Overcoming Depression: A Lesson From The Life Of Elijah by Rob Marshall
One of my favorite Old Testament stories is about Elijah. The story starts in 1 Kings 18 where we read about Elijah challenging the Israelites to decide whether they would serve God or Baal. To help them make their decision, he challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to a little contest. They were both going to prepare a sacrifice, and whichever god answered by fire, that god would really be God.
The prophets of Baal tried all day, and nothing happened. But when Elijah prayed, God caused His fire to come down and burn up the sacrifice, the wood, the water that Elijah had poured on the sacrifice, the stones, and the dirt around the altar.
When the people saw what God did, they fell down and worshipped Him. It was a powerful sign, and a great victory for God and Elijah, who then ordered the people to kill all the prophets of Baal.
And if that wasn't a great enough victory, the story goes on to tell us that Elijah prayed that rain would come to end a three-and-a-half year drought, and God answered his prayer with a deluge.
You might think that after experiencing such a great victory, and seeing God answer his prayer, that Elijah would be feeling pretty good. And he probably was, until he got some bad news.
When Jezebel, the queen, heard about Elijah killing all the prophets of Baal, she sent a message to him that said, "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." And when Elijah got her message, being the mighty man of God that he was, he got scared and ran away.
I can't really blame him. There have been times in my life when I've gotten news that wasn't half as bad as "I'm going to kill you," and I've gotten scared and run away. The Bible says that, as he was running, he left his servant behind, went out into the desert, sat down under a tree, and prayed that God would kill him.
Have you ever had bad days like that? Days when nothing seems to be going right and you just want to curl up in some quiet corner and die? I know that I have had times like that, and the bad news that I got wasn't a death threat. There have been times in my life when I've wanted to die and the only problem I was facing was a little discouragement.
In 1 Kings 19 we read that Elijah ends up going to the mountain of God and spends a night in a cave. In the morning the word of the Lord came to him, and God said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" (1 Kings 19:9)
Elijah answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." (1 Kings 19:10)
We read that God called Elijah out of the cave and that He brought a wind, an earthquake, and a fire to test Elijah.
When I see Elijah standing on the mountain, with a powerful wind howling around him, rocks falling and breaking into pieces near him, the dust from the rocks being blown into his face and eyes, I imagine that he must have been thinking that God was going to destroy him.
I'm sure that Elijah breathed a sigh of relief when the wind stopped, but then the earthquake came and he feared that God was going to open the ground, drag him down into the darkness of the earth, and crush him. And after barely surviving the earthquake, the fire came, and I'm sure that he knew this was it, God was going to consume him in a His wrath and his life would be over.
And all during this frightening show of God's power, God wasn't speaking to Elijah. Throughout this entire ordeal, after each potentially devastating event, the Bible says that "The Lord was not in" the wind, the earthquake, or the fire.
In times when I've felt depressed, and I've experienced a lot of times like that, I find that something happens that I can't explain. I may not be standing precariously on some mountain, but I have felt like my thoughts were destructive winds that tried to sweep me away in a torrent of negative words and feelings. Or my mind has raced on to imagining my life being shaken to the core and everything either falling apart or being completely destroyed, burned up by my own actions or God's wrath.
As I read this story I realize that most of the times when I have felt that way, God wasn't the one that was "in" the shaking. It was the anxious thoughts in my own mind that God was revealing to me. His voice was yet to come, and it came to me just like it came to Elijah, as that still, small voice, that asked me a very important question, "What are you doing here?"
When I look at how God dealt with Elijah in his fear and depression, I see that God is telling me something very important. For one, I need to be careful not to get off alone and allow my feelings to overwhelm me. I don't have to feel like I want to die just because something didn't work out the way that I had wanted.
The next thing that is important for me to do when I'm feeling like I'm stuck in a dark cave, is to put my focus on God. There are things that He wants to say to me, and most of the time, He will start off by asking me a question that will get me thinking about how I came to feel so depressed.
It was after Elijah had experienced the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, while feeling alone and without God, that he was able to hear God's voice. And when God spoke, He let Elijah know that he was wrong about many things. He was not the only prophet left and there were thousands of Israelites that still worshipped Him.
God will bring us out of our depression when we are open to hear the truth. The truth will most likely be very different from the thoughts we've been having, but it will encourage us and give us hope. And then God will give us our marching orders, just like he did for Elijah.
The way that God deals with depression in our lives may seem hard to understand, but what He is trying to do is to get us to hear Him more clearly than ever. What we have to do is to not allow the negative thoughts and emotions to so overwhelm us that we stop listening. And when we hear His voice, He will correct the wrong information that we have, give us hope, and ask us to obey Him and start taking action again.
When we do that, we will rise above depression and find victory in Him.
