In Good Company

Remember Abraham? We meet him in Genesis 12 as Abram with God telling him to go to a land God would direct him to. Now, I don't know about you, but I've never received a word from God like that. Abraham did. To the childless man God promised, "To your offspring I will give this land" (Gen 12:7). Abram's first "response", it seems, is to lie about his wife because she was beautiful and someone might kill him for her. Huh? Abram, you have a direct word from God. What are you thinking?

Or how about Moses? This particular prophet spoke "face to face" (Exo 33:11) with God. So intimate with God was he that his face shown with God's reflected glory. Still, when the people grumbled, he lost his temper, defied God, and ruined his own chance of making it into the Promised Land.

Then there was Samuel, the child set apart from birth to serve God. While living in the temple (1 Sam 3), he was awakened by God's own voice in a time when no one talked to God. There he began service as the last judge of Israel, eventually anointing Israel's first king. When Saul failed to follow God's instructions, God told Samuel to anoint a new king. Samuel was delighted to obey God in what might have been a perilous venture because God had been so intimately connected to him. Right? No, not at all. God said to go anoint a new king, to which Samuel replied, "How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me" (1 Sam 16:2).

One of my all-time favorites is Elijah. You remember him. We first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17 walking into the Ahab's throne room and declaring "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word" (1 Kings 17:1). Nice! There is no record of God sending Elijah. James tells us "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit" (James 5:17-18). But God honored his prayer and for three years miraculously protected Elijah. First there was the creek where God sent birds to feed him. Then there was the widow's house where God kept them in food every day. When her son died, Elijah prayed him back to life. And finally there was that glorious confrontation between the prophets of Baal and Elijah. They failed miserably in calling down fire from their Fire God although they tried everything all day long. Then, stacking the deck against himself, Elijah finally makes a simple prayer asking for fire -- "Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that You, O LORD, are God, and that You have turned their hearts back" (1 Kings 18:37). And God answered him, sending fire that consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, the water, and the dirt around the altar. Very definitive answer. The people seized the false prophets. Rain returned to the land. All was well with the world ... until Queen Jezebel sent him a message threatening to kill him. After prayer that stopped rain for 3 years and the long-term, miraculous care of God for 3 years and the raising of the widow's son and the stunning defeat of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the return of the rain at his word, you would think that Elijah would scoff at such a threat. He was under God's protection. Who was she, after all this, to threaten him? No, Elijah's response was stunning. "He himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree and he asked that he might die, saying, 'It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers'" (1 Kings 19:4).

And so it goes. Isaiah the prophet of God was faced with God Himself and responded "Woe is me! I am undone!" Jeremiah was told all that would happen and, when it did, became known as "the weeping prophet" because of what God did. Habakkuk complained to God about the sin of his people and when God replied, "I plan to judge them", he protested God's response. Peter assured Christ, "I will give my life for you" and within hours denied he even knew him. As the first leader of the new Church, Peter succumbed to the heresy of legalism in Antioch and needed to be rebuked by Paul. Paul considered himself the chief sinner (1 Tim 1:15). All of God's "best servants", it seems, have been losers and failures. Paul says of those who are called "Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor 1:26-27).

Do you ever feel like a failure? Do you ever feel like you're not up to God's standards? Do you ever feel like you're not getting anywhere as a believer? That, while others are doing great things for God, you're not? That it's even possible that God doesn't like you much because you're such a spiritual loser? Well, then, you're in good company. You're standing in the midst of the saints, losers all, who time after time take the best of all possible circumstances from God and mess them up. It has been said that believing in God only qualifies you to be a demon (James 2:19). Messing up on your walk with God, it seems, only qualifies you to be a prophet of God. Or, to put it in terms Paul used, "I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor 12:9). Do you feel like a failure at times? You're in good company. God uses failures all the time.