Although Elijah was an ordinary person like ourselves, he had considered the pathway he needed to tread if he was to bring pleasure to God!

First, he had to peruse and ponder God’s Word. Indeed, it was God’s Word that furnished him with material for his prayers. He meditated on it and then claimed its promises. His request that it should not rain was not a thoughtless or random one but He simply claimed what God had promised in His Word: ‘Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, lest the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens and there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish from the good land which the Lord is giving you’, Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 16-17. His concern was for God’s honour and to see God’s will done on earth.

Second, Elijah learned to tread the pathway of patient obedience. He must have been waiting patiently for some time to appear on the public scene. Nevertheless, no sooner had he arrived on it, God removed him from it! Just like Elijah, we must learn that none of us is indispensable to Him. Elijah was told, ‘Hide yourself’, chapter 17 verse 3 and he disappeared from the limelight for probably a year! It is not a sign of rejection or that the Lord no longer has a place or us in His plans. The pathway to becoming a ‘man of God’, like Elijah became, is often a mystery to us and calls for simple trust in what the Lord says. It is often a pathway of pain and suffering but the Lord has promised to be with us.

Elijah only moved, when God spoke to him. The word of the Lord always came to him and he discovered what it was by taking small steps of faith. He never demanded to know what God’s next move would be.