How to Know if God Has Given Up on You

0:00Well howdy Spotify thank you for tuning in to Pastor Mark's sermon this week. I wanted to tell you real quick we'll get you to the sermon in just a second. What real faith is real faith exists for one reason to get bold practical Bible truth to as many people as possible. Pastor Mark can his family launch real faith to help people grow strong in faith and live out God's truth in real life. What started as a simple online library of sermons and daily devotionals has grown into a global Bible teaching movement. By God's grace real faith content has reached over 800 million people and generated over 2.8 billion impressions and impacted over 150 countries. All that to say we are trying to reach the nations with Bible teaching and you're one of the people that are helping us do that. And when you share, like, subscribe, whatever it is here on Spotify it is a huge blessing to us and we want to give something back to you guys. If you're enjoying this sermon we create a resource every week called daily divos.

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2:23It's an honor to be here today and to serve Pastor Mark. I always wonder when I get invited to do things like this, why did they ever invite me? And hold by their time on finish you're not thinking the same thing. So we'll see. What Calvin talked to me about this originally asked me to share some of the lessons of the church. I guess nearly 50 years I can't believe it in leadership Christian leadership. We planted my wife and I. The short answer is how I survived is sitting at a table over there. Her name is Elaine. But we planted two churches and learned a lot of lessons in the process. I think that most of all we learn through making mistakes to be honest.

3:24It's the truth, isn't it? And the accumulation of wisdom is just sharing how God by grace saved us through all the mistakes we've made. And hopefully, and it's what I've tried to do for about 20 years now is in disciplinary younger leaders is to share. So this is where I went wrong and I hope I can save you from making the same mistake yourself. So I'm going to this is kind of challenging. I'm going to take the first part of the time in sharing a number of lessons that I've learned over the years. And I'm just going to be very brief in each one of these points. And what I'm going to try to do is to illustrate some of those lessons through a Bible teaching because that's what I am a Bible teacher. That's what I do best at. And so we'll see how it goes.

4:25Number one, find spiritual fathers. You can only exercise as much authority as you're submitted to. So many pastors want everybody around them to submit to them. But if you look hard enough, you'll find there's nobody in their life that they're accountable to. I don't care what age you are. My spiritual father is 85 years old. And now I try to find younger leaders that I can be accountable to. Find people that you can be accountable to. Find the kind of men who will hold your feet to the fire, who will speak wisdom into your life, who will care for you. It's just so incredibly important. Most pastors die because of isolation. Like remember that tribe in northern Israel, they lived in a town called Laish. And when they were attacked by the Danites, they came to grief because they lived in isolation.

5:29There was nobody that they knew, nobody that they could call on for help. I wonder how many even of these mega church pastors that get caught up in trouble. They're so high up on their podium that they don't have anybody to speak into their life. So when I was church planning in England back 45 years ago, the first thing that I did after I heard God speak about planning a church was to find an older man. And I would never have survived without him. And then when we moved to Canada, or I moved back, my wife who's British moved with me, we church planted there. And I was a church born on another spiritual father. And many of the lessons actually that I'm sharing come from things that he said to me. So it's hard to become a spiritual father. We all want to be, don't we, eventually in life.

6:31It's hard to become a spiritual father if you've never had a spiritual father. It's like having a good father. I had a great father that enabled me to be a father. And as a father, as many as obviously massive in our society today, it's very difficult to be a good father or a good spiritual father if you haven't had a father figure in your life. So find somebody. Second, God can take a lifetime to premiere a man for the last 10 years. My spiritual father said that to me. He said a lot of things that irritated me. About 99.9% of which were right. And he said, David, God can take 50 years to prepare you for the last 10. I hated him for that. But look at even Jesus can begin ministry until the last three years of his life. Think about it. In our mentality, it's, gee, Jesus, what were you wasting your time in the carpenter's shop?

