A Gentle Whisper: Listening for God in Hopelessness

I want to tell you a story, a story that's of Elijah and how we

hear from God because the Lord was not in the wind, he was not in

the earthquake, he was not in the fire.

He was in a gentle whisper.

And if we can understand from Elijah how to listen in the very

worst moment of life, then all these other topics we want to look

at, the challenges of life will have a foundation for how to

listen to God.

So the story I want to tell you is from 1 Kings that was just

read for us.

And it's an amazing story.

It's a remarkable story in so many ways.

Elijah was a prophet.

He lived about 3,000 or so years ago.

He was a prophet because in those days, there was no Bible, of

course.

And so God would anoint people to speak to into those who were following

God, to give them direction and give them insights.

And these were people who were very close with God and leaned heavily

on God and listened to God.

And so when they spoke, people listened.

And Elijah was that kind of prophet.

So what happened in the land of Israel during the time that Elijah

was a prophet and Ahab was a king, There was a drought that came.

Now, drought in those days would be a very serious thing, because

it's not like you can go and there are reserves of water someplace.

If it goes on for very long, it can be dangerous and deadly.

So a drought is a very serious thing.

And so the people who trusted God began to believe maybe God wasn't

there.

And so they began to worship idols and worship other gods, hoping

that would break the drought.

And it was pretty common in ancient times to worship idols and

to worship other gods.

Today, we worship idols too.

You know, we worship idols of politics.

We worship idols of technology.

We worship idols of money.

But Elijah challenged King Ahab and the prophets, who were gathering

the people to follow after the false God to a contest.

And he said, let's go to Mount Carmel, which is a place where everybody

can see what's going on, and we'll prove whose God is really powerful.

And so they went there.

Now, in the context of what's going on, Ahab the king had a wife

named Jezebel.

And Jezebel and Ahab were taking the people into a horrible

moral decline.

They wanted power, they wanted money, they wanted fame.

And so when they brought their prophets of baal, the false God leaders,

they brought them together.

There were 450 of them, 450 of these false God leaders.

And in those days, many people believed that God's various gods

controlled parts of the World, if you studied the Iliad and the

Odyssey, and you know that from Greek literature.

So they believe there's a God of the sun, a God of the moon, a

God of water, and a God of fire, and all these different gods.

Well, Elijah was going to prove to them that wasn't true, that

there was only one God.

So Elijah challenged them to this contest.

He said, let's make a sacrifice.

And a sacrifice would be that they would build an altar of wood.

It would probably be up on a stone thing to begin with, and then

there'd be wood piled high.

And on top of that, they would put some kind of a dead animal that

they were sacrificing to be burned.

And he said, let's build our sacrifice.

But here's the deal.

Nobody lights it.

You don't light it, I won't light it.

We'll let God light it.

So he said to the prophets of Baal, 450 of them, pretty big crowd.

He said, you go first.

And so they began to pray, they began to chant, they began to

march around.

The scripture says they even started cutting themselves with swords

to try to make their God respond and light the fire.

And they went on all day long, and nothing happened.

They finally gave up.

So Elijah says, okay, my turn.

He said, but before I do it, let's make it tougher.

So he had them bring jugs of water.

Now, the water was pretty scarce because of the drought, so

this was really kind of energizing the people that he would

even waste the water on this.

And he said, I'm going to show you how powerful the real God is.

Pour water all over this thing.

And he said, I'm going to drink a trench around it.

Which he did.

And not only was it soaked with water and all the wood was soaked

with water, the trench filled up with water, there was so much

water on it.

And then Elijah prayed, and when he did, God brought fire.

And the fire not only consumed the sacrifice and all the wood, it

melted the rocks, it cleaned up all the water in the trench and

even burned the ground around it.

And then he killed the prophets of baby baal, A little side

note in the story, which is kind of amazing.

So Jezebel, especially when she heard the story when Ahab got

home that we heard in the scripture today, she was mad because

her whole power base was built around following these false gods.

