Is THAT the best you can do?

Jeff Foo and I were at the coffee shop near my block eating dinner. We were talking about the notation in my book and worship ministry in general. And he mentioned something VERY interesting about Elijah fleeing from Jezebel after he challenged the prophets of Baal.

For those of you who need the reminder, the Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown in 1 Kings 18. He called down fire from heaven in the name of the LORD God of Israel when the prophets of Baal couldn’t. The Israelites who saw it repented from Baal worship and killed the prophets of Baal. Great victory, right?

But in 1 Kings 19, when Jezebel heard about the entire incident she sent Elijah a death threat. And at that Elijah turned and fled. After facing down 450 prophets of Baal, one woman could frighten him? That didn’t make sense to me for years. Until Jeff offered his conjecture: maybe Elijah felt that calling down fire from heaven was the strongest card in his deck? And if Jezebel rejected that he had no cards left to play?

When studying human motivation, a key technique is to watch out for the turning point in the behavior. What you suspect a motivation to be MUST be able to explain all the subject’s decisions. For example, when Macbeth was being goaded by Lady Macbeth to kill King Duncan (that’s from Shakespeare, for all you non-literature-savvy people) he kept resisting the temptation, giving all kinds of noble sounding reasons, until Lady Macbeth told him how he could perform the foul deed and yet not get caught. And with that he immediately changed his mind and agreed to the murder. This showed that all his noble sounding reasons were just a cover-up for his fear of being caught.

Applying this to Elijah’s odd behavior, we have the perfect explanation now. He subconsciously assumed that once he pulled off his great feat there was nothing significant he needed to add. And so Jezebel’s opposition, irrational and mild compared to what he just accomplished, threw him mentally off-balance, sent him running for his life, and left him despondent and suicidal.

It’s all interesting theory, great speculation, until it happens to YOU. And this has been my experience ever since I last posted.

You see, I subconsciously assumed that once I complete my book I would have a breeze with everything else after that. I chose to release my work as an e-book via the internet to cut out the hassle of huge publishing and publicity costs of an actual physical product. I also found a point-and-click e-commerce service that was (so I thought) able to help me with all the techie stuff while I just relax and take a well deserved break. (If you don’t agree that I deserve a break, go write YOUR own book!)

Then I ran into loads of grief over the website. It seems that I signed up for the service just when they were transferring THEIR servers, so their point-and-click had glitches that season. And because of that I bypassed their point-and-click to use cpanel to upload my html and other files. In the meantime I went into the tags of the autoresponder system that came with my e-commerce package (using the time-tested method called trail-and-error) to prepare all the follow-up I carefully crafted for my site and e-book. I also had to create an additional SQL database (to install an automated digital delivery system) and work out various FTP details in order to register the above system. Let’s not forget settling the online payment system and getting that set up. And the ioncubes! How could anyone possibly forget the ioncubes! And now the whole thing just flipped on me, and I keep getting an internal server error anywhere I go on my precious website. *sniff*

Now tell me honestly, did anything in my previous paragraph make it sound like I actually KNEW what I was doing? ‘cause I don’t. It was like watching someone else do it. You know how you can watch kung-fu movies, see the stunts and yet not know how to do it yourself? That kind of feeling.

One of my techie friends, with whom I shared the story, was amazed at how quickly I grew to manipulate the various elements of techie world, and amused at how I could describe me doing his day-by-day activities as high drama.

When you run into unexpected problems (no, they weren’t problems, they were tragedies!) you have to watch your emotions, because anything can trigger you off and you can take things personally. Check out Elijah’s emotional state:

1 Kings 19:14 - He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too." (NIV)

And this is how he describes things just after he brought the people of Israel back to repentance. You can figure out what his emotional state was like, I mean, absolutely no mention of the great victory the LORD just worked through him. And he also exaggerated his problems too. It was actually one person, Jezebel, who wanted his life, and yet he said “they (meaning a whole group) are trying to kill me…”

That is what was happening to me too. Even the support personnel’s email saying that he was going on leave, and was handing my case over to his colleagues made me think, “What? Trying to fix MY problems got him so stressed out that he needed to go on leave?” *SOB!!!*

And at this point, it was Jeff’s conjecture that helped me keep my perspective. In the light of the rest of my available ministry time on this planet, is my book the very best I could do? Or does God have even higher mountains for me to scale, even more revelation for me to share and even greater deeds for me to accomplish?

In other words, can I still learn more and do more, even the techie stuff?

The reason I am sharing all the above with you all is not to garner sympathy for myself. Right now I don’t want sympathy, I want my website running properly! (And besides, I’m sure more of you are laughing at me than sympathizing with me…) I am sharing it because we tend to have subconscious limits to what we think we can accomplish in Christ. And when we pull off what we consider our absolute best (overcoming cancer, writing a book, building a successful ministry or business), any minor setback or glitch after that can drive us to despair, because we don’t believe we can do any more, that we’ve got no better cards in our deck to play.

So let me tell you right now: whatever you’ve done so far may be your best for now. But as you continue to grow to maturity in Christ, you will find that you can do more and achieve more. Your best will keep growing and growing, and will grow to include even things you NEVER thought you’d be able to do (like me and html…)

OK, here’s the unplanned update on the continuing epic saga of JJ and his precious e-book. Hopefully (and prayerfully) the next update is about my site being up and running, and you can all buy my e-book then (was that hint subtle enough?) J

Be blessed, everyone!