Exit Stage Left | Elijah: The Power to Stand

Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie, encouraging you. If you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org. Let's grab our Bibles and turn to 1 Kings chapter 17. 1 Kings 17, we're looking at the life of Elijah, and the title of my message is, Exit Stage Left.

Let me start with a question. Have you ever faced a time in your life where you were isolated and alone? Maybe your friends and family even abandoned you. Maybe your husband or your wife walked out on you. Maybe even your dog left you. Cats always leave you.

They've never been your friend. Just deal with that. Or maybe right now, as I'm giving this message, you're in a time of difficulty or trial, similar to a desert, because there once was a time in your life where you were active, but now you're inactive.

Once you were mobile, now you're immobilized. If any of these things resonate with you, and I think this message I'm about to share with you will help, because this is a story of the prophet Elijah storming into the court of the wicked king Ahab and his even more wicked wife Jezebel, and throwing the gauntlet down at the nerve center of Israel, and telling these idol-worshipping people that it wasn't gonna rain. God was gonna withhold the water because of their worship of false gods. And here's where Elijah got his boldness, his courage, his chutzpah, if you will.

Verse King 17, one, and Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there will not be dew nor rain these years except at my word. What were the secrets of this miracle-working prophet? By the way, he was a human just like you are, just like me. He had his shortcomings and his flaws.

We'll see that later. He says it in his opening statement, As the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand. Elijah served a living God. He knew God was alive and powerful, and he constantly stood in the presence of God. He understood that wherever he went, the Lord went with him, and so that gave him a courage.

And that's something that will give you courage as well. So when he first walked in, I think that probably Ahab and Jezebel thought he was a joke. How did this guy get past security? Remember, he's kind of wild-looking. He's all hairy, dressed strangely, and they're in their beautiful royal robes, and he makes this bold statement.

They probably thought, That's such a joke, and then it stopped raining, and it wasn't a joke anymore. And suddenly Elijah became public enemy number one. Basically, the queen and the king put a contract on him. We've got to get this guy whacked fast, because he is a threat to our nation. So what was Elijah to do?

It's exit, stage left. The Lord said, You've got to get off the grid. No Instagram posts, no tweets, no anything.

Nobody needs to know where you are, because the Lord said to him in verse two, You've got to hide yourself. By the way, I just read an interesting little article that said, One week off of social media can ease your depression and anxiety. One week. And they said, You also gained nine hours of free time that you did not have.

Think about that. I'm going to go off social for one week while Elijah was off the grid, and nobody knew exactly where he was. Why was he hiding? Because the king and queen wanted him dead, but also because God was getting him into shape for what was ahead. So Elijah went from the palace to the barren wilderness. He went from the throne of power to the desert of obscurity.

He's in oblivion, and here's what happened. First Kings 17, verse two. And the Lord said to Elijah, Go to the east and hide by the cherith brook near where it enters the Jordan River. Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food. So Elijah did as the Lord told him, and camp beside cherith brook east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat. Each morning and evening he drank from the brook, and after a while the brook dried up, and there was no rainfall anywhere in the land.

We'll stop there. If you're taking notes, here's point number one. We learn things in deserts that we don't learn anywhere else. We learn things in deserts we don't learn anywhere else. And when I say desert, I'm using it as a metaphor for a difficulty, a trial, a hardship, whatever it is you might be going through similar to that, but you will learn things in that place. Now when we think of the brook cherith, we think a little babbling brook, you know, sort of like Snow White in the forest and the animals are gathered around smiling.

No, it wasn't that way at all. Actually, the word cherith means the cutting place, the cutting place. God was getting Elijah ready for his showdown with the prophets of Baal. It was going to be the shootout at the Carmel Chorale. This is going to be big, and he was going to have to be almost a different person when that event came with incredible faith. This was sort of like Elijah's boot camp experience. You know, at the beginning of the chapter, he's introduced to us as Elijah from the town of Tishbeth.

At the end of the chapter, he is introduced as Elijah, the man of God. Something happened in that cutting place. I wonder if I'm talking to somebody right now that's in a cutting place or a spiritual desert.

You're walking through a valley, but you need to know you're not the only one. Paul spent 40 years in the desert before he was able to lead the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt. Joseph spent a number of years in a prison cell before he became the second most powerful man in the earth and saved the lives of many people. Paul, not Spol, there is no Spol. Spol was Paul's brother, but there's not much about him in the Bible.

No, Paul. Paul spent three lonely years in the Arabian desert after his conversion and before he began his public ministry. For us, our cutting place was 14 years ago when we entered into a valley that in many ways we're still in, and that is the valley or the cutting place when our son Christopher died in an automobile accident. It's a very hard thing to go through, and anyone who has lost a loved one, especially a child, knows what I'm speaking of right now. But I have to say, in this valley we have been in, we have learned things we would not have otherwise learned. We've come closer to God, and the Lord has been with us in a special way, and He has changed us and continues to change us, and He'll do the same for you no matter what kind of valley you're in. I love how David sums it up in Psalm 23. He says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Then he gives the answer, For you are with me. See, if the Lord is with me, I can get through it.

When you know the Lord is with you, you can face anything. I'd rather be in a desert with Jesus than anywhere else without Him. That's what Elijah understood. See, exciting and exhilarating days were ahead for the prophet, including Mount Carmel, but before there would be a Mount Carmel, there had to first be a brook called Cherith. There has to be a cross before there can be a crown. Before there can be a resurrection, there has to be a Gethsemane and a Calvary. There has to be death before there can be life. Jesus said, If you will lose your life, you'll find it. What does that mean?

It means that if you will give your life to God and recognize that His plans for you are better than your plans for yourself, you will find another dimension of life that you had not known even existed. But we ask, oh man, come on. Why do we have to go through these valleys? Why do we have to go through these trials? Why do we have to weather these storms?

Why can't I just go from mountaintop to mountaintop? Here's the answer. James 1 to, Brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its work in you that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Number two, God allows trials in the life of the Christian so we will grow up spiritually. You know, we think we know certain things, and the Lord will test us periodically. Did you know God gives pop quizzes? Remember when you were in school? Some of you were in school still. The teacher would say, It's pop quiz today. All the nerds and the geeks would be like, right? They even laughed that way.

Not me. I was like, Oh no. Because I was a guy drawing cartoons, distracting other students, messing around. Why were the geeks and the needs, I'm making new words up. So we have Paul the brother of Paul, and now we have gerts and speeds, or whatever I said. But why were the geeks and the nerds so excited?

Because they were prepared. By the way, we don't call them geeks and nerds anymore. We call them boss now, pretty much. It's a good thing to be a geek today.

Especially if you know how to fix computer things. But Jesus will test us. Oh, you think you know this? You say you trust me?

You say that you believe I'm in charge in your life? Here comes the test. Not to make us miserable, not to hurt us. To test our faith and strengthen our faith so we'll understand this truth is really true.

You see? So we can advance as Christians. Thirdly, God allows hardships to show us his power. Sometimes he'll just allow a difficulty so he can deliver you from it.

Or even remove the difficulty from you. Now, honestly, there are times we have to go through it, and we're not delivered. But then there are times he'll take us out of it all together.

And fourth, trials and testings produce a necessary quality in our life. Let me go back to that statement from James 2 and read it from another translation that sheds some light. James 1, verse 2. When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't treat them as intruders but friends.

I love that. Trial comes, I don't want a trial, intruder, no. Maybe it's a friend. Why would it be a friend? Realize, James continues, that they come to test your faith and produce in you a quality of endurance.

Let that process go on until you're men and women of mature character, men and women of integrity with no weak spots. Sort of like working out at the gym. How many of you go to the gym or to some kind of a health club every week? Raise your hand. Okay, not a lot of fit people in this service.

I think it was even worse for service in Riverside. All right, so you don't go to the gym. I go but I don't like it. My favorite time of going to the gym is when the workout is over and it's all the obnoxious people.

Like the guy who picks away something and slams them on the ground, right? Or the person that sweats all over everything. Sweat, sweat. And then how about this person taking pictures of themselves while they work out.

Please don't do that. I don't want to scroll through and see you working. I just don't but a lot of people like to, here I am at the gym, look at me now, you know.

That sort of thing. Well look, you go to the gym to get stronger, not weaker. You break down the muscle in order to build up the muscle. God does the same for us. Trials are like God's gym where he's strengthening us for the present and for the future.

It's been said character is not made in crisis. It is revealed. So here now is Elijah in his time of trial by the brook sheriff. Now he's going to get fed every day.

