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“What am I even doing here?”
The question slipped out through my tears before I could stop it. I was processing yet another hard goodbye to a friend with my husband, which somehow led to questioning my entire purpose serving in a country I loved.
Maybe this questioning came from not being as involved in our ministry due to our two little people. Maybe it was from a lack of witnessing more immediate fruit from our efforts. Maybe it was from the pain of continuous hellos and goodbyes.
Maybe it was all of the above and then some.
I thought I would be seeing so much more come to fruition at this point, yet in this season it felt like one disappointment after another kept bulldozing my frail optimism.
1 Kings 19 depicts one of the most beautiful reminders of God working through our unmet expectations in unexpected ways. Elijah had been faithfully serving the Lord despite the Israelites’ refusal to repent. But as he is fleeing Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife, he tells God he has had enough. The prophet was deeply despondent, to the point of asking the Lord to take his life.
“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 19:20).
But the Lord replies: “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by” (v.11).
A powerful wind. An earthquake. A fire.
Yet, the Lord was not in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire.
He came in a gentle whisper. And that whisper came with both a command for Elijah to get back up as well as a promise: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal…” (v.18).
God had always been working in the Israelites’ hearts even when Elijah couldn’t see it.
Friends, may we not lose hope when our disappointments come crashing down on us. We may never see the fruits of our labor, and we may face more losses than victories, but I pray we hold fast to our good Father who is with us through it all and is always, always working.
What have been some of your unmet expectations? Where in those disappointments do you need the Lord to work in your heart?
As shared in the devotional above, I have been struggling with having to say goodbye to so many dear friends over the years of living overseas and even more so lately. It feels like just when I get close with someone or even a group of people, things change, people move, etc. Instead of bringing these heartaches to the Lord, I think I have been grieving quietly to myself until I explode and my emotions get the best of me.
I want to lament well about these things with Jesus, the good Shepherd of my heart, and ask for Him to build a resilience and trust in me to keep going with the work He has for us here- even when so many leave, or my main role is with my children, or the fruit is slow.