I’ve had Enough, Lord

Um we did 15 weeks to start the year, we call cover to cover, which was really zoomed out.

I mean, at one point we did 21 epistles in one weekend, okay?

We covered a lot of ground and a lot of that was kind of going up to 10,000 feet looking uh at portions of scripture.

And then uh what we're gonna do is kind of the opposite of that for these next three weeks.

We're gonna zoom in.

We're gonna take a closer look and look at some specific stories uh and and verses that really kind of build on the foundation that we did for those first 15 weeks.

And so that's what we're up to today.

Um we are uh gonna start in the book of 1 Kings, chapter 19, and uh I'm gonna start reading in verse 3.

1 Kings 19 · chapter mention

1 Kings 19 3.

If you don't have it, don't uh Bible with you, don't worry, it'll be up on the screen.

It says, Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness.

He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.

I've had enough, Lord, he said.

Take my life.

I'm no better than my ancestors.

Uh we're zeroing in here in two verses where we have a guy who has hit an all-time low.

He's he's hit his pain threshold emotionally, mentally, in some ways physically, he's just really, really low.

And uh he says, I've had enough, Lord.

Take me out.

If you've ever been that low, if you've ever been to that place where you feel like you are completely empty and you can't see a path forward, you know that you don't get there overnight.

And you don't get there for no reason.

So, what we're gonna do today is we're gonna start from this passage.

We're gonna first look back at how did he get to this point?

And then we're gonna look ahead and go, what happened from here?

What's the path forward?

And if if you're here today, and maybe you've these words have even come out of your mouth, I've had enough, Lord.

I can't take it anymore.

And you're in that place, boy, are you in the right place today?

So, how did Elijah get this low?

How did he get here?

Um, he's introduced to us in chapter 17.

So, what we just read was in chapter 19, and in chapter 17, 1, uh Elijah just blows up on the scene.

Like, we don't get a whole lot of backstory, we only really get his hometown.

It says in 1 Kings 17:1, Elijah the Tishbite from Tishbe and Gilead said to Ahab, who's Ahab, but he's the king.

1 Kings 17:1

So Elijah shows up, and uh we have no like lineage, we have nothing other than he just shows up like in the king's face.

He says to Ahab, as the Lord the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.

So he shows up in the king's face.

Now what what what's happening here?

Okay, little backstory.

So the when the monarchy or the the kings of Israel starts with King Saul, who was the king that everybody wanted.

He fit the profile that the nation was looking for in a leader, um, but he had a corrupted heart.

And you're gonna see the second king is David, who is a man after God's own heart.

And so he's the king God wanted.

After David is Solomon, and Solomon is well known for his wisdom.

You see a lot of the his writings, he gives us a lot of concise, wise sayings that go great with your coffee and donut in the morning to kind of get you going for the day.

Um, but one of the realities about Solomon's reign was he introduced idolatry into the nation and he really bought into the to the empire mentality.

He drove the people hard, and yeah, he made a lot of progress and they built a lot of cool stuff, but he made a lot of alliances that were more than just like economic alliances, they became spiritual alliances where they were uh introducing idolatry into their world.

We talked about this during cover to cover, why God had such beef with idolatry.

It wasn't just that he was worried that somebody, uh some other idol was gonna get the credit um for the rainfall.

It really got down to the fact that these were deep fakes of his character.

And he's not he's not so shallow that that you know some some somebody else gets the credit and it's just gonna fall apart.

It really got down to the fact that these deep fakes all would lead people into perverted, distorted theological views and beliefs ultimately about God.

And then the practices that were connected to those were deep perversions that caused a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, and a lot of confusion.

And so that's why he said you've got to get this stuff out.

Well, Solomon welcomed it in because with that came uh economic prosperity.

They were able to do deals with other nations and things like that.

So from there, after Solomon, it starts really this downfall.

His son Rehoboam takes over, and Rehoboam's like his dad, but worse.

And so it he ends up, uh they end up in civil war.

And now the book of 1 and 2 Kings follows the northern kingdom.

So you have a northern and southern kingdom, the book of 1 and 2 Kings followed the northern kingdom, and so Ahab is the seventh in the line of the northern kingdom, and all of the kings have gotten worse and worse and worse.

