"Elvis Has Left the Building"
1 Kings 19:1-9a
The psychology professor, wanting to prove a point with his students, told them they were going to discuss the emotional extremes that many mentally disturbed people go through. “For example,” he asked one student, “what’s the opposite of joy?” “Sadness,” the student answered. “The opposite of depression?” he asked a young lady. “Elation,” she replied. Turning to a young man from Texas, he asked, “And the opposite of woe?” “Well sir,” the cowboy replied, “I reckon the opposite of whoa would be giddy up.” Giddy up is precisely what Elijah did.
Don’t overlook the fact that at this point he had every practical reason to have been riding high; he was coming off a fantastic spiritual victory. He had preached one of the greatest sermons of all time; he had confronted some 850 pagan prophets and exposed them for the heretics that they were—and then eliminated them. Because of his faith and obedience, God had sent down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice he’d placed on the altar and hours later sent a downpour of rain on a land that hadn’t had a drop for three years. But what the idolatrous King Ahab of Israel and all those prophets of Baal and Asherah had failed to accomplish, Queen Jezebel made happen in one felled swoop! Enraged about the death of her prophets—because they told her exactly what she wanted to hear and because they prophesied of her future power and glory and because they deified her and Ahab and because they perpetuated their kingdom—Jezebel vowed upon her own life to have Elijah killed. And as fear and fatigue and anxiety and depression seized Elijah’s very soul, he checked out; he beat it; he split that scene; he left the building.
“Elvis has left the building!” means that the show is over and that you should go on home. It was announced at the end of Elvis Presley’s concerts to encourage fans to accept that there would be no further encores. I understand that the phrase has now worked its way into a verb: “to Elvis,” which means to make a sudden exit. That’s exactly what Elijah did. The overwhelming hero of Mount Carmel had rapidly turned into the vanquished heel of the desert—on the run from Jezebel.
Statistics show that in an average week, 50,000 people visit the Minirth-Meier Clinics for therapy. Seventy-five percent of these clients will have either clinical depression or some sort of anxiety disorder. Frankly, it happens to a whole lot of us, so let me emphasize that depression can be a very real problem. And before you arrogantly think that you’re too spiritual for it to happen to you, let me remind you that it happened to Elijah, one of the greatest saints to ever walk this planet.
Indeed, Elijah becomes a case study in clinical depression as this passage unfolds. It’s clear that he experienced many of the classic symptoms: fear (vs. 3); suicidal tendencies (vs. 4); excessive tiredness (vs. 5); and eventually overblown feelings of rejection (vs. 10). And he experienced this depression for a rather long time—nearly two months. So why would a man who had experienced some of the most powerful displays of God’s power be suddenly be crippled by fear and hopelessness and despair? Why would he run away to some desolate corner of the world and yearn to die? As in almost all cases of clinical depression, there’s probably a compilation of underlying reasons.
But personally I see in Elijah a man who’s just proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord is the one true God, that the Lord is the sole source of Israel’s salvation. Yet even after the magnificent Mount Carmel display, most of Israel kept right on worshiping those recently defeated idols. So of course he was depressed! Surely he wondered, What more can I do to turn these people’s hearts back to God? For me, Elijah’s heartache brings to mind Jesus brooding over the holy city and speaking aloud His sorrow: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of God’s messengers! How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings—but you refused and turned away!”
Elijah’s distress reminds us that even God’s most dynamic servants can suffer from depression. And it’s not necessarily due to a lack of faith; and it’s not necessarily due to an immoral lifestyle. Remember, Elijah was the man of God in his day—faithful, moral, and obedient. But at this point he found himself so deep down in the depths of despair that any measure of up seemed impossible to him.
But that’s not where God left him. Unlike some overzealous Christians, God didn’t settle for a quick diagnosis: “Well, sorry Elijah. I’m afraid you have a chemical imbalance, and Prozac hasn’t been invented yet, so I just can’t help you!” No, long before psychiatry was ever thought of, long before healing could be bought in little purple pills, long before we had clinics and psychiatrists and psychologists (not intending, of course, any disrespect to psychiatrists or psychologists or the clinics they run), long before all of those things, God healed a man of depression—and it wasn’t an isolated instance. For what He did for Elijah, He can do for you and me.
Let’s look more closely at how God reacted to Elijah’s depression. First, the Lord recognized that Elijah’s depression wasn’t an imaginary problem; it was real; it was so tangible you could almost cut it with a knife. And God did not say, “Hey Elijah! Get a hold of yourself! Move past this sinful attitude! Where’s your faith, man?” No, God didn’t treat Elijah gruffly at all. In fact, in answer to Elijah’s prayer to die—and I just love this—God just let him sleep! After some snooze time God sent an angel to feed him, and then He let him sleep some more! Finally when the prophet was good and awake, God sent him south into the desert for forty days and nights. In all that time, it’s not recorded that God said a word; He didn’t offer any counsel; He didn’t set Elijah down for a face-to-face talk. Over the course of that time, Elijah is nurtured; he’s given time to rest and to think and to recuperate.
When God knew the time was right—as we read later on in this chapter—He stepped in to deal with Elijah’s depression, treating the prophet in four divinely psychological steps. First, God sent him to church. I know; that’s not exactly what this passage says! But God did send him to Mount Sinai so that he would return to the sacred place where God had met Moses and had given His laws to the people. Obviously, God gave Elijah special strength to travel this distance—more than 200 miles—without additional food. Like Moses before him and Jesus after him, Elijah fasted for forty days and nights. (Centuries later, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus would meet together on the Mount of Transfiguration!) What the mountain of God was for Elijah is what the church is for us. For pulling together with other nonjudgmental believers is one of the best ways to deal with depression. When church is done right, it’s the place where we listen to each other and help one another; as the apostle Paul instructed, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Once the Lord had Elijah where He could talk things through with him, God had Elijah tell Him what the problem was. He asked His prophet, “What are you doing here?” not just once but a second time as well. Didn’t God know? Of course He did, but He knew that Elijah needed to vocalize all that was going wrong in his life; Elijah needed to explain his perspective of the problem. And Elijah’s perspective—hidden in the midst of his complaints—was that God wasn’t doing anything, that he’d been beating his head against the wall and still everything was falling apart around him. Feeling very much alone in all his endeavors, Elijah expressed that underlying everything was his sense of abandonment. And that’s when God stepped in and gently dealt with all the false beliefs and all the false ideas that were fueling Elijah’s depression.
Jesus put it this way: “the truth shall set you free.” Why is that? I believe it’s because false ideas and false beliefs—especially those about God—have the power to put us and hold us in bondage. So much of our lives are built around what we believe to be true. If our foundations are based on wrong information or wrong impressions, the result can be devastating. Indeed, the result can be depression.
Then when we fall into depression, it’s easy for us to erroneously think that God isn’t doing much of anything—that we’re all alone in seeking and following God’s will. If we remain in that frame of mind, we gradually lose hope, we gradually lose confidence, and it becomes awfully hard to see God at work in our lives. In times like those it is critical that we realize—just like Elijah did—that God really is working in our lives even when we don’t necessarily see Him doing so.
When the allied troops were making their way across Europe encountering Hitler’s forces, they came across a bombed out building with this inscription scrawled on a basement wall: “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when it’s not shown. And I believe in God even when He doesn’t speak.” That message provided the encouraging hope they needed to keep going. Remembering that message can prod us onward as well.
Once the Lord got Elijah back to church and got him to tell Him what was wrong and corrected some of his false thinking and beliefs, then God completed the counseling session by giving Elijah something to do. God patched up his wounded spirit and told him that it was time for him to make himself useful again. I’m not sure which stage of divine treatment you’re in, but rest assured that God’s ultimate goal is to hear you and to heal you and to make you useful again. Just trust Him with every step of the process, every step on the journey, every step of the way.
Let us pray: Lord, it’s hard to see to the next step when we’re hurting, when heartache is weighing us down. It’s hard to keep going when we can’t see our prayers answered or our efforts confirmed or our loved ones accept Your salvation. But help us to keep the faith in the midst of it all, to rely upon Your will, to trust in Your timing, to remember that You are God and You are in control. In Jesus’ name.
