After the Victory . . . the Battle Begins (Part 1)

I take a much different view of this passage. Paul suffered in much the same way as Elijah did here, when he states in I Corinthians 1:8, "despaired even of life". Christ in Matthew 26:38 states, "my soul is very sorrowful, even to death".

If you have not been to this place, personally, you are unable to grasp the issue here. I have found great comfort in the story of Elijah. God is capable of stripping everything away to bring you to this point. Why? To accomplish 2 Corinthians1:9, "we felt we had received the sentence of death, But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God." Do you just "feel the sentence of death", or do you experience it. To experience it is to feel the wisp of the flames of Hades at your feet. It crushes you mentally, physically and spiritually. The battle is not in deflecting it, it is to be beat down. The sin is not in feeling it, nor is it in experiencing it. Christ had an anxiety attack in the Garden. The sin is in loosing hope and in rejecting God. Does God scold Elijah once in this section of Scripture? No. He comforts him. Elijah doesn't curse God. He calls out to God. He realizes he can't rely on himself. When much was stripped of me, I didn't focus on this idea that my despair and anxiety were sin, but in the comfort of Elijah, Paul and Christ, that despite me feeling this way, I could reach out in hope. I could call out to a God, share with Him what I was experiencing, have confidence that He understood it and experienced my suffering as well, and have hope that I could be comforted. So I sat and listened for the small still voice and I heard it.

I see what dgszweda is saying, and if I haven’t been there, I’ve certainly been in that neighborhood, a street or two away.

But I think Paul’s view here is close to the same.

We can scarcely imagine the intensity of the extremes that Elijah underwent, and the events were beginning to take their toll.

The key is another phrase Paul used: “human frailty and sinful weakness”

The line between the two is often a lot finer than we realize. It’s not really even a “line” at all—because there’s hard to discern ‘zone of overlap.’ We never stop being sinners, so there’s always some taint. At the same time, we know that grieving deeply is not sinful because, as dgszweda pointed out, we—blessedly—have the example of Jesus.

I’m not sure we always need to know when weakness has crossed over into sin—because either way, we can take the whole package to the Lord and pour it out, as we see over and over in the Psalms.

Fear is even trickier than grief because there is a lot of fear in wisdom, being ‘circumspect,’ and ‘sober minded,’ etc. (‘beware,’ we are told). So fear can be a very truth-rooted and truth-respecting thing. But it can also be at odds with faith. The conflict is messy and even when we’re probably not sinning, we’re still sinners who at that moment, happen to not be sinning.

And who can “discern his errors”? So… Psalm 19:12-14, and 1 Cor 4:4, and the like guide us.

Aaron,

It is a fine line. In today's world our suffering is a broad spectrum. It can be as light as a tire went flat on the side of the highway, to many extremes beyond that. If we are truly to suffer. To the point that God is "remaking us", what does that look like. It can be utter devastation. In my opinion, it becomes sin when we turn away from God. We either reject God, or we seek resolution of our suffering outside of God. I know that for me, my faith was gone from a human standpoint. All I had to hold onto was the hope that God was faithful. I could not see His faithfulness, nor could I see His goodness. And in my opinion that is okay, as long as we reach out to and cling to Him. Our eyes don't deviate from Him. We are human, we are mortal creatures. We can have fear, sleepless nights, utter trauma, but as long as we seek Him in helping resolve those, than our suffering is producing a work. It is testing our faith. We didn't let the fear overcome us, but we can struggle with it. I feel sometimes that we teach a life that if we are crushed that we sinning. Trust me, God can allow so much to come onto us that it will overcome our physical capabilities. It is in that moment that He shows us that it is not our ability that helps us overcome this. It is not our strength, or faith, our steadfastness. Those can be stripped. It is in that moment when it is stripped away, but we are clinging to the Hope in God, that we can actually see that it is Christ's strength that is holding us. That is a view that is immensely glorifying.

dgszweda wrote:

Does God scold Elijah once in this section of Scripture? No. He comforts him. Elijah doesn't curse God. He calls out to God. He realizes he can't rely on himself. When much was stripped of me, I didn't focus on this idea that my despair and anxiety were sin, but in the comfort of Elijah, Paul and Christ, that despite me feeling this way, I could reach out in hope. I could call out to a God, share with Him what I was experiencing, have confidence that He understood it and experienced my suffering as well, and have hope that I could be comforted.

Amen. I love this because it reminds me so much of the Psalms. Over and over David (in the Psalms, but it could also apply to SI David) questions God about why he is going through the hardships, but he is still trusting God. This is in contrast to the Israelites in the wilderness who were murmuring and blaming God rather than questioning and trusting God.

Thank you for sharing how you reached out to God in hope while still in despair. What a wonderful picture of faith and an understanding of the love and grace of God. I would not be surprised at all to hear that you have been able to share your experiences with others and that it has been a powerful witnessing tool for the glory of God.

I have been working with a few people. I feel that there is often shame cast onto people who are actually struggling. They feel they can't articulate that to others in the church or their pastors because it would be viewed as sin. It has been amazing to me how much of our struggles can be viewed in light of the cross. Oftentimes, after a massive calamity hits your life, you turn to verses about comfort and you seek comfort. The problem is that in my life and in other mature Christians who I know that have gone through similiar issues, there is a period of silence from God after this calamity. And that silence wrecks people, sometimes causing them to turn from God. The comfort is not in some verses that can take away our pain, but to look at Christ on the cross, and the words He uttered were of someone forsaken and an utter silence from God. Christ knows that pain. And as long as we keep looking to Him despite the pain, the silence from God, the suffering, we can cry out to him with those feelings and He will hold our faith fast. So while the story of Elijah looks bad, Elijah cried out to God. He didn't follow in the footsteps of the children of Israel. He didn't reject God or complain to God. He laid at the feet of God his utter emotional overload that he was going through. And God sent him an angel to feed him and give him rest. That was what Elijah needed in that moment, for his exact need.

We as Christians have to know that it is okay to feel fear. Christ had an anxiety attack in the Garden. What was that over? Fear? Was that fear overwhelming His physical body and mind? Yes. Did He abandon His faith, did He fail to hand His life and His will over to His Father? No. It is okay to get beat down, overwhelmed, feel like we are falling apart. It wouldn't be a struggle if we weren't. I think this is a big gap in how churches look at mental struggles. We are often told that you need to control your mind and your thoughts. "If you had real faith you could overcome your challenges." "The real reason you are struggling is that you aren't putting your faith in God". For me that is a lot of bunk and not at all inline with the suffering we see in Scripture. It is the suffering that is peeling back those layers in our life and exposing us. Hold onto that. Absorb the suffering. It is that exposing of us, and our desire to hold onto the Hope of Christ that refines our faith. That is what I Peter calls, our faith being tested by fire.

dgszweda, I think it is important to look at how different people approach struggles and to recognize that we do not all handle them the same way. I love how you are able to find comfort by looking to what Christ experienced on the cross while I find comfort in what David experienced in the Psalms. In both our cases, our comfort points us to God and his strength. Too often the approach is to just suggest that if we had more faith, we would be strong enough not to feel discouraged. My response is that if our discouragement causes is to turn to God and rest our faith in him because everything else seems so hopeless, then it is simply growing my faith in God and not proving it to be weak.

I do believe that there can be ungodly forms of fear and anxiety, but it is a leap too far to suggest that all discouragement is sin. Thank you for sharing your thoughts as well as the hope you have experienced. I pray as well that your times of discouragement were similar to mine- simply passing times of testing that were soon replaced with joy and contentment. If not, my response would not be that I know you are sinfully struggling, but instead I would recommend in depth health screenings and even checking on nutritional imbalances. There are so many factors that contribute to these sorts of struggles and they are not all rooted in sin. We must also realize that we may not find clear answers all the time, but we can take comfort in knowing that God used many people throughout history who struggled with what we are talking about.

It might fair to say that whatever the condition of your faith, there are likely to be sufferings that stretch it to its limits. I’m reminded also of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” statements. Being an extraordinary man it took extraordinary adversity to teach him that when he was weak, he was actually strong.