How? Ravens, basically raven postmates is the new delivery system. Now I want you to think about a raven for a moment. I don't know what you think of when you think of a raven. Here's a photograph of a raven. Not the prettiest bird out there. These are birds that, well let's just say you see a dead squirrel in the middle of the street.

You go, oh sick, gross. That bird, that's called lunch. He's happy to see it. So they're bringing little bits of meat and some bread to Elijah. It's not like they're flying in with little bags of In-N-Out burger and Chick-fil-A. By the way, I invented my own sandwich at Chick-fil-A.

This is very exciting. Do you want me to reveal it to you? It's my own thing. Okay, so I take the regular Chick-fil-A, I like that. And then you know the spicy one? I take the spicy filet, put it on top of the old filet, and that's it.

You'll thank me later. This is why I have to go to the gym, because I eat stuff like this. So the food comes every single day. How would he let the birds know?

It was time to eat. He would shoot out a tweet and they would always arrive. Don't miss the joke.

Tweet birds. Come on, people. These are the jokes. You know, it's funny to me, though, what a weird way to feed someone. Why not go back to the manna miracle?

That was a good one. You get up in the morning as a child of Israel, walk out of your little tent, there's a manna waiting for you. You have manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, manna for dinner. But now Elijah's got a way to birds to bring little bits of meat and some bread to him each and every day. I think the reason the Lord did this is God likes to mix it up. Have you ever noticed that Jesus never healed any two people in exactly the same way? Sometimes they touched him, like the woman who had the medical condition, and she was healed. Sometimes he touched them. Sometimes he would just speak the word and they would be healed. One of my favorites is when a guy wanted to be healed of blindness and Jesus spit on the ground and wiped it in the dirt and put it in his eye. Can you imagine? You come to a pastor for prayer.

Pastor, would you pray for me? No problem. Wait, what? Well, it's in the Bible.

Yeah, only once so. But I think Jesus changed his methods, if you will, so people would not look to the method, but they would look to the Messiah. God may provide for you in a certain way for an extended period of time, and you come to almost trust in that thing instead of him. Well, I've always worked at this organization, and they pay me every week, yes, but it's God who has been giving you that money, ultimately, right? It's God who's been providing for you. So the Lord may mix it up, and something may happen, and all of a sudden, your provision isn't coming from that source anymore.

It's coming from another source, and you discover it was never from that source. It was always from this source, the Lord himself. So the birds come and bring him his food.

Maybe the Lord did it this way so Elijah would have a little companionship. You know, he's all alone out there, nobody to talk to, probably name the birds. Oh, here they come. We have a little bird feeder outside of our window in our kitchen, and so we have these birds that come. We name the birds, and there are two birds that kind of dominate it. There was one that was there all the time, and my granddaughter, Allie, named her, now I'm blanking out on her name, Irene. Irene, she's a kid. Irene, she says, so the bird.

Okay, that's good. Well, now all of a sudden, she shows up with some boy bird. He's kind of got a little red front here.

He's a pretty bird. Well, let's name him George, I said. George and Irene. You say, why George? I don't know. I thought George Clooney. I don't know.

We could have called him Brad or Leo or Greg. I don't know, but. So they hang out. Oh, look, there are the birds.

We'll stop what we're doing. Look at the birds. There they go. Now I have a hummingbird feeder too, and we recently moved it, and now the hummingbirds aren't coming anymore. They're so aloof. Hummingbirds are like the cats of the bird world. You know, they're fickle. George and Irene every day, they're getting the seed. Hummingbird, I may come, I may not come, I don't know, but I am pretty awesome.

They're very hyper. Is there caffeine and nectar? I don't know what's going on with them, but maybe a little companionship for Elijah. Maybe he even started to enjoy it. Get him in the morning. Get some water from the brook and wait for the birds to show up and bring me lunch. And then one day, the brook dried up. The brook just dried up.

It stopped. See, he had to face the consequences of the plague coming on the land too. There was a drought, and now he's facing the drought. And I wonder if I'm talking to somebody right now who just had their brook dry up. Your bank account isn't as full as it once was.

I think that's true for most of us right now with this economy. You had a growing career. Not so much anymore. You had an amazing ministry, and it's not what it used to be. Your brook dried up. Your career stalled. Things aren't looking so bright as they were before.

