What are you doing here?
This week’s Cheer Up is written and read by Derek Otte.
Do you ever ask yourself that question?
Do you ever sit back, take a moment to look at your life, scratch your head and just wonder what the heck you’re doing with your life; what the heck is God trying to do in your life? When things are going well, we often don’t ponder that question; we don’t have to. Life is on track. We feel like we’re right where we’re supposed to be. We’re in “The Zone”. We’re right where God wants us. But when our lives get derailed. When we face trials and challenges; when life doesn’t go as expected, this question rises to the surface.
It’s amazing how God uses the timing of things to impact our lives. A few weeks ago I started going through a Christian outdoor leadership program. I was talking to a friend of mine right before I started this training and we were talking about this very thing; lack of purpose, lack of direction. I feel stuck. Like everything in my “real” life, (everything outside of work that is,) just doesn’t mean anything. I have no purpose, nothing I’m really living for. And then two days later I started this outdoor leadership program and there in the homework we read in 1 Kings 19 God talking to Elijah, asking him, “What are you doing here?”
9 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Part of our homework was to turn that question on ourselves. As you may know, when God asks a question, he’s not asking because he doesn’t know the answer. He asks the question to make us stop and think. Now this question really hit me. One, because it was right in the wheelhouse of where I’ve been struggling for quite a while; and two, I’d never heard of God asking this question of Elijah before! I knew the lead up to this moment. I knew the story of Elijah challenging the 450 prophets of Baal to see who’s God would answer when called upon and set their altar on fire. Baal’s priests chanted and called and danced and even cut themselves to get his attention. Elijah mocked them as they did this and then had his altar completely soaked with water and then prayed and fire came down and utterly consumed the altar and the bull sacrificed upon it. Elijah rounds up all of these prophets and has them killed and then goes to King Ahab. Instead of humbling himself and acknowledging the power and sovereignty of God, King Ahab goes back and tells his wife, Jezebel and she vows to kill Elijah because of what he did to her prophets. Elijah hears this and is immediately put in a tailspin. He’s a wreck. All he can think to do is run and hide and hope to die.
How often does that happen to you? Everything seems to be going fine, you feel like you’ve done something great, you’re obediently working in the will of God, you’re doing something you’re equipped to do, and “Bam!”, everything falls apart, there’s a plot twist and you no longer know where your story is headed and honestly, it all looks hopeless! That’s exactly what happened to Elijah. He goes from a great victory, to having a price put on his head! And God tells him to go off into the wilderness and meet him on a mountain. And THEN God has the nerve to ask him why he’s there! “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
What’s your first thought when you hear that?
Honestly, my first thought when I hear that, and when I hear God ask me that question is, “Hey, I’m here because you brought me here!” Elijah though is a little more respectful here than I have been, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts.” He says. “For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” To put it another way, “Everything I’ve been doing has been for you, God! And yet, no one is listening. No one cares about you or the words that I speak, they’re even killing those who speak up for you, and I’m it. I’m all that’s left and they want me dead too.”
Now there’s actually more to the story going on here. Elijah is not the only one left. Obadiah, the head of Ahab’s household, had hidden away 100 prophets of God in some caves, but Elijah was not aware of that.
Do you ever feel like that? You think you’re following where God is leading, but things are not turning out like you imagined. Things don’t seem to match up with what you think is the direction they should be going. Maybe, since you don’t like how things are going, you try and make them happen under your own power. …And then God takes you out into the wilderness so he can have a chat with you. For Elijah it was a literal wilderness. He took a 40 day hike to a mountain to meet with God. For us, it’s often a time, a season of figurative wilderness where God puts us in an uncomfortable place where we have to listen to him; where we have to rely on him. But what will you do with that? Will you hide in a cave in despair and wish you were dead? Or will you come out and listen as God quietly ministers to you through his Spirit, through his Word, to reveal what he wants you to do, where he wants you to go next?
Remember you might not know the whole story as well. You can only see the little bit you are involved in right now. There may be some other things going on that you don’t see at this moment that God, in his perfect timing, will make a part of your story at some future time, because remember, you are a part of HIS story.