[Elijah] replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
1 Kings 19:14 (NIV)

For over a decade I’ve had the honor to be a regular teacher among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers. I continue enjoy the experience. In that time, I developed an strong relationship with my pastor, meeting regularly to discuss his plans for future messages and to provide any thoughts and feedback he asks for.

One of the things I’ve recognized along the way is that I’m occupy an interesting position. I’m a part of the system, but I’m not dependent on it. My life largely operates outside the actual organizational system of staff and operations. As I engage with my pastor about what I’m observing from my perspective outside the system, I’ve found that he’s appreciated my thoughts. I’ve found the same thing to be true with leaders in business. CEOs often find themselves insulated from potential problems because the system itself shields them from the knowledge of things it doesn’t want them to see, hear, or know.

At the same time, I’ve discovered there’s a danger for me, as well. Because I’m an outsider and not part of the system’s everyday communications and operations, it’s easy for me to have an incomplete picture of what’s actually happening. And in that communication void, it’s possible for my active imagination to make assumptions. One of the things I’ve learned about myself along my life journey is that my Enneagram Type Four heart and brain can easily conjure up pessimistic and overly dramatic throughs about what might be true.

I have always had a strong soul connection with the Prophet Elijah. Whenenever I read his story, I see all the tell-tale signs of a fellow Enneagram Type Four, often known as The Individualist. We Individualists like to work alone. We can be overly dramatic. We tend to be pessimists who expect things to go wrong. It’s easy for us to get so absorbed in our own inner world that we lose sight of what’s happening around us. And, we have a core struggle with shame – a feeling that there’s something deeply flawed in us.

In today’s chapter, I see all of these traits in Elijah. He’s just pulled off one of the most stunning, dramatic, miraculous victories in history. Elijah alone against 450 prophets of Baal. Fire falls from heaven at his simple prayer. YHWH wins! And in the aftermath, an enraged Queen Jezebel, staunch proponent of Baal worship, announces she’s going to kill Elijah for what he did.

Elijah just experienced three years of God’s miraculous provision. He just experienced God’s miraculous, pyrotechnic victory. You’d think that Elijah would quickly shrug off Jezebel’s threat knowing what God has done for him and what God can do by way of providing, protecting, and empowering. That’s not how the prophet responds.

Elijah becomes pessimistic and afraid. He runs. He finds a place to hide all alone. He becomes dramatically suicidal and asks God to kill him. And there underneath all of it is shame. “Take my life! I’m no better than my ancestors!”

In his shame-fueled, depressive pessimism, Elijah then spends 40 days and nights running to Mount Horeb to meet with God and tender his resignation. What I found interesting is that between yesterday’s chapter and today’s chapter, Elijah three times says, “I am the only one of God’s prophets left.” Yet he says that in yesterday’s chapter after Obadiah (who was a faithful prophet) tells Elijah he has 100 of God’s prophets hidden and has been providing for them. In today’s chapter, God tells Elijah that He has 7,000 faithful prophets who remain faithful in their covenant relationship with Him.

From his personal pit of shame, Elijah can only see himself, all alone, convinced that everything is going to fall apart and it’s best just to quit and die.

Talk to Wendy, and she’ll be happy to tell you, “That’s totally Tom.”

She can even provide plenty of examples.

Yet along my life journey, I’ve come to embrace and appreciate that God uses very different people, in very different places, with very different gifts and callings. My pastor is right where God has him walking in the calling God has given him. My position outside the system has me in a very different place and calling. We can learn from one another and actually benefit from the other’s experiences, observations, and life lessons.

And if I pull back the lens on God’s Kingdom work on earth, it’s a global spiritual system with billions of individuals operating in the gifts and callings God has prescribed to accomplish His purposes in authoring the Great Story that is still being told moment-by-moment, day-by-day.

In the quiet this morning, Elijah reminds me how easy it is for me to follow in the sandal-prints of the prophet’s unhealthy example. I am never alone. God has given me gifts for the calling and pupose He has for me. My job is to faithfully carry out the part I’ve been given – and encourage others in the very different parts they’ve been asked to play. Because, in the end, I have to constantly remember that all of this is about what God is doing.

It’s not about me.

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