping chapters of the Old Testament, in First Kings 18, the chapter before the one we’re reading today.
Elijah successfully proclaimed the Lord’s message and demonstrated God’s power to wicked Queen Jezebel and her impulsive husband King Ahab. But suddenly, unexpectedly, the fires of his spiritual passion were snuffed out. At the high point of his ministry, the flame of his devotion to God was abruptly extinguished. And this is where we find Elijah at the beginning of First Kings 19. His passion for ministry has been depleted. Let’s read the first part of our chapter, verses 1 through 4.
Elijah’s passion for ministry is depleted
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” 3Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. 4But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”
Elijah had seen God work powerfully during his life; but he also endured the agony of total exhaustion. His passion for God and God’s work was drained until he was as dry as a bone. He fled to the wilderness and decided that death would be better than to keep on living, the way he was feeling.
What led to Elijah’s dilemma? How did he get into this state where he wants to give up? Remember that Elijah had been ministering flat-out, giving 110 per cent to God. If you want evidence of that, read chapters 17 and 18 of First Kings. He was busy providing food to the hungry and healing to the sick and confronting the spiritual and political power brokers who had turned the Hebrew people away from the living God. And then came the high point of his ministry and that legendary power encounter up on Mount Carmel when the 450 priests of Baal were brought down.
But a few days later, we find Elijah a changed man. That meeting with the priests of Baal left him spent. And just after he came down from that mountaintop of spiritual zeal, Elijah received a death threat from Queen Jezebel. She put out a contract on this man who had punctured her pride and wiped out her Baal priests. “We’re coming after you!” she vowed.
Now why didn’t Elijah send word back to the palace that Jezebel’s and Ahab’s threats were meaningless? He was a prophet of the living God of Israel. He’d just defeated an army of Baal priests. Couldn’t he handle the threats of a few more enemies?
It seems that Elijah was so weary that he succumbed to Jezebel’s threats. In his exhaustion, he lost perspective and fled into the desert. And do you see where he went? He ran to Beer-sheba, the southernmost town in Judah. And if that wasn’t enough; he abandoned his servant there and went “a day’s journey into the wilderness,” walking straight into the desert!
Have you ever been to a desert? Well, I have, and let me tell you that you’ve got to be desperate to flee into a desert. That was the sort of thing that only criminals and renegades did. Was this the same man who performed miracles on Mr. Carmel? Yes, but he was physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally worn out. Under the broom tree, he prayed a prayer like Jonah outside Nineveh – “I’ve had enough, Lord! I want to check out of this life.”
Now friends, maybe our situations haven’t been as dramatic as Elijah’s, but haven’t all of us, at one time or another, given our everything on some mountaintop, and then when we came down we felt like there was nothing left, we had no more to give? It’s ironic that after a time of spiritual blessing and accomplishment, we can feel incredibly drained and spiritually empty, just like Elijah did.
“Sometimes in the midst of our exhaustion, what we need the most is refreshment and rest, which are gifts from God.”
That’s why pastors, whose peak days are on Sundays, can often wake up on Mondays feeling so empty. As we minister to others, the energy is literally drained out of us. It’s just like Jesus when the sick woman touched his clothes. “Someone touched me,” he said, “because I felt power go out from me.” (I’m preaching on that very passage tomorrow!) Do you know that some pastors have a special system to measure how drained they feel on Monday mornings? You’ve heard the phrase “I feel like a truck ran over me”? We could add – “but how many trucks?” On a scale of 1-10, a one- or two-truck Sunday is pretty mild, while an eight- or nine-truck Sunday is a good excuse for a vacation. How about you? Have you had any 10-truck days recently? Did they drain you as they did some of those pastors?
You see, just like Elijah, we can become drained. We can feel caught up in a sea of feelings that runs counter to the facts. We feel self-doubt. We’re hyper-aware of all our mistakes, or hyper-sensitive to the things people have said to us. It doesn’t take much to get us frustrated, and our tolerance level for other people goes way down. We say stupid, petty things to the people who mean the most to us. It’s happened to me. And I’m sure it’s happened to you. The question, dear friends, is what can we do about it? And the short answer is – we can’t do much at all . . . but God can.
In our passage today, we’re going to see God’s gracious response, the ways God responded to Elijah’s exhaustion and stagnation and loneliness in order to restore his spiritual passion. But first, let’s spend some time reflecting on these questions.
