Alone, Unarmed, and Afraid from 1 Kings 19

Today I am commenting on Elijah’s despair as seen in 1st Kings 19. The first four verses of that passage read:

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.”

From that passage of Scripture, we might get the impression that the prophet Elijah had been a failure and that he was running away because he had lost a battle. Nothing was further from the truth, however. Elijah had just orchestrated the show-down on Mount Carmel in which God showed up and God showed out. God demonstrated his mighty power and Baal was shown to be a fraud. The prophets of Baal were all killed, and righteousness had been restored in Israel. It was all good, right? Apparently, not so much . . . 

Humans have a strange but inescapable tendency to give into our fears.  On several occasions during WWII, admirals of the Imperial Japanese Navy won tactical victories over Allied warships, but then turned away from vulnerable groups of transport ships and retreated. In the same way, Admiral Nagumo won a stunning victory at Pearl Harbor, but he flinched at sending a third airstrike, which would have made the victory even greater and would have crippled the ability of the US Navy to strike back for months or years to come. Elijah showed us in this passage that he was not immune from this flaw in the human psyche.

The Source of Our Despair:

On the physical and psychological level, it seems obvious that Elijah was having a stress reaction. Hans Selye was a psychologist who studied stress and developed a theory that he called the General Adaptation Syndrome. He wrote that, in a crisis, people experience an alarm reaction, followed by resistance, which is followed by exhaustion. We can clearly see this pattern in the account of the showdown on Mount Carmel and then Elijah’s subsequent fear, despair, and flight.

While Selye provided the General Adaptation Syndrome as an explanation of what happens when we give into our stress and fears, he also gave us an explanation of how to be resilient in the face of stress.

In his book Stress Without Distress, Selye defined stress as any demand, good or bad, that was placed on our lives. 

Some stress is bad stress, which he called distress. Distress is seen in challenges like financial pressure, car wrecks, death of a loved one, a difficult assignment at work, raising children, caring for a sick elderly parent, or, in the case of Elijah, having a confrontation with the Prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel for all the world to see.

Along with distress, Selye also identified eustress. Eustress is the positive things that come into our lives, like pay raises, petting a puppy, hugging a loved one, enjoying a hobby, being recognized by your boss for doing a good job, or relaxing with friends on the weekend. As a Christian, I also believe worshipping God and prayer, along with any number of other spiritual activities, also provide us with eustress. 

Distress and eustress counteract each other. It is like our life is a stress bank account. We can pay into that account by gathering eustress. When we experience distress, we draw down that account. If we draw it down too far, we experience exhaustion, dismay, and depression.

And old joke in days gone by was that some young people would get into financial trouble after they opened their first bank account because they thought that just because they still had checks in their check books, they still had money in the bank. Of course, today people don’t use checks very much, but another old saying does apply in this situation, “Don’t let your ego write a check that your abilities can’t cash!”

Elijah had experienced a stressful, if successful, experience on Mount Carmel. He had gone through all the first two phases of alarm and resistance. Now he was exhausted. Elijah felt that day the same way many pastors feel on Monday morning; worn out, stressed, depressed, and afraid. The good news is that ways do exist to avoid the crushing despair that Elijah and so many pastors and other Christian leaders can experience from stress.

The Remedy for Our Despair:

First, before the struggle, build-up your eustress. Eustress levels take time, effort and intentionality to build and few people are good at managing these factors. Yet, like our financial bank accounts, we must pay eustress into our stress accounts before we can draw on it. We might be able to mortgage our future in financial terms, but we can’t borrow psychological and spiritual resiliency from another person. We have to build our eustress ourselves so that we have sufficient liquidity in our stress banks to face the challenge of the day.

We build eustress by eating well, getting sufficient sleep, exercising, and enjoying positive forms of recreation. We also build it through good interpersonal relationships and by pursuing a right relationship with God. We must do these things regularly because we also face distress regularly.

By the way, we can’t make up for the lack of eustress in time of crisis by self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, or by gluttony, or by unbridled sensuality. These habits may dull the painful symptoms of stress for a time, but they are actually the cause of more stress, resulting in a spiraling descent into destruction.

Second, during the struggle we must keep our feet on the ground. As many military commanders have discovered, the first reports of disaster in battle are usually exaggerated, if not totally wrong.  Elijah gave into catastrophic thinking; he exaggerated how bad things were and he gave into his fears. 

Jesus was right, of course, when he advised in Matthew 6:34, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  

Too often, instead of building ourselves up today, we borrow trouble from tomorrow. That is a recipe for emotional and spiritual bankruptcy! 

The truth was that thousands of righteous followers of God were still present in Israel. Elijah was not alone, although he did isolate himself, which leads to our next point.

When in a crisis we should not isolate ourselves from others. There is strength in numbers and mutual support from others is critical when facing adversity. Jesus, of course, knew this and he sent out the twelve to do ministry two-by-two, just as He did later with the seventy. 

It is instructive to note that, when Peter betrayed Jesus, he was alone, but, earlier in the evening, when Jesus was praying in the Garden before His arrest, He was surrounded by His closest companions. However, Jesus was alone on the Cross when He cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Elijah was alone during his crisis of stress and he had no friend or colleague to encourage him or to bring him back to the reality of his situation.

Finally, we need to remember who it is that we serve. Like God did with Elijah, He will reveal himself to us in our time of crisis:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:11-13).

What a great question! “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He was there in that dark place because he had forgotten who he was serving. When we confront crisis, we need to remember who it is that we serve. 

We don’t own our ministries, our families, or even our own lives. As a follower of Christ, we are the servants of the Most High God, and we are stewards of everything He has entrusted to us. While God expects us to be diligent, and to be obedient, He does not expect us to be the ones who bring success. He reserves that right and privilege to Himself. As Paul said to the church at Corinth, 

So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Much stress is brought into our lives when we make ourselves responsible for matters which belong to someone else. The success and failure of our ministry efforts is best left in God’s hands!

As we remember whom we serve, we also need to remember that God knows our weakness and frailty. Jesus, himself, recognized that in humans, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Paul knew this also and encouraged the church at Rome by teaching them that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” 

So, God not only brings the increase, but He also empowers us to serve Him! How can we go wrong when we access His power through maintaining a close relationship with Him! As we sing in the classic hymn, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able, to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

Conclusion:

Any soldier who goes into battle untrained, unprepared, ill-equipped, and alone is bound to suffer a defeat. Like the one who brings a knife to a gunfight, many Christians are overconfident and self-assured, until the reality of life sets in. As Mike Tyson has said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth!” And, life has a way of punching us in the mouth, even when we experience a success, and even more when we experience failure.

Like Elijah, we all will experience a dark day of the soul, sooner or later. Let’s prepare for that day of challenge in advance so that we can bring glory to the God who deserves our trust, loyalty, devotion, and our good witness in word, deed, and attitude.

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt