Elijah and the Gentle Whisper

Have you ever been in a situation where you are trying your absolute best but no matter what you do your efforts are in vain? Where you try your best and your best isn’t good enough? As we finish our series, BC, Nate Hilgenkamp teaches us about God’s presence in times of trouble as we study the life of Elijah in 1 Kings 19.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

-Oftentimes in life your greatest successes are followed by your greatest disappointments.

-When life gets hard and you are tired, what do you run to?

-God will give you more than you can handle.

-Sometimes life is simply hard. Our trouble is not that we don’t love God and don’t have faith. It’s the reality that we currently live in a fallen world.

-When God asks Elijah what he’s doing, Elijah answers about everyone else, but not himself. He focused on what everyone else isn’t doing rather than answering the Lord about what he was doing.

-Our God is not simply powerful, but present.

-God will be close in your discomfort.

-Why do we feel closer to God in the pain? Why can we hear the whisper when life is hard but not other times? Because our lives are too busy and too loud.

-We can establish disciplines of silence and solitude. Of slowing down. Disciplines of spending time with the Lord to hear Him all the time, and not just when life is hard.

-God will restore your purpose.

-How often are your greatest anxieties something that God has already taken care of?

-You might not be getting attacked by the enemy because you are not out on mission against him…you are dwelling in a self-created cave. You are a cave dwelling Christian.

-Close encounters with Jesus change everything.

-You can’t have God’s power without His presence, and vice versa. He is a God of both.