7:34How about the nine years that Paul spent in Tarsus? Abraham spent decades in the wilderness. Joseph spent years in prison. Moses was old man when he began his mission. So what do we think? This is an interesting question. What do we think in our Evangelical Charismatic Church world? What do we think is the model of success in ministry? If you're a young man starting out. Your model of success is somebody who's climbed the ladder from being a youth pastor at 20 to being an associate pastor at 25 to being a senior pastor at 30 and a mega church pastor at 35 and then burned out at 40. The place of preparation, biblically, usually the desert. But I think the time of preparation is just as important as the time of activation. When I was a student at the University of Toronto in an undisclosed period of time ago,

8:35they were building what was then the tallest freestanding structure in the world called the CN Tower. And you could go and look, they dug a hole about 700 feet into the ground because they were putting a structure up that was 1700 or something feet tall. If you haven't dug the hole, the structure is going to fall over. And I had a friend of Vancouver who planted a church and put years of effort into it and then God said, had it over to a younger man. And he said, but God hasn't come to the place of success yet. Where I would like it to another is where I get the recognition. He was walking past the construction site in Vancouver, looked down a big hole and said, God said, you've dug the hole. Without the hole, the building won't survive. The place of preparation is as important as anything else that happens. And if it takes 50 years, it pretty well did in my case, that's worth it.

9:39Number three, build on character, not charisma. I planted a church in a university campus in England. It was a many move of God. We had conversions. We had extraordinary miracles of healing. We had it all happening in my 20s. I was being asked to go here, speak here, speak there, speak the next place. And then God spoke to me. It's a long story, but we moved to Canada. And I wound up in a little rural, redneck place where nobody was interested in anything that I had to say. And a number of years into the process, I asked that pesky spiritual father of mine. I said, why did God do this to me? I should have known not to be so stupid as to ask him a question like that. I mean, I picked him up at the airport one day. He said, how are you doing, David? I said, well, I feel discouraged. And he looked to me and said, well, what lie of the enemy have you believed? She. Thanks for the encouragement.

10:42So I said, why did God do this to me? And he said, David, your charisma would have blown up your character. I didn't like that either. But character is built through adversity. Paul writes about that in the fifth chapter, Romans, suffering, he says, produces endurance. Endurance is the decision to hang in and not walk out. We've all thought about quitting. The difference is some of us don't and won't and haven't. Suffering produces endurance. That's the decision to hang in, not walk out. Endurance produces character. That word in Romans 5, verses 3 and 4. That means it's the word use of a metal like gold has been refined in the fire. That's character. And character is what produces hope. That's what we want to get to, isn't it? And hope, of course, is not as important because the love of God is poured out into our hearts by his Holy Spirit.

11:43So we want to build our house on a rock, not on sand. We want to build our family that way. We want to build our ministry that way. We want to build our church that way. But to get to that right foundation, you have to develop character. Not you can't count on charisma. And by charisma, it'll just mean the miraculous. I mean, somebody with a lot of pizzazz, who is a fantastic communicator, who is a good organizer, administrator, could have found out his successful corporation. Why not do it for a church instead? And then we wonder why when we build churches like corporations that people leave. Church can be a lot of things. It's an army. It's a university. It's a hospital. But above all, it's family. Churches and family, it's nothing. So it has to be well organized. Obviously, I'm not a good organizer. My wife will tell you.

12:43But if all we have is the corporate. I think it's the worst enemy of the New Testament church. Build family, please. This is foul. I love this church. I mean, even though we don't know a lot about it, you can tell its family. When you walk in, you start talking to the people. This is family. That's what we want. Okay, build on character, not charisma. God will meet you far more in the valley than he will in the mountain top. How many have grown when things are hunky-dory? No. How many have grown when things are terrible? Yes. Okay, number whatever it is for. Not today, 11 minutes or not doing too bad. These are all deep teachings. They're even more significant in the Greek. Anyway, number four. Put one foot ahead of another. This story comes out of a time of severe discouragement.

13:43We had gone through the 18th church split. I was very perfectionist. I probably still am. That's a problem with teachers. And I would not compromise. We had a church. We had a church every several years. It was the same church, but people would come in one door and out the other. Because I wouldn't compromise on the things I believed in. And what we were doing was very counter-cultural at the time. Anyway, at the end of one of these bad situations, I saw discouraged. I was taking the garbage out one morning. And I was holding the garbage bags in my hand. And I thought, I don't even know if I can make it to the end of the driveway. And ever since I had a power encounter with the Holy Spirit when I was about one year old as a Christian, I have been able to hear the voice of God.

14:44That's my kind of ace. And I heard God speak to me in that moment. And He said this. Just put one foot ahead of another. And I thought, what can be practical? And I started walking down my driveway. And I got to the end, somehow put the garbage out. And it took months and months of walking and putting one foot ahead of another. And gradually it got better and better and better in time. And you just, if you feel a failure, as long as you're moving forward, you're okay. Just put one foot ahead of another and trust God. You know, we look for a lot of fireworks and excitement in the kingdom. But the fact is that the kingdom moves ahead usually through small but continuous steps of obedience.

