“I feel like I’m just waiting for the grave.” It’s rather vulnerable to admit that this sentence came out of my own mouth recently, but it did.
I was speaking to someone who knows me and loves me, and those words just popped out. Thankfully, that bleak statement doesn’t convey the full picture of my life or my interior landscape, but on that particular day, in this particular season, a discouraged part of me showed up. After that conversation, I decided I needed to spend some time in prayer. Sitting in a dark, candlelit church, before Jesus was exposed in the monstrance on the altar, I found myself recalling the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah.
Elijah was an incredible prophet. Yet apparently even incredible prophets have their moments. Perhaps you know the story about Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal (cf. 1 Kings 18:20 – 40). It’s a dramatic scene, concluding with the Lord consuming Elijah’s sacrifice with fire from heaven, and Elijah slaying 450 false prophets. Not bad.
However, it wasn’t that scene, but the next one, that came to mind for me in prayer. When Jezebel, the evil wife of the king, learned what Elijah had done, she made it known that Elijah’s own neck was now on the line. Elijah hears this message and promptly flees for his life. He escapes a day’s journey into the wilderness, sits down under a broom tree, asks the Lord to please take his life, and lays down to sleep.
In that one moment, Elijah went from mighty prophet to someone I could deeply understand. Despite all the wondrous deeds the Lord had done in Elijah’s life, and even through his life, the Bible tells us that “Elijah was afraid” (1 Kings 19: 3). The same man who called down an all-consuming fire from heaven, whose steadfast faith converted all those present, and who single-handedly took on a horde of false prophets, could not face the wrath of one Jezebel. Instead, just like me, “Elijah was afraid.”
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had your own moments of fleeing Jezebel. Despite all the ways God has shown up in your life, all the growth or progress or conversion you’ve experienced, there is still that one thing that makes you want to curl up under a broom tree and quit. Maybe it’s a particular mental health struggle. Maybe it’s a difficult health issue. Maybe it’s a stressor life brought your way that feels consistently overwhelming, no matter what you try. Or, like Elijah, maybe it’s that one relationship with that one person (or that one kind of person) that feels like it brings out the worst in you and makes you want to run the other way. How can we respond in these moments?
There is some wisdom in Elijah’s approach. Sometimes we need to take a nap under a tree. We are embodied persons; fear is a real emotion and rest is a real need. What I find especially interesting, however, is not Elijah’s approach but the Lord’s response. He sends Elijah an angel with simple instructions: “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you” (1 Kings 19: 7). The angel even brings food and water, rousing a disheartened Elijah twice with the same command: “Arise and eat.”
In other words, God knows it won’t ultimately help me to avoid doing what He calls me to do or becoming who He made me to be. But, like any loving Father, He recognizes and supports my need for rest and renewal. Sometimes, what I really need to do in response to emotional distress is rehydrate, eat a nourishing meal, and get a good night’s rest. Sometimes that’s enough to turn things around and get me started again on the journey.
But, sometimes, that isn’t enough. Sometimes, we need a stronger hand to compel us forward. That was the case for Elijah. In the following passage, Elijah encounters the Lord and receives a singular command: “Go.” (1 Kings 19:11, 15).
Arise. Get up. Move. Act. Go. Become. And as I read it, I can feel the parts within me that want to get up and keep fighting the good fight grow stronger. I can feel them becoming inspired to arise, move, and go where I know I need to go even if parts of me don’t want to.
Discouragement, fear, depression often have the opposite effect; they can make us want to run away (flight), or lay down (freeze). While the Lord will tend to these parts and love them, He will eventually call us to arise again. It’s in these moments that we cannot judge the next step. It may be small. It may come in the form of a meal or an edifying conversation. It might even be something as small as sitting up and admitting to ourselves that we are afraid. It might be crying out to God, or waiting patiently for His still small voice. It might be to receive what the Lord inevitably provides through the messengers, angelic or otherwise, He sends to strengthen us. It might be to get up and go to the next place the Lord is calling us, or it might be to turn right around and approach the thing we ran from in the first place. Whatever it is, don’t judge it.
Arise and face your Jezebel. You were made for this.