Print(5) Elijah's Struggle With God
For me, Elijah is the classic example of the desert experience. I'm sure I will come back to this Old Testament figure as I further reflect on the place of the desert experience in the lives of God's people.
This true servant of God went from the heights of spiritual victory and 'success' to the depths of hopeless despair and depression. His understanding and experience of God was to shake his theology to its very foundation. In the desert, this man had a crisis of faith on a scale that very few of us have encountered.
This crisis eventually took him back to the foundations of his faith. The lessons he needed to learn about God necessitated such a crisis if those lessons were to be forever incorporated into his life and worldview.
When I think of mountain-top experiences, I think of Elijah. There were two mountain-top experiences in his life - each entirely different from the other. But it was the desert experience that formed the link between those two mountains.
Mount Carmel was the scene of one of the most spectacular victories for the Kingdom of God recorded in the Old Testament. Against all odds, Elijah successfully challenged false religion exposing its impotence while, at the same time, revealing the "God Who answers by fire". That mountain-top experience had all the elements of victory - faith, obedience, boldness, to name just three.
I would have thought that, given the dimensions of that victory, Elijah would have been up for any challenge. But the threat that Queen Jezebel made against his life saw him flee into the desert and into a depth of depression that made him wish he was dead!
It was in that desert that he encountered God in such a way that ultimately led him to Mount Sinai and an aspect of God's being and character that his theology desperately needed. This time it was not the 'spectacular' aspect of God's nature that he saw but that which is best described as "a still small voice" or "a gentle whisper".
I need to make sure that my understanding and experience of God is balanced so that I don't fall into the trap of majoring on one aspect of God's nature to the detriment of other aspects. To fail here is to create God according to my view rather than what I find in the whole Word Of God.
