Like Elijah

A lil deviation from the normal, but I was reading Charles Spurgeon's devotion today and it really touched me. I encourage you to read this passage in Elijah, when he is feeling utterly defeated and in fear for His very life. Although we are not always in situations where we are afraid to die, its more common that we wish we would, and that is the qoute that drew my interest from these scriptures:

"It is enough; now, O Jehovah, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers."

In this situations all the prophets of the Lord are killed, Elijah is the last one left, and Jezebel has put out an all points bulletin for his death. Talk about pressure. But although I cannot feel that I can completely relate to Elijah because his stress comes from following God's will and mine comes largely from disobedience, something strange happens.
We see a parallel here between the old and the new Testament. Elijah goes out into the wilderness like Jesus to seek God and ends up spending 40 days there. However, Elijah is fed by angels as soon as he is out there, so that he may have the strenght to go and talk to God, and lay his complaints before him. The fact that Jesus only ate after His 40 days were up not only points to his divinity, but also the fact His larger burden to bear required a greater communion with God. Just look at what happens, Elijah falls asleep twice on his first day out there and twice he is woken up by the angel of God who says "Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for thee."
What I see from this is a). we are weak b). God is looking out for us, and God will sustain us just even in the desire to seek his face and inquire of him. It is later when Elijah is able to encounter and talk to God, but God did not see Elijah's fear for his life as something do be despised. He was not embarrassed by Elijah's inability to last in the desert, and most of all he was not upset by the fact that, in retrospect, Elijah was whining to Him about his life when God had already proved so faithful.
I whine, sin, complain and moan even seconds after a blessing to God because I am nigh overcome by a new affliction. I am not saying that one can go on having a faith that is never confident in God, quite the opposite actually. What I am trying to highlight is the fact that God is so loving and compassionate to those who earnestly seek after Him that he does not despise our failures and weaknesses but utilizes these to care for us - to show His strength in our weakness as Paul would say.

All this to get to this qoute by Spurgeon:

"Be then, dear reader, much in prayer, and make this evening a season of earnest intercession, but take heed what you ask"

Elijah did not get the death that he had asked for (he never even got to die, he was taken up by chariots of fire later, how ironic!). But at the same time, God relieved him of the pressure, which was what Elijah was really asking for. At the end of that Chapter God tells Elijah to appoint so and so the new king of Syria, so and so the new King of Isreal, and Elisha to be the new prophet. Thus the political and religious turmoil that hand haunted Elijah and made him wish he would like to die would be resolved in the coming years by the death of the old-guard of evil doers that had been a bane upon him. This verse really shows that God sees through to our hearts, much better than we can. So today I am going in prayer, and whatever it is that I cannot even see or say myself, I pray that God sorts it out and that I may find peace.

Do the same my brethren.