Study 18 - Your gentleness has made me great

Following an awesome display of power which tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks, God drew Elijah near with a gentle whisper. It wasn’t the magnificent display of power that drew Elijah to the mouth of the cave, but the soft voice that spoke to him of God’s tenderness and love, reminding us of King David’s testimony, ‘Your gentleness has made me great’ (Ps. 18:35, NKJV).

Intimacy
Accountability to God must be accompanied by intimacy with him, because we’ll receive healing and restoration only when the two are brought together. We must hear the voice that asks, ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you realise that you’re answerable to me for your conduct?’ But we must also have our ears tuned to the gentle whisper that says, ‘You’re precious to me. I know what’s happening’ – and that woos us tenderly back into God’s purposes.

God isn’t interested merely in how you can serve him. He wants you to hear the clear, gentle whisper, ‘I love you. I’m for you. I know your sighing, your longings, your heartbreak. I know what you’ve been doing for me and how little you’ve been appreciated for it. I hear you when you cry out in desperation.’ It’s this gentle whisper that melts your heart.

Delight
David said, ‘He rescued me because he delighted in me’ (Ps. 18:19). That’s one of the greatest truths in the whole Bible: God is delighted with you. When God whispers into your ear, ‘I’m delighted with you,’ it’s almost too much to bear. He adds, ‘You’ll be called by a new name: my delight is in you’ (see Isa. 62:2, 4).

I once looked up ‘delight’ in the dictionary. It said, ‘great pleasure and satisfaction’. But I wasn’t too pleased or satisfied with that. So I searched for it in a thesaurus. This is what I found: ‘laugh, smile, get a kick out of, hug oneself, rave, bask in, enjoy, wallow, have fun, exhilarate, relish, elate, thrill, ravish, intoxicate, entrance, enrapture, purr’. Isn’t that wonderful? When God looks at us, he purrs with delight!

Have you ever fallen in love? You’re in a room full of people and suddenly you realise, ‘She saw me!’ The Bible says, ‘You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes’ (Song of Songs 4:9). Or have you ever seen parents with their first baby? ‘Isn’t he wonderful? Doesn’t he look like me? Did you see that? That was his first smile.’ God purrs over us like that.

How do I find healing from exhaustion? It’s in the gentle whisper from God, ‘I love you. I’m delighted with you. You make my heart sing whenever I see you.’ That’s what’s overwhelmed great Christians in history. And that’s what restores your soul – a fresh experience of intimacy with God and a new revelation of his love.

Commission
God drew Elijah close to him; then, to complete the prophet’s restoration, he gave him a job to do. He did the same for Peter who must have thought, ‘After what I’ve done, Jesus will never trust or use me again.’ But Jesus, having re-established a loving relationship with his disciple, said to him, ‘Feed my sheep’ (John 21:17). Peter must have been stunned to hear those words, repeated three times so that he really got the message: ‘I still want to use you.’ Little did he know just how greatly he'd be used. He would never have dreamed that he – the one who denied Jesus before a handful of people – would within a few weeks be preaching to a vast crowd in central Jerusalem and see three thousand converted.

‘Go back the way you came,’ God told Elijah (1 Kings 19:15). Then he continued, ‘When you get there …’ This was no vague commission, a sort of pat on the head with a general comment, ‘Off you go. You’ll find your way somehow.’ No, there was a specific job for Elijah to do. I expect that in his desolation he thought, ‘I’m finished. I’ll certainly never speak to a king again.’ In fact, Elijah’s new commission didn’t consist merely of addressing one king but of anointing two (1 Kings 19:15,16). Furthermore, while he’d come to regard his life as worthless, God regarded it as worth reproducing. He was going to give him a disciple – Elisha. Some commentators say that the two prophets spent ten years working together. One failure had not destroyed all the excellent characteristics that God had built into Elijah, nor have any feelings of desolation you have recently experienced nullified all that God has taught you over the years.

‘Furthermore,’ God was telling his servant, ‘you’ve been on your own long enough, so I’m giving you a friend, someone you can care for and train to take over from you. Contrary to your expectations, your ministry hasn’t finished. I want you to stop thinking about yourself and start concentrating on Elisha. He doesn’t know as much about me as you do. I want you to give yourself to him, pray for him and teach him everything you know. And by the way, you’re not as alone in the work as you make out. There are still seven thousand people in Israel who refuse to worship Baal.’

Restoration
God has a wonderful way of working healing into weary people. If you drift away from him, he doesn’t abandon you. No matter what you do, you’re always his delightful child – but don’t take advantage of that fact, because one day you’ll give account of yourself to him.

‘Lazarus, come out!’ Jesus commanded (John 11:43). He didn’t say, ‘Corpse, come out!’ Lazarus had a name, an identity, and so do we. From inside our tomb, we may protest, ‘But I can’t come out. I stink. Look at me. I might as well be dead.’ But God will have none of it. ‘Come out!’ he says to us. ‘Come out of that despondence, that self-pity, that sense of uselessness. Tombs are not meant for people who are alive in Christ and who still have work to do for me. Leave the tomb behind and come back into the light. My thoughts about you have never changed. I still love you. I’m still delighted with you. I still want to use you to establish my kingdom. So, come out!’

Quote
‘Is it a small thing in your eyes to be loved by God – to be the son, the spouse, the love, the delight of the King of glory? Christian, believe this, and think about it: you will be eternally embraced in the arms of the love which was from everlasting, and will extend to everlasting – of the love which brought the Son of God’s love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory – that love which was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, pierced – which fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, died. That love will eternally embrace you.’
Richard Baxter