Someone prayed, “Dear Lord, help us to realize that some of our greatest times of devotion to you come when we are the loneliest. Amen.” At the end of the apostle Paul’s life and ministry, imprisoned in Rome for the second time, realizing he would not be released, soon facing death as a martyr, Paul described an occasion he felt abandoned and all alone. Yet in that desperate situation, he allowed it to bring him into a deep encounter with the Jesus. “At

This is a short devotional series on loneliness. We all feel lonely at times. • Being without company – experiencing too many lonely nights at home. • Being cut off from others – feeling that everybody has friends except us. • Feeling sad from being alone – lonely without family around us. Sometimes loneliness is our own fault. We’ve hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the walls of our personality. We push people away. We build walls instead of bridges. Sometimes loneliness comes because of

I have often recalled these words: “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” Fear is a natural human reaction to any difficult or dangerous undertaking. God doesn’t condemn it. But he doesn’t want us to be dominated by fear. The prophet Elijah is an example of this. He stepped onto Israel’s stage from nowhere and simply announced God’s message to the king: “There will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word” (1

Ahab was an evil king in Israel’s history who “did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him” (1 Kings 16:30). Elijah the prophet burst on the scene, boldly confronting him: “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve. . . .” (1 Kings 17:1). We could understand Elijah saying with boldness: “Ahab, I don’t serve you nor your dead gods. I serve the God who is alive, the One who is the

Old Testament Elijah was marked with courage. “Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, ‘As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives. . . .’” (1 Kings 17:1). Before considering the full conversation, I’m impressed with Elijah’s assurance that God is alive! In this story, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel lived as though God was dead and dormant, and they were leading their country into Baal worship. Elijah, however, served the God who is alive and real and