Rob Marshall is the author of "Taking On Goliath - How to Unleash the David in All of Us." Learn how you can unleash your faith and overcome any "Goliath" that may stand between you and your dreams. Get two free chapters from "Taking On Goliath" when you sign up for our free newsletter. Just visit:
http://www.TakingOnGoliath.com
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
Showing posts with label Elijah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elijah. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
Christianity - The Religion that is Not
Christianity - The Religion that is Not by Rev Michael Bresciani
In the seventeenth chapter of Matthew the Apostles Peter, James and John were with Christ when he suddenly was transfigured (glowing or glorified) and was seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Instead of trying to hear what was being said between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter decided that building a shrine to commemorate the event would be a better idea. A voice came from above that changed Peters mind and is still changing minds to this day. The voice said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Mt 17:5
Here was a microcosmic but very typical example of mans penchant for religion and God’s answer to it. Peter wanted a shrine, a building or edifice to mark the spot where something happened. God wanted them to hear and see Jesus. To understand this is to see what separates real Christianity from religion.
Ecclesia is the Greek word used in the New Testament to describe the church. It has nothing to do with a religious system or a building. It refers to a called out body of believers made up of individuals. The church is a group of believers with or without a cathedral or building. The idea of going to church has long supplanted this definition. But such a connotation of the word cannot change the definition. The believers themselves are the church.
Christ was very careful not to instruct his disciples to build churches, shrines or an edifice to centralize his deity or worship. He told them rather to go out into the world and live out his message and tell it to others. How well he knew that we would make another religion out of his life in record time. It had already happened with the previous revelation God gave to the Jews.
The Mosaic form of religion reached its height around the time of Jesus. With the Temple in Jerusalem at its center it was a swelling complexity of oral and written traditions that would be hard to contain in the largest computer data bases of today. Christ spent a good deal of time resisting the extremes of that system and rebuking its leaders for their shallowness and misconceptions about what God really wanted and who he really is. He called its leaders a generation of snakes and said they used their religious rules and codes to laden men with mountains of unnecessary restrictions and meaningless rules.
In the Christian era it is said that Catholicism with its centuries of encyclicals, patristic teachings, ex cathedra and pontifical statements is ancient Judaism’s twin. In this late hour in time many churches have slouched into the same patterns including many historical denominations of the protestant movement. These religious bodies are not wrong just because they are burgeoning but they are heavy with the weight of their own complexity. Resultantly they offer much less to a troubled world that doesn’t even have time for itself, much less a fat religion that only adds to the stress of the modern day.
What has happened to Catholicism has been the problem for all the once great Christian churches or movements. They laid a construct over the simple gospel one single strand at a time. Doctrines, viewpoints, rules and codes some explicit, some implied and some harshly enforced.
Like the ancient Jews who had ceremonial laws, hygienic laws and moral laws to deal with, the more external forms of the religion finally cover the more important spiritual and moral aspects of it. The construct that so carefully was laid out now becomes the mask or the obstruction that keeps anyone from seeing the original all important first messages. When the simplicity of the gospel is covered by mountains of rules, liturgy and ceremony it becomes a sort of vaccination that keeps people from getting the real thing. The real thing is a way of life not a religion.
When the believers in the first century had not yet formed any denominations or sects they were told to tell others about Christ’s new way of life. “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” Acts 5:20. Jesus had told them often that he came to bring life to men not another religion.
Knowing that mans proclivity to religion was second only to his tendency to sinfulness Christ instituted two and only two outward ceremonial ordinances. They are partaking in the Lords supper (communion) and water baptism of repentant adults, not children or infants. Religious leaders added statements of faith, extra biblical doctrines, ceremonial observances, liturgies, rules of conduct, sacraments and the list goes on and on. If Christ were on earth today he would rarely ever be invited as the guest speaker in many churches. He would no doubt be found rebuking the religious nonsense of today’s church as he did centuries ago.
What really separates true Christianity from all religions in the world is simply that it is not a religion at all. Men have devised complex systems of piety and religious observance of every kind in an effort to placate or appease God. In Jesus Christ, God holds up a stop sign to the world. God says stop guessing who and what I am and what I want. I will show you who I am and what I want and in the process give you what you need…life.
The remaining difference between faith in Christ and all other religions is that Christ alone will show up at the end and judge the living and the dead. He alone will take the governments of the world away from man and rule as Sovereign Lord of all.
We debate religion but God will judge the souls of men, not by some religious belief system but by the example he showed of his life, his death on the cross for the sins of the world, his resurrection from the dead and every word he uttered during his life. We will not be able to argue the matter of our lives or offer God our adherence to some religious system as an answer. Jesus said, “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48
Religion based on true Christian teaching is not necessarily bad. It must be used as a supplement and never a substitute for the real thing.