15:44But remember, even though we grow in the valley, there's an end to every valley. Okay, next point. Store up oil in your jars. Prepare for the future. Don't just manage the present. This comes out of a situation I was in with that same spiritual father of mine. His name is Duane Harder. And he came to, he flew in on one of those encouraging trips. And he said, now David, this is about 30 years ago. He said, now David. And he said, now David and started to adjust his glasses. I knew I was in trouble. The only worst thing was when he sat down with a layman eye and he looked over at her and adjusted his glasses. And he said, now Elaine, how are things? Is it May I leave the room? And so he said to me, now David, you need to start preparing the teaching. And I said, Duane, I said, nobody's listening to my teaching.

16:48Why should I bother? And he said the day will come. And it took me a couple of years to get past that one, but I started doing it. And because I started doing it 30 odd years ago, when the door began to open for me to teach, I had the whole archive there to draw from. And so whatever, how do you apply that to your life? Prepare for the future. Don't despise the day of small things. You can all put some oil in your jars now. It doesn't matter what area of ministry or leadership or service you're in. Put some oil in the jar now. Don't be frustrated because the senior pastor has not yet recognized that your God's gift to the body of Christ.

17:49But start doing something now to prepare for the day when your character is developed and your charisma can be released. Well, thank you for joining us here on Spotify. If you don't know me, my name is Pastor Mark Driscoll. I have been in the pulpit for a little more than 30 years preaching and teaching the Bible. I have been faithfully married to my wife since 1992. We've got five kids. We got six grandkids. And I would love for you to know more about real faith ministry where we send Bible teaching around the world. And if you would pray for us, we would appreciate it. And if you'd like to partner with us, we would invite you to do so. We are supported by generous people who give financially so that we can get God's word out to the world. If you'd like to do so, text partner to 999-383. Again, text partner to 999-383.

18:49We love you. We thank you. And I appreciate you allowing me to help you learn God's word. Next point is lead by principle, not expediency. The cost is always worth it. We had a visiting speaker come to our church. He was a great evangelist, actually. But he was a big man on doing stuff that works. And let's do this because it works. And let's do that. And it led to some trouble. I'll just leave it at that. But out of it, God spoke to me this. Are you building on what works or on what is truth? Because years ago, I heard a story, Dr. Larry Burkett, who wrote a number of amazing books on money and finance. I think they're still in print. And a Chinese apostle who had been released from prison in the,

19:55this is 25 plus years ago, when things began to ease up in China. Unfortunately, I've gone backward again, as you probably know. But this gentleman had been in prison for many years and was released. And he came to the United States on a tour. And he was taken around all the big ministries, whatever they were, I don't know, but a lot of big ministries for a month. And he was with Dr. Burkett was sitting with him in Atlanta at the end of the month. And said to him, brother, after touring around America for a month and all these great churches, what is your observation? And the man looked at him very quietly and said, it's amazing how much you've been able to do without God. And you have a lot of resources. There's some places you can start a church and get a thousand people, even if you're preaching a load of nonsense.

20:57And there's probably a few examples we could cite of that, but we won't. It's where gracious. I feel like doing it, but. So, you can build on what works and for a while it will work until it doesn't work. Because in the end, if there's not truth underlying it, you're building your house on sand and not a rock to go back to that point. So, the choice that we make determines, I'm talking about building church now, the choice that we make determines what we produce. Are we producing European craftsmanship or cheap knockoff imitations? If you read about the Hermes handbags, I own ten of them myself. But the craftsmen spend a lifetime learning and some of them are still doing it. There are 70s and 80s and all of the time and effort that goes into that.

22:00And so, that's the kind of thing that we're supposed to be doing when we're building church. We're not going to cut corners on truth. It may make us unpopular. That's fine. Jesus was unpopular. We're not going to just go to the latest trend or the latest gimmick, but we want to build on what is biblical and what is truth. That's in, I don't know what I'm right on this, but in the COVID period of time, my observation was that there were a lot of churches that were a myawide and an inch deep, you know, a corporate, not family. And people exited them in droves. As soon as there wasn't a church service, that was the center of their commitment. And I think there was a codependency. Pastors wanted bumps on seats. And so they cut the message down to what was palatable.