- Why did Elijah run away from Jezebel?
- What moved Elijah to ask God to take his life?
- After a great victory, I usually . . . Anticipate a letdown? . . . Bask in it? . . . Move on to the next challenge? . . . Take the credit? . . . Rest? . . . _____?
- The most difficult thing for me to handle after I have had a spiritual mountaintop experience is . . . the spiritual letdown . . . overconfidence . . . physical exhaustion . . . getting back to routine . . . settling for the ordinary . . .
Now let’s read verses 5 to 8 of our story.
God gives rest and refreshment to an exhausted Elijah
5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
When we were living in Aberdeen, Scotland years ago, I became friends with a young doctoral student living with us from Kenya, an Anglican priest named Bernard Kariuki. He was studying New Testament at the University of Aberdeen and was an extremely diligent student. He had left his wife and his children back home in Kenya, and as a way to make the most of his time, he spent 16-18 hours a day studying and writing and reading and keeping his head in the books. He was too busy for too much socializing. But after a while, as you can well imagine, Bernard burned himself out. When he took time to relax, he told me he felt guilty. He became so depressed and withdrawn that not only did he cease studying but he actually had to be checked into a psychiatric hospital in Aberdeen, where, over time, he finally found some balance in his life.
After that, Bernard came to live with us for about three months, where we had meals together, and worshipped together, and talked about our homes in faraway North America and Africa. Bernard loved most of all spending time playing with young son David, down on the floor and holding David in his arms. It was a such a joy to see Bernard come to life again, to see the light sparkle in his eyes again, and to see him smile and laugh and to tell us how much David reminded him of his own sons back in Kenya. And he returned to his studies, but with a less frenetic page. About a year later, as he was completing his studies, we had the joy of meeting his wife Helen, who came up to be with Bernard as he completed his studies. It was so good to see how rest and refreshment and fellowship helped Bernard overcome his physical and mental exhaustion. All these years later, I Googled his name and discovered that the Most Reverend Bernard recently retired from his position as the Bishop of Nairobi.
Sometimes in the midst of our exhaustion, what we need the most is refreshment and rest, which are gifts from God. God created us with the capacity for work and rest, and that balance is built into the very structure of creation itself when God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh. This is something that some of us try to ignore, to our own peril.
Very often in my life, church ministry feels like a whirlwind, and its demands are relentless. Think of the whirlwind of ministry demands that faced Jesus and the disciples. The Gospel of Mark tells us that so many people were coming and going that Jesus and his disciples didn’t have time even to eat (6:31) Has that ever happened to you? Many of us have fallen into the opposite habit, of eating compulsively and too much, to cope with the busyness!
Henri Nouwen has written that most of us are so obsessed by activity that we have no time for prayer and no time to attend to our own wounds. As Nouwen puts it: “Our demon says: We are too busy to pray; we have too many needs to attend to, too many people to respond to, too many wounds to heal.”
It reminds me of the story Stephen Covey tells about the man who was busy sawing down trees. His task was taking everything out of him as the blade got duller and duller. He was totally exhausted. But he was so driven to saw down more trees that he never took the time to stop and sharpen his saw, the one task that would have made his work so much easier.
And what are the results of this frenetic pace? Roy Oswald writes that if pastors work more than 50 hours a week, three things tend to go awry in our lives. Our bodies deteriorate because there is not enough time to rest, exercise and eat properly. Our relational life goes because there is no quality time with significant others. And our spiritual life suffers because there is not enough time to read, journal, walk, think and pray.
In the words of the apostle Paul, “Brothers and sisters, this should not be!” In the face of these twin demons of stress and burnout, I’d like to suggest the disciplines of self-care and Sabbath for our own health and for vitality in our ministries.
Let me say a word to you pastors. If you preach every Sunday, you expend as much emotional energy in two hours on Sunday morning as in a whole day of work. That’s a huge amount of energy expended in one day. And that’s why we need to take time away, to have at least one unpressured day away from your clergy role and discover your primary identity as a child of God like everyone else.
Jesus established a rhythm of public ministry and personal time, and how desperately those of us who are called to Christian leadership as ruling elders and teaching elders need to set similar boundaries. We must find a rhythm of caring for others and then caring for ourselves as well. We must find a rhythm that works for us, building into our schedules a variety of self-care activities that refills our spiritual and emotional tanks. And let me add, for the record, that if you’re busy and engaged at church as elders and pastors every Sunday, that means Sunday is not your Sabbath. Your day of rest needs to be another day!
