Move or Die.

Read time: 9 mins

“Then the Lord said to Elijah, “Go to the east and hide by Kerith Brook, near where it enters the Jordan River. Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food.” So Elijah did as the Lord told him and camped beside Kerith Brook, east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook. But after a while the brook dried up, for there was no rainfall anywhere in the land. Then the Lord said to Elijah, “Go and live in the village of Zarephath, near the city of Sidon. I have instructed a widow there to feed you.”

1 Kings 17:3-9

Back in the day we didn’t have Netflix, Hulu, Disney plus or Amazon Prime. You couldn’t pick what you wanted to see. You had to watch something we called channels. You kids don't know nothing about that. Some liked Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, CNN or ESPN but my favorite channel was Discovery Channel. I liked shows like MythBusters and Dirty Jobs but every once in a while they’d do something called Shark Week. During Shark Week they’d do dedicated programming about sharks and I'd have so much fun learning about them. Great White Sharks are crazy. They can grow to almost 20 feet long. They can swim at almost 40 MPH. They can smell their food up to two miles away and use their 300 teeth to attack. But Great White’s have an interesting quirk. They don't breathe like us. They can't inhale. They breathe by swimming with their mouths open and allowing the oxygenated water to pass over their gills. This means that they breathe only while swimming. If they stop moving, they die. 

I'm here to inform some and remind others that we are the same way. The currency of a Christian life is faith and faith atrophies when it isn't consistently worked out. The Christian life is one of progression. If you don't keep moving, growing, and progressing, you too will die. Sanctification is almost synonymous with maturation. You must keep growing. 

The Christian life is a life of progression. All through the Bible, we see the Christian life depicted by nomads. Many of the stories we sympathize with and learn from can be boiled down to people trusting God enough to move through life with Him and go with Him to the places He desires for them. It’s all about movement. It’s all about progression. Abraham was given the command to go to a place God would show him. Joseph, though taken by force, was brought from city to city, and then from position to position, eventually culminating in everything that was meant for his evil being weaved around for his good. The children of Israel famously traveled decades through the wilderness as God prepared them for His promise. Then that promise was given “little by little” according to Exodus 23. It was about movement. One step at a time. When the people of Jerusalem started to abandon God and follow self-destructing ideals and idols, God's method of deliverance was allowing them to be moved to captivity, grow for a moment, and then move back to their home country as they rebuilt the walls and temple. Every story is about movement. Every story is about growth, creation, maturation, progression, newness, and resurrection. Though uncomfortable, God uses movement to mature us and progression to perfect us. 

The last command given by Jesus to His apprentices was to go and walk through life with others as He did. You are asked to do the same thing. You will be asked to move. God moved David from being a shepherd, to palace staff, to a fugitive, and finally to king. God moved Joseph from trust fund tattle to betrayed slave, to housekeeping executive, to prisoner, and eventually to the savior of the most powerful civilization of his time. God moved Daniel from a slave to a Secretary of State. God will move you from position to position. God will move you from platform to platform. God will move you! 

God is going to ask you to move forward. As the Israelites were standing at the edge of the Red Sea, God told them to shut up, stop crying, and move forward. And call to movement is what we see again in this story. 

Sometimes moves are for your protection. Elijah has been tasked with objecting to the offensive office of his time. The Bible says that King Ahab was worse than all the other kings that came before him. He is leading Israel into debauchery, idolatry, fornication, war, strife, poverty, and pollution, and Elijah is tasked with storming into the palace and letting him know that it’s time to move forward. God has had enough of the harm Ahab is causing to His chosen people. Elijah says it won't rain for the next few years because of this sinful structure. You can imagine this makes Elijah a target. He is accusing the most powerful man in this region while threatening the economy that he finds safety in.

