Lessons from Time Outs

Last week we started a series of messages on the life of Elijah in 1 Kings chapter 17. So I invite your attention again to the 17th chapter of 1 Kings this morning. If you were to visit a place like SeaWorld or any large aquarium, you probably would see some kind of special show that features doffins or seals or even an orca whale. And they would be doing amazing feats. And if you watch carefully, you'll notice that after each trick they do, the trainer will begin talking about that animal or about the particular trick they've done. But while they're talking, the animal makes its way back to the side of the trainer, gets its head above water and opens its mouth wide. And as the trainer is talking, they're also dumping handfuls of fish in that animal's mouth because that animal has been trained to do what it does because it knows it will get a reward if it does the trick. Sometimes I think we see our relationship with God in exactly the same way. Sometimes I believe we view our relationship with God this way. Our arithmetic goes like this. 144 God plus being obedient to God plus serving God faithfully equals reward. And we like to think that we get to determine what the reward is going to be. So we think if we're faithful to God, we're living for Him, we're serving Him that nothing bad should happen to us, that everything should be going well in our lives, that we shouldn't have any illness, we shouldn't have any problems, we shouldn't have any financial difficulty. Sometimes through the years I've heard many Christians say, I don't know why this happened to me, I live for the Lord, I serve Him, I try to live for Him faithfully. Why would God allow this for my life? So that's that arithmetic, that's that fish coming up to try to get the reward for being faithful to God. So Elijah, I wonder about him, maybe he felt the same way. Remember we saw last week, he was a person just like us with the same kind of nature, same kinds of wants and desires and feelings and emotions and so forth. So I wonder if Elijah maybe felt this way. When we saw him last week, he had burst onto the scene and announced God's message to King Ahab, there will be no rain in this land except at my word. And obviously that prefers also to God's word through Him. So he has served faithfully, he has delivered God's message in just the way God wanted him to, the very message didn't depart from it at all and so now you would think, well, you know, maybe God's going to reward him with something really special. Maybe he'll do an evangelistic crusade throughout the nation of Israel and many people will be saved. And then we, Jezebel, will become converted and there will be a great revival in the land or maybe God will open up for him a bigger ministry, maybe even as a temple prophet in Jerusalem and the temple. But that's not what God does. If you're with me in 1 Kings chapter 17, follow along as I begin reading in verse 2. And this amazing declaration, faithful declaration of the prophet in verse 1, then the word of the Lord came to him saying, get away from here and turn eastward and hide by the Brooke Kareeth, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you will drink from the Brooke and I have commanded the Ravens to feed you there so he went and did according to the word of the Lord before he went and stayed by the Brooke Kareeth, which flows into the Jordan. The Ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the Brooke and it happened after a while that the Brooke dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Instead of being rewarded in ways that we see reward, instead of being giving something as a reward for what he had done, he's forced into solitude at an out of the way place that nobody knows about a little Brooke called Kareeth. Now that reminds me it is such a beautiful picture of what we all experience. We all experience times when life seems to stop. At least life as we know it, life as we typically experience it just seems to stop. And we are forced into this inactivity or loneliness or solitude. Times in life when we may feel isolated, we may feel set aside and we wonder if we are of any more valued to God or to anyone else or to his work. Maybe we are all used up, we're not needed anymore. Because that time of loneliness, that time of solitude, can come because of an extended illness. Sometimes it may come because of an indifferent spouse and a dying marriage. Sometimes it may come because of the death of a spouse. Sometimes it may come because of a friend who's turned against you because of some misunderstanding or maybe because your company has decided to downsize and you've been given two weeks notice in your job that you've had for 25 years. Or maybe it's just an inner struggle that you really cannot express to anyone else. Just something you're going through that you seem all alone in this. You know any kind of leadership includes its share of loneliness and solitude, things that no one else really understands or bears with you. So all of us go through times like that and it is at those times which by the way I like to refer to as time outs in life. If you're familiar with sports you know what a time out is. It's a stop, it's a pause in the activity. If you're a parent you