And when it introduces Ahab in chapter 16, it says that he is the worst of all of them.

They hit an all-time low as a nation.

He marries a woman named Jezebel, who is a Phoenician uh priestess, essentially.

What she's she's a priestess of Baal.

And so when she comes in, she comes in heavily with this Baal worship and then puts to death the prophets of Yahweh.

And so it's just in a really bad place.

So you have Elijah, who is a ball of fire, man.

This guy isn't scared of anybody.

So he goes and gets right in the, I mean, he comes on right in the king's face and he declares that there's gonna be a drought.

A few things significant about that.

First of all, a drought hits them much different than it hits us.

When we have a drought, it just means our grass is gonna be brown for a while.

That's what it means.

In their world, a drought means people die, right?

It's an existential threat.

People aren't gonna get food and water, the crops aren't gonna grow.

And so it's it's literally like, you know, you you may not live through it, uh, depending on how long it is.

Um, the the second thing was it affected their economy.

So again, crops not only fed the citizens, but it was part of what made their economy go round.

But the big part of this was that in their idolatry, Baal was seen as the god of storms.

So if you see any pictures or statues of Baal, he's holding a lightning bolt in his hand.

And so he not only was seen as the god of war, but he was seen as the god of um of rain, and again, which would be economic prosperity to them, but ultimately the the the living agriculture.

And so the fact that when Elijah goes, really this drought is about Elijah taking a stand and saying, Look, you guys are following this God, and the fact that it keeps raining means that you're you're keeping this belief alive.

And what what God is gonna do is not have it rain, and then we'll see what Baal's capable of.

So that's kind of chapter 17.

Chapter 18 is this unbelievable showdown.

It's one of the most dramatic chapters in the Bible.

You have God speaks to Elijah and says, Go tell Ahab I'm gonna send rain after three years of drought.

And so he goes to Ahab and he says, Ahab, God's gonna send rain and we're gonna and we're gonna make sure everybody knows that God gets the glory.

Yahweh gets the glory.

So they call out this primetime TV.

It's an ultimate showdown.

Bring everybody out, bring the whole nation out.

Bring your 450 prophets of Baal.

450 prophets of Baal that show up to Mount Carmel and it's going down on Mount Carmel.

Bring them all and get everybody out here, okay?

Everybody get out and everybody see.

So they have a huge crowd of people.

The nation is there to watch.

And um Elijah and all of his boldness goes one on 450.

One on 450.

Bring it on.

I want all the smoke.

And so he goes and he says, look, we're gonna here's how here's how we're gonna do it.

We're going to have you make a sacrifice to uh light a sacrifice or have a sacrifice for Baal.

I'm gonna have a sacrifice for Yahweh, and we're gonna set up the sacrifice, but we're gonna see who can bring the lightning.

All right, because we're not gonna light it, we're gonna let the gods, whoever's the real God, is gonna light it.

And so so they set this thing up, and he goes, tell you what, let's flip a coin.

Now, don't need to.

You go first.

You guys go ahead and go first.

So the prophets of Baal, 450 of them, they start doing all this stuff to try to make Baal act.

They're dancing around the altar, they're doing their rituals, and it's like from morning, it says from morning to noon, nothing happens.

And Elijah is feeling himself, he starts talking trash.

He's like, you know, guys, you need to crank up the volume.

I don't think Baal can hear you.

He doesn't hear well.

All right, so you got to just get louder.

Come on, guys, get louder.

And so they're getting louder, and then he starts taunting them.

He's like, you know, maybe he's taking a nap.

You know, you guys might need to wake him up.

He says a couple crude things to him, right?

You have to go read the text, find out what he said.

All right, and so he's just having fun with this.

And and and these guys, again, it gets ugly.

They start cutting themselves because their belief about Baal was that he, you know, ultimately, if he wasn't acting, they needed to show how how serious they were.

And so they're literally, you know, mutilating themselves.

Nothing happens.

So once they get done, Elijah says, I tell you what, uh uh, my turn now.

He he pours water on the sacrifice as a drink offering.

He sets the thing up, he steps back and he goes, God, you don't need me to beg you.