What replenishes my soul? An outing to a bookstore and a big mug of Starbucks coffee. A date night with my wife Irene and going out to enjoy a meal together. Walking down Bayview Avenue near our home just to see the world go by and “people-watch.”
What replenishes your soul? I’m sure each one of us would answer that question a little bit differently. But one thing is guaranteed: we can’t be effective in our ministries at church or in life itself if we’re constantly running on empty!
As Roy Oswald puts it in his wonderful book Clergy Self-Care:
Jesus chided the Scribes and the Pharisees for their legalism in regard to the Sabbath, but he did not do away with a day of rest.The Sabbath is a wonderful spiritual discipline that is built right into the order of creation. In six days God created the world, and on the seventh God rested. How much of the craziness of our lives would fall away if we would return to Sabbath observance? How healing it would be for us and what a wonderful model for [those in our congregations] in coping with the madness in their lives.
When we’re feeling weary and drained, God wants to give us rest and refreshment. That is his gift to us, just as it was to Elijah. Here’s some questions for us to ponder.
- Lying under the tree, what did Elijah need most? A good night’s sleep? . . . No more Jezebels? . . . a steak dinner? . . . Another dramatic miracle? . . . Fellowship with other prophets? . . . A new vision of God?
- When you experience a spiritual letdown or time of exhaustion, what helps YOU recover?
- Do you practice a Sabbath one day a week for renewal and replenishment? Does your congregation?
God meets a passionless Elijah to give him a fresh encounter with God
After experiencing the rest and refreshment of God, Elijah was strengthened. Strengthened enough to go on a long 40-day journey to a faraway Horeb, the mountain of God. And it was there on Mount Horeb where the Lord graciously met Elijah in a deep and personal way. Let’s read verses 9 through 14 together.
9 At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”10 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” 11 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake;12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
It’s fascinating to note the place where God called Elijah to meet with him. Do you know what Mount Horeb is? Mount Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai is the place where Moses and the children of Israel originally came out to worship God after God delivered them from their slavery in Egypt. Mount Sinai was the place where God gave his law, the Ten Commandments, to his people. It was the place where God established his original covenant with the children of Israel. And now God brings Elijah there, perhaps to remind Elijah that the God who worked in power long ago in Egypt and the wilderness was the same God who would empower Elijah again.
“After experiencing the rest and refreshment of God, Elijah was strengthened.”
Note also that this meeting with God was a very personal encounter. A second-hand experience wouldn’t do. And just like the children of Israel, and Elijah, we need fresh encounters with God repeatedly in our lives. We need a fresh encounter with God like the children of Israel needed fresh manna in the wilderness every morning. The old stuff was spoiled after one day. And so will our old experiences of God if we simply depend on them, without seeking the fresh presence of God in our lives day by day.
And note the surprising way God met Elijah. If I were planning this meeting, I would have spoken in the wind and the earthquake and the fire – certainly things that would get your attention. But instead, God chooses to speak to Elijah not through the miraculous or the loud, but quietly, in a still small voice, in the sound of silence. But it was a fresh, vital, life-giving encounter that renewed Elijah’s call to serve.
As a pastor, I’ve been surprised that one of the challenges I’ve faced in my ministry has been seasons of boredom, a kind of spiritual numbness that descended on me like a thick fog or a heavy blanket. And when that happens, how easy it is, and how tempting, to abandon the ministry of leading God’s people as elders and pastors, and to settle for a dull, predictable management of the status quo. To keep the wheels turning, to keep the doors open, but our hearts are no longer in it.
Managing to get by and survive may seem like a less-costly alternative than the pain of taking up the reins of leadership, and the inevitable conflict that comes with it. But in the end, when we compromise our calling to be leaders of God’s people, our hearts shrink. We become lukewarm caretakers of the status-quo.
Back in the fourth century A.D., the Desert Fathers observed a common malady among many monks and priests who lived in the desert. They even gave it a name — acedia. Acedia was described as a “spiritual sun-stroke,” as the “devil of the noonday sun,” a malady which created a loss of passion, spiritual boredom, wandering around listlessly with no goal in mind. Acedia is a laziness or indifference in matters of the spirit.
