Used for God's Glory - Elijah

21-08-07 Morning Chapel – Elijah – When things do not go as planned

HBI – God can use our stories for His glory. Sometimes things do not go as expected but we need to remember it is our job to follow Jesus and he will do the rest.

Þ Intro.

- Never have I ever questions

- Can God use our stories for His glory? Even though we have gone through some hard times, or maybe fell into the trap of temptation and sin can God still use us.

- But one thing that we need to remember is that whatever God wants to use us for it is for His glory, it is not about us.

- This is hard though sometimes. I wanted to look into the life of Elijah next. The reason is that it is hard to live a life for Jesus sometimes when things do not go as expected.

- It seems like everything is going wrong so we just flee and stop trying to do what Jesus has called us to do.

- I have told you guys the story of when my life did not go as planned. After my 3rd year of Bible college my plan was to go back for a 4thyear.

- I was all set to go for that 4th year but the teachers prayed about it I guess and said that they did not think that I was ready to do an internship at the time.

- You see I had some growing to do before I would be ready for something like that. But at the time how do you think that I handled it? Well not all that well.

- It sucked, I did not like it and I wondered why they thought that I was not ready. Looking back I would agree with them, at that time I probably was not ready.

- Life was not going as expected, and at the time that was not okay for me. But God led me on to other things. But the question I keep asking myself is when things do not go as planned how do we handle it?

- God still wants to use us for His glory, God still wants to use our stories to point other people to Him. We come int this with expectations, we think we know best how this is going to look and God may have other plans.

- Even though we may try and run-away God still wants to use us, there is nothing we can do to mess up the plans of God.

- To me this is a relief to know, because when I get things wrong, when I screw up as soon as I turn back to God He is there saying “you should have trusted in me all along, but I forgive you”.

- So, what is God trying to do in your life? Even if it is beyond what you expected to happen will you still trust and follow God?

Þ Eliah and the sacrifice

- You may wonder why I would go to Elijah to see how you can mess up and still be used by God for the glory of God.

- Well one thing we are going to see is that there are different things that we can go through that might cause us to doubt that God is using us for His glory. But our stories still matter, God still wants to use us.

- So let us go to Elijah back when there was a challenge against Elijah and God and on the other side where the prophets of Baal.

- One of my favorite Christian rock bands, Disciple, wrote a song on this story. The song is called God of Elijah and it goes through this whole story. Check it out.

- Many people likely know this story so here is a paraphrase of it.

- How long will you waver between two opinions If the Lord is God (then follow him) But if Baal is god (then follow him) There are 450 prophets of Baal and just one of me So it should be no problem to get his attention And show everyone here today That if he's the real god, he'll have to send fire down So they began to shout, run around, cut themselves Baal made no reply, so Elijah cried Maybe he's sleeping, or busy, or travelling Or using the bathroom, or deeply thinking So Elijah took twelve stones representing The 12 tribes and built an altar of sacrifice And dug up a trench, and cut up a bull And placed it on the wood And poured four jars of water all around He said do it again, and then do it a third time Until the whole sacrifice had been soaked down Water rolled out of the trenches Then Elijah prayed Lord God of Israel let it be known today that you are God I pray you answer and turn their hearts back to you again Let the fire fall, and burn it all Let it rain down God of Elijah, send your fire

- Those are most of the lyrics to the song I mentioned. Then Elijah went and struck down the Prophets of Baal by the sword.

- Things seemed to be going great, I mean after all that God had done through Elijah, he must have been pretty excited about the change that was going to happen.

- Just imagine being there and seeing what God did to the sacrifice and how foolish the prophets of Ba’al looked. Thinking now things where going to change and people where Going to turn to the Lord.

- After all, when the people saw what happened, everyone there responded 1 Kings 18:39 (CSB)39 When all the people saw it, they fell facedown and said, “The Lord, he is God! The Lord, he is God!”

- God is in control and is all powerful. We can trust that whatever is going on in our lives that God is in control. Though sometimes things do not go as we expect and that can cause us to either cling to God for strength or run away in fear that we do not control our own lives after all.

Þ Did not go as planned

- You would think that the king at the time, king Ahab would change his life after seeing this great miracle that God did.

- Our expectations would dictate that peoples lives would change and they would go back to worshipping God like they where supposed to. And that is likely what Elijah was waiting for.