You know who you are, do what you do.

And and and again, what what is the sign for the God of storms?

Baal is a lightning bolt, and God sends a lightning bolt, boom, saying, uh, Baal is is not who you think he is.

And he sends a lightning bolt and it consumes the sacrifice.

So it stinking worked.

Elijah wins the day.

I mean, he is validated like never before.

God has been validated like never before.

The nation bows their knee, they all cry out, the Lord Yahweh is God, the Lord Yahweh is God.

They take these 450 prophets of Baal, they put them to death, and then it gets even better because now God sends rain.

So now clouds fill up the sky, the rain comes, people are saved in terms of now they're gonna be able to eat food, now the economy is gonna be back.

Now people aren't gonna have to die, and God has proven who he is, and everybody acknowledged it.

You you couldn't get it wrong.

It's it's indisputable.

Undisputed, God is who he says he is, and Baal has been exposed.

And so Elijah, okay, this is the moment he dreamed about.

This is the moment he's been waiting for for three years.

It went exactly according to plan.

So now what he would have imagined is gonna play out is this Ahab and Jezebel are gonna be driven.

They're gonna do the same thing that Ahab and Jezebel they did to their prophets, either kill them or drive them out.

We're gonna be done with them.

And so that's what he expects.

But but much to his chagrin, he's gonna find out that he won the day, but that was about it.

All these people who bowed their knees and declared Yahweh to be God, bowed their knees, but there was no change of heart.

They went right back to who they were.

And Jezebel and Ahab remain in power.

And so in 1 Kings 19:1, it says, now Ahab, this is after, this is after the showdown on Mount Carmel, this is after the killing of the prophets of Baal, and this is after God sends an incredible rainstorm.

1 Kings 19:1

It says, Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he killed the prophets with a sword.

So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely.

This is how they would make a vow.

If by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life when he came to Beersheba and Judah.

Now we're right back to where we started.

He he left his servant there and he went a day's journey in the wilderness and he came to a broom bush and he sat down under it and he prayed that he might die.

I've had enough, Lord.

He said, Take my life, I'm no better than my ancestors.

It's interesting if you've ever had something work and you could you could imagine it, you saw it done, and you you had all the passion to drive it through.

You took bold action and it worked, and yet you thought when it worked, there was going to be a different result on the back end.

And then it doesn't happen like that, and now you find yourself sitting in the wilderness in the aftermath trying to figure out number one, what just happened, and number two, where do I go from here?

I I just emptied the clip, I just spent all my passion on that.

And I thought for sure, I mean, in his mind, he thought what this nation needs is a showdown on Mount Carmel.

Chapter 18.

And if we display the power and the might of God in a way that no one can argue with, then that's going to be this turning point.

In his mind, he thought when this happens like it happens, everybody's going to turn.

How what how could anything else happen?

How could you do it any different?

Truth has been brought to light.

You can't argue with it.

God just showed his power, Baal's been exposed.

But what he found was that even though they bowed a knee, the hearts were not changed.

And so what he thought was going to be this crescendo moment of breakthrough, he realized was going to be a fight for the rest of his life.

So he's out here and he's going, I don't know what to think.

I feel like a fool.

I had the vision that I had up to this point, got me up early and kept me up late, and had me driving, driving, driving, and now it's like I did, I did all of that just to win the day.

Just to have it like we win, and then it just evaporates into thin air, and we're right back to where we used to be.

And so it's in this moment that he is completely empty and exhausted.

He has no vision, which is a new place to be for him.

Because up to this point, he's been totally driven by vision.

But now my vision didn't play out the way I was sure that it would.

And in the aftermath, now I've got to figure out where to go from here.

And this is why he hits a place so low that he cannot imagine a future that he would be as passionate about as the one that he just lived.

And so he falls into despair and says, you know, I would just, Lord, just take me now.

So what's the path forward?

Right?

We know how we got to where we are, and for some of you, as I describe this, even though it's not apples to apples with Elijah, you have your own Mount Carmel.

You have your own vision, you have your own life that you've lived out, and you've come to the place where you get to the back end of it, and you go, all of that, and it what difference did it even make?

All we did was win the day.