know what a time out is. Maybe a little different but it's a pause in the activity level of that child hopefully sitting in a chair in a corner somewhere in the room, whatever. It's a time out. And those time outs in our lives we can have a tendency to feel a numbing sense of loneliness. We may have some problems with our spiritual vision during those times. Our spiritual vision and perception of what God is doing gets kind of blurry and we may think that God's forgotten us. That He's not thinking about us. That He's not aware of what's happening. If we're not careful in those times of life, in those time outs we can get so spiritually disoriented that we go into a free fall and there's the danger of getting so discouraged that we just give up altogether. So if I just describe you or even if I haven't because you will be there at some point we are, I invite you this morning to sit down with me by Elijah at a lonely out of the way place called Kareeth. And let's see what lessons God has to teach us in those time out experiences in our lives because God has not forgotten you. God is still very busy even in those times when it seems like nothing is happening. God is still very busy. He is at work and there are some lessons we can learn about what He's doing from Elijah at Brook Kareeth. The first thing God is doing in those time out times is He's doing a work of protection. And the lesson we can learn is this, God can take care of us. God can take care of us. A lesson in protection. Let us with me if you will again verse two. The Word of the Lord came to him saying get away from here and turn eastward and hide. That's the key word hide by the Brook Kareeth which blows into the Jordan. The Hebrew word for hide carries with it an unusual connotation. It doesn't necessarily mean to hide in the sense of concealing someone. It really doesn't even mean to hide in the sense of withdrawing from people or situations. The idea behind this word is the word of protection. It means to hide in order to protect someone. That's what God is doing with Elijah. And if you picked up on what he did last week you can certainly understand why he would need to be protected. He just announced to the King of Israel there's not going to be any reign in this land except my word and then walks out. Well, A-hab is going to try to find him. Elijah has just shot to number one on Israel's 10 most wanted lives. And so A-hab is going to try to find him for sure. In fact we know that's what was going on because in chapter 18 verse 10 when Elijah runs across a representative of A-habs called Obadiah. Obadiah tells him this in chapter 18 verse 10. As the Lord your God lives there is no nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to hunt for you. And when they said he is not here he took an oath from the kingdom or nation that they could not find you. So we know A-hab was out to finding. He was even sending to other nations to try to find Elijah probably to force him by some kind of pressure or maybe even torture to lift the drought maybe even to killing. So Elijah needed to be protected from A-hab but there are others no doubt who are trying to get a hold of Elijah as well. Can you imagine all the farmers? They'd like to have a sit down meeting with Elijah. And what about the Samaria Flower and Garden Club? I'm sure they wanted to talk with Elijah as well. Gone, no reign, what do you mean? No reign, we need reign. So there are lots of people out after Elijah and so God says I'm going to hide you in the sense that I'm going to provide protection for you. And he was so well hidden that archaeologists and Bible scholars today still cannot identify where the Brooke Carreeth was. If you've ever been to Israel or seen pictures of it you know that there are many ravines that come out of the mountains down to the Jordan Valley and into the Jordan River. It's just one of those ravines that happen to have a Brooke. That's all we know. So God had him hidden pretty well. But what does that have to do with us? We were talking about Elijah being protected and it was that to do with us. Well, we probably are not going to face the need to be protected from political leaders or government officials. Although as we saw last week that day may come, that day may come, may come sooner than we think. But all of us go through times when people turn against us just like Ahab did Elijah and maybe the farmers and others as well. All of us go through those times and although we may not need protection from a political ruler there is another weapon that we will often face in those time outs of our lives and it's the words that people speak to us or against us. One of the hardest things to take in times of time outs or solitude or times when we feel alone something has happened that just seems to isolate us from everybody else. One of the hardest things to take is what people say about us during those times. You know the barbs, the criticisms, the insinuations, the gossip that starts going around about why this person is experiencing that, they must have done something, God is not blessing them. All of those things when we know that that's not true, those things are hard to take. And so I find it very interesting that the same word hide used for protecting physically