Your kids left home, which frankly is a relief because they're in their 50s. But still, your brook has dried up. But don't despair because God is not done with you yet. God was not done with Elijah. He was just done with this chapter in the life of the prophet. Now Elijah was ready for the next act. He was ready for the next chapter in his life. Everything was going according to plan, God's plan. I know it's been said before, but there is truth in it. When God closes one door, he opens another. The brook dried up, but now the Lord's saying, all right, I have some other things to teach you, so let's move right along.

You never know. I read about some farmers who are raising cotton in the south, and the dreaded bull weevil invaded and started eating their crops. Now look at that creepy thing, the bull weevil. A lot of creepy animals today, ravens and bull weevils. And so these bugs show up, and they just destroy crops of cotton. And the farmers began to despair. They had invested their life savings into these crops, but then one of them had an idea, why don't we plant peanuts instead? Amazingly, those peanuts made them more money than they ever had made with cotton.

So they had a monument dedicated to the bull weevil. I'm not making this up. Look at this. This is real.

This is not Photoshopped. Here's this monument. Thank you, bull weevil. And sometimes a bull weevil comes into your life. What's this all about? What's this person doing here? Why did this problem start?

Why is this happening to me? And then later you look back and you go, thank God for the bull weevil. Thank God for that interruption, because it caused me to pivot and go this different direction that I would have never gone in before. And so God was still at work in the life of Elijah. And sometimes weird stuff happens in our life that doesn't always make sense at the time.

Think about it. Paul was in the middle of a very successful missionary journey when he was stoned and left for dead. You might say his brook dried up. But then God raised him up and he went on to change the world. Joseph was on a roll running the house of Potiphar, but he was falsely accused and sent to prison. His brook had dried up, but God delivered him and he saved the world. So now it's time for chapter three, or act three, in the life of Elijah. The Lord was going to expand Elijah's life and grow his faith. First Kings 17, verse eight. Then the Lord said to Elijah, this is after the brook has dried up, go to the village of Zarephath and near the city of Zidane. Now, by the way, the city of Zidane, Zidane was the center of Baal worship. This is where Jezebel, the wicked queen, came from. So the Lord is effectively sending Elijah to Baal's central, which is kind of ironic. And then the Lord says there'll be a widow there to feed you. So he went to Zarephath.

He arrived at the gates of the village. He saw a widow gathering sticks and he asked her, would you bring me a little bit of water and a cup? And as she was going to get it, he called to her, hey, bring me a bite of bread too.

I said, I find this humorous. Okay, I'll get you some water. Hey, give me a sandwich too, would you mind? But this woman is so gracious. And think of how Elijah looked.

He was strange looking, all hairy. And he comes up to this lady who's basically at the brink of death. She even protests and said, I don't have enough bread to share. I'm out of flour and olive oil to make more. This is my last meal. He's like, yeah, whatever.

Just give me some to eat. But it wasn't that way. See, he was testing her. And more to the point, the Lord was testing her. Would she trust God? And in this case, the men of God. And she said yes.

And look what happened next. Verse 15. She did as Elijah said. And she and Elijah and her family continued to eat for many days.

There was always enough flour, excuse me, a flour and olive oil left in the containers just as the Lord had promised through Elijah. I love how she made things from scratch. My wife is an amazing chef. If you follow me on social media, you see, because I post food all the time. In my story on Instagram, I posted my omelet from this morning. This was an amazing omelet. And she just gets all the ingredients together and makes stuff.

I never make anything. I used to make scrambled eggs for myself. And there came a point where I couldn't even eat my own food. I mean, I used to make them okay and something went south and now they're the worst.

In fact, last time I made them, they were kind of greenish looking. Like, what happened here? The grandkids won't even eat them. They used to eat my eggs and I'll say, do you want me to make you scrambled eggs?

No, thank you, Papa. It's like, oh. The other day, my granddaughter, Allie, got out some flour and some other things. I said, Allie, what are you doing? She said, I'm gonna make crepes.

You're just a little kid. You're making crepes? Very impressive. I am very good at toast, though. I do think that I've mastered toast.

There is a technique, nevermind. So this widow would make these meals from scratch. But here's something to think about. This was humbling for Elijah.

Why? Well, let's be honest. Men, men don't like to be dependent on anyone. Men like to think that we fix things. We're the ones with the answer to the question. We're the ones with the solution to the problem.

