How God Meets You in Your Darkest Moments | Pastor Mark Crull

I wanna welcome everybody who is online. I wanna welcome our multi-site campuses. Can we give it up for Pastor Joseph, who's preached last weekend on Solomon. Well done, brother. What an amazing message on the fear of God. It moved me to think differently about what does the fear of God look like and mean in my life. And so, well done. Karen and I just came off of our annual summer vacation with our family. You saw a picture the last time I was up here. It was awesome. We started it by doing our inaugural Cousins Camp. All right, so we have the 11 grandkids, one in the oven, but the four oldest, one six-year-old, three four-year-olds, we spent five days, no, yeah, five days and four nights with them, and I'm still standing. Like, I'm here. Like, this was amazing. Karen did a great job. It was like a VBS for the kids she put together on God is our creator. They had Bible verses they memorized. We learned some songs. We took them to the zoo, did an animal scavenger hunt. When the families came to pick them up, we had a little program for them.

And you can imagine, not a dry eye in the room. So I share that because I wanna plant a seed in your mind if you are a grandparent that you have an opportunity to invest a spiritual legacy if you choose to get intentional and to go for it. And we went for it, all right? And this was the first one. We envisioned doing this now every summer with the grandkids as they get old enough, bringing them to Cousins Camp and hopefully build a lifelong of memories and help to build a spiritual legacy for our family. All right, well, last month, you should have received our first elder update. So during this interim season, the elders are committed to giving a monthly update on where are things at. So if you didn't receive that last week, check your email spam folder or whatever, or maybe you blocked us. And if you want it, unblock us or call or however that works. But since you showed up in church today, this is gonna come out this coming week. I'm just gonna read it to you. So you're gonna hear the elder update right now. Dear Northview family, we sing a song at church called Trusting God. The refrain says, "'I sought the Lord and he heard and he answered.'"

This simple lyric summarizes perfectly our recent call to prayer and fasting for our church. We asked you to pray as God leads you, to believe that he heard your prayer and to trust him to answer your prayer according to his perfect will in his perfect time. We are so very thankful for everyone who has been praying and fasting for our church and for our senior pastor search. Speaking of the search, we want to let you know that we have formalized our search team. Serving on the senior pastor search team will be the Northview elders, Tim Colvin, Wayne Kinney, Jeff Seagrave, Ryan France, Travis Theobald, and Ernest Asamoah, along with Northview staff members, Jessica Farson, who is our director of HR, Beth Anderson, who is our director of projects, and Mark Kroll, interim senior executive pastor. As a team, our number one priority is to discover God's will for our church. There is nothing more important than that. If you have questions or thoughts for our search team, we can be reached at search at northviewchurch.us. As you know, the starting point for our senior pastor search has been a focus on prayer and fasting, and we are committed to continuing this weekly discipline throughout the entire process.

What we are adding now is the additional step of seeking godly counsel. As a team, we are reaching out to wise, respected, and godly people for the purpose of gleaning their guidance on the best way to approach our search. Proverbs 15, 22 says this, plans fail for a lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed. Ultimately, we are trusting God with this search. He is faithful. However, we also believe that putting together the best plan possible honors him and seeking godly counsel is a part of our plan. Lastly, we want you to know that we are committed to responding to every question and comment that we receive at elders at northviewchurch.us. However, we have recently heard that some of our replies are going directly into junk or spam filters. If you have yet to receive a response, receive a response to your email, please contact us at elders at northviewchurch.us. please check your spam email folder. If you are still unable to locate a response, please forward your initial email to us again so we can assure that everyone hears back from us. We are so thankful for you and believe that God has great things in store for his church that we call Northview, your brothers in Christ, Northview elders, and Pastor Mark Kroll.

