Persisters

Then it came to pass the seventh time, that he said,"There is a cloud, as small as a man's hand, rising out of the sea!"So he said,"Go up, say to Ahab, Prepare your chariot, and go down before the rain stops you." – 1 Kings 14v44

After the encounter at Mt Carmel was done Elijah, as we saw yesterday, knew that it was time for rain. Something had clued him. I suspect, as a true prophet of God, he just knew that the rain was coming. He started making preparations and preparing Ahab for the rain.

He knew it was coming, so he and his servant went out to look for it. He told his servant to go out and look over the ocean for any sign of rain. The servant came back and told him that there was nothing there. ‘Go look again,’ said Elijah. After a time the servant came back – ‘Nothing there Boss.’

‘Go look again.’ – Nothing. ‘Again.’ – Nothing

I won’t go through the whole event, but you get the picture. They want through this seven times. It was only on the seventh visit that the servant came back with the report, ‘I see a little could, only the size of a man’s fist.’

That was enough for Elijah. ‘Load up your chariot and head for Jezreel, Ahab. If you don’t you are going to get stuck in the rain!’

I like Elijah’s sticktoitiveness. Like Joshua leading Israel around Jericho for seven days and seven times on the seventh day, and like Namaan dipping himself in the Jordan seven times obeying God took persistence. Nothing happened immediately.

It is easy for us in our day of immediate answers to understand this concept of persistence. We want our answers and our results and we want them right now. We as a culture have lost the concept of persistence.

What is even more sad than that is that the church has, in so many areas, forgotten how to persist.

God help us to be persisters.