My love for you consumes me

Twice the Lord asked Elijah what are you doing here? and the question, despite the beautiful and faithful answer, had a bit of a scolding from God. Elijah was not in the right place where the Lord wanted him to be. It often happens to ourselves: we respond to the Lord with heartfelt prayers, with sublime and altruistic attitudes, we believe we have felt his voice and his presence in the great and miraculous events that He allows us to see and not we realize that God, in these times of excessive sensationalism, manifests himself much more often in a soft hiss, in a sweet whisper, in a placid breeze that brings his Spirit to tell us here I am! What do you need?

Many times we are where we should not be and we believe that we are there from God. But thank God that he has made us rise again through Jesus Christ. By his power and our faith in his direction, we can be relocated to the place where we can be of use and be used for his glory.

Elijah had just had two great spiritual victories: his prayer to God brought the desired rain to Israel after years of drought and famine and secondly the 450 prophets of Baal had been defeated (1 Kings 18/19). However, he flees in terror and abandons his post of duty. His faith is temporarily broken, his fears depress him, he begins to complain about the people who, despite these two miracles, continued obstinately sinning. God appears to him and calls him again to finish the work with this simple question, what are you doing here, Elías?

Have you ever felt that God has asked you that same question? Honestly, I do. The Christian also needs God from time to time to send his rain to quench his spiritual droughts and his unsatisfied hunger. Yes, also sometimes we escape the borders of duty and flee and lose sight that God is in control of all things and that there is nothing to fear. How good it is to know that the Lord knows those who are His and that, despite our weaknesses, our love for Him, our zeal for Him consumes us like Elijah.

Who could at all times answer like Elijah to the Lord's question, what are you doing here, Elijah? The truth is that when we feel the Lord's zeal for his work, when our love for him produces suffering within us when we see that things are not going well around us, when in his love, the call to follow him calls us to obedience of his Word and puts us in a privileged position (as children of the Most High!), there can be no other answer.

Wherever you are, if your love consumes you for the Lord, I am sure that He will meet you and put you where He wants you to be. Ah, that faith sometimes breaks you, that you cannot find an explanation for your feelings of fear and fatigue, that suddenly you feel your heart dry, it is nothing that can take away your sleep. God will be there, by your side, no noise or earthquakes will be needed, or His fire to consume your sacrifices. He will reach you in a soft whisper that will bathe your being in His presence, will dress you in the fine linen of His holiness, will put a ring on you as a symbol that you belong to Him and will put you in the exact place where the only thing that counts is His glory.

I invite you to read 1Kings 18 and 19. Perhaps God will speak to you in this passage as he spoke to me.

God bless you!