So there you go, there's your update for this month. We will give you another update mid-August sometime. That will come out. And we're just committed to monthly communicating with you kind of where we're at in the process and what the plan is, where we're headed with all of this, all right? Now, before I jump into our sermon today, the message, would you join me in, let's just go to God in prayer, all right? Lord God, thank you for our church. Thank you, God, that you are here in this room. Thank you, God, that you are with us. And we walk in with all different kinds of potential distractions, thoughts, emotions, and I just pray, Lord God, that you would settle down our spirits, settle down our minds and our hearts, help us, Lord, to be fully present, first and foremost, with you as we look into your word and as we study your scripture, God, and how it will work in our life according to the needs that we have today. God, we love you. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen, amen, all right? Now, we're in our 52-week series on these people that God used throughout the story of God throughout the entire Bible. We just covered three of the kings, right? We covered Saul, David, and Solomon.

They were kings over the nation of Israel when Israel was one nation. They were monarchs over the whole Israel group of people. After Solomon, the kingdom split northern and southern. You had Israel and Judah, north and south. And the story continues with 20 more kings for each kingdom, all right? But overlaid onto the kings, and some of them were bad. One of them shows up in our story today, and it's not good. It's really, really, really not good. But he shows up and overlaid over all of these kings that were reigning over the nation of Israel were prophets. You've heard of this idea. God has prophets, the prophets of God. There are four major prophets. We call them major prophets. There are 12 minor prophets. They have those titles because they each have books of the Bible that are named after them. The four major prophets are the really long books, right? Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. And then the minor prophets are the shorter books. However, there were 100. Nearly 100 prophets that are mentioned throughout all of Scripture. Those are just the ones that have books named after them. The one we're gonna look at today doesn't have a book named after him, but he was used by God in a super powerful, powerful way.

And throughout the unfolding story of Israel, God did not remain silent. He didn't remain silent. He was engaged and active in his creation. Now, for those who believe in God, you can kind of divide people that believe in God into two camps. One of them is like a deism, a deistic camp. The other is a theism, a theistic camp. Deists believe that there is a God and that God created, but after he created, he took his hands off. He has no meaningful involvement with his creation. Yeah, there's a God he created, but he's not engaged in. It's like the Bette Midler song, From a Distance, if you're familiar with that song. There's a refrain in that song that says, God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us, what? From a distance. That's a deistic worldview. Christians are not deists, we're theists. We believe that, yes, there is a God, God created, and God is actively engaged and involved in his creation. And one way that God has remained engaged is by raising up prophets to do his work among his people. These prophets did not choose their role. They were chosen by God to be his voice to his people. So when they spoke, it wasn't opinion, it wasn't, I have an insight for you. When they spoke, it was, thus says the Lord.

They spoke for God to people. Like prophets like Samuel would confront kings, like Saul, of their hidden sins. Prophets like Jonah would be in public places and speak to the whole people group in Nineveh and call them to repentance. They were speaking for God in different ways. And there were four main ways that God used prophets in the Old Testament. The first one we've already basically touched on. Prophets were God's messengers. At the court, a prophet spoke on behalf of God. God would reveal his truth to them and they would proclaim it to the people. Another way that God used prophets is prophets were covenant enforcers. They were like spiritual prosecutors. Prophets reminded Israel of the covenant that God had made with them, all right? Are you familiar with the covenants? They're different. We think about contracts. Contracts are more transactional and conditional. They're like, I will do X if you do Y. That's a contract. A covenant is more relational and unconditional. It's I will do X regardless of what you do. I'm binding myself covenantally to this promise. God makes his first covenant, it's called the Abrahamic covenant, with Abraham.

He makes it with a man and he tells Abraham, from you, there will be a great nation. Your descendants will be great. Well, this was a super unlikely scenario. Why? Because he's old and his wife is old and they were barren. How is this possibly gonna happen? Well, it wasn't because of Abraham that it happened. It happened because of God's word and his faithfulness. God binds himself to this promise and Abraham, his role was simply to trust and to follow, to listen to God, to trust and to follow. Fast forward, the second covenant, we call it the Mosaic covenant. It happened in the scene where Moses is on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 49, he receives the law and in that time, God speaks to Moses and he declares that the people, so it's a covenant with the people, not a person, but with the whole nation, that the whole nation is his treasured possession. However, this covenant includes a call to a way of life and that way of life is called the law. This is where the commandments come, all right? And the way of life, it's a way for them to know how to live in relationship with God and know how to reflect his character to a lost and dying world. When Israel walked in obedience to the law, they experienced blessing in their life.

