Elijah the Tishbite. I often ask him to pray for our ministry. There’s him, my friend Murray (a good, devout man who passed away), and St. Seraphim of Sarov--that’d be my posse, the bros I go to when I need a hand in a pinch.
When I say that Pentecost is the gateway to Ordinary Time and that the Acts of the Apostles is a blueprint to the Christian Life … it’s Elijah who I look to as a model of what a Christian ought to be.
Elijah’s life is deeply rooted within the “not only” and fearlessly utilizes the dunamis. In so doing, he’s completely abandoned himself to the will of the Father.
I often ask God about what’s in the Secret Sauce that made Elijah.
Secret Sauce or not, it’s clear to me that Elijah was drinking from a Fire Hose of Grace … but we have something greater than Elijah here--whatever was in Elijah’s Secret Sauce pales in comparison to what we now have access to. The redemptive sacrifice of Jesus opened not merely the Fire Hose of Grace, but it let loose the floodgates!
If you, my fellow Evangelist, want to operate within the Grace and Power of God, what would you rather drink from, a fire hose or a floodgate? I’ll tell you what I’d rather drink from: the floodgate.
Please God, give me a floodgate and don’t let me settle for a fire hose! I want to stand in front of that dam and consume as much that those floodgates release.
By our Baptism, the same explosive power that raised Jesus from the dead abides in you (Romans 8:11). Elijah never had that. Every single time we wilfully receive the sacraments, this same explosive power is strengthened and rekindled. Elijah never had that and yet, we don’t act like it. We acquiesce back into this humdrum Christian living that seems to pay no attention to the Kingdom of God that surrounds us, we seem to pay no attention to the Sea of Grace all around us, and we act as if there's nothing special about the Catholic faith that sets us apart from all the other faiths, philosophies, and religions … Elijah never had that either. He never acquiesced.
You wanna know what he had? Elijah had grit.
Attitude
Commitment
Passion
Desire
That’s it. That’s his not-so-secret, secret sauce. Just like successful entrepreneurs, just like the canonized Saints, Elijah is just like you and I. The difference here is that you and I have access to the Floodgates of Grace, whereas Elijah had a fire hose--a mere juice box straw compared to a flood gate.
My friends, I pray that you and I may know “the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe” (Ephesians 1:19). I pray that we will seize the grit needed to commit to drawing ourselves closer to Jesus through daily scripture, frequent reception of the Sacraments, a commitment to kneeling before the floodgates, and a moment-to-moment surrender to the Heart of God. I pray that Elijah would be our model of Christian living.
Great article