And she was getting a lot of money and stature and pride, and

her whole ego was built into this thing.

And essentially, she got humiliated, and Ahab got humiliated.

And so she Put out a notice before tomorrow.

Before tomorrow I will have you killed, Elijah.

And Elijah, who had just called down fire from heaven to burn

this up in front of 450 prophets of Baal, when that woman

told him she was going to kill him, he was scared to death and he

took off.

He'd just seen God's power.

And so often we run from our problems when we've just seen God's

power.

You get on a very high and then you go into a deep low.

And that's pretty common sometimes in a Christian life.

And that's what Elijah did.

So he went from this high of this moment of really humiliating

them and lifting up God to being scared to death of this woman.

And he ran off into the wilderness.

So look at the scripture of what happened then when he went to

the wilderness, it said, then he went alone into the wilderness,

traveling all day.

He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might

die.

I've had enough, Lord, he said, take my life.

I'm no better than my ancestors who have already died.

Elijah was feeling hopeless.

He was at the bottom of it all.

He was hopeless.

He ran from God when God was the one.

He knew he could solve the problem.

But so often when we feel hopeless, we think we've got to somehow

fix it ourselves and solve it ourselves.

And we run away from the one source that really can give us hope

in the worst of moments.

So he did that and then he ran alone.

The scripture says.

Well, going alone in those days was really dangerous.

You didn't go alone.

I mean, the scripture tells earlier than the part we picked up.

He went with his servants to a certain point and then he left them

behind and he went alone into the wilderness.

Well, there are all kinds of bad people out there and robbers

and bandits and all kinds of stuff.

There are a lot of wild animals too.

A lot of wild animals.

But he was so desperate and so overwhelmed.

He went by himself because he just wasn't sure who he could trust

anymore.

He was scared of the people even around him.

And then it says he traveled all day now.

He traveled a bunch before that, and then all day by himself

in the wilderness.

And that would have been really hard trek to do that.

So he was a exhausted physically.

He was exhausted because he didn't have anything to drink.

He was exhausted and emotionally drained from this big

high he'd had in front of the prophets of baal.

And now this scared to death feeling and the running that he'd

had.

When you're running for your life, he Was out of everything.

He just beyond exhausted.

And so scripture said, he sat down under a broom tree.

A broom tree was something we don't relate to.

But a broom tree is not a big, beautiful oak like we have in the

center of campus.

A broom tree would be kind of a glorified bush, about the size

of that piano, probably.

And it was a lone one, which means he wasn't in a forest.

He wasn't protected by anything.

It was out in the middle of nowhere.

And he got up under this thing, which probably would have

been filled with all kinds of insects and snakes and spiders and

all kinds of stuff, but he was that desperate, and he got under

the broom tree and he fell asleep.

You know, when we feel threatened, our natural instincts

are either to fight or flight.

Fight or flight.

Most of us run when we feel threatened.

The problem with running when you feel threatened is it begins

a pattern in your life that every time you feel threatened, every

time you feel overwhelmed, when you.

Or every time you feel hopeless, you run.

And so when things are tough, you change colleges.

When things are tough, you change jobs.

When things are tough, you change marriages.

When things are tough, some people even change families, leave

their kids.

People who run develop a pattern of running that is very hard

to stop.

And that's where Elijah was.

So here he is, exhausted, scared to death for his life, been

running out in the wilderness all by himself.

He's under this tree, he's exhausted, and he finally just called

out to God.

He didn't say, lord, you know, I really messed up.

I should have done this.

I should have done this.

I'm really sorry, and how can you help me?

No, he just said, I've had enough, Lord, I've had enough.

I'm done.

I'm as good as dead.

I'm done.

That's all he said.

It was a last resort prayer in every way.

We get so busy trying to solve our problems, we forget, like Elijah,

that God was there all the time.

God was there all the time with Elijah.

God was just waiting for Elijah to be ready to listen.

This is the same man who'd shown the power of God to the prophets

of baal.

Can you imagine if that fire didn't start?

What would have happened?