When they turned away from God, they experienced painful consequences. So when the people did drift into idolatry and into disobedience, these prophets, they didn't persecute them, they prosecuted them. They called them out and called them to repentance. They were covenant enforcers. A third way that God used prophets is as historical foretellers. I think this is the common way that most people think about a prophet. Like you know how to tell the future. I was watching TV two days ago and there was a poly market commercial which I'm not like current on a lot of things and I think what this is is you can gamble on basically anything but the tagline to this commercial was, it said, can you predict the future? And the answer to that is no, you can't predict the future. However, prophets could. They were historical foretellers. How could they do this? They did this because God revealed to them what was true and what was going to happen. There were lots of this foretelling. The most common one that we think about are the messianic prophecies. These are the prophecies about Jesus Christ

and his coming to earth. And one of the ones that you'll recognize is from Isaiah chapter 53, which says, "'But he was pierced for our transgressions. "'He was crushed for our iniquities. "'The punishment that brought us peace was on him "'and by his wounds we were healed. "'We all like sheep have gone astray. "'Each one of us has turned to our own way "'and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all.'" How did Isaiah know this was going to happen with the Messiah? This was 700 years before Jesus ever arrives on earth. He knew it because God had revealed this truth to him and Isaiah is proclaiming it. He's a historical foreteller. The prophet Micah tells that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. How does he know it? The same way. All right, there are like hundreds of these messianic prophecies and that was one of the way that God used prophets. The last way, number four, is prophets were godly intercessors. So prophets didn't just speak to people on behalf of God. Prophets would speak to God on behalf of the people. They were intercessors between the people that they were leading and God himself. And Moses was one of the earliest prophets that God used

and when he was on Mount Sinai and he comes down with the tablets, you remember what scene he saw? He saw the people. worshiping a golden cow. This was not good. So there's a prayer that Moses pleads to God and the end of that prayer goes like this. Remember your servant Abraham, Isaac, and Israel to whom you swore by your own self. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them and it will be their inheritance forever. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. Isn't that fascinating? God had threatened disaster on the people. Moses the prophet intercedes for the people to God and God evidently changes his mind and relents and does not bring. So thank God for Moses and for interceding on the people's behalf. Now, I think a natural question at this point would be, do we have prophets like this today? Do we have prophets like this today? In the camp of Christianity, there are two main worldviews when it comes to this question. One is cessationist, the other is continuationist.

Cessationists believe that the revelatory gifts of prophecy and tongues cease to exist after the apostolic age. The apostolic age is the age of the apostles. God gave the apostles these gifts to entrench the truth, to give credibility to their message and he gave them this as a gift for a period of time. And the cessationists believe, they emphasize the supremacy of scripture, the sufficiency of scripture and that God speaks through his written word when it's faithfully preached and applied. So we have the written word. Continuationists view is that God, these revelatory gifts are still, they still exist, but there's a caveat. They believe that they're different than what we read in the Old Testament. Yes, they exist, but they're not equal to scripture. So if there is a tongues or if there is a prophecy and an interpretation, that it's gotta be tested against the written word. It's gotta be tested against scripture. If it's different than scripture, scripture takes precedent over that. And it's for the purpose of edification, encouragement and comfort, all right? Now, so those are two ways of thinking about this. I think there's one really key point in all of this about are there prophets today?

