Responsibility For Your Consequences

Elijah prayed for no rain to fall and it didn’t for three and a half years! Now after that God ordered him to go stay by the Brook Cherith. I do not understand the cause of the curse; perhaps because Ahab was wicked and did evil before the Lord, and judgement fell over the entire territory he was in charge of.

In my mind I wonder why the leader didn’t suffer alone. Perhaps the lesson is indeed how Proverbs 29:2 declared: if the wicked rule, the people groan and sigh.

That aside, God had to ensure that Elijah doesn’t suffer from the consequences his own tongue created. After a period, the brook as well dried up and God commanded Elijah to go to the widow of Zarephath to be taken care of.

I do not want to take this out of context, but I’d want to share the train of thought that came to me:

God didn’t order Elijah to command the rain not to fall. Perhaps judgement would have come another way. Regardless, this decree was suffered by him onward!

James 5:16 tells us that the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man avails much! Then it goes on to compare that truth to Elijah.

This is where I am driving to; if you have attained a certain level of maturity as a christian, your prayers shall as well avail much: GOOD OR BAD!

We must be ready to live with the consequences of whatever we will have declared! If we pray the time of marriage come, and perhaps not press in more to God’s appointed or predestined time for our marriage, we might rush into it, while we haven’t all attributes God wanted us to have attained before taking the oath.

Now what will you do when it gets challenging? When it requires too much long suffering, but you didn’t let God refine the fruit in you when He desired to do so! He might ask you to go to the brook Cherith, but you’d not be willing to leave your comfortable home!

Or perhaps you have now moved, and now He is asking you to go to Zarephath again — just when you had settled in, in the suburb of Cherith!

You’ve prayed the rain to go! It has gone! Now don’t start crying when the rivers around dry up. You asked for promotion and now promotion has come! Don’t start crying that the work load is a lot! Your capacity must take in the consequences of your declarations and prayers!

You must bear the wisdom to work smarter if more work has come. You must maneuver whatsoever it is because yes!— your prayers will avail it!

Undoing the rain expulsion took a little more effort for Elijah unlike when he first expelled it. Undoing the promotion could be hard. Undoing the marriage could be harder (and condemnable); but for now, ask God for capacity! For grace! To handle all that you’d desire.

Let Him give you what you should desire, for if He does, He’ll build the capacity within you before it comes … for it’s Him desiring it for you. (Psalms 37:4) All in all, I as well would encourage us to pray in tongues alot. (Jude 1:20-21) When you do, you are praying in His perfect will.

If in Tongues your prayer is suspending the rain, then God has deemed it should happen, and so the consequences are on Him. If in them you are praying for the arrival of your spouse, then it must be the appointed time. I can’t express the tragedy of you praying a thing that’s way opposite from what God is desiring for you.

I remember Jephthah being rash! He promised to give God the first thing that came out his house (as a burnt offering) when he returned from the victory war against the Ammonites. His daughter came out dancing with a tambourine. And he had to fulfill his vow.

He took responsibility for the consequence. But again, let excitement not drive us to such irrational decisions. And neither should anger. May God grant you and I more wisdom and capacity to handle all we might declare: from increase to uprooting, from building up to casting down.