So, we went in there and I stood at the door. I looked around. They had people dancing. They even had the staff dancing on the bar. Oh, it was wild. I thought – “This is great.” I look over, and I see one straight away. So I went over. He went up to the bar, and he’s ordering all the drinks. There was a girl dancing on the bar, and I went and just stood behind him and waited. He turned around, and he was shocked.
He said – “What are you doing here?” I said: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here. This is not what you were called to be. What are you doing here?” He’s got his back to the bar, arm full of drinks. I’m saying: “What are you doing here?” I said to him in a different way: “What happened to you that caused you to lose your confidence in God and come and try and find confidence in a bottle? What happened to you? What went wrong?”
He stood there holding the drinks, all the music’s going around, and he began to weep. He shared how his heart had been broken because a relationship he’d had broke-up. I said: “This is not going to help you. You need to come back to the Lord. You need to come back to the place you were called.”
So when God says: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” He’s really saying, “Elijah, how on earth did you get yourself here? We were having a revival. Where did you go? I turn my head to talk to the angels, and the next minute, you’re in a cave. I’ve been telling the angels about all the work my servant Elijah’s doing. ‘Woah. Did you see him? Fire from heaven! Killed all the prophets! Woah. Got that old ugly queen really worried. Man, look at my servant Elijah!’ What are you doing here in this cave?”
Elijah starts a story – “You don’t understand. I’m the only one faithful and they all want to kill me. I’m only trying to serve you. They just want to kill me, it’s not really fair. You never told me it was going to be this hard.”
“I become a cell leader – I never knew it was going to be this hard, that people would be not nice to me, and after I’m kind to them, then they walk away. They say bad things about me. So, I don’t like.”
“It’s only me who’s been faithful.” How can hiding in a cave be faithful? You see, he’s a very confused man because he let a spiritual pressure confuse him. God says: “Well actually Elijah, there’re 7000 others who haven’t been involved in this stuff.” “Really? I didn’t see that. I didn’t know about that.”
So God spoke to him twice – “Elijah, what are you doing here? Elijah, what are you doing here?” In other words, He’s saying – “You don’t belong here. You need to return to your assignment.” So He spoke to Him – “Go back to your assignment.”
Notice what He tells him to do. Get this – “I want you to raise-up some disciples. I want you to anoint others. I want you to multiply your ministry. I want you to multiply the ministry. You’ve been doing this all alone too long. You need to think strategically. You need to raise-up others who’ll carry the ministry. I’ll even tell you who they are so you don’t have to think – “Oh, there’re no one. Not him. Not him. There’s no one.”
God said: “I’ll tell you who they are. Elisha, and Hazael, and Jehu. You invest in those people. You release what’s in your life on them, and then you watch. The job you couldn’t finish, they’ll finish it up.” God reveals his intention – that he should raise up disciples, that he should multiply his ministry. But it started by returning to his post.
Now in this passage here tonight, you see the result of spiritual pressure. This pastor that called me, he was incredibly discouraged. I said to him – “It’s just spiritual pressure. It’s just a spiritual attack and you’re sitting under the tree like Elijah. I’ll stand with you. I’ll pray for you. But you need to stand up again, come out of that cave, go back to your assignment, go back to praying, go back to ministering, go back to doing what you need to do. You need to rise up again.” I told him how to stand up in prayer, how to recognise it was just a spiritual attack.