And it's found in Hebrews chapter one, verses one and two, where it says, in the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom also he made the universe. Jesus is not just another prophet. He is the ultimate and final revelation of God. He is God, Emmanuel, God with us. He is God in the flesh. So we are no longer waiting for new authoritative revelation like they were in the Old Testament. We have Jesus who has been revealed. We have the written word who establishes what God's will is and his truth. And so that's why within Christianity, we would say Mormonism is not Christianity because they believe that Joseph Smith in the 1800s got this revelation, these gold tablets and the Book of Mormon. So they have this Book of Mormon and a Christian would say, well, that's not the revealed God of the Bible. So that would be an example of how that's applied. Now, this all brings us to the first of several prophets that we're going to look at. We're gonna look at in the next seven weeks prophets. They played an important role. And the prophet we're looking at today is the prophet Elijah.

And like many prophets, Elijah's story is a big one. However, today I'm gonna focus on our attention on a time when the prophet Elijah finds himself hiding in fear in a cave, which seems kind of odd. A prophet of God is hiding in fear in a cave. And I got a question for you as we start. Have you ever found yourself in a cave? Do you know what I mean by that? Like, have you ever found yourself in the cave of fear? Emotionally, with depression, with anxiety, with panic attacks? Have you ever found yourself in a cave physically? My body is breaking down. I just got a diagnosis. I can't. I can't believe this is happening. And it sends you into this cave, this place of despondency, of uncertainty, of fear, a relational cave. I was served divorce papers. My world just totally broke apart. My child disowned me. They don't want anything to do with me, a relational cave. How about a financial cave? The business is not going well. We can barely make payroll. We're on the verge of bankruptcy. And it just sends you into this cave of fear. Well, you're in good company if you've been there.

The fact that Elijah is hiding in a cave is somewhat confusing because of the story that happens right before it. If you have your Bible, turn to 1 Kings 18. It's one of the most dramatic spiritual victories in all of scripture. For years, Israel had wandered far from God under the reign of King Ahab. This is the king I mentioned earlier, King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. God's people were led to worship. They led God's people to the worship of the Baals, false gods and the Asherah gods. And the worship of Yahweh, the one true God, had been neglected for years. And under Ahab's reign, God's prophets were even being hunted down and killed systematically. They were killing God's prophets for going against what they wanted the people to do. And the Hebrew nation was caught between two loyalties, professing faith in Yahweh, the one true God, while living compromised lives as if Baal held power. Kind of like today when you have one foot in the church or God and one foot in the world. That's kind of what I see is going on here with the people of Israel. And into that confusion steps God's prophet, Elijah. And we're gonna pick up the story in 1 Kings 15 with these words.

Elijah said, as the Lord Almighty lives whom I serve, I will surely present myself to Ahab today. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. When he saw Elijah, he said to him, is that you, you troubler of Israel? I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, but you and your father's family have. You have abandoned the Lord's commands and have followed the Baals. Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah. We're talking 850 prophets, false prophets who eat at Jezebel's table. So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and he said, how long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing. So Elijah is setting up this battle on Mount Carmel between the one true God and him as God's prophet and the false God of Baal and the 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah, all right? So you've had two sacrifices, two cows, two bulls, you have two altars, and it starts with the prophets of Baal going first

and they prepare their altar. They cry out all morning. From morning until noon, they're crying out for the God of Baal to hear them and to come and to consume this offering that they had made. And at noon, Elijah taunts them. He says, shout loud or perhaps your God is deep in thought or busy or traveling. Maybe he is asleep and he must be awakened. I mean, the guy was full of faith. He was confident this was not going to work. The prophets of Baal begin to slash themselves all throughout the midday. They are frantically prophesying over this sacrifice that they had prepared to the gods. And when it comes to the evening time for the sacrifice, this is what the scripture records. But there was no response. No one answered. No one paid attention. So the story then turns to Elijah. The altar of God had been neglected under Ahab's reign. So he had to rebuild the altar just to do the sacrifice. He rebuilt it with 12 stones, which represented the 12 tribes of Israel. And after rebuilding it, he dug a trench around the altar and he had people fill four large water jars and pour the water on top of the sacrifice, on top of the cow.

