OC February 17th

“Get up and eat!” 1 Kings 19:5 NLT

This is a great piece of scripture that Chambers relates to depression. Elijah, a prophet, was not aligned with the current king of Israel, Ahab. Ahab had set up altars to Baal and was not following God and His commandments. Elijah had just met with the prophets of Baal and challenged them to summon their god. This is the story where they both present a bull as an offering. The prophets of Baal petition and plea to their false god but no fire comes to consume the offering. Elijah then doused his altar and the bull with jar after jar of water. He then prays to God and the fire of God comes from heaven and consumes his offering. The people there exclaimed that Elijah’s God was the one true God. Elijah then ordered the people to seize the prophets of Baal and slaughter them. 

After this Ahab’s wife Jezebel is enraged for she is a follower of Baal. She sends word that she is sending for Elijah to have him killed, for he has killed the prophets of Baal. 

Elijah flees. He goes into the woods in a state of depression feeling that he had not served God well, was being hunted down and persecuted, and was no better than his father’s before him. He lies under a tree and asks God to take his life. This is when an angel of the Lord wakes him and says “arise and eat.”

Chambers comments on depression by saying, “If human beings were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness exaltation.” 

He further says, “When the Spirit of God comes to us, He does not give us glorious visions, but He tells us to do the most ordinary things imaginable. Depression tends to turn us away from the every day things of God’s creation.”

Chambers explains that when God steps in, His inspiration is to do something natural and simple - “things we would never have imagined God was in…” And that we must “take the first step and do it in the inspiration of God.”

“If, however, we do something simply to overcome our depression, we will only deepen it. But when the Spirit of God leads us instinctively to do something, the moment we do it the depression is gone. As soon as we arise and obey, we enter a higher plain.”

If you are feeling God’s nudge to do something simple and ordinary, don’t overcomplicate things. Do it. Elijah was told to get up and eat. He obeyed and is given the strength to travel 40 days and nights where God then tells him of how He will reconcile the faithful of Israel. 

We tend to complicate everything. Rationalizing anything  we hear to fit how we are “feeling” or to match our opinions of the day. Have humility and courage to cast that aside and just listen to God - however ordinary or simple the message is - and obey.