Victory and Defeat

"Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. 'I have had enough, Lord,' he said. 'Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.' Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep."
1 Kings 19:3-5a

Does this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself feeling this way? Elijah was a great man of God. In fact, he was THE man of God in his day. God had done impressive miracles through him. He had just challenged all the prophets who worshiped the idol, Baal. He stood toe to toe with them and issued a challenge. He told them to build an altar for their god and he would build one for his. Whichever altar was consumed by fire from heaven would prove which god was really God. Of course, God showed up. He did send fire from heaven which not only burned up the offering on Elijah's altar, but all the sacrifices that were on the altar to Baal as well. It was a huge victory. Elijah went on to kill all the ungodly prophets to clean the land of the reproach. Then the power of the Lord came on him again and he ran possibly the first marathon, all the way to a place called Jezreel.Then, trouble hit...hard.
    It is amazing that after such a great victory, literally in less than a day, Elijah was saying to God, "Just kill me now!" How is that possible? I believe the answer is found in the very first phrase of the scripture: "Elijah was afraid..." I have come to understand this truth: Fear cripples us. Fear took the man of God, and turned him into a depressed, defeated human, all in the course of one day.
    I know that all of us have experienced times of great spiritual victory. Those times seem to play like Leonardo DiCaprio's exclamation in the movie, Titanic, "I'm on top of the world!" Then, before we know what happened, we are gripped with fear and the victory melts into a deep defeat.
    The devil has few weapons that work against us. In fact, I will boldly say that he only has one...fear. He loves to rob us of the joy that is ours through Christ. He wants to minimize our victories and make us focus on the defeats. So, I speak this great Biblical truth into your lives: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." (James 4:7). Don't give in. Don't succumb to fear. Fear is an empty threat. We are secure in our positions as princes and princesses in the kingdom of God. Elijah did not die, he went on to do even greater things for God. We will not die either. We are not called to live in defeat, we are being anointed with the victor's crown. Let's take up our positions and raise a victory shout. We are no longer slaves to fear!