AUG 30 2026 | Elijah: From Drought to Downpour S2E2 | Somewhere to Run, Somewhere to Hide

Sea Change Church · Elijah: From Drought to Downpour S2E2 · "Somewhere to Run, Somewhere to Hide" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · August 30, 2026 1 Kings 19:7–13 If you have your Bibles, open up to 1 Kings 19, verse seven. That's why it's key to have your Bible and not just the notes, because we're picking up mid passage. As you remember, after a big success against the prophets of Baal, Elijah is threatened by Jezebel, and he runs away in fear, going from someone who could take on hundreds of prophets and see the fire of God fall to a man who is desperate, exhausted, and doesn't want to live anymore.

That's where we found him last week. And when he was there, God met him in the running. He didn't rebuke him. He sent an angel to sustain him, and that's what we're talking about today: how do you maintain sustenance when you're going through a very difficult time? He's being touched twice by an angel now. God has been bringing him food, and he's getting ready to head off on a forty day journey through the wilderness, reminiscent of Jesus, reminiscent of Moses and his forty years, ending at the mountain of God. But God has to sustain him to get there first. "And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, 'Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.'" Underline that phrase, the journey is too great for you, because that's true for a lot of us right now.

When we think we can do something in our own power, we tend to fail. We need a touch from God, and we need his word, and we need his sustenance. "And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him and said to him, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?' And he said, 'I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.' And he said, 'Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.' And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind.

And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak, went out, and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'" He asks that question twice, and we'll get into that dialogue next week, along with the wind and the fire. That's the part of the passage everyone focuses on, the apex. But to get to that cave, Elijah had already been living a certain lifestyle that set him up for that moment, and that's what I want to look at today.

We've just come out of a long series on getting active and changing the world. Today I want to ask a different question: how do you get sustained? How do you sustain yourself through a hard season? The world will offer you multiple types of sustenance, and they work for a short period, but in the end they tend to break you down more than they build you up. You're going to see a pattern in Elijah. Yes, he got afraid. Yes, he struggled with even wanting to live. Yes, he was in a very low, dark, deep place. But every time he made a movement somewhere, he moved toward God.

I want to break this down into practical tools for when you're in the valley, in the wilderness, in fear, in a difficult season. Here's the big idea. This is a passage about dwelling. Elijah is moving throughout the whole story: under a broom tree, in Judah, in the wilderness. Remember, back in chapter seventeen he was at the brook Cherith, sustained by ravens. Now he ends up in a cave, and then on a cliff waiting for God. This is a passage about position, about movement, about geography, and if you skip straight to the wind and the earthquake, you miss the setup that got him there. We need to be a people of posture: sitting, quiet, listening, and a people of position.

Where are you putting yourself? When I first got sober, I realized there were places I could no longer go, and I stopped putting myself there. My discipler told me, "You can change your life by changing your geography. Fill your calendar so full of good things, Bible studies, meetings, that you just don't have time for those old patterns anymore." The places you dwell, in large part, shape the person you become. Location influences formation. We are in the business of spiritually forming you, not entertaining you. We're not here to just give you a little word of encouragement, though we want that to happen too. We're here to see real formation, so that in six months you look different in a positive way.

We live in a world of spiritual deformation, and that happens in the church as well, when people serve so close to the fire of the Lord that they get burned. So the key word today is dwell. Where are you dwelling? Where you put yourself on a regular basis will, in large part, affect your spiritual formation. Let's go to the first point. Elijah lost his strength and courage, but he never lost his way. Do you realize that? You can be down, despondent, broken, not hearing from God, and still know how to get home. Scripture says when you raise a child in the way they should go, they will not depart from it, or they will return to it.