Elijah is also used in the book of Psalms of God's protection for us in times when people are saying things about us or to us or against us that are not really justified. Look at these couple of verses on the screen. First of all Psalm 31 and verse 20, you shall hide them in the secret place of your presence, talk about the presence of Jehovah. From the plots of men, you shall keep them secretly in a pavilion. I notice this from the strife of tongues. And then in chapter 64 verses 2 and 3, the Psalmist says this, hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the rebellion of the workers of aniquity who sharpened their tongue like a sword and bend their bows to shoot their arrows. What are those arrows? Better words. Sometimes the hardest thing to take about timeouts in our lives, difficult times when we feel all alone is the things other people say. The point is this, have you learned in those times when people are saying things that you know are not right, but you're going through a difficult time, it's hard to explain to anyone what's happening in your life. Have you learned to turn to God to protect you, or do you become vengeful? Do you react with anger or defensiveness or becoming harsh toward others as you retaliate or strike back at them, or have you learned just to leave that situation with the Lord because he can protect you from the strife of tongues, from those bitter words that have been flung your way? Sometimes it's just things that people say that come out of the blue that you didn't expect that hurt pretty deeply. I remember when I was first starting in ministry in Jeannion, I were in our first church in rural North Carolina back in the mid-70s. I was still in Bible college. I still had a year and a half to go. I had taken a couple of preaching classes, but I had not taken yet the capstone course called expository preaching. And so I was starting into that class in my last semester of Bible college, and I knew that it was customary for the professor of that class if he knew that any of the preacher boys in his class were preaching somewhere, he'd just show up unannounced. Well, of course, I was pastoring a church, so I expected sometime he'd probably show up at Needham's Grove Church, and sure enough, one Sunday I got up to preach, and there he is. He's sitting out in the auditorium. You talk about intimidation. I didn't know when he would be there. No way I could plan a silver bullet message, just to impress the professor. I just had to preach what I'd prepared, and so I did. At the end of the service, I'm standing at the back, greeting people as they go out of the auditorium, and he's holding back, waiting, and I'm thinking, oh boy, this is going to be rough. He came up after everybody else had gone through the line of Jeannion hour back there, and he took my hand and he said, you used the nominative form of the pronoun after a preposition. And I guess I had a kind of deer in the headlights look, you know, I certainly wasn't expecting that. I knew what he meant. I must have said for you and I, rather than for you and me, which is the appropriate English, but he said, if you have an English teacher and your congregation, that'll hurt your ministry. And I still had the deer in the headlights look, I guess. And I was kind of waiting for, okay, I thank you, I appreciate that, I'll work on that. But I was kind of waiting, is there anything else? There was nothing else, no other criticism, but nothing of a positive nature, and you know it was a good message, you had the outline right, you do whatever, nothing, nothing. The only thing was I used the wrong form of the pronoun. That was it. Well I must tell you, I went home kind of miffed. You know, did he not get anything out of the message except for you and I, rather than for you and me, is that it? And then I remembered something I'd read about Charles Haddon's Spurgeon, the great preacher of the late 1800s in England in London, Metropolitan Tabernacle. He also started when he was very young, he started preaching when he was 19 years old. And the church grew to some 10,000 people in his ministry, it was amazing, amazing preacher, the Prince of Preachers he's called. But early in his ministry, he would find, under his office door, slipped underneath the door, on every Monday morning, a letter from an anonymous person in the congregation. And that letter corrected every grammatical error of his message the day before. Now I can tell you, preachers just love those kind of letters. But I got to thinking, you know, what Spurgeon did, he decided that instead of trying to figure out who it was and get back at him or get angry and upset, he would decide to work on his English. And if you've ever read, and they're still in print, Spurgeon Sermons, you know he became a master of the English language. I wish I could say that worked for me. It didn't, but at any rate, I decided to try to learn. Never to say for me, for you and I again, you and me, for you and me. Sometimes it's just the things people say that get you all riled up, we have to learn that God can protect us. God can take care of us. And when people don't understand what we're going through and may even gossip about it, or say things about it that we know are not true, rather than retaliate, go to God, trust him to protect you. He can protect you. The second work that God is doing with Elijah and does with us in time out times is a work of providence. A work of providence. Here's the lesson, God is in complete control of the situation. Even when your situation seems out of control, God is in complete control. Look again at our text, verse 4, and it will be that you will drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. Now skip down to verse 6. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook. So God uses ravens to bring him food. Have you ever really thought about that? Ravens are birds of prey. They eat small animals or feed on the carcasses of dead animals. They are not the most likely caterer to bring bread and meat to Elijah. And so what this shows is God's complete control. In fact, did you notice the word commanded there in verse 4? I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. It's a strong word which shows God's absolute and complete control over the animal kingdom. I have commanded the ravens to feed you. They are going to bring you bread and meat twice a day. So the animal kingdom is under God's control. He commands they obey. The whole situation was completely under God's control. I don't know what you are facing. I don't know what you are going through in your life. I don't know what timeout you may be in right now in your life. But I want us to see this from Elijah. And I want to encourage you from God's word. God is in complete control of your situation. Whatever it is, it may not look like it to you right now because we can't always see with our finite, limited, time-oriented perspective what God who knows the end from the beginning and acts with no time in mind. We can't see with our limited reference what God is doing. We can't always understand it. But rest secured from the scriptures. God is in complete control of your situation. Whatever it may be. I read a story one time about a missionary who had decided to relocate from the states to Uganda. He was with navigators and he wanted to start. He felt after he and his wife had prayed for some time. He felt that God wanted them to move to Uganda and begin the ministry of navigators in that country. Amazing story. He says this. He says we uprooted the family flu to Kenya where I put the family up in a hotel so that I could rent a Range Rover, a Land Rover, and travel across the border into Uganda. He said one of the first things that caught my eye when I came to the village where I was going to spend my first night was several young kids with automatic weapons shooting them off into the sky as I drove by. They stared at me and pointed their guns. And he says I started to wonder God are you really in this move? Is this really what you want me to do? So finally he said after a long day of exploring the part of Uganda that he could, he came to a city where he knew there was a hotel and he went in late at night after dark to try to get a room in that hotel. And the person at the counter who spoke a bit of broken English said we only have one bed in this whole hotel. But you can have it for tonight. So he went up two flights of stairs and opened the door to the room. He saw a naked light bulb hanging by one wire over a table and two beds. And that was it. One of the beds was perfectly made. One of the beds was still unmade. And it suddenly hit him. I'm sharing this room with somebody else and a chill went down his spine. So he knelt at the made up bed the one he knew would be his and began to pray. And he said Lord I'm afraid. I'm in a country I don't know a culture that's totally unfamiliar. I have no idea who sleeps in that bed. Please show me that you're in this move. And just as he was finishing his prayer and not came on the door and he went over to open it and in walks a six foot five Ugandan national and he says what are you doing in my room? And the missionary was kind of afraid to answer. But he finally was able to blur it out. I'm just here for one night. I'm only I'm taking that bed over there. I won't bother you. I'm just here for one night. And the Ugandan man towering over him said what are you doing in my country? And the missionary said well I'm here to establish a ministry of the navigators in this country. There was a pause and the big Ugandan giant of a man broke into a grin. Ah, the navigators. You ran over and grabbed the missionary, picked him up and danced around the room with him. The navigators. I have been praying for two years that God would send someone from that organization to my country and he pulled out a little scripture verse memory pack. You know the navigators memory verses and at the bottom it has at the each verse on each verse at the bottom it has Colorado Springs, Colorado. And so he looked at the missionary again. Are you from Colorado Springs, Colorado? And the missionary said well I used to be but I'm actually coming to live here to establish navigators in this country. And so the Ugandan man laughed again and they rejoiced at God's provision. That man would become his best friend who taught him the language and served on the board of the navigators in Uganda. Now only God can cause a missionary to pick a particular town to stay for that night at the only