And to this day, acedia still afflicts many Christian leaders as a loss of passion for ministry. One author describes it like this:
No longer does the ‘fire burn in the belly.’ With hardly more than a whimper, such pastors settle down to get by until a better appointment or call comes along, or until their pension kicks in. Acedia is an old word for an old widespread sin. Leaders in their middle years are especially vulnerable when life has been daily for a long time and promises to be exceedingly daily for a long time into the future. A person in the grip of acedia has drifted so far out of the current of things that from where he [or she] lies motionless by the shore he [or she] hardly bothers to watch life go by.
The ancient Desert Fathers are warning us that we can become numb to God and to God’s work in my life; we can be so familiar with the routines of church life that we lose the sense of wonder that the living God loves us and gave himself for us in Christ, and that he is calling us, in deeply personal ways, to love and serve him, and his people, and the world he loves. What a calling! What a vocation! What a life mission! But unless we’re careful, acedia, spiritual boredom, a numbness to the things of God can set in, and we can become insensitive to God’s voice and useless in God’s service.
“we can be so familiar with the routines of church life that we lose the sense of wonder. . .”
What can keep spiritual leaders like us from falling into this trap? I think we need to cultivate the discipline of discernment, a deepening self-awareness of our lives in Christ. Indeed, until we develop a profound sense of self-awareness, a deep insight into the often hidden inner world of our own thoughts and emotions and motives, we are hindered from growing in our knowledge of God.
One of John Calvin’s great insights was that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of oneself go hand in hand, as the opening words of the Institutes makes clear.
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
If we intend to know God and grow in his grace, we have to look hard at ourselves. The “rivulets” of self-awareness, says Calvin, will lead us “to the spring itself,” to God.
For some of us, this journey inward is a profoundly troubling, awkward, even painful voyage. We are exploring realms that we have consciously or unconsciously kept hidden from others, even from ourselves. And yet this it’s worth the risk if we are to grow into what Christ calls us to be. And it is mandatory if we are to avoid acedia, the passionless, rudderless spiritual boredom that strikes so many of us in Christian leadership.
So in practical terms, how can we deepen our sense of self-awareness and our knowledge of God? I am assuming, of course, that as Christian leaders we are making use of the ordinary means of grace — of taking time to pray and reading the Bible to hear the Lord speak to us, of taking time for worship and Sabbath rest and regularly receiving the Lord’s Supper. All these are important disciplines to help us grow.
But let me share two daily habits that have become meaningful to me in the last few years. There’s something about daily practices and everyday routines that become second nature, and these daily spiritual practices help deepen my awareness of God’s abiding presence with me.
I learned the first daily habit from the late John Stott, the renowned Anglican preacher from All Souls Church in London, England. The moment he rose from bed every morning, Stott would begin his day by kneeling and saying the following prayer:
Good morning heavenly Father, good morning Lord Jesus, good morning Holy Spirit.
Heavenly Father, I worship you as the creator and sustainer of the universe. Lord Jesus, I worship you as the Savior and Lord of the world. Holy Spirit, I worship you as the sanctifier of the people of God. Glory be to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.
Heavenly Father, I pray that I may live this day in your presence and please you more and more. Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself and cause your fruit to ripen in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God, have mercy upon me. Amen.
For me, that prayer says it all. It reminds me who I am and whose I am. It puts my life in perspective and sets a tone for my day. It serves as my spiritual morning coffee, getting me back in gear around the ultimate priorities of my life. It jogs my memory that my purpose is not merely to please people but to please my heavenly Father. It calls me to daily give up my rights and shoulder the cross, following Jesus. It reminds me daily of the kind of character God is working to form in me by asking the Spirit to fill me and then use me as he sees fit. I have memorized this prayer and try to pray it as soon as I get up to reaffirm the covenant relationship I have with God.
“. . . until we develop a profound sense of self-awareness, a deep insight into the often hidden inner world of our own thoughts and emotions and motives, we are hindered from growing in our knowledge of God.”
The second daily practice I have found to be incredibly helpful is the discipline of daily morning and evening prayer, or as it is called in various traditions, the ‘daily office’ or ‘divine office’ or ‘liturgy of the hours.’ Daily prayer has its roots in the fixed-hour prayers of the Jewish people who would pray at particular times every morning, evening and night. This basic pattern, with many variations, became the practice for countless Christians down through the centuries, even to our own day (although it has been lost among many of us Protestants).