1 Kings 19:1-9a
The psychology professor, wanting to prove a point with his students, told them they were going to discuss the emotional extremes that many mentally disturbed people go through. “For example,” he asked one student, “what’s the opposite of joy?” “Sadness,” the student answered. “The opposite of depression?” he asked a young lady. “Elation,” she replied. Turning to a young man from Texas, he asked, “And the opposite of woe?” “Well sir,” the cowboy replied, “I reckon the opposite of whoa would be giddy up.” Giddy up is precisely what Elijah did.
Don’t overlook the fact that at this point he had every practical reason to have been riding high; he was coming off a fantastic spiritual victory. He had preached one of the greatest sermons of all time; he had confronted some 850 pagan prophets and exposed them for the heretics that they were—and then eliminated them. Because of his faith and obedience, God had sent down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice he’d placed on the altar and hours later sent a downpour of rain on a land that hadn’t had a drop for three years. But what the idolatrous King Ahab of Israel and all those prophets of Baal and Asherah had failed to accomplish, Queen Jezebel made happen in one felled swoop! Enraged about the death of her prophets—because they told her exactly what she wanted to hear and because they prophesied of her future power and glory and because they deified her and Ahab and because they perpetuated their kingdom—Jezebel vowed upon her own life to have Elijah killed. And as fear and fatigue and anxiety and depression seized Elijah’s very soul, he checked out; he beat it; he split that scene; he left the building.
“Elvis has left the building!” means that the show is over and that you should go on home. It was announced at the end of Elvis Presley’s concerts to encourage fans to accept that there would be no further encores. I understand that the phrase has now worked its way into a verb: “to Elvis,” which means to make a sudden exit. That’s exactly what Elijah did. The overwhelming hero of Mount Carmel had rapidly turned into the vanquished heel of the desert—on the run from Jezebel.
Statistics show that in an average week, 50,000 people visit the Minirth-Meier Clinics for therapy. Seventy-five percent of these clients will have either clinical depression or some sort of anxiety disorder. Frankly, it happens to a whole lot of us, so let me emphasize that depression can be a very real problem. And before you arrogantly think that you’re too spiritual for it to happen to you, let me remind you that it happened to Elijah, one of the greatest saints to ever walk this planet.
Indeed, Elijah becomes a case study in clinical depression as this passage unfolds. It’s clear that he experienced many of the classic symptoms: fear (vs. 3); suicidal tendencies (vs. 4); excessive tiredness (vs. 5); and eventually overblown feelings of rejection (vs. 10). And he experienced this depression for a rather long time—nearly two months. So why would a man who had experienced some of the most powerful displays of God’s power be suddenly be crippled by fear and hopelessness and despair? Why would he run away to some desolate corner of the world and yearn to die? As in almost all cases of clinical depression, there’s probably a compilation of underlying reasons.
But personally I see in Elijah a man who’s just proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord is the one true God, that the Lord is the sole source of Israel’s salvation. Yet even after the magnificent Mount Carmel display, most of Israel kept right on worshiping those recently defeated idols. So of course he was depressed! Surely he wondered, What more can I do to turn these people’s hearts back to God? For me, Elijah’s heartache brings to mind Jesus brooding over the holy city and speaking aloud His sorrow: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of God’s messengers! How often I’ve longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings—but you refused and turned away!”
Elijah’s distress reminds us that even God’s most dynamic servants can suffer from depression. And it’s not necessarily due to a lack of faith; and it’s not necessarily due to an immoral lifestyle. Remember, Elijah was the man of God in his day—faithful, moral, and obedient. But at this point he found himself so deep down in the depths of despair that any measure of up seemed impossible to him.
But that’s not where God left him. Unlike some overzealous Christians, God didn’t settle for a quick diagnosis: “Well, sorry Elijah. I’m afraid you have a chemical imbalance, and Prozac hasn’t been invented yet, so I just can’t help you!” No, long before psychiatry was ever thought of, long before healing could be bought in little purple pills, long before we had clinics and psychiatrists and psychologists (not intending, of course, any disrespect to psychiatrists or psychologists or the clinics they run), long before all of those things, God healed a man of depression—and it wasn’t an isolated instance. For what He did for Elijah, He can do for you and me.