23:00And people wanted a church where they could go once a Sunday, give one 50th of a tithe and feel they'd done their religious duty. And so, when COVID came and churches closed down, they were off the hook. And a lot of them never came back. The churches that we were involved with that were built on biblical foundations, they came back bigger, almost every single one of them bigger than they ever had been before. And a bunch of people that had been in the other type of church started coming to the good kind of church. So, it may take longer to build a church or applying it to your personal life and ministry. It may take longer to build that on a truth basis, but it will still be prospering when the cheap knockoffs have disappeared. I'm getting down to the last couple of points here. Never walk alone. One of the things I observe about the New Testament, especially acts in the letters of Paul,

24:01is that leadership is always in the plural. I counted Paul had at least 22 men in his apostolic team. If you go through all of various letters plus acts. And so, we believe or should believe in five-fold ministry. I can't give an exposition of five-fold ministry, but I'll say it simply this way, that I do believe there are five-fold ministers who minister to, I mean Pastor Mark would be one example of that, who minister to the wider body of Christ, whose ministry is not just restricted to a local congregation. And so, Apostle Prophet Pastor Evangelist teacher. But those represent five kind of areas of gifting that filter through the body of Christ. So, you may not be an apostle, but you may have a building capacity. You may not be a prophet, but you have the ability to see things,

25:03and strategize the way that other people don't. You may not be a five-fold teacher, but you do have capacity to teach. You understand what I'm saying? And so, what we need to do in building leadership is to work with people who can compliment what we are. And where things go wrong is where you build the church on one model, or on one of those gifts, maybe what the senior pastor is, but you fail to compliment and build out a team that has different aspects of that gifting. And as far as I'm concerned, iron sharpening iron is still valid as a principle today. It is somewhere in the Bible, I believe. It's not in 2nd Queens, chapter 3 either. It's really in the Bible. And so, how does that look? We had an Elisabeth team, and I could have shot most of them if I had suitable weaponry.

26:05But when I recovered my sanity, I would always thank God for them, because they'd say no, or they'd say, I don't see that, David, or I think we need to stop on that. And then in the end, we worked through, we came to a consensus, and hopefully, you know, without giving up my position as the spiritual leader or whatever, I needed those other men to be there. And so, nice decision making takes longer, but when you come out of that room, you're united. And nobody questions. If you are ever become an elder, God forbid, no. A sign of insanity is someone who says, I want to be an elder. I've got a psychiatrist, and I'll refer you to him. I don't have a psychiatrist, actually. But with the spiritual father I had, I didn't need a psychiatrist.

27:05It's okay. But you need to walk with people in team, and it may take longer, and be less straightforward, but it will save you a ton of trouble. So, find people around you that have different gifts than you, and let's submit one to another. Find those who will cheer you on when you're successful. Who will encourage you when you're not successful, who will correct you in love, but listen. They'll never, ever, ever walk out on you. And I have a living example of that today. One of my oldest friends, Pastor Don Smithies, here this morning with his wife Lisa, this afternoon, or whatever it is. And I said, hey, Don, I'm going down to Pastor Mark's place to do this, and he said, I'll come and support you. I said, don't you not have to do that. He even delayed his anniversary, but I'm in trouble with his wife.

28:09That's, will come. We'll fly from Michigan to Phoenix just to support you. Now, the interesting thing about Don and me is you could not find two more opposite men. I'm a, whatever I am, a British Canadian intellectual. I've never shot a gun in my life. I know the room just emptied. Well, my dad was in the Armed Forces. I was going to count for something. Don was raised in the swamps of Florida. As a teenager, he'd take his rifle and shoot out the transformers in the town, see how many houses he could knock out. And when he didn't do that, he was catching alligators with his bare hands. It was absolute truth.

29:10I mean, I don't know if you've been in Pastor Mark's office. There's some interesting artifacts in that place. But Pastor Don has two things in his office that Pastor Mark does not have. One is a full suit of armor. He wears it to elders meeting. And the other is his pet tarantula. Now, you could not find two men who are more totally opposite in the natural. But we have walked together for 25 years. We have been bloodied in battles. I have never walked out on him. He has never walked out on me. And God has a word for that. It's called covenant. Don Alisa, you want to stand up and wave? I know it's in the dark. But I want to honor them.

