My name is Elijah.  You just heard my story this morning about everything that happened with the widow and her son, and Pastor Paul asked me to come speak to you more about what I was thinking and feeling during that entire time.  I want you to know that I am someone who seeks to trust the Lord with all my heart, but it isn’t always easy, as I think you know.

I am from the area of Tishbe, in the province of Gilead in Israel, and I just sort of appear in the Bible abruptly, but of course, there was much that happened in my life before I am mentioned there.  I can only assure you that all those years before I appear in the Bible were years that I discovered that God had a special call on my life, had a special desire for me to speak His word and to be a prophet.  My relationship with God brought me so much joy, but it scared me a lot too when I felt God calling me to speak to the king of Israel about the direction the country was going in.  That was certainly intimidating!  You know, it is not easy to be a prophet – people don’t always like to hear what you have to say, and certainly evil King Ahab was no exception.  When I told him that there would be a drought on the land if he did not change course and turn from the evil that he was involved in, he kicked me out of the palace and I was forced to flee out into the wilderness to save my life.  God ended up having me live for over a year by a river where the birds fed me.

Then the river dried up in the drought and things were looking bleak because I was starving to death, and then God led me to that widow and her son.   I certainly know that the widow and I would never have had a relationship if God hadn’t arranged it.  We were so different.  She was from there, from Sidon, an area where pagan gods are worshipped, while I was from Israel, the land of the one true God Yahweh.  We spoke different languages, came from different cultures, liked different foods.  She was a woman; I was a man, at a time when you did not have relationships with people of the opposite sex outside of your family very often.  And yet somehow, in the midst of that famine and drought that we were all facing, when food was getting so scarce, God had us learn to depend on each other.  As you just heard about, God sent me to her to ask for water and bread to survive.  This turned out to be overwhelming for her to contemplate since she had just about run out of oil and flour to make the bread, but somehow God just told me, and this is hard to explain to others, but I hear God speak to me sometimes, and God just told me to tell her to make me some bread, and that God would provide for our needs together in the future.  I wasn’t really sure to be honest if she would do it, if she would make the bread for me, but after a moment of hesitation and studying my face to see if she believed me, she did, and I was not surprised somehow when her oil did not run dry and her flour did not run out during all those days of drought.  That is how good our God is, and it felt so good to know that God was providing for me once again.

But I will be honest with you, what happened after that did surprise me-it surprised me a lot.  I should let you know that the widow gave me a room upstairs in her house during those days of drought, and I ate some of my meals with the widow and her son, and after awhile, I started to sort of see myself as a fill in Dad for her son, as someone that I felt close to even though we came from such different backgrounds.  He was not very talkative, but lots of times we would just be together without saying anything, and it isn’t everyone in this world that you can do that with, right?  Well, after a time of seeing God’s provide food for us together, the son suddenly got sick, and when I say sick, I don’t just mean a little cold, I mean really sick.  I started to get alarmed because he was not getting any better, and his mother was obviously upset and concerned, and so I started to cry out to God on his behalf, expecting that God would answer my prayer as He had answered so many other prayers in my life as a prophet and help this boy overcome his illness and get better.  But he didn’t – day after day he didn’t, and I would sometimes just sit by his bed as he labored to breathe, mopping his brow, wishing I could do something, anything to take this suffering away from him.   I had no idea why God was letting this happen after all that He had done for me, and I’ll be honest with you, it really shook me.  It shook my faith, so that I felt like I was dying inside.  Have you ever experienced that in your life, having your faith shook?  I mean, maybe over a period of time your faith gets built up and God is doing good things in your life and you are trusting in Him, but then something really hard happens, something really bad happens, and then it feels like your faith just got shot down?  That is what was happening to me during that time.

Still, it came as quite a shock to me that day when he actually stopped breathing and died.  I still believed that God was going to miraculously heal him at some point, but I was out in the yard doing something that day when his Mom came running out of her house and started screaming at me, “What do you have against me, man of God?  Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”   I couldn’t believe that he had died, that God had let him die, after all my prayers.  I couldn’t believe either that this woman would think that God would take the life of her son because I somehow disapproved of her former lifestyle, because of the sin in her past.  No, this woman meant the world to me – she had saved my life – how could you let this happen Lord?  Without thinking about it, I said to her “Give me your son.”  I put him in my arms, and then carried him to my room upstairs in their house and laid him on my bed.  I couldn’t believe that God would let him die, after He had saved my life so many different times.  Take me Lord, not him – take me!  Was this family to be cursed because of me – was he to die because of something I did wrong?  I was feeling like such a failure – not only was King Ahab not interested in listening to me, but the one of the only people in the world to listen to me, this boy, he was now going to die?  I cried out to God, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?”  It is okay, you know, to yell out at God sometimes – God can take it.  He wants to hear from you when you are in pain as well as when you are being thankful – that is who He is, that is the kind of relationship He wants to have with you.

Well, I just stretched myself over the boy, putting my body over his, and then I pulled myself off and did it again.  I was desperately praying that God would use me somehow, that He would show this widow and yes myself that I am a prophet, that I have the power of God within me.  Finally, I stretched my body over his a third time and I cried out “Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”  It was at that precise moment that he began to sputter, and then to breathe – to actually breathe – I have never been so excited to hear someone breathe before!  Oh, I was so happy – praise be to God!  Praise be to God!  Without giving the boy a moment to collect himself, I picked him up and carried him down the stairs to the room where his mother was weeping, just sobbing, and I came in and she must have been shocked to see me carrying her son with a big smile on my face, and I said “Look, your son is alive!”  Oh, I loved to see her face just light up, as her tears turned from tears of sorrow to tears of joy, and how special it was to hear her say “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.” 

Well, today I do stand before you as one who speaks truth, as who trusted God in a very difficult time, and saw that He is trustworthy.  I saw God take someone who was dead, and bring him back to life, and when God did that, it was as if He was bringing back to life that part of me that was dying inside as the boy got sicker and sicker.  Maybe there is something in your life this morning that is dead inside of you.  I mean, maybe there is a relationship, whether it be with a friend or a family member, that is not working out right now, and it makes you feel dead inside.  Or maybe you are having a tough time at school or at work and it makes you feel like you are dying inside.  Maybe some hard things are happening like illness to you or to people you love, and you feel distant from God and dead inside spiritually.  Maybe there is some issue in our world that gets you so passionate that you feel dead inside because of the inaction around it.  I just want to say to you this morning that our God is a God of life.  Our God wants to bring back to life what is dead inside of you.  Now this may not happen on your timetable just like it did not happen on mine, but don’t be afraid to cry out to God.  He is the life giver.  He is the One I have learned to trust with all of my heart.  We give Him the thanks and the praise today, Amen.