Tag: Elijah

Standing for Truth

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A.W. Tozerby A.W. Tozer

Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. Isaiah 59:15

In recent times, we have developed a peace-loving, soft-spoken, tame and harmless brand of Christian of whom the world has no fear and for whom it has little respect. We are careful, for instance, never to speak in public against any of the false cults lest we be thought intolerant. We fear to talk against the destructive sins of modern civilization for fear someone will brand us as bigoted and narrow. Little by little we have been forced off the hard earth into a religious “cloud-land,” where we are permitted to wing our harmless way around like swallows at sundown, saying nothing that might stir the ire of the sons of this world. That neo-Christianity, which seems for the time to be the most popular (and is certainly the most aggressive), is very careful not to oppose sin. It wins its crowds by amusing them and its converts by hiding from them the full implications of the Christian message. It carries on its projects after the ballyhoo methods of American business. Well might we paraphrase Wordsworth and cry, “Elijah, thou shouldst be living at this hour; America has need of thee.” We stand in desperate need of a few men like Elijah who will dare to face up to the brazen sinners who dictate our every way of life. Sin in the full proportions of a revolution or a plague has all but destroyed our civilization while church people have played like children in the marketplace. What has happened to the spirit of the American Christian? Has our gold become dim? Have we lost the spirit of discernment till we can no longer recognize our captors? How much longer will we hide in caves while Ahab and Jezebel continue to pollute the temple and ravage the land? Surely, we should give this some serious thought and prayer before it is too late—if indeed it is not too late already.

by A.W. Tozer

Take heed what you ask for!

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Charles Spurgeonby Charles Spurgeon

“He prayed that he might die!” 1 Kings 19:4

It was a remarkable thing that the man who was never to die, for whom God had ordained an infinitely better lot, the man who would be carried to Heaven in a chariot of fire, and be translated that he should not see death–should thus pray, “Let me die! I am no better than my fathers.”

We have here a memorable proof that God does not always answer prayer in kind, though He always does in effect. He gave Elijah something better than that which he asked for, and thus really heard and answered him.

Strange was it that the lion-hearted Elijah should be so depressed by Jezebel’s threat as to ask to die–and blessedly kind was it on the part of our heavenly Father, that He did not give His desponding servant what he prayed for.

There is a limit to prayer. We are not to expect that God will give us everything we choose to ask for. We know that we sometimes ask, and do not receive, because we ask amiss.

If we ask for that which is not promised,
if we run counter to the spirit which the Lord would have us cultivate,
if we ask contrary to His will, or to the decrees of His providence,
if we ask merely for the gratification of our own ease,
if we ask without an eye to His glory,
–then we must not expect that we shall receive what we pray for.

Yet, if we do not receive the precise thing asked for, we shall receive an equivalent, and more than an equivalent, for it. As one remarks, “If the Lord does not pay in silver, He will in gold; and if He does not pay in gold, He will in diamonds!” If He does not give you precisely what you ask for, He will give you that which is tantamount to it, and that which you will greatly rejoice to receive in lieu thereof.

Be then, dear reader, much in prayer–but take heed what you ask for!

by Charles Spurgeon