30:10And my last point is this. Maybe it's my most important. Man, step up into headship. But always make sure your wife is with you. When we left England, my wife was a nurse. She came to the church. It was a bad mistake. She met me. And that was right the rest of her life. And so when I felt God speak to me, that we needed to leave England and come to Canada, I said, Lord, she's already agreed to marry me. I can't do this to her. And I said, you all have to speak. Please, would you speak to her? And she knew nothing about anything that was going through my mind because there was no reason for me to leave at all. But suffice it to say I had absolutely incredible supernatural guidance

31:10that I, if I told you you'd understand. So the next day, she came to me and said, my scripture reading this morning, I love what brother said about reading the Bible. Because number of times God's spoken to me through my daily scripture reading is absolutely unbelievable. She said, my scripture reading this morning was Genesis 12 verse 1. The Lord said to Abraham, go leave your father, son, your father's country, and go to a land. I will show you. We're moving to Canada, aren't we? Thank you, Lou. But we went through hell many times after we went to Canada. And if she had not had that independent word from God, can you imagine the strain that would have put on our marriage? So I thank God I'm married to prophetic woman that can hear from God.

32:10You have to make sure your wife is with you. There's a place in the scripture where it says, go at the pace of the children, the women and the children. Don't barge ahead. And it's not good enough in my book. I could be wrong, but my experience tells me in scripture, I think, tells me that it's not good enough for me to say, God's spoken to me, trust me. And I know there are times when we have to say that, but on important issues, you have to stop gentlemen. And say to your wife, are you really in agreement with this? Have you heard from God? Because if she hasn't, when the test comes, you're in trouble. If your wife has not heard the same call as you, you need to stop and wait until she does, your wife should be the greatest influence on your life apart from Jesus. And I always say, I am the one doing the teaching,

33:13but when you hear me, you hear her. The same came back to the Lord at the age of 21. At the age of 23, she was church planning with me in the backwoods of Canada. I can honestly say I'd be nothing without her. 43 years, a week from a Thursday next week. 43 years, eight children, 11 grandchildren later, we're still here. We will retire when we die. Never retire, refire. Remember this, and this is the conclusion I've tied it pretty well to the first part. The kingdom always moves forward, but always at a price. Somebody has to pay a price. So the kingdom moves forward. We have prayed for so many people over the years. I've lost count of the number of miracle babies, the places where doctors have said it's absolutely impossible. But I remember the day an absolute miracle came.

34:15I think it was in somebody in Nashville. And on the same day, that miracle baby, the couple we prayed for, our daughter, Sarah, miscarried twins, and our daughter in law, Samantha, miscarried. We lost three grandchildren to miscarriage, the same day we received a miracle. The kingdom moves forward, but at a price. But if you know your call, and if you're moving in obedience, God will always give enough grace to cover what it costs. So that's that. I want to spend the next 28 minutes and 24 seconds. I'm going to start reading the call back, because it gives me more time. 31 minutes and 40. No. I want to talk about Elijah for about 25 minutes, if you'll, bear with me. By the word of the Lord through Elijah, there had been no rain.

35:16You all know this, sorry, don't have to read this scripture. There have been no rain in the land for three years. And then the word of the Lord came, the drought was about to end. Through Elijah, God had been controlling the weather. In an agricultural economy, God was controlling everything through controlling the weather. In judgment on the wicked rule of Ahab and Jezebel. Elijah had been in hiding. He was commanded to show himself to Ahab, first Kings chapter 18. And in that meeting, he set up the famous confrontation of Mount Carmel between himself and the prophets of Bale. And the story unfolds as one of the most vivid and powerful accounts in the Bible. And the story unfolds as one of the most vivid and powerful accounts in the Bible of the confrontation between good and evil. And as we know, God moved miraculous lead to destruction. And the story unfolds as one of the most vivid and powerful accounts in the Bible of the confrontation between good and evil.

36:25And as we know, God moved miraculous lead to destroy the power of the enemy and his agents. And at the end of it, Elijah pronounces the end of the drought and the coming to the ray of the rain. And Ahab has to rush back into the city to avoid being caught in the deluge. So it looked like the battle was over, but it wasn't. Jezebel operated in an extraordinary measure of demonic power. Elijah's victory did not terrify her so much as it infuriated her. And she orders Elijah's execution. Now at this point, the beginning of first Kings 19, you would expect the word of the Lord to come again to the prophet in the way that it had done so many times, but it didn't. Instead of which, the scripture tells us, Elijah was consumed by fear and ran for his life. Now if faith is the key to triumph over fear, then it follows that fear is actually the greatest obstacle to are being able to hear from God.