It's not we aren't as often as we think we are. But to go be dependent on a woman, and not just a woman, a widow, and not just a widow, an impoverished widow, and to be dependent on her each and every day. But this is the thing I find so impressive about Elijah. It was whatever God told him to do, he just did it. He was just obedient. He was obedient in really little things. It may not seem like a big thing to you to sit by a river and let the birds bring you food.

It may not seem like a big thing for you to go and be dependent on a widow. It may not seem like a big thing for you to do some of the things he did, but it was the little things that built up to the big things. If you wanna be used by God, you have to be faithful in little things because of the simple truth. You're never too small for God to use, only too big. I mean, this guy went into the court. They have in Jezebel and threw down the gauntlet.

That was a source of power in Israel. I've had the opportunity to go to the White House quite a few times, and I've been in the Oval Office twice, been able to pray for the president. That's an intimidating thing to walk into the Oval Office. For starters, it's actually kind of small. You're thinking, wow, what an impractical room.

It's completely, well, oval. And you think of all the history that's happened in that room. And you look at that desk that the president sits behind and the decisions that have been made at that desk, and then you're there with the leader of the free world, and that's intimidating as well.

Imagine how intimidating it was for Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel. I remember another Oval Office I was in years ago. It was the office of Pastor Chuck Smith.

It felt like the Oval Office to me because I was 17 years old. I was a brand new Christian, so I went there to Pastor Chuck's office, and I thought, I want to be used by God. So I said, Pastor Chuck, I want to come and serve here.

I'll do whatever you need done. Wherever you want me to go, I'll go. Chuck said, oh, really? I was thinking that he'd say, Greg, why don't you preach for me Sunday morning? I mean, I've been a Christian six months.

Why not, right? Or go do this other ministry thing or pray for that person over there. He said, Greg, I want you to go talk to Pastor Romain. I didn't know who Pastor Romain was, and then I went to Romain. Hi, Chuck sent me to you, and I didn't realize that was like, there was a message, a hidden message there. Like, here's another one, Romain.

As I discovered later, Romain was a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps prior to being a pastor. So I said, yeah, we want you to do some work. Here's a broom.

Go sweep. There was this tree called a pepper tree. All it did was drop leaves.

I'm thinking, this is the most worthless tree ever planted. You sweep and the leaves drop, and you sweep, and all I did was sweep under this stupid pepper tree. But I realized what they were doing. They were getting free janitorial work from you. That's what they were doing. But there was something else.

They were gonna find out, is this kid humble enough to do a menial task? Because if you're not faithful in a little thing like that, how can you be given the responsibility to do a greater thing? Jesus said, if you're faithful in little things, you'll be faithful in large ones. But if you're dishonest in little things, you will not be honest with greater responsibilities. Elijah was so faithful, and he was so obedient, and he did this for the Lord.

And this woman continued to provide for him. Point number five, God loves to take what we have and multiply it. God loves to take what we have and multiply it. I had so little to offer to God after my conversion.

Well, I draw these cartoons, and that's kind of it, you know. But the Lord was giving me gifts that would develop in time. Ironically, for me to be a teacher is almost a laugh.

The student that got bad grades is now gonna be a teacher? I think the Lord had a little fun with that one. You have no idea what God may call you to do. You say, well, I'm kind of a behind-the-scenes person. The Lord might say, yeah, well, I'm gonna put you in front of everybody. That's a new kind of person you're gonna be. And you might say, I like to be in front of people.

I like to have big crowds watching me. The Lord might say, I'm gonna put you behind the scenes now. And another person, he might say, I'm gonna give you this gift that you never had before. It's a supernatural gift to someone else who'll do a different thing. But God loves to take what we have and multiply it. Like that little boy with the loaves and fishes that he gave to the Lord. Listen, there are three things that's for. There are three things we can give to God.

Time, talent, and treasure. Every one of us can give our time, our talent, and our treasure to the Lord. First there's our time.

We have a given day. Will we dedicate any of that time to the Lord? Will we dedicate any of that time to scripture? Will we dedicate any of that time to prayer? Will we dedicate any of that time to worship and church? Will we dedicate any of that time to sharing our faith with others?

You have your time. Then you have your talent. And we all have different kinds of talents, don't we? And then God may give you gifts on top of those talents.