Where do I go from here?

So, what's the path forward?

That's what we're going to look at.

So let's go back to the text.

So he he ends uh verse four by saying, I've had enough, and take my life, I'm no better than my ancestors.

And and in verse five, he it says, Then he look- Look at this.

It says, Then he laid down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once the angel touched him and said, Get up and eat.

And he looked around, and thereby his head was some bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water, and he ate and drank, and then lay down again.

And the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.

Alright, so what's interesting here is it says an angel of the Lord, uh, which is it we're not exactly sure what that means.

So it doesn't describe the angel of the Lord, it doesn't say it had wings or it was glowing or celestial.

The word for angel there is the word messenger.

So it could have been, you know, a heavenly, celestial being, or it could have just been somebody who God sent.

We don't we we don't know that for sure, but we know it was someone sent by God.

And um and and so notice what happens here is uh he says, get up and eat.

And then he takes so he takes a nap and then he eats and then he goes back to sleep and then he eats again.

So he takes two naps and has two meals.

Um, okay.

This is not what I would have expected from a messenger from God or an angel, right?

It's like if if I'm in the place where I'm like, I've had enough, Lord, I can't take it anymore.

Just take me out.

Right?

You are in the valley of despair, and God sends some sort of messenger angel to you, you're expecting more than here's some food and take a nap, and then do it again.

I'm expecting like a magic carpet ride.

I'm expecting some sort of existential experience, something metaphysical, okay, something in the clouds, you know, maybe I get to float up into outer space, and maybe I get to, you know, isn't that?

I mean, you send an angel, I'm I'm low here, and and and the angel, the first thing the angel does says is take care of your body.

See, the path forward, right, starts, the first thing is to prioritize health.

Like, like don't just glide past this.

Don't just glide past this.

Often what happens when we are impacted mentally, emotionally, we have tremendous disappointment.

Things can really start to cascade and devolve and start to really go down fast because those feelings then lead sometimes to some poor health choices.

And so let's let's not miss this.

The angel or messenger of the Lord doesn't come in with some profound sound bite for all time, doesn't come in with some metaphysical experience.

He says, no, you're a physical being, you've gone through a hard time, eat well, nourish your body, get rest, do it again, and you're going to need to actually respect the physical, finite body that you've been given.

Don't take the situation from bad to worse because you make poor health choices connected to major disappointment.

So I don't know where you're at, I don't know where this hits you.

This may be completely irrelevant for you and what you're walking through, and maybe you've been the best health of your life.

But often, oftentimes things go from bad to worse because we're trying to make sense of the chaos in our lives, and in the middle of that, maybe develop some coping mechanisms where we are whether physically, uh, you know, now we start eating and things we shouldn't be eating, or we're not eating at all, or we're not resting, we're not sleeping, we're not taking time off, we're starting to become compulsive.

And then those decisions, friend, your your body is fragile, your body is finite, your your body is a it's a it's a bunch of systems and it's a bunch of appetites, and if you don't respect those and you don't treat them well, all of a sudden this thing that happened emotionally turns physical real quick.

So the angel shows up and says, Look, you're gonna see some things about God you've never seen.

We're gonna do some really profound stuff, but the first thing I want you to do is fuel up for the journey and rest up for the journey.

And so the path forward starts with a prioritization of health.

So it says in verse 8, so he got up and he ate and drank, strengthened by that food.

Notice that.

Strengthened by that food.

He didn't get some like super spiritual, supernatural dose of adrenaline.

He's like, no, man, it was that food.

He traveled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb the mountain of God.

Okay, Horeb the Mountain of God doesn't mean much to us until we know what it is.

It's actually Mount Sinai.

So Mount Sinai is where Moses received the law of God.

To the Jewish listener, when they hear this, this is probably the most significant place for them.

This is the place where God met man, where God met Moses and gave his word.

And so you have this guy who doesn't know what to do and doesn't know where to go.

He says, instead of running away from God, I'm going to run to God.

And so he gets up from the wilderness.

He's he's he's got his rest, he's he's nourished his body, and now he takes a 200-mile journey, 40 days, 40 nights, to go to the place that God met Moses.

I want to meet God there.

