Just How Much Has God Told Us?

And he cried to the LORD, "O LORD my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?" Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the LORD, "O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again." And the LORD listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. - I King 17:20-22

I am still thinking through what I am about to share with you. The record of my thinking on this is not complete. In the aforementioned little verse we have a first time account of God raising the dead. Previous to this He had taken Enoch straight to heaven alive but this was the first time the truly dead are truly brought back to life.

So here is my question: What is Elijah thinking here? How does he dare ask God to do such an unprecedented thing?

You see, Elijah could not go back through the record like some astute and learned prophet (or teacher, pastor or theologian) and try to find another instance of resurrection and say, "Ah! Precedence recorded in the Scriptures - there's a situation like we have here in the present time. You see? God did it there. He will do it here.”

How much do we use precedent to determine what we commit God to doing in our current circumstance? How much have we limited God in our practice by only what He has done in the Bible? And worse yet, in precisely the way He did it (Anyone have an Alabaster box of oil around anywhere? Anyone?)

You see guys God never claimed to provide a written record of absolutely everything He has ever done. And I believe He has left the record incomplete, so to speak, so that we will not trust in the past but in the God who is fresh and alive and creative and real; able to meet today's need today and He can do it in unprecedented methods today. If He wants He can inform you to use Crisco or HoneyTime Honey!

Elijah had no, "God by the numbers" manual to follow. Instead, he relied on his relationship with his Heavenly Father. Elijah's ability to receive direction from God singularly and directly was his spiritual "trick". We should call this faith. However, we don't. We call something else faith. We call faith what we don't know but hope for and maybe it will and maybe it won't happen Elijah had only his faith in the living God. But, in Elijah's case it was a practiced faith. He had spent hours in prayer, reading, fasting, focusing and more than these, meditation and listening so that when the time came Elijah KNEW what God wanted to do.Why? Because God told Him.

Don't you wish at times that you had a book where you could look up "healing," or "impatience," or "forgiveness"? Okay. "What to do when I'm (without forgiveness, in need of healing, lack patience) in the face of testing": here are steps one, two, three, four, and five. And in case of severe emergency: six, seven, and eight.

Ta da! You'd have the answer!

Or, what to do when death comes: Steps A, B, C & D. If it is the dearest friend you've ever known:and F & G. If it is your own child: then E and H and possibly I.

But my loved ones there's no such manual. And for this we should be grateful! We should raise our voices and shout to the heavens! We should dance and laugh and sing HIS praises!. Why? Because it means He must speak to us, with us and through us individually. It also means we must read, pray, sing, praise, glory and meditate on and in Him.

Thankfully, in His Word God does include principles to follow in most crises, but not a precise procedure in difficult or impossible situations. He lets us know that our relationship with Him should cause us to have certain character attributes. We know how I spirit should respond. But Jesus came to restore our ability to hear and receive from our Heavenly Father. God leaves us on the cutting edge of today so that we will trust in Him and the principles in His great and gracious Word and those principles will drive us to Him...personally...throne room of God stuff...in HIS presence. That's all we have but isn't THAT amazing? And my loved ones...get into that...get into your intimate relationship, like Elijah with the God of the Universe but also of your life because one thing I am learning, day-by-day as I grow in my life in Jesus is this: That's enough.

I remain...

InHISgrip,
~J~