Elijah – Tunnel Vision

The Scripture

The Scene

The School Master

Do you ever have days when you feel like a martyr like Elijah in this passage?  Have you ever felt that God has asked you to do something that is beyond what you think you can handle?  The more you dwell on the magnitude of the task, the more overwhelmed you feel.  Before long, all you can think about and talk about is how busy you are and how massive the task is that you have been asked to bear.  

I think this is a bit how Elijah must have felt.  There’s a line from a movie that says, “We were talking about taking on the mob and the mayor together.  That’s madness.”  I think that’s probably how Elijah felt.  He had taken on the King, and the false prophets and humiliated them.  But now, he had fallen under the rage of Jezabel, surely he was done for now.
Over the last several months I have been carrying a load that has been overwhelming at times.  This past week contained some of those “Mayor and the Mob” moments.  Often when people ask how we are doing, the common answer here at the mission headquarters is “busy.”  I have come to despise that answer.  But the past few weeks I have found myself saying those very words.  This weekend the Lord helped me to see how completely tunnel visioned I have become.  All I have been talking and thinking about is the weight of the load I have been asked to carry.  Load or no load, I have come to the conclusion that God doesn’t want us dwelling there.  Look at what the Lord did with Elijah.

First of all He met his physical needs.  He gave him food and water and rest.  He then provided extraordinary strength to get Elijah to the place where he could meet with God.  He brought him to a place, set apart, away from everything else, up on the mountain, and there God met with Elijah.  He wasn’t in the fire, He wasn’t in the wind, He wasn’t in the earthquake.  He came to him in a whisper!

The Psalmist often talked about God being a refuge, a fortress and a rock.  The Psalmist found that to be true even in the midst of chaos.  Is that true of your life?  It hasn’t been in mine this past month or so.  We can let our hearts be so filled up with ministry that we can’t hear the whispers of God any more.  It’s almost as if the higher the mound of responsibilities grows on our plate, the harder and harder it is to see anything else.  We become tunnel visioned to the point where that is all we can see, think about and talk about.  But, the message from Elijah is this.  God isn’t in the fire of over commitment, He isn’t in the winds of constant change, He isn’t in the earth shattering success of ministry!  God will give you extraordinary strength to accomplish the task he has for you SO THAT you can make the time to get alone with Him. 

Where we find God is in the solitary places, the still small voice, the place of peace and rest in His character!  That place is available to us even in the midst of the chaos if we choose to listen and hear his still small voice.