But that fire started.

He showed the power of God, and then he went into despair of

hopelessness.

I hope today you don't feel hopeless.

But for some of you, someday you might.

Someday you might feel hopeless like Elijah.

So what did he do?

First, I think we see that God was there all along.

God was there at the prophets of baal.

God was there when Jezebel threatened him.

God was there.

When he ran, God was there.

But until he cried out to God, he didn't get an answer.

God would have given Elijah an answer sooner if Elijah just would

have asked and listened.

But here's what's really interesting to me, what God didn't

do.

You imagine this.

This is the big deal.

This guy's on this spiritual high.

This woman threatens him, and he's scared to death, and he runs

away from everything and thinks like he's totally hopeless.

You'd think God would say, well, let me tell you a thing or

two.

I'll take you back, but I'm going to straighten out some stuff

with you.

Or maybe God would say, I'm going to let you suffer a while longer

and teach you a lesson so you won't do this again.

Mnh.

Mnh.

God didn't do any of that.

When Elijah cried out, God sent him an angel, and the angel

touched him and told him, get up and eat now.

For 40 days after that, the angel and Elijah traveled together,

and the angel brought him water and food.

You know when you are physically exhausted, when you push

too much, you don't eat well, you don't sleep well, you don't do

all that stuff.

The powers of life come at you in a way that they don't otherwise.

And the angel knew, before you're going to listen to God, I've

got to get you restored physically and emotionally.

So he took him to a safe shelter as well, where he could emotionally

rest and get restored.

In fact, he took him to the mountain where the ten commandments

came from, because he knew for Elijah, that was a sacred place.

So he got him into a point where Elijah was willing to hear.

And so often, we are just not ready to hear.

And so we need to take those steps, whether they be physically

or emotionally or in our patterns of life, to get ready to

hear.

And that's what Elijah did.

And finally, he was ready to listen to God.

And when he did, this is what the scripture said.

God said, go out and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord

told him.

And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm

hit the mountain.

Such terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not

in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was

not in the fire.

And after the fire, there was a sound of a gentle whisper, the

sound of a gentle whisper is how God most often speaks to us.

And I hope this semester that's what we'll learn as we look

at various people and how they handle the challenges of life and

learn to listen to God.

And so that's what we're going to do this semester as we go through

this.

And I shared that list with you.

Well, in hopelessness, Elijah cried out.

He said, I've had enough.

I've had enough, Lord.

I'm at the lowest point.

I can't get any lower than this.

And, you know, that's why I wanted to start with hopelessness

today, because the rest of it really gets better after this.

Some of the other challenges people face compared to absolute,

utter despair and hopelessness.

But let's take five quick lessons from what we learn about

listening to to God from this story of Elijah, who's at the worst

point in his life.

The first is this.

We have to be willing to listen.

We have to be willing to listen.

If I told you right now, God's going to speak to you in the next

30 minutes and he's going to tell you something to do.

Most of you wouldn't do it.

I probably wouldn't do it.

We've got to be willing to listen.

If you're not willing to listen, God's not going to speak

to you.

People say, well, God never speaks to me.

Yeah, because you're not willing to listen.

You're not willing to even do what he says.

He's given direction in his scripture.

We don't even do that part.

So why should he speak to us directly?

God's not going to give us that direction unless we're willing

to.

To listen and to do it.

And that's where we've got to start.

The second thing is we got to ask God to speak to us.

The number one reason most people never feel like they never

hear from God is because they haven't asked God to speak to them.

If you'd make it your prayer every day to say, God, teach me something

today, God, direct me somewhere today, God help me be stronger

relationship with you today.

If you'll ask God to speak to you, God will speak to you.

I guarantee it 100%.

God will speak to you.

So you've got to ask.

You've got to be willing.

Then you got to ask.

And then thirdly, it requires reflection.

Now, Elijah, when all this happened, he wasn't reflecting.

He was scared to death.

He was running for his life.

So he wasn't even hardly, you know, processing what was going on.

But that's where God spoke to Elijah.

