Elijah: Jack Bauer of the Old Testament, Spiritual Living, Christian Faith

I was honored to have an article chosen as one of Crosswalk.com’s top ten articles of the year. It is the article: “Elijah, Jack Bauer of the Old Testament.” Here is an excerpt:

There’s a part of Elijah’s life that doesn’t often get told. This is the scene that would get left on the cutting room floor. This is the chapter the editor would delete.

You turn to 1 Kings 19 and you can hardly believe what you read. This is just after Elijah’s epic spiritual victory on Mt. Carmel, so you’d think you’d find Elijah celebrating. But there’s no postgame champagne for this guy.

Instead, we find this Bible superhero in the fetal position, miles from the city, under a juniper tree. He’s crying and asking God to take his life.

This is not something we expect from our superheroes. They are made of something bigger than this. They don’t cry. They don’t break down. They certainly don’t ask God to take their lives.

But Elijah does. Why? Well it turns out that while all of Israel returned to the worship of Jehovah, Queen Jezebel didn’t. In fact, she threatened Elijah with death.

Now you would think Elijah would easily say, “Okay, God just brought down fire on the altar, I think He can handle this one.” But Elijah was physically and emotionally spent. And the one person he wished would have come to faith rejected him. He didn’t see the entire nation bowing down. He only saw Jezebel rejecting him.

But something happened under that juniper tree that redirected Elijah. God changed Elijah’s theology.

Read the whole thing here: Elijah: Jack Bauer of the Old Testament, Spiritual Living, Christian Faith.