In 1999, the King family won a lawsuit proving that United States government agencies participated in a conspiracy to have Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated. Martin didn’t receive the type of heat that led to his death when he was simply preaching the gospel or fighting against school segregation. He really started receiving the most pushback when he started to fight for economic equality. People get mad when you mess with their money. This is what threatened the power structures of that day and this is what Elijah is doing. By saying there will be no rain, He is saying there will be no food or trade. The animal sacrifice industry will plummet. The city planning and construction will come to a halt without oxen’s assistance or natural resources to be used in the building process. They were headed for a recession, economic downturn, and possibly revolt because of this threat. Elijah was in danger after making this promise. It makes sense that God would move him to protect him.

So God tells Elijah to go to Kerith Brook. There he will have water. God would protect and provide for Elijah after this move. This move was for Elijah’s good, and crazy enough, Elijah would see God work in ways he would have never imagined. God promised that ravens would DoorDash him five-course meals. (God is using what Elijah would’ve considered an unclean bird as a means of his deliverance. That’s a different message but God wants to use dirty things and people too.) God is showing up in miraculous ways. God is doing great things. Elijah is safe and accounted for. He is seeing God move, but the story doesn’t end there. Yes, God moved him there and provided. This move was obviously for Elijah’s good but at some point, God asks Him to move again. 

Now, It makes sense when God takes you from a toxic relationship or an abusive job. It makes sense when God moves you as an obvious means of saving you. But what do you do when God moves you from a good place? What do you do when God tells you to move from a place you’ve become comfortable? What do you do when God says it's time to progress and leave a place where you’ve seen Him work? Do you have the sensitivity to His voice and submission to His will to be able to leave what has worked for you in the past and move into the unknown? Elijah has literally seen birds bring him meals on wings and now God is telling Him to leave that and come out of hiding. Elijah is still a fugitive. This is like God telling Anne Frank to leave the annex she’s been hiding in and go to live in the city where Nazi soldiers could still be patrolling. This is insane, and It’s where I've noticed that faith moves seem to be the hardest. 

You’ll sometimes see a rocket ship divide from itself when it reaches a certain point. Components that helped it reach a destination aren’t designed to stay with it forever. The rocket has to part ways and move on from something that once supported it. An apparatus that helped for a season falls off when it's no longer needed. Some relationships are like rocket boosters. They’re supposed to ride with us and support us for a season but ultimately fall off when they’re no longer of use. How do we let God lead relationships from friend to acquaintance? What do we do when God moves us past relationships that helped us in one season but are no longer in use for the next? How does your relationship with your parents shift in adulthood or when you get married? How do we “leave our mother and cleave to our wife” when it's time to move from the things that once nurtured us into partnership with the things God wants to use to deliver us? How do we leave the job that we prayed for when it’s time to walk into the new one? How do we leave the city we fought for when it’s time to conquer a new one? How do we transfer from the school we sacrificed for when God calls us to a new destination?

I think we can often get “finger-pointy” when we talk about moving forward. It’s easy to think its everyone else who has a problem with this but it’s all of us. As a young Christian, I can easily criticize the more seasoned saints who seem to be hung up on what God did in the past and resistant to moving forward into what He is calling us to next. But I think we need to offer them some sympathy because we do and will experience the same struggle. Even though I may be more likely to dress down, dim the lights, and invite Chandler Moore for worship, I can recognize that God still moved through tent meetings with Bible workers, hats, and rituals with Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland. It’s not that there's always a theological difference or that one is better than the other. God was in each movement or style of the church. Our issues come when we hold on to the great things God did in the past without accepting the future glory that will be revealed through a God-ordained move. Most of the time, we get stuck because we’re just trying to recreate the worship moments we found God in so that others can do the same.  It's a noble goal. We prefer it because we’ve seen God move through it. But just because God blessed the brook doesn't mean we will stay there forever. 

