“And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1Kings 19:9)
One of the things I love about the Bible is that it gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly. It doesn’t sugarcoat things. God shows us the best and worst of even His greatest servants. And that is important because sometimes we forget that the greatest men in all the Bible were still just men. They had faults and failures just like us,
Case in point, Elijah. God had just given Elijah one of the greatest victories ever seen up on Mount Carmel. He had just seen the miraculous happen when God sent fire down from heaven to consume his sacrifice, proving to 850 false prophets that Jehovah is the one, true, God.
Yet, as soon as Queen Jezebel heard of the demise of her false prophets, she was so angry that she sent word that she would kill Elijah. In fear, Elijah is in the run, hiding from this angry Queen. He goes into a cave to hide out. He thinks he is all alone in that cave, but he is not. God is there, too!
And God says to Elijah, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” In other words, God said, “What are you doing hiding out in this cave, Elijah? I didn’t tell you to come here. I am Jehovah God. I am the one who called you. I am the one who just proved myself by sending fire down from the sky. Why are you hiding out in a cave from an angry Queen?”
Maybe God is asking you the same question, today. “What doest thou, here?” Why are you letting fear, anxiety, and worry, determine your course of action? Maybe you are running from circumstances that seem overwhelming. Maybe you are even running from God (like that’s even possible).
God is calling you back to where you used to be. “What doest thou, here?”