And so four water jars. Then he says, do it again. So they do it a second time. He says, do it again. They do it a third time. This sacrifice is covered with water. The trench is filled with water. The wood is wet. Everything is wet. And we pick up the story in verse 36. At this time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord. Answer me. So these people will know that you, Lord, are God and that you are turning their hearts back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up all the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. Now, I was listening to a podcast. That's just a little sidebar. I was listening to a podcast, a guy named Wes Huff. He's a Canadian apologist,

a Christian man who defends the faith. And he says on Mount Carmel, they have found, they think they have found the location where this happened because literally the geography of this spot of Mount Carmel is different than all of the geological makeup of the stones and the rocks and the earth right there. It's like, this had to have been super dramatic. I mean, is there any more unmistakable victory for a prophet than what just happened? It was clear, it was decisive, it was public in front of everybody. If there was ever a time when it seems that the nation would turn back fully to God, this was it. But the story does not move in the direction that we expect. When word of these events reached Jezebel, she did not repent, she retaliated. Enraged, she sent a message to Elijah vowing that within a day he would be dead just like the prophets of Baal. Elijah had killed all 850 prophets of Baal. So all of her prophets were dead and she vowed you're gonna be dead within a day just like them. And suddenly this bold prophet of God who just witnessed one of the most dramatic miracles that we have recorded in the scripture is running in fear from a ungodly woman and her threat. And it's there in the shadow of chapter 18 that I wanna really focus our attention

which is on chapter 19 of 1 Kings. And this is the story where Elijah finds himself in that cave that I talked about earlier. Now, this is a little bit of a long passage. I'm gonna read it from my notes because I think it'll go smoother. Here we go. Elijah was afraid and he ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servants there while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broombrush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough Lord, he said, take my life. He was suicidal, he wanted to die. He was so despondent by the turn of events that had taken place. I'm no better than my ancestors. Then he laid down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, get up and eat. He looked around and there by his head was some baked bread over hot coals and a jar of water. He ate and he drank and then he lied down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time, touched him and said, get up and eat for the journey is too much for you. So he got up and he ate and he drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb, which is another mountain where this cave was,

the mountain of God. There he went into the cave and he spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him and said, what are you doing here, Elijah? He replied, I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left. And now they are trying to kill me too. The Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord. And the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great, powerful wind tore the mountain apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "'What are you doing here, Elijah?' And he replied, "'I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. "'The Israelites have rejected your covenant, "'torn down your altars,

"'and put your prophets to death with the sword. "'I am the only one left, "'and now they are trying to kill me too.'" Now, I wanna make four very simple observations and teaching points from this encounter that Elijah has with the Lord God. And I believe that each one of them reveals to us how God ministers to us when we are discouraged and despondent living in a cave, all right? Now, I know what you're thinking. Mark, do you know what time it is? You're gonna make four points, right? So people that are time-conscious, I wanna put you at ease. We will be done on time, all right? So just, these are just four simple points that I wanna make that I think, if you hear these and if you believe these, it will fundamentally change your life and change the way you view your relationship with God. And the first one is this. God is with us in the cave. That concept that God is with us is Christianity 101. I mean, it doesn't get any more foundational than the concept that God is with us in the cave. And I would say, it wasn't until late into my walk with God that I discovered how important and how meaningful it is to believe that to be true. It will change everything for you if you believe it. Because if God is with us, who can be against us, amen?

