“Then the word of God came
to him: 'So Elijah, what are you doing here?'”
1 Kings 19:9, The
Message
Elijah was by
anybody's definition a spiritual Avenger in the times he lived in.
Case in point would be the 'Clash on Mount Carmel' where he
single-handedly faced down wicked Queen Jezebel's regiment of prophets
of Baal and – with God's help – did it with style. Isaiah had
once prayed, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come
down,...” (Isaiah 64:1ff). I wonder if he had Elijah's victory on
the mountain in mind when he had prayed thus? In any case, after that
slam dunk knockout he becomes Public Enemy Number One. You would
think his victory would fill him with bravado. Instead, his resolve
melts like snow in May and he high tails it out of Dodge. He runs
south, way south. He runs until he can't run any more and then crawls
under the shade of some scraggly tree out in the Negev hoping for
death to find him. However, God's got other plans. After being
ministered to by an angel, he then walks “forty days and nights”
(1 Kings 19:8) until at long last he reaches Horeb, the mountain of
God where once upon a time Moses received the law of the Lord. He
crawls into a cave to rest and while sleeping the word of the Lord
comes to him,
“So, Elijah, what are you doing
here?”
Personally,
I would expect a better greeting from the Lord for this guardian of
the Law. I would think a 'well done' or an 'atta-boy' or 'thank you
for standing with me' would be a far better way to greet his
exhausted servant. But no. He gets a, 'What are you doing here,
Elijah?' as in 'Why are you here and not up there defending Me and
doing my work?' To wit I say, Come on, man. He's tired. He's
emotionally spent. He's been an outlaw for God for such a long time
and that's all he gets? “So Elijah, now tell me, what are
you doing here?” Frankly, it's
a bit harsh. If that's how it went down, God's sure got a funny way
of encouraging his servants.
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| FCA Convention Night #1 |
A
month ago I attended the national convention of the association that
our fellowship belongs to held this year in Chicago. Early on in my
ministry in Chetek I was able to attend this gathering annually but
our fellowship's resources have been pretty tight for a number of
years now. What's more, the convention is always during track season
guaranteeing if I go that I miss a full week of practice and meets.
So I haven't attended one since 2008 when it was held in Minneapolis.
But this year, seeing it was back in the Midwest, I felt like I had
to go. Unlike Elijah in so many ways I do identify with that moment
he drags himself into the cave on Horeb feeling discouraged and in
need of a good word to sustain him. So I drove to Chicago with the
hope that God was going to speak such a word to me.
Honestly, this has
been a season of tough sledding in our ministry in Chetek. It's not
that we have been experiencing conflict with our leadership team. We
haven't. In fact, we have enjoyed a wonderful sense of unity in our
midst for several years now. It's not that we have experienced some
huge defections either. For a small fellowship, we have a good
percentage of disciples serving in various capacities. So what's made
this season so tough? Here are three things that come to mind:
For starters, one of our elders –
and one of my dearest friends – has gone missing.
Without divulging particulars suffice to say he has become consumed with his work. He's
a farmer and the ag industry in this
country is the worst it's been
in a generation. He's trying to keep the family farm afloat and that
pretty much robs him of energy and attention he used to be able to
expend at our fellowship. We all feel he and his wife's absence from
regular worship and the other things that go on around here. What
Confederate Lt. General James Longstreet once said about one of his
generals, Gen. George Pickett, sums up perfectly how I feel about
this missing elder of ours, “I don't like being without Pickett.
It's like going into battle with one boot on.” I feel his absence
keenly.
 |
| Longstreet needed this man in the fray |
Like a slowly collapsing bag, over
the past five months people have left.
One left because he
was offended at what he perceived was our lack of spiritual
commitment. Another left (with her two children) 'feeling led' to
begin attending another fellowship 15 miles north of here. What makes
that loss more keen is that she once had been core. Yet another took
a job in a neighboring county and therefore moved away. And another
core couple have been slowly fading out for reasons they attribute to
work schedules. These are, on the main, par for the course. Who of us
in ministry hasn't experienced these kinds of shifts in the makeup of
the fellowship we are responsible for? But the long and short of it
is that on any given Sunday there are a lot more empty chairs in our
sanctuary than we have been accustomed to.
 |
Supposedly 'regular attendance'
among evangelical Christians these days is 1 Sunday out of 4.
I don't recall
which poll generated that finding and where I heard it quoted first
but if that is so it certainly has been playing out at Refuge these
past few months. The new 'normal' seems to be 30-35 average weekly
attendance where 50-60 used to be the norm. Fair or not it's those
dang Millennials that seem to be the primary culprits of fitting
corporate worship into their schedules (as opposed to fitting their
schedule around corporate worship).
The
Lord specifically told King David never to count the fighting men to
remind him that the sustenance and protection of the kingdom did not
reside in his ability to marshal the troops and send them out to
fight. In the same way, I shouldn't be counting heads in order to
find my confidence as a leader but admittedly I have. Besides, less
people attached to our fellowship means less resources both
financial and human and taking all these other factors into account
has left me feeling insecure and wanting to read the 'tea-leaves' of
my circumstances. Maybe it's me? Maybe God has been trying
to tell me I'm done for some time now and I've just been tone deaf to
his voice?
