So Sharon wrote a post the other day about
Value Village and it has gone #viral on Facebook. She simply made the point that VV ‘s prices
are often higher than retail stores.
Well apparently a lot of people agree as the post has over 25000 shares!
Dear
Value Village...do you realize that you are not a retail store? And do you know
what I can buy at Homesense for $12.99??
SHARE
this if you agree that VV's prices are tooooo high. End of rant.
Value Village
What have you had a rant about?
There was a man in the Bible who had a rant
with God. However, in his case, he had
just gone viral with an amazing victory and display of God’s power at Mount
Carmel proving the existence of God and that He is worthy of worship.
Ok, now enter the scene with me in 1 Kings
19. We have Ahab, who was a wicked king
in Israel and his wife Jezebel who was even more wicked and the story is being
relayed to her about what Elijah has done.She is swearing by the same gods who failed
miserably against the God of Elijah in the previous chapter and then we read...
Elijah was afraid and ran for his
life.
I don’t get it….You just saw God demonstrate
Himself powerfully on the mountaintop,
He answered your prayers and now he is
going to let one woman scare him to the point where he runs away from his next
assignment
Elijah was running for his life.
V4 He wants to die and now the #rant
“I have 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. I am the only one left, and now
they are trying to kill me too.”
Elijah is afraid.
You can’t have a great faith, great God and
great fear or can you?
You can wake up in the morning after a
great day of serving God in some form or fashion, helping people out, serving
others, blessing people, singing His praises and wake up feeling defeated.
We were never meant to leave God’s presence
So, how do you live through it…It’s not
that the fear is gone, but they found a faith in God
I’m so grateful that the Bible shows me a
man of great faith in 1 Kings 18… and then in 1 Kings 19, a man so low he is
ready to die …he’s real, we can relate to him!
My question today is, “Are you running away
from the direction that God is calling you?”
We easily can get caught up in what
everyone else is thinking and forget about listening to the most important
voice in our life, the voice of our Father God through His Holy Spirit.
Here are three keys right out of the TEXT
to really living from the life of Elijah:
Get up and eat v6
Elijah runs far away, he wants God to take
his life… and what does God do…He tells him to eat. This is just not a picture
of physical food, it is a picture of how
God’s Word meets our spiritual needs
John
6:35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the
bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes
in me will never be thirsty.
God cooked the food for Elijah, meal
service was coming through; He has given you his promises, but you got to get
up and eat it. So start listening to His
Word, listen to His voice and take it to heart!
Go out and stand v9-11
It is one thing that God speaks to you on
the mountain when we are in a good place, but He also speaks to us in the cave,
when we are going through darker times.
You feel more distant from God sort of like when your “wifi signal” is
not as strong in the cave. Here’s the
truth, in isolation there can be more despondency. But why do we do that. We make a mistake, we crash spiritually or
something devastating happens in our life and the first thing we do is go into
hiding. It happened in the beginning
with Adam and Eve and it still happens now. I was just talking with someone
whose husband left her and the first thing I asked is do you have a good
support system of people around you and she replied by saying that she was too
embarrassed to go to church.
Whatever you are going through, you are not
the only one left.
You are not the only one left. God says I’m with you when you pull the
covers over your head, when you don’t want to face the day.
The enemy wants to keep you in the
cave. He wants you to keep replaying the
film of how you went down and how you lost your perspective
He speaks into our depression, dysfunction,
addiction. Elijah is still running but
the LORD keeps pursuing him. There are
lies that bounce around in the walls of your cave and God wants to get you out
of the cave. You may be stuck and He
wants to get you unstuck.
When you get on the mountain, it’s a
picture of worship, we hear God more clearly, in the presence of the LORD.
How do we stay calm? We do it by listening to our Father’s voice
through His Spirit
Look how God passes by!
The wind tears apart the mountains…He is
not there.
A fire consumes, a flashback scene for
Elijah… He is not there.
There are so many more dramatic ways that
God could have shown Himself that He is in control but then…a gentle
whisper… Elijah, what are you doing
here?
Why
did he whisper to Elijah? He whispers
because He is close.The enemy can yell, the voices inside your head can yell,
but God chooses to whisper in this moment. He doesn’t need to shout because He
is right, He is in control, he holds you in the palm of His hand.
What about you? What are you doing here, how long are you
going to stay in that cave, how long are you going to refuse to forgive that
person and hold them and yourself hostage?
How long are you going to stay awake at
night trying to fight a battle He already has won for you?
Remember how I was with you, how I provided
for you
Remember He knows everything about you...The hairs on your head are numbered. Luke 12:7
His Spirit is inside of you and I believe
there are things He wants to tell you.
The 3rd Thing God tells Elijah -
Go back the way you came v15
It’s time to move on.
Elijah was told, “Go to the desert of
Damascus….anoint Nimshi…hand the torch
over to Elisha, get back to the work I called you.”
How many more nights will you spend in the
cave? Are you ready to get back to the place I called you to be?
REMEMBER…you didn’t get into a relationship
with God by your own achievements, performance or effort….It was all by grace.
One of our friends at Church at the Manor,
Greg, is literally moving on. He was
baptized on Sunday and it’s his heart’s desire to get a fresh start. We prayed for the infilling of the Holy Spirit
too. He is actually moving out of the
Manor after living there for 12 years.
He shares how everywhere that he has lived, he has seen a cross from his
window… a reminder that God is always there, chasing him. I have had many conversations with Greg and
shared some real God moments as well as we broke bread , prayed, laughed and
shared life together.
EAT, STAND, GO…it’s a message for all of
us!