So we give those to him as well. And finally, there's your treasure, your resources. And I have found that God is faithful to provide for our needs if we will honor him. There's an amazing promise in the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, where God says, bring all of the tithes into my storehouse, that there may be food enough in my temple. And if you do, listen to this promise, if you do, the Lord says, I'll open up the windows of heaven for you, pour you out a blessing so great you won't have room enough to take it in. Then the Lord says this, try it, let me prove it to you.

Don't you love that? Here's what God is saying, take your income, always give a percentage of it for the work of the kingdom of God. That's why we have an offering, by the way.

Maybe you've wondered, what is this mysterious bag passing by, what is happening? That's for you to invest in the kingdom. You don't have to do it. No one's pressuring you to do it.

If you don't wanna do it, don't do it. But do you realize the blessing that can come your way as you're faithful to give to the Lord? Elijah passed every test that God gave him and the widow did too. But now he's gonna face the biggest test so far. First Kings 17, verse 17, after these things.

Underline that phrase, after these things. The son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse.

He finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, what do you have against me, oh man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son? Wow.

Pretty accusatory. After these things we read, after what things? After Elijah has trusted God with every test that has come his way. After he faced off with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. After he's gone off the grid and waited for the birds to feed him. After he's been dependent on this poor woman and seen God provide. After these things, the worst case scenario, her son dies.

She even accuses Elijah. And when tragedy strikes, sometimes people lash out at God. Why did you do this to me, God? Why did you let my son or my daughter die? Why did you let my parents die? Why did you let my sibling die? Why did you let this tragedy before me? Why and we shake a fist in the face of God?

It's understandable, we do it. But we need to remember this simple thing. It's not a punishment when a loved one dies.

She thinks, why are you punishing me, God? No, sorry to break this to you, people die. The stats on death are pretty impressive. One out of every one person will die.

All right? That's why we all need to be prepared for eternity. So it's not a punishment on you. It's life and it's death. And it happens to everyone.

The Bible says there's a time to be born and a time to die. But I can understand this woman's pain. As I said earlier, my wife and I have been there. But to her credit, Elijah says, give me your son. He took the hit, by the way. He could have said, why are you yelling at me? I've been here helping you all this time. He just says, I hear you, okay. Give me your son. And she says, here. There's something in her that knows that God's gonna intervene still.

And I wonder if we could just take those things and give them to the Lord. I'm having problems with my son. He's a prodigal. Why don't you just give him to the Lord right now? I'm having problems with my daughter.

She's just, it's just so much trauma. Why don't you give her to the Lord right now? I'm having problems with my husband.

He's such a loser. Maybe change your attitude and then give him to the Lord. I'm having troubles with my wife. Give her to the Lord. My career, give it to the Lord. My ministry, give it to the Lord.

My anxiety, my fears, give it all to the Lord. That's what she did. What happened next? Are you bored? Is this boring? Are you okay? I have like seven more minutes, okay? We good? We good? Not everyone clapped just then.

I'm just. First Kings 17 verse 21. And he stretched himself over the child three times and cried out to the Lord, oh Lord my God. Please let this child's life return to him. The Lord heard Elijah's prayer and the life of the child returned and he revived. Then Elijah brought him down from the upper room and gave him to his mother. Look, he said, your son is alive. Then the woman told Elijah, now we know for sure you're a man of God and that the Lord truly speaks through you.

Wow. This took a lot of faith. Up to this point, no one had been raised from the dead before, okay? So there was no precedent. Elijah could not have prayed, well Lord, as you've raised people from the dead in the past, do it again. No one had been raised from the dead. This was the first time a person came back from the grave. He was developing next level faith.

What Elijah asked God to do with the widow's son was minor compared to what he was gonna ask God to do on Mount Carmel. Listen, God is preparing all of us for what is next. Everything in life is preparation for something that still is yet to come.

So let's review and close. Number one, we learn things in deserts. We do not learn anywhere else. Number two, God allows trials in our lives so we will grow spiritually. Thirdly, God allows hardships to show us his power.

Fourthly, trials and testings produce unnecessary quality in our lives. And fifth and lastly, God likes to take what we have and multiply it. Listen to this. You think Elijah was close to God?

And he was. God would speak to him, but then the Lord wouldn't speak to him for a while. You say, man, I wish God would speak to me like that. Listen to this. You are closer to God as a Christian than Elijah the prophet was.

And I'll tell you why. Elijah the prophet stood in the presence of God. He was aware of the presence of God, but you have God himself living inside of you because of what Jesus did on the cross. If, that's all caps, if you're a Christian. Well, we're all God's children.

