He came to a cave, where he spent the night. But the Lord said to him,
What are you doing here, Elijah? (1 Kings 19:9 NLT)
"You have no business to be here" – that is
what it means. Yes, prophets and apostles could make mistakes, and they did; but
there is this about it – because they had seen, and were utterly abandoned to
that which they had seen of the Lord's mind, the Lord was abundantly able to
come in on their mistakes and sovereignly overrule them and teach His servants
something more of Himself and His ways. Now, you never find that with people who
are indefinite. The indefinite people, those who are not meaning business, who
are not abandoned, never do learn anything of the Lord. It is the people who
commit themselves, who let go and go right out in the direction of whatever
measure of light the Lord has given them, who, on the one hand, find their
mistakes – the mistakes of their very zeal – taken hold of by Divine sovereignty
and overruled; and, on the other hand, are taught by the Lord through their very
mistakes what His thoughts are, how He does things, and how He does not do them.
If we are going to wait in indefiniteness and uncertainty and do nothing until
we know it all, we shall learn nothing.
Have you not noticed that it is the men and
women whose hearts are aflame for God, who have seen something truly from the
Lord and have been mightily gripped by what they have seen, who are the people
that are learning? The Lord is teaching them; He does not allow their blunders
and their mistakes to engulf them in destruction. He sovereignly overrules, and
in the long run they are able to say, "Well, I made some awful blunders, but the
Lord marvelously took hold of them and turned them to good account." To be like
this, with vision which gathers up our whole being and masters us, provides the
Lord with the ground for looking after us even when we make mistakes – because
His interests are at stake, His interests and not our own are the concern of our
heart. The prophets and the apostles learned to know the Lord in wonderful ways
by their very mistakes, for they were the mistakes, not of their own stubborn
self-will, but of a real passion for God and for what He had shown them as to
His purpose.