21-Feb-2024 – Do you have desire to become an Elijah?

Published by Sunil Binkam on February 21, 2024February 21, 2024

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse – Malachi 4:6

This verse was talking about upcoming Elijah with a specific assignment to turn the hearts of fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers. As Jesus explained later, this was about John the Baptist. But if we could meditate little deeper, we can also apply the lesson or essence from this verse to our personal lives as well.

In this passage we can observe two main aspects one is preparation second one is judgement. Whenever we hear the word judgement, we remember the final judgement only. But for the sake of study, let’s define judgement. “lest I come” is a key phrase that can help us define the judgement. “lest I come” indicates that there is a running time and there is an appointed end for that. On that appointed end, the judgement will be declared. So we can define judgement as, “the righteous reward for something in a period of time”.

To understand this a bit, lets take an example of a student preparing for an exam. There is a period of study which is preparation. At the end there is an exam which is judgement. The righteous reward is the marks we got. This depends on the preparation.

Now let’s understand what is this preparation phase to turn father’s heart to the children and children’s heart to fathers. Let us use a clue to understand this by referring to a verse.

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him – Genesis 18:19

This verse captures God speaking to himself. God knew Abraham’s heart. And God expects a father’s heart to be like that. And even if we remember the heart of our heavenly Father, it is also like that only.

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does – John 5:20

The heavenly Father does only the perfect, righteous and holy things. He shows these things to the Son because He wants his Son also to do the same. Now how should be the heart of the son?

the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does – John 5:19

So the son always looks up to the Father to learn what to do and how to do. If we read Psalms 119, we can understand how David looked unto God through the commandments and in prayer to do things in the right way.

From these verses, we can understand that in the context of the god’s judgements, he wanted us to be prepared by teaching the ways of God to the next generation and the next generation follows the previous generation.

In the context of the time period of something like we saw in the example of study, father can be understood like the originator and children as the outcome. The originator in a student’s scenario is the student himself and the outcome is his results. The student must study and prepare in a godly way with fear and honoring the opportunity given to him to learn and then the results will follow the same pattern.

If the student puts the right amount of focus and hard work by honoring God given opportunity to learn, he will be successful and along with good result, that learning will be used by God to glorify His name. Otherwise, he cannot get good result and God could not use him in that area and the student loses the opportunity.

This is same in any aspect in our life. God gives us many opportunities to become something. As long as the preparation time is there, you have still chance to prepare. But once the time is over, the judgement to reward you with the well deserved conclusion. In this way, we all have the opportunity to become Elijahs to prepare ourselves for the God given opportunity.

Now the question is, “Do you have desire to become an Elijah?”.

Prayer

Dear loving heavenly Father, thank you for your love and grace. Thank you for teaching me today about the preparation and what does it mean turning the hearts of fathers towards children and vice versa. Help me to realize that the time is running short and, help me to prepare for the good reward. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!