And so it says he went into a cave to spend the night, and the word of the Lord came to him.

Look at this.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

What are you doing here?

Why are you here?

What brought you here?

And and he's he's wanting to get Elijah processing through all right this path forward.

And so he starts out and he says, I've been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

Alright, there's a literary element at play here.

This is a what's called a Hebrew intensification structure.

It's a way of saying something as powerfully as you can say it, as intensely as you can say it.

So this I've been very zealous really would would be translated.

I have been burning with burning zeal.

I have been burning with burning zeal.

I have been giving all of my passion.

I've been giving God what I think He wants, which is the best of me.

I've put out the best possible energy that I can have.

I've been at a fever pitch.

I've been white hot.

I've been absolutely as passionate and as zealous as I can possibly be.

And then he says, I've been zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

I've been burning with a burning zeal, and what do I have to show for it?

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, they've torn down your altars, they've put your prophets to death by the sword, and I am the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me too.

Can you feel him wrestling with his theology, with what he's supposed to believe, feeling like I gave my best and it was a waste.

I gave my best and things are no better than they've been since the beginning.

God, I thought you were gonna use me beyond my ancestors, and I am no better than my ancestors.

I thought you were gonna use me to stop this free fall of seven kings of the northern kingdom and this divided nation.

I thought you were gonna use me in this profound way, and I put all of my eggs in that basket, and I did my very best to give them the best self and to trust you in every way, and I thought I thought chapter 18 was going to absolutely be a breakthrough for everybody.

Undeniable.

And I just saw the most profound victory that I've ever seen, and yet, chapter 19, Jezebel's still in control.

In fact, she's threatening my life.

I don't know what to believe.

So verse 11 says, The Lord said, Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.

In other words, this is what we call a theophany.

This is God giving some sort of physical manifestation of his presence.

And in the Bible, what you see are the three main forms of theophany would be fire, would be whirlwind, would be earthquake.

So if if we go to um Exodus 19, 18, this is when God was giving the Ten Commandments to Moses, when God was giving him the law, look what it says.

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it, on it fire.

Right?

So the fire represented the presence of God.

The smoke billowed up like smoke from a furnace.

Look at this, and the whole mountain trembled violently, an earthquake.

So you see, you remember when the nation of Israel was lost in the wilderness and God would lead them by a pillar of fire.

You remember when Moses went and saw the burning bush?

Okay, he saw fire.

So uh Job, God speaks to him in a whirlwind.

So what the point of this is these are the ways, these big, powerful, unmistakable, loud, strong ways that that God had showed up in the past, and certainly what Elijah was expecting.

And so it says, he said, Go stand on the mountain, I'm about to pass by.

And then it said, then a great, powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord.

Look at this, but the Lord was not in the wind.

The wind, then after the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And look at this, and after the fire came a gentle whisper.

So the second thing in the path forward that we see from 1 Kings 19 is a deeper revelation of God.

So it starts with a prioritization of actually respecting the physical body that God's given you, but the second was God showed him something about himself that Elijah had never seen.

He saw God in a form that he was unfamiliar with.

He had only seen God in fire and lightning and all this stuff.

And again, that was his mentality.

And this kind of some this checks out.

Like often for us, you know, we go, we see God in the big, bold, powerful action, but can you see God in the deafening silence?

Do you see God in the reverberating silence?

Do you hear God in the whisper?

Often we go, no, the big crescendo moment, that was God.

And now when I'm in the aftermath and the silence is deafening, I go, God's not speaking.

We see silence as empty, but often silence is full.

God is speaking in the fullness of silence.

He had to lean in to hear it.

The other things were overwhelming.

They were huge.

They were loud, they were big.

But sometimes in the frenzy of the earthquake and the heat of the fire and the sound of the wind and all this, and all of that, sometimes you it's going so fast, you don't know the difference between adrenaline and anointing.

I don't know the difference between what God's doing and I'm doing.

I don't know the difference between my ego and God's power, and it's all happening so fast, and I'm feeling so good.

And then when it all comes to an aftermath and it dissipates and the music fades and all is stripped away and all the dust settles, and you're sitting there and the silence is deafening.

