Saturday 30 May 2020

May 30: 1 Kings 18:11-14

Key Verse: 1 Kings 19:12
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Devotion:
Most people want some sort of ‘big bang’ to happen when God talks to them or when they ask for something from God. In reality God is going to silently and covertly answer so many more prayers than the ones we notice because they are big events! I love these verses which depict Elijah standing on the mountain waiting for God; there are all sorts of big events which people would otherwise claim to come from a god: wind, earthquake and fire. But none of those were God’s presence even though we expect God to show Himself in awesome physical ways!

God does not have to boast about His love for us and does not have to make the whole world notice when He wants to speak to us – but He does want us to stop and listen for Him and wait for His instruction. How did Elijah know it was God when the other forces of nature looked even more powerful than the whisper which got to him? Elijah waited for something unique from God, a personal touch which the world cannot give us.

We may think of such things like the pandemic s being a judgement from God, but in reality it is simply a mistake made by mankind and one for which the whole world is paying for! This has nothing to do with God other than us lifting up our prayers for mercy and an end to this all. But if it suddenly stopped tomorrow, got wiped off the face of the earth by a single word from God, how many people would go back to doing exactly what they were doing before the pandemic?

We do need to stop and listen, not just to the world as we begin to realise how much we have polluted and broken it, but to God who has been trying to get this message to us for a long time! To listen properly we have to stop all the fuss and just sit with God until we hear Him. How can we hear Him when we have so many other things distracting us? How can we focus on the still small voice when we have a country shouting at us from all angles?

Points to Ponder:
How often do you stop and listen?

Will you set aside a small amount of time every day to stop and listen to God?