37:31And I think it is. So Elijah flees to Beersheba. Now Beersheba was about 120 miles south of Mount Carmel. That was as far away as he could get from Jezebel and staying within the boundaries of the nation. And there, in a very depressed state, he prays that God would take his life. It's enough, Lord. That's what he said. He was saying, was I sacrificed enough. He was having a prophetic pity party. I sacrificed enough. I reached my limit. Thank God Jesus didn't take that attitude, it gets semini. There is never a reason to limit or to end our serving of God, no matter what the cost. Now in my book, and I've consulted psychologists over this, the root of most depression is this. It's anger.

38:32Elijah painted himself as a sacrificial servant, whom God had failed. And I've had those angry, depressed moments as I illustrated earlier on. So the reality is that Elijah was angry at God because God had refused to fulfill his expectations. And now he'd had enough. But God is gracious, he sends an angel to feed him. How many times does God send somebody to feed you when you were ready to give up? Lots of times. Tom Wright, the theologian, I don't agree with him on a number of things, but he said one thing, right? He said, God meets us at the screaming point. So Elijah has lost control, he's got no plan left. But just when you think it's all over, God has a way of reminding you, he's still in charge. And so the angel commands him to go to Mount Horib.

39:35Now interestingly, that turns out to be another name for Mount Sinai. This is a significant. Mount Horib was 250 more miles south of Bershiba. And here's something equally significant. The journey took 40 days. It's an important number in the Bible. Immediately, it links Elijah with the 40 days and 40 nights Moses spent on the same mountain back in Exodus 24. And the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness after their failure to enter the promised land. And those numbers turned up in the book of Revelation as well. 40 is the number of failure, but it's also the number of God's presence because Israel failed in the wilderness, but God was with them in the wilderness. And notice the number of days Jesus spent in the temptation.

40:35Anyway, amidst Elijah's failure, God is about to show up. And God usually shows up in the moment of our failure. And failure is usually the gateway to success. Success is rarely the gateway to success. In fact, it can be for many Christian leaders the gateway to failure. But failure is often the gateway to success if we learn to find God and it and listen to what He's saying to us. Now, the wilderness in the original Exodus is the place and in the second Exodus, portrayed in Revelation, the wilderness is the place of God's protection between the place of spiritual bondage and the place of ultimate deliverance. Now, the story that unfolds here in 1 Kings chapter 19 is about to show us that it's the wilderness more than Mount Carmel where God shows up.

41:36It's the place of God's presence for Elijah even as it was for Moses. So in the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, something very significant happened. Jesus succeeded where Israel failed. Why do I say that? It's because in that place in his confrontation with Satan, three times Jesus quotes the text of Deuteronomy. And all in context are places where God had given specific commands to the Israelites in the wilderness and they had disobeyed. So Israel had looked back to the food of Egypt and despised the manor. But Jesus quotes Deuteronomy and says, man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Israel had tested God at the waters of Mary, but in Massa. But Jesus refused to put God to the test.

42:37You should not put the Lord your God to the test. Israel had entered into idolatry at the golden calf, but Jesus said, you should worship the Lord your God in Him only. So the three places where Israel had failed were the three exact same places where Jesus succeeded. And each one of those three times Jesus quoted Deuteronomy and the word of God against the devil. And so in 40 days Jesus succeeded where Israel had taken 40 years to fail. And Jesus turns the number 40 from a symbol of human failure to the place of the victory of the Son of Man. So here in this cave on Mount Sinai where Elijah has wound up under divine leading, the word of the Lord is restored to Elijah. But the word of the Lord comes as a question, what are you doing here Elijah?

43:41Now God did know. But sometimes God asks us the question, say, Jesus is an blind man, what can I do for you? Well, the answer was blindingly obvious. See, Jesus is drawing it out. And if you feel God's asking you a question, you better figure out what the answer is to that question because it's important. What are you doing here Elijah? Elijah was in the wrong place. He shouldn't have had to have got to this place. But in the providence of God, this is the place that God is going to meet him. So even if you miss God, which Elijah had, even if you fail, which Elijah had, God will still find a place to meet you because he's more committed than you are to his plan for your life. Now, if he'd been honest, Elijah would have confessed the truth. I'm here, Lord, because I have lost sight of you.

