WHERE IS THE LORD GOD OF ELIJAH?

It was shortly before Christmas. Our local paper, The Pantagraph, had printed an article about the plight of Bloomington’s “street people”, describing the services available for them at the Home Sweet Home mission and the Salvation Army Safe Harbor shelter. Both provide what they believe to be the best care they can. Naturally, each approaches the need with a slightly different philosophy, and, also naturally, neither pushes salvation as a prerequisite for their help. (This is as it should be. If we say, “Okay, we’ll help you, but only if you first believe the way we tell you to believe,” we’ve lost the battle. Our help should be unconditional. A forced conversion may work but it’s rarely lasting. I’ve learned this from experience.)

Yet when I read the article, I felt something missing. Many of the homeless that seek help from these facilities are alcoholics and drug addicts. Both agencies agree that none of their addicted clients will ever successfully overcome their situations unless they kick their addictions. But how are they to do that? Counseling? Social service agencies? Force of will?

Back in the days of the Jesus Movement, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I would often read about men and women stumbling into places like David Wilkerson’s “Teen Challenge”. Some came looking for nothing more than a warm place and a cup of coffee at the Teen Challenge-run coffeehouses; some came because they had been witnessed to and were responding to the first real hope they’d had in years. When they came, they brought their addictions with them – some to drugs, some to alcohol, some to sex, some to all three. They were desperate. Many had tried to kick their habits, using every available social and psychological resource to no avail. Many were or had been close to death. They came, not because the Christians promised them another twelve-step program, but because the Christians promised them the unconditional love of God. And they came because God promised them something else – power. Not the power of control over others, but the power to see their addictions broken once and for all.

The stories differed in their details: Some of the addicts were miraculously healed on the spot; some had to go through withdrawal while their new Christian friends prayed with them and sweated with them and held them and cried with them; some battled with their addictions over weeks and months until those addictions were gradually removed. But these addicts were healed, miraculously, by the power of God and the Holy Spirit.

And that’s what I missed in the article I read. Those interviewed talked about rehabilitation, but not about healing; they talked about social services, but not about power. Perhaps it was a bias in the reporting; perhaps the healings are there, but kept quiet. Or, perhaps, the focus of the article was only on those who came in for a meal and a place to sleep, and not on those who were looking for something deeper. I hope that’s the case. I hope that wherever Christians are involved, evangelization is actively going on, coupled with prayer for healing. But I have to wonder.

Where is the excitement of the Jesus Movement? Yes, I know we’ve matured. There was much in the Jesus Movement that was almost embarrassingly immature (does anyone else remember talking about “getting high [or hooked] on Jesus”, and singing, “He’s the chocolate in my milk, He’s so real to me”?) But I think we’ve lost something along the way – the fresh innocence of belief, the feeling of “hey, man, God is awesome, He can do anything”. We approach our prayers and ministries with caution now, like elderly people gingerly picking our way upstairs, fearful lest we fall and break something. We warn ourselves and those to whom we minister that “this might not work”, and enter into our prayers already armed with reasons and excuses “just in case”.

I’m not of the school that teaches that you must never, ever doubt even a little bit if you want to see your prayers answered, and if they’re not answered, then you must have done something wrong – your faith wasn’t strong enough. We’re Christians, but we’re also humans, and humans, by nature, doubt. Each of us struggles every now and then even with the most basic questions: Is there really a God? Does He really love me? Did I really mean it when I prayed for salvation? So it’s no surprise that we have doubts about something like healing. Even Jesus didn’t expect us to have towering, unshakable faith; He asked only for faith the size of a mustard seed (which is about the size of a grain of table salt) to move mountains (Matthew 17:20).

I know Jesus berated the disciples in the same verse for the smallness of their faith, and I know that James speaks out strongly against doubt (James 1:6-8). But I don’t think the doubts they addressed were the nagging little doubts that pursue us; I think, rather, these are the doubts that result in our constantly changing our minds. “Sure, God can heal. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s really possible. Wait. Yes. On the other hand….” It’s the kind of thing that has come to be known as “waffling”, and it’s no wonder that kind of attitude gets no firm answers. And that’s the kind of attitude I think we’ve gotten into.

The Jesus Freaks of the ‘60s and ‘70s leapt into their faith with everything they had. When they read that Jesus commanded His followers be baptized, they went to the nearest river or lake or ocean and were joyfully immersed in full view of the world. When they read that the early Christians pooled their resources and lived in community, they went out and started Christian communes. When they read Jesus’ command to go and preach the Word to all men, they went to the slums and bars and shooting galleries (the equivalent of today’s crack houses) and preached the Word to the outcasts of society. And when they read that they were to heal, they healed.

After Elisha watched the prophet Elijah be taken up in the fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:11, 12), he prepared to take over for his mentor. He had seen the power of God working through Elijah, and one of the things he wanted was to experience that same power. The chance came almost immediately when Elisha reached the Jordan River. He had seen Elijah part the water with his rolled up cloak; now was the moment to see if God would be with him the same way. He took Elijah’s cloak and struck the water, calling as he did so, “Where now is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” (2 Kings 2:14) And God answered. He not only answered in that specific instance; Scripture tells us that Elisha went on to perform twice as many miracles as Elijah performed!

Where is that power today? Where is that eagerness to see the hand of God? We have matured, yes, and that, too, was commanded. But at what expense? Jesus challenged the Ephesian church, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen; repent and do the works you did at first”. (Revelation 2:4, 5a, RSV). We’ve matured, but in doing so, have we lost our youthful zeal?

As the world spins merrily toward its destruction, we’re seeing more hurting people than ever, more people bound by chains of addiction and disease, more people emotionally, psychologically, socially and physically crippled. The world offers them shining promises of power to overcome their disabilities, and to achieve their full potential; alternative religions even offer them the power to achieve godhood. They’ll be coming to us to see what we have as well. When they do, what will we offer them? When the alcoholics and addicts come to us for deliverance, will we have more than just our own twelve-step program? When the AIDS victims walk through our doors, will we do more than just hold their hands while they die?

My mind tells me to be careful; that we can’t hold out an empty promise to someone; that to offer hope and then not carry through is one of the worst things we can do to someone. But my heart burns to see the healing power of God – the power to break addictions and diseases and bonds of personal and generational sin. One of my favourite sayings is, “if it has been done, it can be done”. The power of God has set others free: therefore, the potential is still there. We can be a part of His healing if we want it badly enough.

If you feel the same, then I invite you to let this be your prayer: Lord, let me see Your power. Use me to heal, to bring people to You, to set people free, to raise the dead if it’s Your will.

Send Your power, Lord.