- But when Ahab got back he put the blame solely on Elijah for what happened and attributed nothing to God. 1 Kings 19:1 Ahab told Jezebel everything that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.

- Note the emphasis on “all Elijah had done”. His horrible wife, Jezebel reacted by doing the only thing she could do. She could not attack God himself so she went on the offensive against Elijah.

- Elijah became scared and ran for His life. He ran into the desert and hid under a tree praying that He could just die for he is no better then those who came before Him.

Þ Application

- You see we have a problem of failed expectations here. When Elijah was questioned by God on why He was hiding in the desert he answered essentially that He had failed.

- 1 Kings 19:10 (CSB)10 He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of Armies, but the Israelites have abandoned your covenant, torn down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are looking for me to take my life.”

- He was likely looking for a real turnaround, for God to suddenly change the hearts of the people or at least have the people turn back to the Lord God.

- But all he got was death threats from the throne. They did not want anything to do wih His God. Life is full of disappointments as we know that we live in a fallen world.

- There is a problem when our expectations get in the way of trusting God. The question we have been asking applies to this as well, can God still use us even when we fail to follow Him.

- We need to remember tht God holds us responsible for trusting in Him, for obedience, for love, for faithfulness to do as he has called us to do.

- The results that come from this are in the hands of God, not in our hands. We are just to be faithful in doing as God has called us to do.

- ur expectations can easily slip into a sense of a demandingness--demanding that things work out the way we think they should. When that happens, we are usurping God’s sovereignty and acting as though we the creature were the all wise Creator.

- When we start to do this, we make the source of our happiness, our security, our significance dependant on our own expectations. And when this happens what we get is Elijah syndrome.

- It is easy to become depressed because life is not going the way that we think it should. It is easy to try and run away and leave ministry.

- It is easy to not want to serve God anymore when stuff like this happens, if we are dependant on our own will focus on ourselves rather then on God.

- There is a story of a man named Frank Jenner who gave his life to the Lord when someone asked him if he knew here he was going to go when he diedenner encountered a group of men from the Glanton Exclusive Brethren who were engaging in open-air preaching, and he converted to Christianity. For 28 years, from his initial conversion until his debility from Parkinson's disease, Jenner engaged in personal evangelism, probably speaking with more than 100,000 people in total. One person who became a Christian after encountering Jenner's question was Noel Stanton, who went on to found the Jesus Army in 1969.

- In 1952, the Reverend Francis Dixon of Lansdowne Baptist Church in Bournemouth, England, began hearing several testimonies from people who became Christians after Jenner accosted them on George Street, Sydney. The following year, Dixon met with Jenner in Australia and told him about the people he had met who had become Christians as a result of Jenner's evangelism, and Jenner, then fifty years old, cried because he had not previously known that even one of the people, he had talked to had remained a Christian beyond their initial profession of faith.

- He did not know anyone had come to the Lord through His ministry. He knew God had called him to share the gospel and trusted in God for the results. He let go of His expectations and trusted in God but was relieved to hear that God used him to bring people to Jesus!

- Well to conclude the story of Elijah, God told Elijah to travel to Mt Horeb. He walked for 40 days and 40 nights not sure what God had planned but did not know what else to do.

- He stood outside the mountain to wait for the presence of the lord. There was a mighty wind, a big earthquake and a roaring fire that passed by.

- All of these where signs of the presence of the Lord but He was not in those things. These big, these massive events, the Lord was not in.

- But then there was a soft whisper, and the voice of the Lord was in the still small voice. But you must realize that I don’t usually work in a manner that’s loud, impressive, and dramatic. My still, small voice brings the Word to the listening ear and heart. Yes, there’s a time and place for the wind, the earthquake and the fire, but most of the time, I speak to people in tones of gentle love and quiet persuasion.” The Lord wasn’t condemning the courageous ministry of His servant; He was only reminding Elijah that He uses many different tools to accomplish His work. God’s Word comes down like the gentle shower that refreshes, cleanses, and produces life[1]

- Things do not always go the way we want them to Go, but God is right there saying trust me, you may not always understand How I work but I am at work.

- So then trust in the Lord, trust in His expectations. Use what He has allowed you to go through for the Glory of the Lord.

- Tell your story, how Jesus changed your life and pray and trust that God will use what you have gone through for His glory.

- After all it is about God’s expectations, not yours.

[1] Wiersbe, W. W. (2002). Be responsible(p. 149). Colorado Springs, CO: Victor.