I have to be aware enough of my preferences so that I don’t fight my kids when they want to preach through the method that works in 2050. I was born in 1999. I’m one of the older members of Gen Z and bordering the youngest members of the millennials. My Gen Z brothers already make fun of me for dressing more like a millennial in their eyes and not being on TikTok. I’m already getting “left behind”. It’s only a matter of time until I can potentially be the old man who is mad at the next generation's creative ideas for impact just like the people who are mad at me! But I don’t want to get stuck. I want to be able to move when God says move! 

But why? If God worked before, why would I ever have to move on? If God has used it before, why would I have to do anything else? Because even the brooks God has done great things through will eventually dry up. Yes, God used this brook. Y'all, birds literally fed Elijah. But at a certain point, it dried up and it was time to move on. The church you grew up at will eventually have to change. The method will change but the mission stays the same. Sometimes leadership has to change for you to get to the promised land. Sometimes you need a new king in order to build a new temple. 

This is a hard aspect of the growth journey, and I can imagine Elijah's questions and concerns. I can imagine his feelings. There's a mourning process that you undertake when you move on from something God used in the past. I remember crying while driving away after graduation at Pine Forge Academy. I loved it there but I had to move on. I loved it there but I wouldn't wanna go back and miss out on what God did in my life after it. I did the same after Oakwood graduation and my last Aeolian concerts. It was hard to leave. And I’m sure I will have a hard time if and when God asks me to leave the church, people, and city I'm currently loving. Elijah probably had the same feelings and questions many of us have. But it was worth it. He may have thought, “Why can't I just stay where I'm comfortable?” “Will I be safe in this next move?” “What should I expect?” “Is it something I can sustain?” But God provided for Elijah in the new space just as He did in the old one. The place changed but God did not.

God may lead you to new things because the old things are drying up, but He also may lead you to new things because there is work for you to do. He’s leading you to new pastures and still waters in order to restore your soul. Elijah was told to move on because there was more God wanted him to be a part of. While the brook was great, many of Elijah’s greatest moments came after this move. This is just the beginning of the story. Elijah may have been afraid that God wouldn't work in a new place the same way He had done before but God promised that someone would feed him just as the ravens did. Elijah raised a boy from the dead. Elijah went on to challenge all of the prophets of Baal and he won. Elijah went on to mentor Elisha. Elijah continued to see the power of God, eventually culminating in his being taken to heaven on a fiery chariot. 

If Elijah dug his feet into the ground and ran from the moves God was leading him to, he would have missed out on his best moments. If Elijah was afraid of moving from place to place he would’ve never gotten the chance to move from earth to heaven with God, or partner with Moses in their moment with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Many of us are missing out on the exceedingly and abundantly that God wants to bring into our lives because we are afraid of moving on. 

The Bible says that when the foundation of the new temple was laid, the sound of mourning and shouting merged together into one noise. The transition was traumatic for some and a testimony for others. What was the difference? Some people cried because they remembered the past glory and got stuck, but others rejoiced because God promised them that the former glory would be nothing compared to what he would do through the new temple! The best was yet to come. And we can find new peace and joy in the face of transition when we stand on the promises of God. 

You’ll notice that every devotional and really every story in the Bible has the same question. God is asking if you trust Him. If you truly believe that God is good and wants the best for you, you will trust His transitions. If you truly believed what He said, you would believe that the best is yet to come.

I know it's hard but God is asking if you trust Him. Do you trust His voice? Do you trust His leading? God has a plan. God has an intended future in mind for you. He had a promised land in mind for the Israelites with vineyards they didn't plant and houses they did not build. What if the Israelites went back to slavery in Egypt because they were afraid of going to something new? What if David was afraid of moving and never went from the pasture to the palace? What if Joseph was afraid of moving and never went from the dry pit to the destined platform? What if Daniel was afraid of moving and never went from a slave to a senator? The Bible says that God directs our paths. We need to stop fighting and let Him. 

Shut up and stop crying. Look around, use what you have, and get moving. I will do more than you can imagine to accomplish what I promised you. Trust me and start walking. 

Exodus 14:15-16 (Pace Version)

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