Elijah was fearless in front of King Ahab in 1 Kings. In the beginning, Elijah had no fear. King Ahab was an evil king, worshipping Baal.
Elijah went in front of him and commanded no rain. During this time, God provided for Elijah in the miraculous. God sent ravens to feed Elijah and then when the brooks dried up, God led him to a widow to provide for him. Elijah then goes out and kills the false prophets in great numbers.
Elijah is given some supernatural strength from God to outrun Ahab’s chariot. So far this sounds like a story of victory, and it is. But on the same day Elijah won the battle, he ran for his life. He allowed Jezebel’s words and reputation to intimidate him.
“Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.” And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” (1 Kin. 19:2-4).
He wanted the Lord to take his life, (vs. 4). He was intimidated and fearful of Jezebel. Here God had provided for him over and over again, but he allowed Jezebel’s words to intimidate him.
God wants us to be full of faith not fear. We too could be compared to Elijah. There are days we are filled with faith and feel as though we can conquer our mountains and then there are days we are plagued with fear and run from our problems instead of confronting them with faith. We too like Elijah don’t always look back and remember what God did for us in the past and how He protected us, cared for us and provided for us.
We were not created to be faithless; we were created to be fearless. The Bible says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love,” (1 John 4:18).
When we know the love of the Father we can be fearless, because then we are perfected in His love. The Father loves us. He loves you and He loves me. That is reason enough to have faith.
We are going to have challenges and obstacles placed in front of us, similar to what Elijah experienced. It is what we do in those times of confrontation and situations that will determine if we will be fearless or faithless. We must always remember, God is on our side and, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).
I remember one time I was at Garden of the Gods and God led me to run up one of the rock formations. It wouldn’t seem like a big challenge to most, but to me it was. It was out of my comfort zone. I would run up and take a break in increments to stop and absorb what our Heavenly Father had for me.
I remember arriving at the point in which He finally told me to stop. I encountered Him and had a vision, it truly was supernatural. As I ran back down to my husband, I said to him, “I feel alive, I feel so alive, I feel free. Something was broken off of me!” I was so full of joy and happiness and I felt so alive because I was not faithless, I was fearless.
God presented me with something He wanted me to do and I was fearless in doing it. As a result, it filled me with faith and made me fearless and brought forth freedom.
God is going to put things in our path to build our faith. He is going to give us assignments to root the fear out of our lives. How do we accomplish the assignments? By embracing what He asks of us.
As we embrace them we will move through them more easily, instead of resisting what He asks of us. We will accomplish the task and in return it will create us to be fearless people, not faithless people.
Kathy DeGraw is the founder of DeGraw Ministries, (degrawministries.org). She is a prophetic deliverance minister who is passionate about releasing the love and power of God. She travels hosting conferences, teaching schools and evangelistic love tours. Kathy enjoys empowering and equipping people through writing and is the author of five books.