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| Hollis had a good word for all of us |
This was my state
of mind as I pulled into the convention center on Chicago's
far-southwestern side on Tuesday afternoon. The only thing I brought
with me to the daily gatherings and the nightly services was my
journal in hopes I would catch a 'word' that spoke to my current
situation – a text, a Scripture, shoot, even a “thus saith the
Lord” would do. Over the course of four days I heard some good
messages, heard some wise counsel and engaged in more than a few
poignant conversations with fellow ministerial colleagues and
friends.
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| Convention is way more than hearing messages. It's about connecting with friends. |
On the
very first night the speaker – a pastor turned stand-up
comedian/Christian entertainer – shared from Genesis 42. In the
passage, Jacob's sons are appealing to him to allow Benjamin to
return with them to Egypt so that they may appease the prime minister
who makes seeing their youngest brother a part of the deal to acquire
more grain. When Jacob hears the terms he complains to his sons, “You
have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no
more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is
against me!” (v. 36). His
point: A lot of times we don't see things from God's point of view.
Unbeknownst to Jacob he is soon to be a part of a grand reunion of
all his sons as soon as Joseph reveals who he is. What appears to be
against us may, in fact, be working out to be something very good for
us. Which is why we need to seek “God's eye-view” of things in
our life and ministry.
The
very next day at morning devotions another pastor-friend
shared from
Jeremiah 6:16 reminding us that God, indeed, wants to speak with us.
Inspired by the text his counsel was simple, “Listen. Look. Ask.
And then obey.” He concluded with something not original but I
really like: “I've never heard God's voice but I know
what it sounds like.”
 |
| Here's another former roommate that I hadn't sat down and spoke with for over twenty or more years |
Looking through my
journal today I am reminded that all through that week I was writing
snippets of good counsel and wise Scriptural advice that I heard. As
I opened up to a few good friends and shared my life with them I
received what you would expect to receive – encouragement, a pat on
the back and a reminder that I am not the only pastor struggling with
the issues that seem to be facing us here.
In the cave, Elijah
was instructed to go out upon the mountain and prepare himself as
“the Lord is about to pass by” (1 Kings 19:11, NIV). Perhaps it
was the very place or in close proximity to the cleft of the rock
where God had hid Moses seven hundred or more years earlier following
the fiasco with the golden calf just before he passed by (see Exodus
34). But whether at that place or another there he stands waiting in
expectation of the Lord's imminent visitation. And then this:
“A hurricane wind ripped through
the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn’t
to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t
in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t
in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.”
“When
Elijah heard the quiet voice, he muffled his face with his great
cloak, went to the mouth of the cave, and stood there. A quiet voice
asked, 'So Elijah, now tell me, what are you doing here?' Elijah said
it again, 'I’ve been working my heart out for God,
the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, because the people of Israel have
abandoned your covenant, destroyed your places of worship, and
murdered your prophets. I’m the only one left, and now they’re
trying to kill me.'” (1 Kings
19:11-14, Msg)
I think it's a
legitimate complaint. He's been working hard and living on the run
without a lot to show for his efforts. As far as he can see there has
not been a whole-sale turning back to God among his countrymen. Ahab
and Jezebel still rule in Samaria and while she's lost a whole
company of her prophets, the people continue to flock to the
religious sites at Bethel and Dan. He feels like he's fighting for a
lost cause.
Of
course, he's not. As bad as things are things are never as bad as
they appear. God gives his dejected prophet some tasks to do (like
return to the fray and appoint a successor) and then reminds him,
that even though it feels like he's standing alone there are in fact,
many remaining in Israel who “have not bowed down to Baal
and whose mouths have not kissed him.” (v. 18, NIV).
During
the long drive home on Friday, as I reflected on all that I heard both
corporately and personally, I felt that God had spoken to me.
Not audibly and yet directly.
Not dramatically and yet certainly. No whistles, no bells. No vision
or ecstatic prophecy. While it wasn't a life-changing word – e.g.,
'Go to Africa' or 'Come and be our pastor “over here”' - it was
definitely a life-sustaining word. And
it simply was: “Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.”
Chicago seems like
a long way to go from here to hear a word that you could just as well
as hear from any of my pastor-friends at Chetek Cafe. But sometimes
you have to go far to hear something that's a whisper's length away.
Here's how I put it in my journal: “...in lieu of not knowing any
differently I must keep going [in Chetek] trusting that You are with
me and will be with me.” And that's what I call a good word.
“Don’t be misled: No one makes a
fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who
plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring
God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his
life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting
God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real
life, eternal life.
“So let’s not allow ourselves to
get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good
crop if we don’t give up, or quit.” (Galatians
6:7-9, Msg)
So, chin up. Keep going. Don't give up. And carry on until the journey's end.
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