We think God is checked out, but actually God is speaking something different.

And so what he had to do was he had to bring three things that that that Elijah thought was what God would do.

And he said, Let me show you one that you haven't thought of yet.

And he speaks to him in a whisper.

He brings the sheer quiet and forces him to see something that he's not been able to see.

Now look at this.

This is great.

This might be my favorite favorite part.

He says, when Elijah heard it, he pulled a cloak over his face and he went out and stood in the mountain of the cave.

And then a voice said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

That looks familiar, right?

A few verses earlier, he asked him the same question, right?

What are you what are you doing here, Elijah?

I think the first time he was asking Elijah, What are you doing here?

The second time he's asking him, What did you learn by what I just showed you?

And look at this, he replied, I've been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword, and I am the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me too.

He says the exact same thing.

I mean, it's a copy and paste.

Um okay, this is also a literary element.

When you see redundancy like this, it's designed to slow the reader down.

How many times you read something in scripture, you just read right over it and you go right on the next thing?

And this redundancy is forcing us to, even as a reader, to slow down.

And there's a few things that are uh statements that are being made here, things that we need to wrestle with.

The first is you expect, as the reader, after the theophany, after the whisper, to see some movement from Elijah to go, you know what, I've seen the light, I've heard the whisper.

Wow, here's the lesson crystallized.

But what you see is he is stuck in this cycle of despair.

And I appreciate that.

Because the reality is often when you have this sort of profound change happening in your life, like going from I've lived my whole life this certain way, and then in the deafening silence, I started to hear something new and think something different.

Usually, even if you can see it clearly or you hear that whisper clearly, it doesn't just change like that.

Like often it takes, I don't know about you, maybe you guys are quicker than me.

I it takes me a while to get like what I think in my mind and what I feel in my spirit and what I feel in my body, and get that all aligned, you know.

Sometimes it's like I think I'm know something or I change my mind on something, but it takes my emotion a while to catch up.

It gets takes me a while to get up to speed, and sometimes I gotta repeat this thing a few times.

And and so we see that you know, this process it doesn't just happen in a straight line, it doesn't happen uh in the in the blink of an eye here for Elijah.

He's still feeling what he felt.

Even though God showed him something new, he's still feeling low, he's still feeling foolish, he's still feeling disappointed.

But verse 15, God changes his response and he starts to give him a plan.

And so he says, Hey, listen, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to go back the way you came.

I want you to go to the desert of Damascus, and when you get there, anoint Hazel, and then anoint Jehu, and then anoint Elisha.

So the third thing he does in the path forward is he gives him a fresh vision for the future.

And notice what he does, he's changing Elisha from this expectation that this crescendo moment in chapter 18, like I could do something just me and God, so profound on Mount Carmel in chapter 18 that's going to change everything for all time.

It takes them from this looking for this intense, intense moment to change everything to a more realistic expectation that I want you to start playing the long game.

I want you to build for the long haul.

I want you to do something bigger than you, beyond yourself that will last when you're gone.

And so he says, hey, instead of going back to Mount Carmel and flexing, what I want you to do is I want you to go find some people and start to pour your life into them.

Because so far, it's really been you against the world.

Right?

You've been you've gotten really good at being a loner.

You've gotten really good at just you and God doing stuff.

But I want to do something beyond you.

I want you to go find other people, and I want you to start pouring into them, and I want you to start making an investment.

I want you to anoint these people, and I want you to take your cloak, I want you to take your mantle, and I want you to start to put that on them.

I want you to start giving them authority, I want you to start giving them, uh pouring your life into them, mentoring them, you know, giving your best to them, because it's this is not just about you.

Up to this point, you thought that if you could have the biggest day ever, and if you could have the showdown on Carmel and it would go according to your vision, that everything would be better.

And what you're finding is that the problem that you've been called to impact isn't going to happen in some one big dynamic moment.

It's going to be a lifetime of faithfulness.

Stop overestimating what you can do in one chapter on Mount Carmel and start now setting your vision on what you can do with a lifetime of faithfulness, pouring into people that will be around long after you're gone.

And so he gives them a fresh plan.

And then the last thing is that he gives them a better perspective on his life.

