"Elijah (Part 3)"

Victory Can Be Yours!

Article #65 – “Elijah (Part 3)”

               Last week, we left Elijah praying to God to consume what was on the alter.  “Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.  When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, ‘The Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God.” (1 Kings 18:38, 39)   God’s purpose in all of this was to bring His people back from worshipping false gods.  It was not to make a hero out of Elijah.  It was not His plan to punish Ahab.  The three years without rain and the demonstration between Elijah’s God and the gods of the prophets of Baal and the Asherah was to show to the people of Israel that Elijah’s God was real and the other gods were nowhere to be found.  The people saw and worshipped the real and living God.

King Ahab was told to go down the mountain because the heavy rains were coming so he got on his horse drawn chariot and raced down the mountain.   “Then the hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and he girded up his loins and outran Ahab to Jezreel.” (1 Kings 18:46)  I went to a liberal arts college and was required to take a course in religious studies.  I chose to take a class in the Old Testament.  When our professor taught us on this account of Elijah, he said that this had to be just an entertaining story because, everyone knows that no one could outrun a horse drawn chariot down a mountain path.  I wasn’t even attending church at the time but wondered how strange that the pastor of the local university church, and professor of religion could not see that God had His hand on Elijah and thus he surely could outrun a horse drawn chariot.  If we do not have faith to believe that this is possible, how could we have faith to believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins?  When God is in charge of any situation, all kinds of supernatural acts may occur.  It is by faith that the great men and women of the Bible did the things that they did and it is by faith that we believers must believe the acts that they carried out.  Without that faith, what can we possibly believe concerning the accounts of the Bible?  We cannot pick and choose what to believe and what not to believe.  We must see the Bible as being the literal, inerrant word of God where when the Word tells us that Elijah outran a horse drawn chariot, that is precisely what occurred.

Elijah had two things working for him as he was serving God.  One was God communicating with him and, he was communicating with God through his prayers.  We have the same tools when we are serving the living God.  We have His Word, the Bible, His communication to us and our prayers to talk with God.  When we are using the tools that God gives us to serve Him, we also have the hand of God on us and we also can do some things that otherwise we could never accomplish.

You, too, can have victory in Jesus!  More next week regarding Elijah.

Lowell Parrish