We all choose to place our trust in something or someone, unfortunately for the great majority of people that something or someone is not God. As with people’s retirement plans and pensions tied to the market, they see their life’s earnings instantaneously leave them due to dips in the market. For these people, as harsh as this may sound, their god was their money. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” People whose spouses have died have a 66% chance of dying themselves in the three months following the death of their spouse. As much as we all do and should love our spouses, this study shows that most worship our spouse like a god. Though we should naturally grieve the loss of our spouse, since we serve the One True God, we should not see our lives as over, but we should seek Him and ask how we should continue to serve Him and in what capacity now that our situation has changed. The suicide rate and death rate has been shown to increase after the loss of a child. So we should all pause for a second and honestly ask ourselves who our god is? Is it our spouse? Our children? Our money? Our career? Our intelligence? Our appearance? Whatever of these you choose they are fleeting and will one day fail you or leave you or fail to satisfy you. Only God has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5).

We all want long term plans, multiple options, guaranteed results, etc, but this is not a life of faith. We read in 1 Kings 17:1, “And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.” This prophet approaches this evil king without fear or trepidation and simply speaks forth the word of God with no concern of what will happen to him. Elijah’s trust is in God, not his circumstances. We read in 17:2-4, “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Get away from here and turn eastward...And it shall be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” After the brook dried up, he didn’t fret, instead we read in 17:8-9, “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” So Elijah continued to move along seamlessly in his life of faith, trusting wholly in God for direction. This trust led him to another confrontation with Ahab, followed by a test between himself and God with the 450 prophets of Baal and their god. As we read in 1 Kings 18, God prevailed. But immediately after this amazing victory, Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and we read in 19:3, “And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba,...”. We have a tendency to view those used greatly by God as superhuman, but in reality their strength is directly proportional to their faith. Though Elijah is an amazing man of faith, at this moment he wavers.

We read the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We can all talk a good game, but we must all ask ourselves where and who do we place our trust. We must understand if it is God AND something else, the “and” means we have not fully placed our trust in God. It’s not a multiple-choice question but only a question with two choices. The better question is true or false, I trust in God to direct my steps and my life. This is a question we should all pray over. Our spouses, our children, our careers, our money, our vacations, our education, etc., are simply blessings that have been bestowed upon us by a loving God. We must all decide whether we are going to trust the Creator or the created. We are all human and will falter as Elijah did. But if we want to experience the Spirit filled life that our loving God has prepared for us, we should place our eyes and our trust on Him and Him alone. Only through His Word can you begin to get to know Him.