"When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
{1 Kings 19:3} (NIV 1984)
Elijah was spent; wasted; finished! What he had done was remarkable, for God had used him in a mighty way. James holds him up as an example of fervent effective prayer. But that was then, and now is now, and he is finished. He runs toward God, and by God’s provision makes it to the same mountain that God met Moses on.
God comes to him, and asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God knows exactly why Elijah is there, so the question is for Elijah’s benefit, and therefore for our benefit. What is he doing there? Why isn’t he ministering in the place God called him? It isn’t because God hasn’t blessed his ministry. It is because Elijah was discouraged by his enemies; people who want to destroy him. Elijah served a gentle God, a God who came to him, and spoke to him gently and who sent him back into his ministry.
Friend, has God been asking you that question? It is good for us to spend time with God, and with His people who love us. But there will come a time when God will ask us, “What are you doing here, ______?” When we hear that question from our God, we know it is time to get back at it, to go into the world and be the light that He has called and enabled us to be.
I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.
("In the Garden", C. Austin Miles, 1912)
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