Elijah means my God is God.

We are looking at the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17. He is a Tishbite from Tishba that is a part of Gilead.
One day Elijah shows up to King Ahab. King Ahab is the worst king of all time. He is married to Jezebel. She is terribly evil. Elijah said to the king that there will be no rain or dew until he says so.

1 Kings 17:2-4 MSG God then told Elijah, “Get out of here, and fast. Head east and hide out at the Kerith Ravine on the other side of the Jordan River. You can drink fresh water from the brook; I’ve ordered the ravens to feed you.”

He went and did according to the Lord. The ravens would feed him. This is interesting because ravens are scavenger birds. They eat what they see. They don’t save anything for later. So how would or could a raven possibly feed him? Yet they did. They fed Elijah everyday twice a day. God keeps His promises.

1 Kings 17:5-6 MSG Elijah obeyed God’s orders. He went and camped in the Kerith canyon on the other side of the Jordan. And sure enough, ravens brought him his meals, both breakfast and supper, and he drank from the brook.

The work Elijah had was to have enough faith that the ravens would eat for themselves and then bring enough for him. He also drank from the brook until it dried up. Then God tells him to go to this place called Zarephath. Zarephath is 130 miles from the brook. Again, his work is to have enough faith just just keep going.

1 Kings 17:10-11 MSG So he got up and went to Zarephath. As he came to the entrance of the village he met a woman, a widow, gathering firewood. He asked her, “Please, would you bring me a little water in a jug? I need a drink.” As she went to get it, he called out, “And while you’re at it, would you bring me something to eat?”

When he gets to Zarephath he sees a woman and asks her for water. He then asks for a little bit of bread. The woman said she only had a little bit of flour and oil and that she is getting sticks to make the last of the flour into bread for her and her son and then they will die.

1 Kings 17:12 MSG She said, “I swear, as surely as your God lives, I don’t have so much as a biscuit. I have a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a bottle; you found me scratching together just enough firewood to make a last meal for my son and me. After we eat it, we’ll die.”

Then Elijah asks her to give him bread first, but says that if she does this then her flour and oil won’t run out until the rains come.

1 Kings 17:13-14 MSG ​​Elijah said to her, “Don’t worry about a thing. Go ahead and do what you’ve said. But first make a small biscuit for me and bring it back here. Then go ahead and make a meal from what’s left for you and your son. This is the word of the God of Israel: ‘The jar of flour will not run out and the bottle of oil will not become empty before God sends rain on the land and ends this drought.’”

She went and did as he said. She did the next thing.

1 Kings 17:15-16 MSG And she went right off and did it, did just as Elijah asked. And it turned out as he said—daily food for her and her family. The jar of meal didn’t run out and the bottle of oil didn’t become empty: God’s promise fulfilled to the letter, exactly as Elijah had delivered it!

Many times we feel like all we have is a little flour and a little oil and what this story is illustrating is that if we are willing to do what God asks us to do, it won’t run out. We simply need to do what God says to do.

Yet the story deepens. The son gets sick and dies. The woman says to Elijah did you come to bring doom to me. Then Elijah takes the son upstairs and prayed over him and he came back to life.

1 Kings 17:17-24 MSG Later on the woman’s son became sick. The sickness took a turn for the worse—and then he stopped breathing. The woman said to Elijah, “Why did you ever show up here in the first place—a holy man barging in, exposing my sins, and killing my son?”
Elijah said, “Hand me your son.” He then took him from her bosom, carried him up to the loft where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he prayed, “O God, my God, why have you brought this terrible thing on this widow who has opened her home to me? Why have you killed her son?”
Three times he stretched himself out full-length on the boy, praying with all his might, “God, my God, put breath back into this boy’s body!” God listened to Elijah’s prayer and put breath back into his body—he was alive! Elijah picked the boy up, carried him downstairs from the loft, and gave him to his mother. “Here’s your son,” said Elijah, “alive!”
The woman said to Elijah, “I see it all now—you are a holy man. When you speak, God speaks—a true word!”

Then 3 years passed. Elijah goes back to King Ahab. King Ahab was looking for him all this time but Elijah kept disappearing. God was providing for each step Elijah took. King Ahab called Elijah a troublemaker, but Elijah said no King Ahab is the troublemaker, by not following God and by following a false god.

So Elijah challenged King Ahab. Elijah’s God against King Ahab's god. They set it up and Elijah mocked them. The priests of King Ahab did all they could think to do. They even cut themselves. Nothing happened.

Now it was Elijah’s turn. He rebuilt the altar. He dug a trench around it then drenched the bull altar with 12 barrels of water.

1 Kings 18:36-38 MSG When it was time for the sacrifice to be offered, Elijah the prophet came up and prayed, “O God, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, make it known right now that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I’m doing what I’m doing under your orders. Answer me, God; O answer me and reveal to this people that you are God, the true God, and that you are giving these people another chance at repentance.” Immediately the fire of God fell and burned up the offering, the wood, the stones, the dirt, and even the water in the trench.

This is significant because the false god Baal of King ahab is the god of rain and dew. Do you know how dry it is to have no dew? The god of fire is also Baal. This is why our God is all God. The God of everything. This is why fire came down and burned up all the water

1 Kings 18:39 MSG All the people saw it happen and fell on their faces in awed worship, exclaiming, “God is the true God! God is the true God!”

What can we take away from this story?
Elijah is confident - He actually believes that God is alive.
We need to stop acting like God is dead. God is alive and well. We can trust Him through it all. When we hear the miracles that have happened we must believe they will happen for us. He did it then and he’ll do it again.

Romans 4:20 NIV Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,

We can make our faith stronger by giving praise and glory to God.

1 Peter 1:6-7 MSG I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

Romans 8:5-8 MSG Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

We cannot have an encounter with Jesus and walk away the same. When we do that, that was just a feeling, not an encounter.

John 14:15 NIV If you love me, keep my commands.

James 5:17 NIV Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years.

God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Elijah’s superpower was radical obedience. If we just do what God tells us to do, everything will be ok. Our obedience will outdo our skills every time.

John 14:15 NIV If you love me, keep my commands.

The greatest test of our love of Jesus is our obedience to Him without knowing the answers. Praying for clarity is the worst prayer we can pray. It is selfish, because what we are praying for is all the answers so we can feel comfort before doing anything.

Do the next thing. When we obey God with the next thing we will be in the exact place He wants us to be. We don’t get to have it our way. Besides, it is better when it’s His way.

Galatians 5:22-23 MSG But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

As we keep doing the next thing God shows up, because He is faithful. God has commanded and He says this on all the things He told Elijah. He has prepared the place before we get there. God’s voice sounds like His word. It doesn’t sound like us. We need the Bible, so that we know how to hear Him.