44:43And here, because, to quote my spiritual father, I believe, the lie of the enemy. I'm here because I've fallen into fear. I'm here because I failed to stand up to Jezebel in the confidence that the same God who met me in Mount Carmel would deal with her in Jezreel. But instead, he answers, imagine, he's got his picking to. He answers with a self-justifying complaint. Look at all I've done for you, God, and now you've left me alone in my enemies are trying to kill me. See, through his anger and self-pity, Elijah had lost track of the spiritual reality that had controlled his whole life. He forgotten what God had done in Mount Carmel. He forgotten what God had done when he was fed by the raven. He forgotten what God had done when he raised the widow's child from the dead. He was blaming God for a difficult situation he could not explain, instead of assuming that God in his faithfulness and sovereignty had a plan.

45:51Elijah had allowed Jezebel to turn incredible victory into utter defeat. He believed a lie. The lie came in when he heard Jezebel's threat. What was the lie? Well, at the foundation, it was the lie that God had failed him. So the question is, what false belief made Elijah susceptible to believing something his whole walk with God should have taught him was not true? I think it was this. He was expecting victory to come through the manifestation of power on the mountain. And when it didn't happen, he was lost. Elijah's identity worked in strength, but not in weakness. He hadn't found out what another man discovered many centuries later.

46:51God's power is manifest in only one place, our weakness. The kingdom is not built on big personalities who think they're all that, a bucket of chicken. I heard a faith preacher online a few months ago, and he was saying his congregation, I appreciate your prayers, but I don't need your prayers. I know how to pray. What a lie. See, no, the kingdom of God is built on men and women who have found God's inexhaustible strength in their own profound weakness. And that principle runs like a thread through a number of the points that I tried to share earlier from my own life. I spent a life, a lot of which was in a spiritual desert, a life which God had to build character in me.

47:54He had to build character instead of working with charisma. He built a life, lived in team and in submission to others. He built a life that was lived, and I'm not putting myself in a pedestal, the opposite. I had to be dragged into everything, kicking and screaming, but God had to teach me to live by principle and not expediency, no matter what the cost. All those things. Elijah was lost in self-centered, naval gazing. And when all you can see in leadership is your own disappointment, you will place your suffering at the center of your universe and you will forget who God is and what he's done for you. So God takes Elijah in 14 minutes and 30 seconds. I'm going to make it. Thank you, Lord. God took Elijah out of the cave and he stands him in a place on the mountain in his presence.

49:00Exodus 33 tells us that God met Moses on Mount Sinai in the cleft of the rock and now he meets Elijah. I can't prove it, but I think it was the same exact place. The coincidences are way too many. Just like Moses, God takes Elijah to the mountain. Just like Moses, he makes him stand in a place where his presence passes by. There are three manifestations of God's power when Elijah stood there, the earthquake, the wind and the fire. When Moses went up the mountain, it was the earthquake, the lightning and the fire. Now God is making a point here because after the power manifestations, that's the earthquake and the wind and the fire, after the manifestations are over, something different happens. And Elijah knows it. I am sure that the same cloud appeared as had appeared to Moses, the same glory passed by as happened with Moses.

50:07And Elijah, just like Moses, covered his face because no one can see God and live. Pastor Mike was talking about the same passage on the weekend. And God came, it says, in a low whisper. Now, the Hebrew is a very graphic tactile language or the very small vocabulary. And it's interesting that the Hebrew phrase here, it's very difficult to translate, in Hebrew it's dhumamah dhaka and it means a thin silence. And if I put a title on this message, it would be the thin silence of God. In that moment, God asks Elijah the same question, what are you doing here? Elijah still hasn't learned, he gives God the same answer. If God asks you a question, you answer it, then he comes back and says the same thing all over again. Don't give him the same wrong answer you did before. It does not work with your wife and it certainly will not work with God.

51:10I don't, oh, I only say that because other men have told me. Anger against God or disappointment that he has apparently failed you will destroy your capacity to hear the voice of God and find the wisdom of God. If that happened with Elijah who heard God more than any of us probably ever have, it could certainly happen with us, couldn't it? So God does not dignify Elijah's complaints with an answer. Neither is God forced to delay putting his plan into operation. I am a Calvinist, folks, God is sovereign. You can be an Arminian and believe that you're sovereign but it won't work out well for you. Well, I just had to say that. Now God is going to move ahead, in other words, whether we move with him or not, right? And that's a lesson to be learned.

52:10And so God responds to Elijah's self-centered inertia with a list of commands. Remember Elijah hadn't learned that lesson of putting one foot ahead of another. He was immobilized. So God says, this is what you've got to do. Go to Damascus, anoint has a Ale king over Syria, find a man called J.H. who anoint him king over Israel and find Elijah and anoint him profit in your place. The three things. And this is the ultimate point of the thin silence. Victory is going to come but it's going to come in an unanticipated way. It's not going to come through displays of supernatural power. It's not going to come through Elijah, the man of power. Elijah's missed his opportunity but God is moving on. The authority Elijah has held is to be handed over to others. Now, has a ale and J.H. who the first two men Elijah anoints will eventually destroy a heaven's Jezebel.

