Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; He will neither fail you nor abandon you. (Deuteronomy 31:8 NLT)
If we are seeking to go on with
God to any degree beyond that which is commonly accepted as a true Christian
life; if we are called to pioneer the way for any further advance in spiritual
life or Divine service; if we are given a vision of God's will and purpose not
seen by the general mass of God's people – or even the larger number of the
servants of God – ours will be a lonely way. There are many other ways in which
we may feel aloneness. It may be for geographical reasons; or it may be because
of an inward experience through which we are passing; an experience or phase
which cannot be shared by another, even the one closest to us. All these and
other reasons may respectively become our "wilderness" in which Satan comes,
and, while there is a basic occasion, his business is to push things into the
extra realm of untruth and tell us that we are actually and utterly
alone. It is not a rare thing for him to tell a child of God that God
has left him or her.
Elijah verily believed that he
was the only one left in faithfulness to God, and he repeated his plaint several
times, "I only am left." He had lost sight of the possibility that the prophets
reported by Obadiah to have been hidden might still be in that underground
faithfulness, or some of them at least. But the Lord knew better and told
him of seven thousand unsurrendering saints who would not capitulate to Jezebel
or Baal. The fact is that what Elijah believed was positively not true. If we
look at things horizontally we shall only see so far, but if we look from heaven
we shall see much more.