Amen. If God is with us, who can be against us? Although Elijah is on this mountain, he's not on a mountaintop spiritually and emotionally. He wants to die. And he's saying, I am the only one left. And they're trying to kill me. It's a little bit of a pity party. And the cave can distort your view of God and his relationship because the truth is he was not alone. He thought he was alone. He was not alone. First of all, God was with him. And if you continue to read the story, it tells us that there were 7,000 other Israelites who had never bent the knee to Baal. He wasn't alone, but he felt alone. When you get into the cave, you feel alone. And it's important for us to realize that God is with us. And I want you to know that I have been in that cave. I have been in that cave. It was 25 years ago. Karen and I were church planting in New Hampshire. We had church planted with a dear friend. We are about two years into the church plant. He comes in my office. He says, hey, Mark, I've taken another job. I'm leaving, we're moving. And they left town and kind of left me. This isn't the first time I've served in this interim role

because even back then, it was like, okay, you're the interim senior pastor of this church plant. I knew I didn't want to be the senior pastor, but I was responsible to help find the next senior pastor. Well, that whole experience sent me into an emotional cave. I was an interim senior pastor and I hated being at church. I mean, that's not a good scenario. When the guy who's like leading the charge hated being at church, that's not good. And I knew I was in this deep, dark place. And by the grace of God, my dear, lovely wife, knew it too. I came home from work one day and I sit down at the kitchen table. She slides a piece of paper in front of me and it just has a name and a phone number without saying anything. She just slides it in front of me. I was like, okay, what's this? She said, Mark, you know I love you and I am forever committed to you, but you are not right. And that's a Christian counselor that I found and I'm asking you to go and meet with this person and talk. My dad had committed suicide three years prior to this. And then this happened and I was just in a really, I was in a really bad place. And by God's grace, through his presence in my life, my life through the counsel of a good counselor, I found my way out of it, and God not only restored

my love for him and the church, he superseded it. My love for him and the church. Matter of fact, this interim, people have asked me, how you doing, is it stressful? I'm like, I'm a man at peace. I don't feel stressed or worried. God has got this, he's with us. He's in control of all of this, and so God is with us. The second point is that God cares that we're in the cave. It's one thing to believe that God is with us, but the devil might want you to believe, yeah, he's with you, but he doesn't care. He didn't care about you and your situation. The devil wants us to believe that God, Abba, Father, Dad, Dad doesn't care about your situation. Did you notice the very first words that God speaks to Elijah was a question? What are you doing here, Elijah? God doesn't rebuke him for being afraid. Dad doesn't shame him for being a sissy. God doesn't guilt trip him, say, you're better than this. You should know better than this. Why are you running in fear? No, God shows care. Did you also notice that he sent an angel, or he brought him food? Man, he's caring for him while he's suicidal. He's bringing him food and water. He cares, he's showing care, and God does care for us. He says, what are you doing here?

I think he's not lacking information. He's God, he's omniscient. So why is he asking him that question? He's asking that question to relate to him relationally, to show that he cares for him. So if you find yourself in a cave today, maybe the way out is just through a conversation with God. I believe God is asking you, hey, Bob, what are you doing here? Hey, Sally, what are you doing here in this cave? I am with you, I've got water, I've got bread, I've got food for you, I will care for you. All right, the third observation is that God speaks to us in the cave. God tells Elijah to stand out on this mountain, and three very dramatic things happen. A wind that tears apart the mountain, the earthquake happens, and then fire happens. These are all ways that God has shown up in the past, right? He literally just showed up with fire in chapter 18 and consumed this sacrifice for Elijah. But the text says that the Lord was not in any of those dramatic ways. He was in the gentle, quiet whisper. And it's in that place that Elijah encounters God. And I think the lesson is unmistakable. God is not limited to the dramatic in your life. God may be trying to speak to you in a gentle whisper. Here's the problem, and it's a big problem. This world that we live in is filled with a ton of noise,

a ton of wind, a ton of earthquake, a ton of fire. And our ability to be present, to quietly sit and hear the voice of God is so compromised in the culture that we live in because of all the things that distract our souls from the living God. Things like TV, sports, gaming, computers, social media, you name it, what's distracting you? The news cycles, all of these things that make us spiritually ADD. They're like wind, earthquake, and fire. How can you hear the quiet whisper of God with all of that going on in you? And so I have a challenge, an application for you. I have tried this, and it's super duper hard. This will sound so easy. You're like, what's so hard about that? Try it. Tomorrow morning when you wake up, go out to your most comfortable chair without anything around you and sit in that chair for 15 minutes in silence and ask God, God, speak to me, I'm listening. And just sit there and see what you hear. I believe he will speak to you. It's extremely hard to do this for me. It may not be for you, because I'm like so distracted. I'm like, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I'm like torn in my mind and my heart. However, the encouragement is the more I've tried this,