Let’s look more closely at how God reacted to Elijah’s depression. First, the Lord recognized that Elijah’s depression wasn’t an imaginary problem; it was real; it was so tangible you could almost cut it with a knife. And God did not say, “Hey Elijah! Get a hold of yourself! Move past this sinful attitude! Where’s your faith, man?” No, God didn’t treat Elijah gruffly at all. In fact, in answer to Elijah’s prayer to die—and I just love this—God just let him sleep! After some snooze time God sent an angel to feed him, and then He let him sleep some more! Finally when the prophet was good and awake, God sent him south into the desert for forty days and nights. In all that time, it’s not recorded that God said a word; He didn’t offer any counsel; He didn’t set Elijah down for a face-to-face talk. Over the course of that time, Elijah is nurtured; he’s given time to rest and to think and to recuperate.
When God knew the time was right—as we read later on in this chapter—He stepped in to deal with Elijah’s depression, treating the prophet in four divinely psychological steps. First, God sent him to church. I know; that’s not exactly what this passage says! But God did send him to Mount Sinai so that he would return to the sacred place where God had met Moses and had given His laws to the people. Obviously, God gave Elijah special strength to travel this distance—more than 200 miles—without additional food. Like Moses before him and Jesus after him, Elijah fasted for forty days and nights. (Centuries later, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus would meet together on the Mount of Transfiguration!) What the mountain of God was for Elijah is what the church is for us. For pulling together with other nonjudgmental believers is one of the best ways to deal with depression. When church is done right, it’s the place where we listen to each other and help one another; as the apostle Paul instructed, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Once the Lord had Elijah where He could talk things through with him, God had Elijah tell Him what the problem was. He asked His prophet, “What are you doing here?” not just once but a second time as well. Didn’t God know? Of course He did, but He knew that Elijah needed to vocalize all that was going wrong in his life; Elijah needed to explain his perspective of the problem. And Elijah’s perspective—hidden in the midst of his complaints—was that God wasn’t doing anything, that he’d been beating his head against the wall and still everything was falling apart around him. Feeling very much alone in all his endeavors, Elijah expressed that underlying everything was his sense of abandonment. And that’s when God stepped in and gently dealt with all the false beliefs and all the false ideas that were fueling Elijah’s depression.
Jesus put it this way: “the truth shall set you free.” Why is that? I believe it’s because false ideas and false beliefs—especially those about God—have the power to put us and hold us in bondage. So much of our lives are built around what we believe to be true. If our foundations are based on wrong information or wrong impressions, the result can be devastating. Indeed, the result can be depression.
Then when we fall into depression, it’s easy for us to erroneously think that God isn’t doing much of anything—that we’re all alone in seeking and following God’s will. If we remain in that frame of mind, we gradually lose hope, we gradually lose confidence, and it becomes awfully hard to see God at work in our lives. In times like those it is critical that we realize—just like Elijah did—that God really is working in our lives even when we don’t necessarily see Him doing so.
When the allied troops were making their way across Europe encountering Hitler’s forces, they came across a bombed out building with this inscription scrawled on a basement wall: “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when it’s not shown. And I believe in God even when He doesn’t speak.” That message provided the encouraging hope they needed to keep going. Remembering that message can prod us onward as well.
Once the Lord got Elijah back to church and got him to tell Him what was wrong and corrected some of his false thinking and beliefs, then God completed the counseling session by giving Elijah something to do. God patched up his wounded spirit and told him that it was time for him to make himself useful again. I’m not sure which stage of divine treatment you’re in, but rest assured that God’s ultimate goal is to hear you and to heal you and to make you useful again. Just trust Him with every step of the process, every step on the journey, every step of the way.
Let us pray: Lord, it’s hard to see to the next step when we’re hurting, when heartache is weighing us down. It’s hard to keep going when we can’t see our prayers answered or our efforts confirmed or our loved ones accept Your salvation. But help us to keep the faith in the midst of it all, to rely upon Your will, to trust in Your timing, to remember that You are God and You are in control. In Jesus’ name.
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