hotel in that town. There's only one bed left. But in that room God has placed a man who's been praying for two years to meet someone from the navigators. Only God can do that. You may not experience or sense that you're experiencing as dramatic an evidence of the provision of God in your life but mark it down. God is in complete control of your situation. Whether or not you see as dramatic a result as that. Whether or not you ever see what he was doing this side of eternity at some point somewhere in heaven all will become clear and you'll see the amazing providence of God. God is in complete control of your situation. The third work that God is doing in our timeouts in life is a work of proving, a work of proving. This is the lesson we need to learn. God has reasons for testing us. God has reasons for testing us. Now this was not a tremendous test for Elijah. God has told him, go hide yourself by the brute caret, and I'm going to send Ravens to bring you food, meat and bread, morning and evening. So I don't know. Again, I don't know if Elijah felt this way. I think I would have, I would have questioned God some, are you sure that's a good enough hiding place? If you want to hide me from Aheb, will he find me there? Is there going to be enough water to drink in this brook? And did I hear you say something about Ravens bringing me meat? But there's no evidence that he asked any of those questions. He may have, but there's no evidence. Verse 5 just says, so he went and did, according to the Word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the brute caret, which flows into the Jordan. He just went. He just obeyed. He trusted God and God fulfilled his promise and did what he said he would do. Verse 6, the Ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook. Ah, but it doesn't end there. Look at verse 7. It happened after a while that the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Now, again, when I'm reading stories like this, I like to put myself in the sandals of the Bible people so that I can kind of figure, what would my response would, what would I think? How would I respond to this? And I think my response would be, wait a second Lord, the brook is drying up. Now the reason why there's a drought is because I was faithful to your message to proclaim that there would be no rain in the land except at my Word. I thought I would have an exception from the drought, but no, the brook is drying up. That doesn't seem fair, God. I thought you would, and you told me you were going to give me water and look, the brook's drying up. What's going on here? But sometimes I think we fall prey to the theology of the prosperity gospel more than we would like to admit. I think sometimes we feel like I'm not supposed to experience hardship in life like other people. After all, I'm one of God's children. I follow Him. I try to serve Him. So I shouldn't be experiencing these things. My friend, that's just not taught in the Bible. I mean, just read the life of the Apostle Paul and see what all he went through, the hardships, and all the things he describes in 2 Corinthians 11 that had happened in his ministry. Amazing. God has never promised that we will be exempt from the results of living in a fallen world. You know what? Our cars are going to break down just like other people's cars do. We're going to get sick, just like other people do. We're going to lose loved ones, just like other people do. God has never promised us that I'm going to put a bubble around you and, oh yes, the curse I placed on all of humanity and nature, you're going to be exempt from that just because you're my God has never promised that. He has promised, He will never leave us or forsake us. And He has promised that He will go with us through those trials, that He will walk with us. I love Isaiah 41, 13, where He says, I will hold your right hand, fear not. I will hold your right hand. I love that picture of God taking us as His little children by the hand and saying, don't fear, I will take you through this. We're not exempt from difficulty. We're not exempt from timeouts in life, but God promises His presence and God also promises He has a reason for what He's doing. I like the way Chuck Swindall says it in his excellent little book on the life of Elijah. He says, our human feelings all tell us that once the faithful Heavenly Father gives water, He shouldn't take it away. It just wouldn't be fair. Once God gives a mate, He should never take a mate. Once God gives a child, He should never take a child. Once He gives a good business, He has no right to take that business. Once He provides a pastor, He has no right to call Him somewhere else. Once He gives us growth and delight and a ministry, He has no right to step in and say, wait a minute, there's no need to grow larger here. Let me take you deeper instead. When Swindall goes on to say, when we hit a rough spot, our tendency is to feel abandoned to become resentful, to think, how could God forget me? In fact, just the opposite is true for at that moment we are more than ever the object of His concern. Do you believe that? Do you believe that even in times of severe testing, God has a purpose, a reason for testing us? He will hide His life, He was testing Elijah as to whether