When he was finally ready to listen and he asked God for help.

He said, lord, I've given up.

And that was an ask for help.

It wasn't an eloquent prayer.

You don't have to have an eloquent prayer to ask God for help.

Just say, lord, I need help.

That's it.

He'll help.

So what God do?

First thing he says is he asked him a question.

He said, what are you doing here, Elijah?

What are you doing?

You know, he could have asked sooner, but he just wanted him to

reflect.

Elijah needed to reflect on where he was and whose he was before

he could hear God.

And then we see fourth, that you have to be close to God in order

to hear him.

You have to be close to God.

God is approachable.

God is not out there someplace.

God is in our spirit, in our life, among us.

And that's why it's so important to understand.

He spoke to God.

God spoke to Elijah in a whisper.

And if I whisper, if you want to hear me, you got to get really

close or you're not going to hear.

They can't hear.

You can hear because you're close enough.

God speaks in a whisper.

If you're not close to God, you're not going to hear Him.

If you're not into the Scriptures and studying what he's

already taught us, you're not going to hear Him.

If you're not seeking after him, you're not going to hear Him.

If you don't get close to God and say, look, I don't have it all

together, God, but I want to be close to you.

If you can't get to that point, you're not going to hear him

because he speaks in a whisper so often.

And you have to be close in order to hear.

And God is approachable like that.

And then lastly, we have to stop looking for something dramatic.

I've had people through the years tell me, I just don't know

what to do.

If God would write it in the sky, I'd do it.

But God's not going to write it in the sky.

God didn't put it in the earthquake, he didn't put it in a

fire.

He didn't put it in the wind.

He whispered it.

We try to find something dramatic to direct us rather than

developing a relationship with God so we can hear him in a whisper.

People say, I just need direction so much.

I'm going to get my Bible, I'm going to open up, I'm going To do

that, I'm going to find direction.

No, you're not.

No, you're not.

Understand the nature of God.

Understand the big ideas of.

Of faith.

Understand his relationship with his people.

Get a kingdom perspective.

Be around Christian people who can guide you.

And find time to be quiet.

And, boy, that's hard to do right now.

It's hard to be quiet in our culture today.

I had an MRI not too long ago, a few weeks ago.

They said, take your phone, take all your stuff, put it in here.

You got to sit here in a room and wait.

So I put it all away and I sat there in the room.

And then they came out a couple minutes later and they said,

it's going to be about 30 minutes.

I said, can I get my phone?

They said, no, you got to keep it away.

It's going to mess up the machine.

Just sit right here.

There wasn't one thing to read.

There wasn't one phone message to flip.

There wasn't one email.

There wasn't anything on Twitter to look at.

Total silence.

Nobody else there.

30 minutes.

I haven't done that in a long time.

It's not easy to be silent, but we've got to get the clutter

of our lives out of the way to hear God.

We've got to put the phone down.

We've got to turn off the tv.

It doesn't mean you have to.

Dead silence.

I listen to Musical Lot in the background and it speaks to me.

But do whatever it takes to help you listen to God and stop looking

for something dramatic because he's going to whisper.

And if you don't get close to him, you're not going to hear him.

Well, God never left.

Elijah.

Elijah, stop listening.

Elijah, stop listening.

And God promises the best for you and for me.

Better than we could ever imagine if we'll listen.

God promises a way through the challenges of life.

He doesn't say, I'm going to take your challenges away.

He says, I'm going to show you my power through those things.

The topics we're going to talk about this semester, God is going

to provide that way if we will listen.

And so my prayer this semester for you and for me is that we'll

learn how to better listen to God.

And if we'll listen to God and learn to listen, it's amazing how

he will help us through the toughest things of life and enjoy

the wonderful things of life even more.

And that's what our benediction verse says.

It says that God has so much more than we could ever imagine.

So pray this benediction with me as a prayer of assurance that

God will speak to you if you'll listen.

No eye is seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived.

What God has prepared for those who love him.

God bless.

Have a great day.