the more I practice this, the better I'm getting. It's like anything, the more you practice, the better you get. And so I would encourage you to try that exercise and see if God speaks to you tomorrow, especially if you're in one of those caves, especially if that's you. All right, number four, lastly, God is patient with us in the cave. cave. Did you notice that God asks the same question two times, the exact same question twice? He asks it before the wind, the earthquake, the fire, and the gentle whisper, and he asks the question after all of that. Did you also happen to notice that Elijah gave the exact same answer? Verses 10 and verse 14 are exactly the same wording. Wouldn't you think that he would have had a different response the second time around after experiencing all that? I mean, you would think that he would, after having encountered God at the mouth of the cave, that his perspective would have changed and he would have given God something different. Like, what are you doing here? He would have said something different, and he didn't, and he doesn't. And God doesn't argue with Elijah in that moment. Instead, he responds with an assignment. All right, we didn't read this, but what happens after he gives that answer is God tells him to go out and anoint two new kings over Israel, and then he also tells him to go find his successor, which is going to be Elisha, S-H-A. That's who we're gonna look at next week. Pastor Steve's gonna look at Elisha next week. But God responds to this scenario with a work to do. God is long-suffering and patient with us. Evidently, God isn't up

in heaven all uptight because we're not getting it right away. He's not wringing his hands like, oh, my gosh, my child here is not really totally getting this. He is long-suffering. I once heard it said that the work of God in the believer's life is a slow work. It's a slow work, and I believe it. It's not overnight. It takes time. And with Elijah, it takes time. So if it's taking time with you and it's taking time with me, again, we're in good company. We're in good company. And God still has work for us to do. He gives Elijah work, and I think it reveals to us his patience with us when we're in the cave. If you're not dead, you're not done. There's still things to be done, and God will use you if you're willing, and Elijah did. He went out, and he anointed the kings, and he found Elisha, and he went on with his life, the life that God had given him. And so I think there is a special kind of grace in this idea that God is patient with us when we're in the cave, right? As chapter 19 concludes, Elijah doesn't return to Mount Carmel. He leaves the cave with something deeper than a dramatic victory like Mount Carmel. He leaves with a renewed clarity who God is and what God is doing in him and through him, and truly, that might be the greater miracle in this story. That could be the bigger miracle of the story. So Northview Church, when we find ourselves, when you find yourself in a cave, you are discouraged. You are despondent. You are living in fear. It's a cave of pain that you're in. I want you to remember these four things. The living God is with you in that cave. He's not only with you. He cares about your situation. He cares that you're in that cave. God will speak to you in that cave. It might be I need to just open my heart to a conversation with him. It's just sitting in that chair and listening for the

voice of God in your life. And just rest on this. Our God is a long-suffering God. He is patient with you. You don't have to get it right right now. Hopefully, we all are growing in our maturity in Christ and becoming a whole new person over time. It's called sanctification. Hopefully, that is true. We don't want to get stuck. We don't want to go backwards. We want to be growing. But remember, it's a long, slow work that God is doing in our lives, and that's okay. God is patient. Would you please stand with me, and we will close with a prayer. Lord God, thank you for Father, Your Word this morning, thank You, God, that even when we find ourselves in that cave, that You are with us, that You care, that You are engaged with us. You ask questions, we can respond. You give us work to do. You're patient, You're long-suffering. I pray for everybody that is hearing my voice right now, no matter where they're at in life, that they would believe that You are that God, that You are engaged with Your creation, that You love us personally, and that You want the best for us. Give us that bold faith and that confidence, God, to go forward in our week, knowing that You are walking with us. We pray all these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.