Royal Tailor – “You Are My Rescue” (Devotional)
1 Kings 19:1-13
Have you ever felt like you were running for your life? Maybe a better way to say it would be running from your life. At times we all want to run away from the pressures life brings in hopes of finding some relief and refuge from it all. This is exactly where we find Elijah in this story and yet we can easily see ourselves in this text as well.
ItΓÇÖs unlikely that we have someone literally chasing us down to kill us, although we might prefer that over perhaps our job totally stressing us out, bills piling up, a constant cycle of family drama, health issues or a million other situations weΓÇÖd rather retreat from. The problem with retreat is that we often run to the wrong places, right? But surely the great prophet Elijah knew better. He ran to the mountain of God. He ran to a place of true refuge.
What stuns me is that God asks Elijah, ΓÇ£what are you doing here?ΓÇ¥ But isnΓÇÖt this where he is supposed to run — to God, to the ΓÇ£mountain of GodΓÇ¥? And still God questions him.
Then the Lord passes by – the wind tears the mountains a part but God wasnΓÇÖt in the wind. The earth shakes…but God wasnΓÇÖt there. Then after all the drama God simply, quietly, whispers and Elijah hears his voice. This is where we tend to miss it. We miss the still small voice because we are caught-up looking for our answers in the macro displays of GodΓÇÖs power when God is actually more into making personal appearances in our lives.
The reason God chose to whisper is because he wants us to know that he is close. Emmanuel– God WITH us. We donΓÇÖt have to run from our lives because God is with us working in our lives right now!
We donΓÇÖt have to run from the struggles we encounter because God runs to us!
The rescuer comes to the one needing to be rescued not the other way around. What do we have to fear? God is faithful. He is close. If you are running today, stop. Sing and declare of, Jesus — ΓÇ£You Are My Rescue.ΓÇ¥