When God Doesn't Give You What You Want

Some things you can only learn with a nap and a snack and a cave.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

I once heard D.A. Carson say that the godliest thing you can do sometimes is go to bed. This is a phrase Daniel often recites to me when I’m tired and refusing to take a nap—or turn it in for the night. Like a toddler, I fight sleep just to get one more thing done. Or to prove that I’m in control. When really, if I just submitted to my limitations, I would save myself some energy—and the need to confess sin the next day.

When we think about the biblical characters, we don’t often think of them needing sleep. We talk of David fighting Goliath. Or Moses parting the Red Sea and performing wonders before Pharaoh. Our Savior healed blind men and went all the way to the cross.

But these godly men (and women) also came up against their limitations. Even in his human nature (not his deity), Jesus needed rest. He withdrew to pray, sleep, and was weary from long journeys. Jesus faced dark nights of the soul, where he cried out to God for relief. Sometimes God’s answer was to press on, and sometimes he pulled back in rest.

God is the only one who never slumbers or sleeps. He is the only one who never needs rest and never needs a moment to gather himself. Human beings feel the weight of our need for rest sometimes before our feet hit the floor in the morning (especially if we didn’t go to bed early enough).

One of the clearest stories in scripture of how God handles people based on their needs in the moment is in 1 Kings 19. Here we meet Elijah in a low moment. Jezebel is trying to kill him, and he’s been her nemesis for a while. Elijah is on the run and he’s ready to give up. He sits down under a tree and says, “let me die.”

No one could look at Elijah’s life and say he had it easy. He was a prophet to a rebellious people and monarchy. He was a voice in the wilderness, calling God’s people back to him, when they preferred to bow down to their idols and sacrifice their children to their gods. He spent a lot of time alone and misunderstood.

And here, he just can’t take it anymore. Death is preferable. He’s gone to the wilderness to regroup and retreat. He’s ready to tell God to find another mouthpiece—he’s out. In our humanness, we understand his reticence to keep going. We want to be liked and included. We want people to accept our message. We can only handle so much opposition before we wonder if our path is the right one.

Elijah is acting like a human being here, not the famous prophet who will one day be taken up to heaven (one of two men in scripture who don’t die the natural way). We are finite and unable to bear the weight of so much suffering. Sometimes we’ve just had enough—and that’s exactly what Elijah has had—enough. I suppose we could look at his response and condemn his lack of faith. When Jezebel comes after him, he responds like a man who doesn’t have God on his side. He runs, hides, and turns to despair.

But the text doesn’t condemn him, and the text doesn’t praise him. The writer of 1 Kings just tells us the facts and lets us see the compassionate care of God. I think if God wanted us to condemn Elijah’s actions, the writer would have included it. Instead, the focus is first on what the angel of the Lord does for him, and then what the very voice of God says and does on his behalf.

God first sends an angel to feed Elijah every time he wakes up from his nap. This man is utterly exhausted from the suffering inflicted on him by Jezebel. God knows this, so he sends an angel to draw near and gives him what he needs—physical strength. Then Elijah has the strength to go on a forty-day journey to a cave—and here he meets with God.

He tries to get God to reckon with him—to answer him for his persecution. What is it worth if God won’t see that he’s under constant threat for standing on God’s word in the darkness? “Don’t you see how I’ve stood by you?” he asks God in his angst. But God never condemns Elijah for his questions, nor answers directly why he had to feel so alone.

God doesn’t give Elijah answers until after he feeds him, gives him rest, and then shows him his power. Elijah wanted to see that he wasn’t alone. God wanted to meet his physical need before he could show him how greatly he was going to meet his spiritual and relational need.

Suffering has a way of disordering our perspective. We think we need answers when we really need a snack or a long nap. It seems so simple, but we’re whole people. Our loneliness in a trial is as impacted by God’s powerful care as is our need to fall asleep at night. Sometimes we need to see him remove our enemies. Sometimes we need him to force us to go to sleep—or raise our blood sugar. He’s that intricately connected. There is not a hair of our head he doesn’t number, and not a part of our bodies that he doesn’t declare his. When we’re undone by suffering, persecution, or trial, we can’t always trace his providential hand until we’ve let that same hand feed us and give us rest. We needs his compassionate care of our physical frame as much as we need him to fight for us out there.

Psalm 103 talks about God remembering our frame and knowing that we are dust. The way God cares for his people varies based on our needs, but he always knows our limitations and responds accordingly. Isaiah 42 talks about him not breaking a bruised reed. When we’re bruised like Elijah, or crumbling under our frailty like in Psalm 103, God adapts to meet us. It might not always be what we want, but it’s always what we need.

In our lowest moments, God’s not standing at the edge of our bed waiting for us to be the hero. He’s not screaming in our ear to snap out of it or get happy. He’s a good Father, who finds us in the cave, gives us a snack and says, “go back to bed, I’ve got this.” God doesn’t command Elijah to fix the problem that is Jezebel. He lets him sleep and get replenished and then shows him what was true all along—he will fight his own battles.

God does give Elijah the answers he’s looking for, but only after he shows him his power in creation and gets him healthy. Only then could Elijah receive what God was giving him, which was exactly what he thought was impossible. There were prophets who had yet to bow the knee to Baal. There was a partner for Elijah who would be trained to take his place. Jezebel would not get the last word.

We’re not told Elijah’s response to God’s deliverance. We rarely are given those glimpses. But I think it’s because the point here is not Elijah. It’s how God deals with his broken people. He wants us to be healthy. He wants to walk alongside us in the process towards healing. Sometimes we have to hide under a bush and cry “no one is with me, let me die,” before we see the angel sitting next to us guiding us to peaceful, healing sleep. We need to rest before we can see how God will deliver us. We aren’t always the hero. There is only one of Him. He will work to get us healthy, showing us our limitations, guiding us towards the way towards healing that can only come from a God who never drops the ball when his people are brought low.