May 9, 2018 - Suggested Reading 1 Kings 18 for the Mother’s Day message from Psalm 86 “save me, because I serve you just as my mother did”

“Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The god who answers by fire—he is God.”

1 Kings 18:24 (NIV) 

We know nothing of Elijah’s call to lead but man oh man did God ever use Elijah to turn God's people's hearts back to God! We read this chapter and marvel at the miraculous working of God- the drought, the rain, the fire from heaven and the turning of the hearts of God’s people away from their false gods and back to their true God. I think of the prayer time this week with Pastor Barry, and the heartfelt prayers going up to our God to turn the hearts of adult children of the families of Parkdale back to their God and I long for God to answer our prayers as He answered Elijah’s prayers that day long ago.

I make the mistake sometimes of thinking that this account recorded in 1 Kings 18 is how God used to act - do you know what I mean by that? That God doesn’t send fire from heaven anymore, that God doesn’t do miracles thru His leaders anymore, that a test like this test proposed by Elijah is not pleasing to God in this age of grace. We sometimes think that they saw God’s power and that they didn’t need faith because they had sight.

I call this type of thinking a mistake - for the New Testament doesn’t teach this. Actually Acts 2 teaches that this age of grace is the age of God sending fire from heaven and James 5 teaches us that the heavy rain recorded at the end of this chapter was the result of a human just like us who earnestly prayed, and 1 John 5 teaches us that when we pray according to His will that we know God hears us, and because we know He hears us we know we have received what we asked of Him. 

So let us call on the Name of our Lord today to turn hearts back to Him!