53:10And Elijah, the third man, he anoints, is going to carry on the prophetic ministry in a new format incorporating a whole school of the prophets. And this is 7,000 others that Elijah had forgotten about in Israel who hadn't bowed the knee to veil. Which is my allysia. And I haven't got time to go into this. It's the type of Christ. Where is Elijah? Is the type of John the Baptist? But see the faithfulness of God. Now, just take a minute to notice. Elijah had three complaints against God if you read the text. There were three things where he felt God had failed him. There were three lice he had believed that had led him into depression and fear. Number one, Elijah had complained that God had stood by while the people had forsaken the covenant. But under J.H. who the covenant would be renewed. Number two, Elijah had complained that God had done nothing while A.H. and Jezebel had killed the prophets. Yet by the hand of Hazael and Jehu, those who killed the prophets would themselves be killed.

54:12Elijah had complained that God had left him alone. Yet under A.H. a mighty school of the prophets would arise to replace him. Never believe the lie that God has failed you. Victory will come, but it may not come in the way or at the time you think it will. Never walk out on God. Never give up on God. Never walk away from the call of God in your life because you believed the lie. Press on, press in, find the truth that will ever and always set you free. Let me finish. True victory ultimately comes in the place of human weakness. It wasn't at Mount Carmel when Elijah was at his strongest, but it was at Mount Sinai when he was at his weakest that the purposes of God were released on the earth. Mount Carmel, amazing though it was, turned out to be only the preliminary victory.

55:16Jesus understood this even though his disciples didn't. Jesus performed miracles which John's Gospel says are signs that point to his true identity. The miracles like the victory in Mount Carmel are amazing, but if you don't find Christ through the miracles, the miracles amount to nothing. Most of the people who were impressed and witnessed the miracles of Jesus never got the point and walked away. Because Jesus knew victory wouldn't come through the power of the miracles. I guess, so many he could have called on his father to send legions of angels, but that wouldn't have accomplished the purposes of God. Jesus knew those purposes would be released through a man hanging in other humiliation and apparent defeat on a Roman cross, but hanging on that cross in his hands Jesus was controlling the course of all human history.

56:20Elijah's a hero to me, he should be to all of us. He stood for righteousness. His life was characterized by extraordinary displays of faith and faithfulness, and God honored him in the end didn't he by taking him in a literal cloud of glory. But we need to learn a lesson from where Elijah failed, never put a man on a pedestal because they'll fail sooner or later. God can come in ways we expect and pray for. Miracles, healings, provision, promotion, things going right, churches growing, we should pray for all those things. Such things are not the foundation of our faith. The foundation of our faith is not the miraculous. It's the cross. The miracles don't happen or when God does, in what God does, the things that we hope for as a result of God moving don't actually come to pass.

57:35What do we do then in those moments where it hasn't worked out the way we hoped it would? Well, we don't lose heart because we haven't believed the lie that without a constant manifestation of the supernatural, somehow we've lost the presence of God. No, we learn to listen for the whisper. We learn to seek the thin silence. And out of that, we'll probably come the release of the purpose of God in your life just as much as it did in Elijah's life. See, God calls us to walk in the way of the cross. But the good news is the cross was followed by the resurrection. It's a constant theme of the Bible. I learned this first as a very young Christian, through a man called Bill Godther. It's a constant theme of the Bible that God first gives a dream, then he destroys it. Then he restores it so that all the glory goes to him.

58:46He did it with Abraham. He did it with Jacob. He did it with Moses. He did it with David. He did it with Elijah. He did it with Paul. So what do we do when our dream seems to die? In the words of that spiritual father of mine, and he said this, quote, each of us needs to wrap our dreams and expectations in the burial cloth of Christ and place them in the tomb. God brings our visions to a place of death before he resurrects them so that he alone gets the glory. So when things don't turn out as you expected, when you run out of hope as you're taking the garbage out down your driveway someday, remember the lesson of Elijah. We can feel sorry for ourselves and give up, or we can flee to the place of God's presence and find him in the thin silence.

59:52And then you can know that your time of resurrection is on the way. Thank you.