No, actually, we aren't. We're all created by God. We're all loved by God. But the way you become a child of God is by asking Christ to come into your life after you have acknowledged you're a sinner. This is why Jesus died on the cross, to pay for our sins. And he rose again from the dead. The Bible says for as many as received him, he gave them the power to become children of God.

Have you received Christ into your life? Let me come back to this one point. I can imagine the joy of this mother to have her son back again. I wish God had raised our son, Christopher, from the dead.

We couldn't even view him after his accident. And I had a dream the other night. And it was so vivid.

And you that have lost loved ones will understand this dream. But I was with both of my sons, Christopher and Jonathan. They were both younger. They weren't married yet. So it was just Dad and his sons.

And we often did things together. And so in this dream, we're standing on a little ledge by the ocean. And both of them are swimming. And they go into this little underwater cave and I can't see them. But I hear them talking.

And Jonathan says to Christopher, you can catch a really cool wave here. And I said, come out of there, I can't see you. I was getting really nervous and agitated. And then they came and they're swimming underwater and I see them underwater. And I reach down and I pull them both up on the ledge and they're standing there. And I'm happy they're there.

And I said to them, one day when you guys get married and have kids, you'll know what it's like to be a dad and worry like I just did. And then it just occurred to me. I'm standing here talking to both of my sons. Both of them.

Not just one of them. Christopher is standing right next to me and I'm looking at him and I realize how wonderful it is. I'm talking to him and then I wake up. So when you've lost a loved one, this happens in your dreams. So on one hand you're sort of happy, let me rephrase that. On one hand you're really happy to see them but always in the dream they have to leave or they're going away from you or you wake up from your dream and you wish you could live in that space again. But one day I will see my son again because of the resurrection of Jesus.

I know there are people here listening to me that say Greg, come on, it's been 14 years. But you know every time I bring this up, people come and they thank me and say we just lost our child. And that really helped us, what you said. And I always think of those people because we're all kind of part of a little family that we never wanted to join, a club we never wanted to be in. But it's always encouraging to be reminded that when our loved ones who have died in faith leave us that they're not just a part of our past, they're also a part of our future. That's very important, isn't it?

So let me close this message by saying what I said earlier. You can be closer to God than even Elijah was. Yeah, but God spoke to Elijah all the time. He never speaks to me, you say. Question, do you own one of these? By the way, this is called the Bible, yes.

Filled with the words of God and God will speak to you through the Bible. Well, like do you have to read it? Can you scroll it? No. Is God on Instagram?

Not really. Can he just shoot me a quick tweet or text? That almost went the wrong direction. We'll just keep moving. No, he wants you to discipline yourself and open up the word of God and you will find God is speaking to you. God speaks to me all the time through the Bible and I'll speak to you as well. You can have this relationship with the Lord and you can have the hope of the afterlife and more than the afterlife, the hope of being with Christ and the hope of being with loved ones that have preceded you to heaven who died in faith but that hope only comes through Christ and if you've never asked him to come into your life, you can do it right here, right now. Let's pray. Father, I pray for every person in this room.

If they don't know you yet, if you're not living in their hearts, let this be the moment they believe. Let this be the moment they invite Jesus into their hearts. We pray.

Well, our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed and we're praying together. Maybe there's somebody here today that would say I need Jesus. I don't know that he lives inside of me right now. I don't know that I'll go to heaven when I die but I want to. I want to start a relationship with God. Would you pray for me? Listen, if you want Jesus to come into your life, if you want him to forgive you of your sin, if you want to go to heaven when you die, if you want this relationship with God I've been talking about, wherever you are, would you just lift your hand up and let me pray for you. Lift up your hand saying I need Jesus today. Pray for me. God bless you. Wherever you are, raise your hand up. I'll pray for you today. God bless you.

Wherever you are. Jesus will come and take residence in your heart and forgive you of all of your sin but you have to call out to him. The Bible says whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Anybody else, you want Christ to come into your life, raise your hand up. Let me pray for you.

God bless you. You that have raised your hand, pray this prayer with me now. Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner but I know that you're the savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Come into my life now. Be my Lord, be my savior. I choose to follow you from this moment forward. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries, follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to harvest.org and to find out how to know God personally, go to harvest.org and click on Know God.