February 11, 2017
Hello John Wesley members and friends,
What follows are my thoughts on I Kings 19:11-13. Reading these verses it occurred to me that people too often look for God but don't find God. It would be easy to say that people are looking for God in all the wrong places. That may be true but what is also true is that people expect God to conform to their expectations of who and what God should be. People want God to be forceful and demanding, they way they would be if they were a deity, but God is not like humanity. Humanity needs to focus less on amassing power and more on acknowledging what we don't know and can't do. Humility too often is seen as a weakness but it is humanity's greatest strength. Why? Because when humans are humble we come closest to imitating our loving God who constrains God's self in order for us to exercise our humanity in all it's imperfections. In these verses we read that God was present in a gentle whisper, this was so because God had nothing to prove to Elijah and has nothing to prove to any of you. Elijah stood in the mouth of the cave in order to have an encounter with God. You do not have to go to a cave but you, too, need an encounter with God. Search for it, expect it, receive it, and give witness to it wherever it appears!
Blessings,
Pastor Woods-Barrant