Working for the Enemy

Sunday’s message was timely instruction in these pressure-packed days. The juniper tree scene in Elijah’s story is a great reassurance: facing pressure is not a warning light on the gauge of your spiritual life. Pressure will come. There’s a few juniper trees in everyone’s journey. But Elijah’s story is also a great reminder: pressure is really not even the problem. Panic is.

A story is told of a man who was hunting in the woods with an older friend. As they made their way down the trail, a snake slithered across their path. Terrified, the younger man fled, stumbling over tangled tree roots and rocks in his path. Scratched and bleeding, he called back from a safe distance, “Would that snake hurt me?” “No,” the older man replied. “But it’ll make you hurt yourself.”

The truth was that Jezebel couldn’t hurt Elijah because he was safe within God’s will. The enemy could not take out God’s man as long as there was still a work ahead of him. But Elijah hurt himself.

He ran away from service and fellowship, and into obscurity. His own response to pressure did exactly what Jezebel longed to do, and could not.

He sidelined himself.

He silenced his own ministry.

What the enemy could not accomplish, Elijah did for her. Jezebel provided the pressure, and Elijah took care of the rest. He made the wicked queen’s work easy- because he did all the work for her.

Our enemy is also limited. He provides pressure, sure.

But he can’t take your prayer life. He has no power to silence your worship. A godly testimony is out of his hands. The fruit that grows from a life that cultivates God’s presence is not his to destroy (Galatians 5:22-23). But let pressure turn to panic, and we’ll do his work for him.

It’s easy to look at Elijah’s story, and feel like telling the guy to take a deep breath. Hadn’t God always provided? Was there not a track record of miracles behind him? Did He not have a God who worked everything out even when there was nothing left to work with?

And yet- don’t we?

The same provider, way maker, and problem solver is as close to us as He was to a sidelined prophet. He still whispers to the weary and revives the discouraged. There is still a refuge to run to in pressing times.

Pressure is a great propeller: it will make us run somewhere. When we run down the road of self reliance or self pity, the destination is always panic. And panic will make you do to yourself, what the enemy wishes he could.

May the pressures of this week drive us beneath the shelter of His wings: not for peace from the pressure, but for peace in the pressure.