Covenanter Witness Vol. 55 - Rparchives.org

ffHaving Done ill to Stand"away."went."A Series of Five Devotional Addresses Given Before the SynodII. How to Meet Personal DiscouragementFriday Devotional Service at SynodRev. E. Raymond HemphillI Kings 19:9, 10"Elias was a man subject to like passions as weare, and he prayed . .earnestly Jas.5:17.The story of Elijah is like a whole series ofsnapshots taken from time to time during his remarkable life. In the first picture we see him standing before King Ahab of Israel. We do not know howhe got there, nor how he escaped. All we know iswhat he said as it is recorded for us in I Kings 17:1,". . . As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom Istand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years,word."but according to myIn the next picture of Elijah he is down in alonely place by the Brook Cherith, being fed by theravens. Another picture of the man reveals him upat Zarephath, there again being fed in a remarkableway by the widow who was gathering sticks for thefinal meal for herself and. her son.Perhaps the most detailed picture we have ofhis life, reveals him standing yonder upon MountCarmel, conducting a contest between four hundredand fifty false prophets on one side and Elijah onthe other. The contest was to show that God couldhear and answer prayer. We have here recorded theencouraging words which he heard the people say:"The Lord, he is the God; the Lord he is the God."On this occasion, and upon other occasions where wehave the picture of Elijah, we see a miracle withElijah victorious.And yet when we turn to the next picture of hislife we see him out in the wilderness sitting undera juniper tree wishing he were dead. In fact, he waspraying that God would take his life. After thesegreat victories in his life, this scene reveals to us aclimax of a whole life of discouragements. It seemedthat Elijah was having more than his share. Itseemed that he was fighting a losing battle. And inthe words of our text (I Kings 19:9, 10) : "And hecame thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and,behold, the Word of the Lord came to him, and hesaid unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah? Andhe said. I have been very jealous for the Lord Godof hosts : for the children of Israel have forsaken thycovenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thyprophets with the sword; and I, even I only,amleft ; and they seek my life, to take it And ifany man had reason for being discouraged, it wasElijah. And he expresses here very vividly his feeling of discouragement. He felt that he was alone. Hefelt that everything was going wrong, and all hisefforts and victories were of no avail. He wished hewere dead out of the way. And he even earnestly100prayed that God would take his life. Perhaps you,too, may feel that you have had your share of discouragements. But when we think of men like Elijah,or of Joseph, or of Moses, or of Daniel, it helps us tosee how fortunate we 'have been. And I know of nocase which shows us better how a man can bebrought down to the depths than we have it here inour text.And yet we see through these words andthrough the words that follow that God still has apurpose and a work for Elijah. He says as we readfurther: "Go . . . stand before the Lord." That wasthe next thing he needed to do. And as soon as hehad stood before the Lord, then God gave him themessage and the challenge. "Now go on and do thework I have for you to do. Go here; go there." Weread further in the story, ". . . and he Elijahfelt that he was alone. He was unable with hislimited knowledge to know that there were yetseven thousand that had not bowed the knee to Baal.One of the difficulties with many of our discouragements, reasons why we are so influenced bythem, is that we do not know the facts. Our vision isso narrow, so limited.But the way we meet these discouragements isgoing to influence our whole lives and our examplebefore others.I was eight years old when my father died, butI was old enough to begin asking "Why?"Why wasmy mother left a widow with six small children under nine years of age? During those early years,there were many times when we wondered why suchthings were happening, why other discouragementswere coming into our home. But always, and so oftenduring those years, I heard my mother say, "Well,the Lord knows best." The Lord knows best, and Itried to discover how. If God does know best, thenwhy, why did such things happen? Often times during those early boyhood days, as I observed the difficulties and the discouragements that came, I continued to ask, "Well, why are these things happening?"or "Why did this have to happen?" And almostinvariably I would hear the words come back again,"Well, the Lord knows best."After graduation from high school, I was underthe juniper tree, so to speak, before the Lord openedthe way for my coming to college. Again duringthose years, there were plenty of discouragements.Some of the most lonely years of my life, I think,were those two years, and I was asking "Why?" Butduring those two years I Avas trying to fit my experience into the words of God as they are recordedCOVENANTER WITNESS