Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Elijah Teaches the Secret of the Giving Life
Oct 2nd, 2008
CommentaryMorning Meditation
Categories: Today's Headlines;Book Study;Exhortation

1. LONELY WRESTLINGS. "He took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried unto the LORD" (1 Kings 17:19-20). We are not specific enough in prayer, and we do not spend enough time in intercession, dwelling with holy ardor on each beloved name and on each heartrending case. What wonder that we achieve so little!

2. HUMILITY. "He stretched himself upon the child three times" (1 Kings 17:21). How wonderful that so great a man should spend so much time and thought on that slender frame and be content to bring himself into direct contact with that which might be thought to defile! It is a touching spectacle, but we must imitate it in some measure. We must seek the conversion of children, winning them before Satan or the world attach them. But to do so, we must stoop to them; becoming as little children to win little children for Jesus.

3. PERSEVERANCE. "He stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the LORD" (1 Kings 17:21). He was not soon daunted. It is thus that God tests the genuineness of our desire. These deferred answers lead us to lengths of holy boldness and pertinacity of which we should not otherwise have dreamed, but from which we shall never go back. "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint! (Luke 18:1).

And his supplication met with the favor of God. "The LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived" (1 Kings 17:22). And as the prophet presented him to the grateful and rejoicing mother, he must have been beyond all things gratified with her simple testimony to the reality and power of the life which the Holy Ghost had begotten within him: "Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth" (1 Kings 17:24). - F. B. Meyer