Daily prayer is set in the larger context of the church year, retelling the great historical events of our salvation in Christ: his advent and birth, his ministry and death, his resurrection and ascension. It consists of an invitation to prayer, numerous readings from Scripture (particularly the psalms), and a focused time to dedicate the coming day to the Lord, including prayers of thanksgiving and intercession for the global Church and the needs of the world. It is concluded by the Lord’s Prayer and a blessing.
Why do I find this daily practice so compelling? Partly because it puts some order and structure into the chaos of my days! It also brings me back to the awareness of God’s presence at fixed points throughout the day. It gives me a structured way to fulfill the apostle’s admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes. 5:17). Praying regularly at set and specific times helps focus and reorient me to God at all the other times.
Currently I’m using an app from the Church of England that helps me worship and pray with Christians from around the world; and I’ve used the Presbyterian Church (USA) Daily Prayer book. And my wife is using a wonderful app from Nicky Gumble and the ALPHA program called which reads through the whole Bible with comments and reflection questions by Nicky and his wife Pippa. Find something that works for you, that gets you praying and reading Scripture on a daily basis. Let’s now wrestle with some more questions.
- What do you think God was saying through the wind, earthquake, fire and whisper?
- In verse 12, Elijah finally hears God in “a sound of sheer silence,” or as other translations put it, “a still, small voice” or “a gentle whisper.” Have you experienced God speaking to you this way? If so, could you briefly describe it to the group.
- Is there a spiritual practice you’d like to you’d like to develop (like a daily morning prayer to God; taking time every day to be still and silent (no Smartphones or electronics!); walking daily to experience God’s creation and respond to God in prayer; journaling; engaging in the rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer; etc. (Read Tish Warren’s amazing book Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life for many more insightful suggestions)
God provides a lonely Elijah with a community of colleagues to share the work
So God provided Elijah with rest and refreshment to counter his exhaustion; and a fresh experience of meeting God to counter his boredom and listlessness; and finally God recommissioned Elijah with a new mission, but also with new colleagues, to remind Elijah that he was not alone. He provided a young man Elisha with whom he could share the work. In Christian leadership, you can’t go it alone. We need a few other trusted friends and colleagues both for genuine community and for accountability. Let’s read verses 15-21.
15Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” 19So he set out from there, and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was plowing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. 20He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” Then Elijah said to him, “Go back again; for what have I done to you?” 21He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant.
As Christian leaders, we become involved in deep ways with the lives of people within our congregations. At those crucible moments of life – birth and death, illness, relationship break-ups, career and vocational crises, job loss, family tragedies – we get pulled into the vortex of powerful emotions. From elation to depression. From the joy of a newborn baby to the sudden tragic death of a loved one. From the idealistic gaze of two young lovers meeting with me for pre-marriage counseling to the despairing, terrified look in the eyes of a middle-aged woman confiding to me through her tears that her husband wants a divorce.
And through all of these and a thousand other encounters, there is an intimacy established with people at these hinge points of their lives — but that intimacy cannot be allowed to go both ways. There is a necessary emotional distancing that pastors and elders must exercise in order to be effective in ministry, a certain detachment. This does not mean for a moment that we don’t enter into people’s pains and joys — we most certainly do! But it means that for my own emotional wholeness and for the protection of those we serve, we cannot reciprocate by opening up indiscriminately to those in our congregations with all of our own struggles and fears.
For me to bring out all my personal issues and failures into the pulpit or my daily conversation would be unhealthy and imprudent. And so in my daily conversations with members and friends at the churches I have served, I have frequently found myself asking these questions: How much should I disclose of myself? To whom should I reveal it? Is this appropriate knowledge for this person to know? Will sharing this thought or idea or feeling of mine build them up in the faith, or am I sharing this to get my own needs met?
These are the right questions to ask in any pastoral care relationship, whether we are ministers or elders. It prevents me from seeking to get my own emotional needs met by someone for whom I am in a relationship of pastoral responsibility. But of course, the result of this predominantly one-sided emotional sharing that flows from congregational members to me can produce a deep loneliness in some of us, or a temptation to seek inappropriate intimacy in others of us. I believe this is a primary reason behind so much of the immorality and sexual scandals that affect clergy in our day. It springs from our deep loneliness and our own unmet needs for relational intimacy with a few others.
