The Message
This Sunday, minister Rohan of Freedom Life Church imparted to the church proper what can be considered a message for the age. A delegation of words that have historically sustained the body of believers in times of great sorrow, emotional drain, and social upheaval.
The existential question arises and the existential dread consumes when, “things are not flourishing. When things are not thriving. When your dreams, expectations, are canceled or rescinded. When that which you anticipated was not only put on pause but was rejected.” (Paraphrased from the message).
Context
We were once more reminded of that heart-rending passage from 1 Kings 19 where Elijah, the famed and envied prophet of Israel confronted Ahab’s corrupt administration and condemned Ahab’s wife, Jezebel’s religious corruption in Israel. Elijah confronts the king and queen’s prophets on a mountaintop in an event equaled only by the American Super Bowl, where the monarch’s priests and clerics were humiliated, Jezebel’s court was humiliated, and the religious entity that ruled the nation-state at the time was brought to question and found wanting.
The god of Ahab and Jezebel, Baal, was meant to be strong and was meant to control the winds, the skies, the waters, fertility, and agricultural stability. They were placed in the limelight to be challenged and were resoundingly humiliated by the jealous God of the children of Abraham, Yahweh.
What was meant to be a victory dance for the establishment became a disastrous win for the underdog Elijah and his God.
A bounty was then put on Elijah’s head. His belt and crown were considered null and void. His safety in jeopardy, his name a byword, and his presence a disease, Elijah, after an undeniable victory, fled the scene to find refuge in the desert. Bereft of the mountaintop experience, he descends from the victor’s podium a defeated bag of potatoes, sapped of want, sapped of desire, and sapped of motivation to continue, in light of his dire circumstances.
Elijah sits under a tree and begs for death to come, either through the miraculous agency of Yahweh, as he had previously seen in action before thousands of spectators, or through the natural and consequential actions of starvation, dehydration, or the numerous agencies of the wild which could pose a lethal threat to his life.
The prophet who shamed the king and queen of Israel was now under a tree hoping to die. Elijah could not and did not know how to manage the wilderness of weariness. Victory has made him weak. The idol slayer knew how to defame and depose giants but he knew not how to manage defeat, dejection, delay, and depression.
Minister Rohan speaks on the dangers of evaluating your life based on your daily or temporary successes. Although these moments in life serve to encourage, embolden, and enforce feelings of comfort and accomplishment, believers, the followers of Christ, must not rely on them as perpetual sources of purpose and joy.
Jesus did say something to the effect that, “In this world, you will have Bugatti’s.” Or maybe it was “trials and tribulations.” In all, Christ informed his apostles and the disciples that his Kingdom of Heaven ethics and lifestyle which he proposed would incite violence and disruption for Christians. Life could and would throw the followers of Jesus into every hole of despair imaginable; and as history demonstrates, life sure did. The Christian faith’s formative years were plagued by government persecution, mass executions, and public and random mob lynchings of Christians.
Issues, trials, problems, and disappointments are undeniable realities in the lives of humans everywhere, but sometimes, Christians believe they will avoid suffering and pain as a result of serving the Almighty God in a fallen world. Escapist theologies tend to diminish the present sufferings of people for the pleasures of the world to come. This anemic theological framework serves best as a hedonistic philosophy but it holds no water to the Christian doctrines about God and life.
In light of this, we must navigate challenges in life in a community. Handling life’s many problems alone is not healthy nor is it biblically sound.
Quotables (Paraphrased)
- “Isolation leads to a lack of accountability. The devil can control your narrative when you are isolated.”
Consider an environment of desperation where the believer is highly susceptible to negative influence as a result of emotional and spiritual vulnerability. That person can be subject to numerous spiritual assaults by the devil. Consider the thoughts that infiltrated Elijah’s mind in his nadir. There was no one around him to remind him that the same God who had given him victory on the mount could give him purpose outside of the city’s walls. Isolation had placed the vulnerable prophet in a circumstance where he was made to believe that death was better than existing in the world with a bounty over his head. A short-lived bounty because the monarchs in question were soon after deposed and killed. Not only does isolation remove you from places of accountability to your community but it cuts you off from your understanding of the value and sanctity of your life – especially when life does not go as planned.
- “Isolation stalls your prayer life. It pushes you away from God.”
There is no doubt that where there is no accountability there is no continuance of pursuit of heavenly things. Meaning, that where believers are not discipled to pursue God, and the benefits thereof, there is no sense of and no desire for communication with God. Because, where believers gather, they interact with God collectively. Where an individual settles, he must commune with God. But, because of humanity’s frailty when it comes to consistency and perseverance, we must, under the constant guidance of our community pursue God personally and in the community. When we isolate or become isolated, dialogue with God can become an echo chamber. This can be one of the most dangerous places for a believer to exist because it is here where personal wants, good or evil, can become the words of God in the person’s life. Cult leaders exacerbate this defect and become demigods in the eyes of their followers by accomplishing the feat of always “hearing from God.” We know, however, that it is not God who speaks to them but their stomachs.
- “Community is a covenant, not a convenience.”
I understood this statement to mean that when we engage in a community and are welcomed into it, we have a responsibility to maintain it and ourselves within it. There is a shared responsibility for community members to thrive but not at the expense of the community and the community must thrive but not at the expense of the individual. Therefore, there exists a contract, social or spiritual contract where this coming together of people cannot be dismissed nor tarnished nor taken for granted. Unless, that is, there is a breach on one or both sides of this contract. Community involvement is historically a designator of a person’s overall well-being and ability to flourish, whereas social ostracism and exilic efforts that isolate not only individuals but whole groups are a major factor in disintegrating the potential flourishing of that group.
- “The right voices will remind you of what the enemy wants you to forget.”
Elijah sat under a tree under the influence of voices of unseen unclean spirits. But God sent an agent, a messenger of change, to place the right message back into Elijah’s heart. Too often we forget that we are loved, cared for, appreciated, valued, and worth it. And, because of our human frailty, it benefits us to be reminded of these wonderful and natural attributes we inhabit. The accuser of the brethren, the deceiver, and snake of eternity past, the devil, wants nothing more than to keep us amnesiac about who we are as Children of God and how we are presented before God, as Children of God hidden in Christ.
- “A loud word can shake you but a whisper can sustain you.”
The conclusion of Elijah’s wilderness of weariness experience is found in this strange and horrifying event towards the end of 1 Kings 19. Elijah leaves his place of suicidal ideations under the tree and walks for days until he reaches the famous mountain of God, Horeb, where he finds a cave and crawls inside for an undetermined amount of time. God calls to him but Elijah refuses to exist in the cave. Storms rage outside, fires erupt, and the earth shakes but Elijah remains fixed in the womb of the rock.
He hides until a gentle and subtle breeze kisses the mouth of the cave and Elijah hears the voice of God once more. It is then and only then that Elijah exists in the cave and returns to his calling, his ministry, as a prophet of Israel.
Navigating the wilderness of weariness will expose us to numerous voices. Voices that are loud, violent, angry, deceitful, destructive, and deadly.
But God tends to send people and at times messengers from above who carry whispers of sustenance that carry us out of places of fixed depressed realities. A gentle hug from a believer can do more to appease and assuage a broken soul than a thousand sermons on the incarnation of Christ and the atonement on the cross.
And this isn’t to diminish the value of the latter but it is to say that often, when believers are downtrodden by life’s many issues, we mustn’t dogmatize and spiritualize for the sake of avoiding uncomfortable interactions. We must become the hands and feet of Christ and enact love and care, often without the use of words, in a community.
Truly, we must manage the wilderness of weariness as a community.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
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