Rev Bresciani is the author of An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ, Xulon Press His articles are read in every country in the world. Please enjoy a visit to http://www.americanprophet.org
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
In the seventeenth chapter of Matthew the Apostles Peter, James and John were with Christ when he suddenly was transfigured (glowing or glorified) and was seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Instead of trying to hear what was being said between Jesus, Moses and Elijah, Peter decided that building a shrine to commemorate the event would be a better idea. A voice came from above that changed Peters mind and is still changing minds to this day. The voice said “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” Mt 17:5
Here was a microcosmic but very typical example of mans penchant for religion and God’s answer to it. Peter wanted a shrine, a building or edifice to mark the spot where something happened. God wanted them to hear and see Jesus. To understand this is to see what separates real Christianity from religion.
Ecclesia is the Greek word used in the New Testament to describe the church. It has nothing to do with a religious system or a building. It refers to a called out body of believers made up of individuals. The church is a group of believers with or without a cathedral or building. The idea of going to church has long supplanted this definition. But such a connotation of the word cannot change the definition. The believers themselves are the church.
Christ was very careful not to instruct his disciples to build churches, shrines or an edifice to centralize his deity or worship. He told them rather to go out into the world and live out his message and tell it to others. How well he knew that we would make another religion out of his life in record time. It had already happened with the previous revelation God gave to the Jews.
The Mosaic form of religion reached its height around the time of Jesus. With the Temple in Jerusalem at its center it was a swelling complexity of oral and written traditions that would be hard to contain in the largest computer data bases of today. Christ spent a good deal of time resisting the extremes of that system and rebuking its leaders for their shallowness and misconceptions about what God really wanted and who he really is. He called its leaders a generation of snakes and said they used their religious rules and codes to laden men with mountains of unnecessary restrictions and meaningless rules.
In the Christian era it is said that Catholicism with its centuries of encyclicals, patristic teachings, ex cathedra and pontifical statements is ancient Judaism’s twin. In this late hour in time many churches have slouched into the same patterns including many historical denominations of the protestant movement. These religious bodies are not wrong just because they are burgeoning but they are heavy with the weight of their own complexity. Resultantly they offer much less to a troubled world that doesn’t even have time for itself, much less a fat religion that only adds to the stress of the modern day.
What has happened to Catholicism has been the problem for all the once great Christian churches or movements. They laid a construct over the simple gospel one single strand at a time. Doctrines, viewpoints, rules and codes some explicit, some implied and some harshly enforced.
Like the ancient Jews who had ceremonial laws, hygienic laws and moral laws to deal with, the more external forms of the religion finally cover the more important spiritual and moral aspects of it. The construct that so carefully was laid out now becomes the mask or the obstruction that keeps anyone from seeing the original all important first messages. When the simplicity of the gospel is covered by mountains of rules, liturgy and ceremony it becomes a sort of vaccination that keeps people from getting the real thing. The real thing is a way of life not a religion.
When the believers in the first century had not yet formed any denominations or sects they were told to tell others about Christ’s new way of life. “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” Acts 5:20. Jesus had told them often that he came to bring life to men not another religion.
Knowing that mans proclivity to religion was second only to his tendency to sinfulness Christ instituted two and only two outward ceremonial ordinances. They are partaking in the Lords supper (communion) and water baptism of repentant adults, not children or infants. Religious leaders added statements of faith, extra biblical doctrines, ceremonial observances, liturgies, rules of conduct, sacraments and the list goes on and on. If Christ were on earth today he would rarely ever be invited as the guest speaker in many churches. He would no doubt be found rebuking the religious nonsense of today’s church as he did centuries ago.
What really separates true Christianity from all religions in the world is simply that it is not a religion at all. Men have devised complex systems of piety and religious observance of every kind in an effort to placate or appease God. In Jesus Christ, God holds up a stop sign to the world. God says stop guessing who and what I am and what I want. I will show you who I am and what I want and in the process give you what you need…life.
The remaining difference between faith in Christ and all other religions is that Christ alone will show up at the end and judge the living and the dead. He alone will take the governments of the world away from man and rule as Sovereign Lord of all.
We debate religion but God will judge the souls of men, not by some religious belief system but by the example he showed of his life, his death on the cross for the sins of the world, his resurrection from the dead and every word he uttered during his life. We will not be able to argue the matter of our lives or offer God our adherence to some religious system as an answer. Jesus said, “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48
Religion based on true Christian teaching is not necessarily bad. It must be used as a supplement and never a substitute for the real thing.
Rev Bresciani is the author of An American Prophet and His Message, Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ, Xulon Press His articles are read in every country in the world. Please enjoy a visit to http://www.americanprophet.org
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
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