And so one final discipline we are called to develop is meaningful friendships with a few others, friendships that foster genuine community but also honest accountability.
In their book Leading the Congregation, Norman Shawchuck and Roger Heuser have written:
[Our Lord] carried out his ministry within the context of a small, intimate, covenant community. The gospel writers make it clear that as soon as Jesus announced his mission and ministry, he set about to form a community with whom he would live and minister. Why did he do this? He did it because he felt the need to relate to an intimate community whom he could count on being there when the going got tough. He recruited those whom he wanted to be with him. He did not create this community for others; he formed this community for himself. He felt the need to live out his ministry within the atmosphere of a small community, banded together closer than brothers.
And from within this community of twelve others, he formed an even more intimate relationship with three. It was this more intimate group of three persons whom he desired to be with in the moments of his highest ecstasy (the transfiguration) and the moments of his deepest agony (the passion in the garden.) . . . Jesus would choose many others to work with him, but these he chose to be with him. With no others would he have relationships of such intimacy and pathos. They lived together in solidarity.
And so over the years I have tried to live in covenant with a small group of other pastors, although this is one that I’ve struggled with the most since coming into our presbytery. For years before that, I had three trusted friends, one younger and the other two a bit older. We would meet regularly for a time of eating, sharing our joys and sorrows, confessing our sins and praying for one another. We had a strict rule of confidentiality about all we say in that circle, and we had agreed to hold one another accountable to the resolutions we make, and the sins we confess. We were committed to one another. I really miss that group!
These were fellow pastors and elders who could uphold me in faith even in times when I couldn’t do it for yourself. Friends to whom I could acknowledge and confess my sins and failures without fear of being judged or exposed. Friends with whom I could share the joys and challenges of life, and with whom I could “let your hair down” without fear of misunderstanding or reprisal.
A covenant group like this has been more than a spiritual discipline for me, it’s been a lifeline. And I’m determined in these last few years of my life as a pastor to be in a group like that again soon, with God’s help. To be in an ongoing, loving, collegial accountable relationship with a few other trusted brothers or sisters with whom we can be truly vulnerable and open should be a requirement for pastors, for our own sake, and for the sake of the people we serve.
- How do you think Elijah felt when he heard about the kings and the 7,000 others in Israel who remained faithful?
- What practical thing could you or your Session do to develop deeper relationships and mutual accountability with a few other fellow Christian leaders?
- In the midst of your hard work, are you developing the leaderships of those who will eventually replace you?
May the Lord help us to learn from Elijah, we seek to restore our spiritual passion, and minister to others in the power of the Holy Spirit!
*****
Helpful Phone Apps for Spiritual Growth
“The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel” Download the iOS or Android app for your phone. It is also available online for reading and listening at https://bible.alpha.org/en/. Nicky and Pippa Gumbel, from the famed ALPHA Course, offer a one-year overview of the Bible, reading three portions of Scripture along with devotional comments for every day of the year. Great to help you see the “big picture” of the Bible. Easy to use and easy listening to Nicky!
“Daily Prayer: Common Worship from the Church of England.” Download the iOS or Android app for your phone. For every day of the year, it presents a free audio form of Anglican morning prayer and evening prayer, including Bible readings, psalms, canticles, music and prayers. Very worshipful and inspiring! This is the app I’m now using.
“Daily Prayer, Presbyterian Church, USA.” Download the iOS or Android app for your phone. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has developed a smartphone app for daily prayer. It provides simple, yet rich devotional resources for morning, midday, evening, and close of day. Each service includes psalms and readings from the Reformed confessions. NOTE: You must purchase this app, and you must read on your phone – NOT an audio.
Books to help you grow in God
Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsity Press, 2019. (An awesome book to deepen daily awareness of God’s presence. Christianity Today magazine’s Book of the Year in 2019.)
Cornelius Plantinga, Morning and Evening Prayers. Eerdmans, 2021. (In this little book, Neal Plantinga, President Emeritus of Calvin Theological Seminary, offers a month’s worth of prayers, with two for each day: one for the morning, looking forward, and one for the evening, looking back. It’s for anyone seeking fellowship with God – from those who have prayed their whole lives to those who have yet to find the words.)
Photo: Road bend in a dark Forest/Lauren Coleman/Wikimedia Commons