or not He would trust Him more than the brook. He would trust Him more than the raven supply of food. Are you going to become dependent upon the creature comforts I've given you, upon the provision, or are you going to trust the provider? Maybe that's what God was doing. But whatever He was doing, we can rest assured that God is not a cosmic killjoy who loves to see His people suffer. God has a reason for what He's doing when He allows difficulty in suffering and trials in our lives. One is quickly go through these three verses. There will be on the screen for you. And just pick out as we read them what God's doing through trials. First Peter, chapter 1, verses 6 and 7, in this, the promise of a living hope in Christ that He's just talked about, in this, you greatly rejoice though now for a little while if need be, you have been grieved by various trials that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold at parishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. God knows what He's doing when He tries our faith with the fires of testing. James chapter 1, verses 2 through 4, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Now that seems backwards, doesn't it? Count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Why? Knowing our mind has to be renewed by Scripture. We have to understand. We have to know that the testing of your faith produces patience and patience. That patience habits perfect work that you may be perfect, mature and complete, lacking nothing. That's what God is doing. Growing us and then Romans, the book of Romans, chapter 5, verses 3 and 4. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing, okay, we're understanding what God's doing, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance or enduring this endurance or stick to itiveness. You see, faithfulness, tribulation produces that and then perseverance produces character and character then produces hope. God is always doing something good in our lives through trials. How often we just don't get that, we pray. God, I want to be holy, but in the back of our minds, we're thinking, Lord, please don't let that hurt too much. Things were praying, God, teach me complete dependence on you, but in the back of our minds we're thinking, but don't take away any of my creature comforts. Sometimes we're praying, Lord, help me to be spiritually strong. The back of our minds were thinking, but I don't want to suffer. You know what? That's like telling the army, make me a soldier, but let's just get basic training. This basic training, it's boot camp that makes you a good soldier that teaches you the discipline physically and mentally to respond well to authority and to do what you're told to do. That comes through basic training. God produces character, perseverance, hope in us, godliness in us through trials. God knows what He's doing. He always has reasons for testing us. In the final work that God is doing by our Brooke, Karith experiences, our lonely times, our timeouts is a work of preparation, a work of preparation. Here's the lesson, God is concerned that we are properly prepared for ministry. God has something He wants you to do, and He's concerned that you're properly prepared. It's just that His preparation, His School of Training doesn't always look like what we think it should be or what we'd like for it to be. Now there's not a verse in this passage we read this morning that teaches us this, but the wider context of chapters 17 and 18 give us this principle. I believe there is a sense in which the apex of Elijah's ministry occurs at Mount Parmel later in chapter 18. You're familiar with the story where he challenges the prophets of Bale to a contest to show who the real God is, and the God who answers by fire from heaven will be seen to be the true God. Okay. Now God has been doing everything up to that point in Elijah's life to prepare him for that crisis moment in his ministry. Remember last week we talked about Bale. Bale is the new fad religion of Israel. Jezebel has brought it with her. King Ahab has embraced it, and we talked about the fact that Bale was seen by the Phoenicians as the fertility God in the sense that he produced the crops from the ground. And so they saw Him as the God who brings rain, and those rains would often come through spring storms, which included lightning. So He was also seen as the God who rides on the storm. Those crops rejuvenized the land, just like we see in springtime here in West Virginia, because the range would rejuvenate the land and life would spring forth, He was seen as the God who revived life. And then of course the result of that would be to give food. He was seen as the God who gives food. All that was attributed to Bale. So you see what God is doing with Elijah up to the point of Mount Carmel is showing him that only he can provide those things, not Bale. So he says to Elijah, okay, they're telling you that Bale is the one who gives rain, I'm going to show you I'm the God who gives rain. Announce to Ahab, there'll be no rain, except at my word. So they're saying that Bale is the one who gives food, I'm going to show you I'm the only one who gives food. Go down to Brook Sheriff, I'm going to command Ravens to bring you food. And then go to the widow's house