Look at this.

1 Kings 19, 18.

God says to him, I reserve 7,000 in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.

How many times in this text do you hear Elijah go, I'm the last one?

I'm the only one.

He says it twice at Mount Sinai, you know?

I burned all my zeal out.

I'm burned out, God, and things are just as bad as they've always been, maybe worse.

And he goes, What's worse is I'm the only one left.

And God gives him a perspective to say, sir, all that you see is not all that there is.

I know you feel alone, but you're not alone.

I know you feel like you're the last stand, you're not the last stand.

And I think healthy, mature people, like we're seeing Elijah mature in front of our very eyes, that you have to hold two realities at the same time.

One is what you're doing, Elijah, is really important.

But the other reality is what you're doing ain't that important.

Like, yeah, it's important, but just so you know, don't get too self-important.

God was doing some stuff before you got here.

Once you're gone, he's gonna do some more stuff.

But for a season of time, you get to do something really important, but don't get too self-important.

You think you're the last one, you think God's up in heaven going, you know, if it didn't work out with Elijah, you know, I'm just done.

You know, I'm out.

I mean, I don't know.

I'm I mean, I'm only Yahweh.

I only own the cattle on a thousand hills.

I only spun this universe into existence all by myself.

I don't remember you being there, Elijah.

So, in a sense, he's giving them a perspective, like, yeah, do your part.

Do your part.

But don't get so self-important that you you start trying to switch roles with God.

God says, hey, you think you're by yourself?

I got 7,000 people that you know not of.

So not all you see is not all there is, that's just all you see, and it makes sense why you feel what you feel.

It's okay to have your feelings, but don't let your feelings and what you feel about reality, your perception of reality, become your conclusion about reality.

God can do much more, and He is doing more than what you even know about.

Amen.

So we know how we got to where we are, how do we move forward?

Just to recap, we prioritize health.

We get a deeper revelation of God, a fresh vision for the future, and a better perspective of life and our reality now.

I want to take a moment and pray for you.

In fact, I'm gonna invite our prayer team to come forward now, to make themselves ready.

I have a feeling that while all of us have something we can take away from today, there are some of you that when I read that text, I've had enough, God.

I've had enough, Lord.

Just take me now.

Some of you can absolutely resonate with the place that Elijah was in.

Although your story and his may not be apples to apples completely, you know what it's like to give the best of you to something and to expect a certain outcome, only to end up in the aftermath.

What is going on?

Why am I doing this?

I really thought this was gonna bring a bigger change.

I thought this was gonna have a bigger impact, and I gave everything I had only to feel like I just see it dissipate up into the air.

And I don't know that I can find anything to pull that zeal out of me again.

And I know it's a terrible place for your flesh to be.

It's the wilderness of Beersheba.

But today I just want to encourage you: God sent a messenger to you today.

God sent a bunch of messengers to you today to meet you right where you are.

There's a path forward.

Some of it's gonna be so practical, it's gonna be like food and water and rest.

But a lot of it is gonna be God showing you something that the intensity of Mount Carmel in chapter 18, and the intensity you couldn't hear the whisper.

And now the dust is settled and the silence is deafening.

And it's in that moment that God wants to whisper some things to you.

He wants you to see some things about him and yourself and maybe give you a vision for the future that looks much, much different than what you had just a few chapters ago.

And I believe in these moments God meets us here.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus.

Lord, I thank you, God, for all the times that you show up in fire and earthquake and wind, whirlwind, and all that good stuff.

And that's great, Lord.

But today we do not forsake or underestimate what you can do in a whisper.

And so I pray in this moment to every receptive heart.

And some of those receptive hearts are broken hearts, confused hearts.

But Lord, in these moments, you meet us right here.

You direct us where we're supposed to be.

So, in a certain way, Lord, some of us are in the wilderness of Beersheba, and yet some of us, Lord, have gone to Sinai and said, Lord, I just want to be in your presence.

I need to I need to encounter you.

I need to touch you today.

For you to touch them.

I pray, Lord, no matter how long it takes us to kind of see what we're supposed to see and work our way through it, Lord, may we unmistakably today sense your presence in this moment.

We love you and praise you and thank you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.