Church at Home | Devotional

SCRIPTURE: 

Read 1 Kings 19:1-18.

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DEVOTIONAL:

What are you doing here Elijah? 

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A gentle enough question, but it must have grated against every impulse inside of Elijah’s body. What was he doing there? Why, he was running for his life, that’s what he was doing! Avoiding an evil queen’s wrath after God had stoked her anger against him. Suffering because of his obedience. That’s what he was doing there. Maybe the question didn’t land gently on Elijah’s raw, broken heart.  

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But Elijah’s faith hadn’t brought him to the cave at Horeb; his fear had. Even though he had led what is arguably the greatest divine showdown in all of scripture (besides, Jesus raising from the dead of course), the words of a mortal woman had put him on a path from fear to self pity to hopelessness. 

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Though Elijah had no strength of his own, by the time he made it to the cave for the night, God had already cared for him along the way and was waiting there to minister to him again. 

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I love how the Lord doesn’t rebuke him, or scold him, or condemn him. He just reminds Elijah who he is. Though he is the rumbler of earthquakes and known as a consuming fire, the Lord’s gentle whisper is what calls Elijah to the mouth of the cave. It’s his gentleness that begins the undoing of Elijah’s dejection. 

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‍What are you doing here, Elijah? 

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There are a number of times in scripture where the Lord asks the same question multiple times. It seems redundant, but each time forces introspection and digs at a little deeper of an answer. When Elijah doubles down on his complaint, God puts him to work anyway. And even in the work he asks Elijah to do, he contradicts the root of Elijah’s grumbling. Elijah felt alone, like he was the only one in all of Israel who was faithful to God. God tells him there are actually 7000 men and women like him. 

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We’re about to enter a new year and it is easy to let the struggles and pains we have experienced paralyze us in a cave of our own making. Sometimes our caves of fear or failure, bitterness or disappointment, unforgiveness or loneliness feel safer than faith in the God we profess. But God is tender and caring and he doesn’t abandon us to our worst moments, or leave us alone in our caves. In fact, he calls us out of our caves so we can again experience his presence and go back to see how his hand fed us even through our wandering. 

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EXERCISE:

What are you doing here, ___________? Where has 2025 left you? What cave do you need to be called out of today so you can step into the new year in faith?

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Spend some time writing down what happened this past year and how you felt about it. If you need to, go through it month by month. Take out a calendar and remember what you did and where you were. Then, once you’ve got a good aerial view, ask the Holy Spirit to review it with you so you can see how God was with you in both your moments of happiness and triumph and moments of deep pain.

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