in Zareffeth. She only has enough meal and oil to make one final meal. But Elijah, I'm going to show you each day she'll go back and find there's just enough more meal and oil for today. And it would happen that way every day I'm the God who provides food. Oh, they're telling you that Bale is the God who revives life. Well, I'll show you who revives life. But widow's son dies and God uses Elijah to raise him from the dead. He's the one who gives life. The only thing God has not done that is attributed to Bale by the time Elijah gets to Mount Carmel is to give fire from heaven. Only thing that God hasn't shown him yet. But the reason Elijah can stand on Mount Carmel and say the God who answers by fire from heaven is the true God is because he knows God's already shown me. He does everything that Bale's supposed to do. Only God can do that. And so he produces a test that should have fallen right into the lap of the prophets of Bale. They claim that's what their God does. But Elijah knows by now only God can do what they say Bale does. You see, God had been preparing him through his timeout experiences to learn the lessons that it would take to issue that challenge in faith on Mount Carmel. Sometimes we think we are ready for our Mount Carmel's before we are. And God has to take us through a training process, a teaching process, a showing process. You know the result of the story. You know the end of the story. You know that God does give the lightning. But not lightning because there's not a cloud in the sky on Mount Carmel. He gives fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice and shows that he is God. Tom Watson, senior, founded the company International Business Machines, which became known, of course, as IBM, led that company for the first 40 years of its existence. And one of his greatest leadership moments was when a junior executive walked into his office one day. This junior executive had lost a ton of money for the company, $10 million in a risky venture that he was trying to get the company to move into. So he walked, he's called actually into Watson's office. And he walked in and the junior executive said, I guess you want my resignation, right? And Tom Watson said, are you serious? We just spent $10 million educating you. And that's exactly what God's doing with Elijah. All of the hardships he went through, God was investing in him to teach him what only God can do to prepare him for Mount Carmel. God has something for you to do. God has things for this church to do. And God is preparing you. No matter the rough waters you may go through, the rough times you go through. God's preparing you for something great. Trust him for that. Believe that Mount Carmel is coming. The time out at Carreath was not wasted time. God's doing a lot in that time. He is doing a work of protection, of providence, of proving, of preparation. We need to learn those lessons in our time outs. When it seems like we've been set aside and maybe we're no longer used to anyone else. Have you ever watched what really happens at a time out in the basketball game? Time outs in basketball games. The TV stations and people think, well, that's time for commercials. That's just a break in the action. And we might even think, it's time to run back and get another snack from the refrigerator or take a bathroom break or something like that. There's no action going on. And if you've ever been to a game and watched what happens during a time out, it may be the most strategic point in the game. All the managers are providing the players with towels and water bottles to refresh them to get back into the game. The team doctor or trainer is checking the knee brace on the star forwards knee to make sure it's still in place and will provide him the supporting needs. One of the assistant coaches is over at the scores table checking on how many fouls does their center have and exactly how many time outs want to make sure how many time outs do we have left. The other coaches are all huddled out on the court, devising the next play that will the team will run when they go back into the game and then the head coach goes over and calls the players together and he shows the play to them on a little board and reminds them all of their responsibilities. There is no more strategic time than the time out. That could be the most important time of the game and it can be the most important time of your life. In that very moment when you think this is a time out, there's no activity. God has removed me through illness or hardship or whatever it may be from the active lines of duty. Why? What's God doing? God is protecting you. God is providentially working all things together for good for you. God is proving you for his own purpose and he's preparing you for what he wants you to do next. Trust him in the time outs of your life. Let's pray together. Father it's hard to thank you for the time outs. They seem to come at random times, times when we would not expect them, times when we thought we would be doing other things and yet you have purposes beyond our ability to understand. I thank you, Father and I pray that you'd help us all to learn the lessons from time outs that Elijah was taught in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.