They know where home is. Elijah was discouraged, but he continued to move toward God. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is get somewhere safe. Do you have a safe space? A group you run with? A mentor you sit with? A place you've created where you can go and dwell? I really encourage you, if you haven't already, invest in a place where you sit and hear from the Lord. It could be a bench. It could be somewhere comfortable. Just invest in that little sanctuary. Back up with me to 1 Kings 19, verses three and four. "Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life, and he came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and he left his servant there.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree." I'm not sure it was wrong for him to move where he went. He was being threatened, there was no word for him to stay, so maybe he's not walking in disobedience, but he is in fear. What does he do with that fear? He moves from Israel into Judah, the southern kingdom, the one ruled by David, where Jerusalem is. It's a safer place, closer to the Lord, even if it wasn't perfect. He knew how to get to safe places. Where do you need to move to? Where is the space you can put yourself in?

He crosses a border, leaves his servant, and goes a day's journey into the wilderness alone. The wilderness is often seen in Scripture as a place of being in God's presence. It only became a place of judgment because of disobedience. Originally it was a sanctuary, a place of stillness. You've driven across the desert, pulled over, felt that stillness in the heat or the cool of night. There's an austere beauty to the wilderness, and it's a place where we can hear from God, which is incredibly difficult to do in this world otherwise. Elijah sits under a broom tree, somewhere with shade. Over and over, he's practicing self-care: crossing a border, finding a spiritual refuge, finding shelter, and that shelter keeps increasing until he ends up in a cave, hidden in the cleft of the rock on the mountain of God.

We tend, when we're struggling, to run to everything but God. I was at Costco yesterday after a genuinely difficult few days, and I walked in and started seeing things I immediately thought I needed to buy, a rug I didn't even really like, but had convinced myself I did. I ended up putting it all back and just buying what I needed, but I recognized that impulse in myself, the same one that had my wife and me loading up at IKEA in our twenties just to feel better, even though the boxes would sit unassembled in our living room for weeks. Spending isn't a huge struggle for me, but it's one of the ways I've tried to self-soothe instead of turning to God.

Verse eight is powerful: "And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God." He stood up. He didn't stay lying down in the valley of the shadow of death. And he ate the food God gave him. Do you eat the food God gives you, or do you go find that other food, the gummies, the distraction, whatever gives sustenance for four hours, four days, maybe four months? What God gave Elijah was supernatural, and he chose to eat it. Sometimes God prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies, and we just don't eat.

So often, as believers, we don't eat the food God has already given us, food that will actually sustain a forty day journey into the wilderness. Jesus fasted forty days in the desert. Moses fasted forty years. Elijah is given food and still goes forty days and nights on its strength. Jesus, in Matthew 4:4, tells the devil, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word," and that word is rhema, that proceeds from the mouth of God. Rhema is a key word here. It isn't logos, the eternal, all encompassing Word that is Jesus himself, something too vast to fully comprehend. Rhema is a specific spoken word, given to an individual person, small enough to actually receive.

We're meant to be a people of the rhema, fed daily, and God has a specific word for you every single day if you'll sit, quiet down, and listen. Instead of looking ten years or five years or three months down the road, you live in today, waiting for that word. That comes from Romans 10:17: faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of God. People have asked me about this idea of abiding, of sitting in the wilderness with God without praying or reading, just sitting in his presence. Are you supposed to empty your mind? No, we're not looking for Eastern mysticism. You can't empty your mind when you have the mind of Christ.

But it does say, "Be still, and know that I am God." The mind stays active, just active on the presence. Think about a baby resting against a mother's breast. That baby isn't planning the afternoon. It's just resting, aware, comforted. That's what it means to abide in John 15, to sit and be in Jesus's presence. And when you sit with the Lord, he will often give you a rhema word. Billions of dollars are spent trying to influence your every decision, and when I'm scrolling, something is spiking my emotions one way or another, and I'm being led by the world instead of the Spirit. I need the rhema word of God because I cannot survive the next forty days, or even today, without it.

And so I want to challenge you: if you don't have that broom tree to sit under, find it. If you don't have your Cherith brook, find the brook. David was the same way. He always knew how to go to the stronghold, a place where ten men could hold off a hundred or a thousand, because they were in a strategically safe place. Jesus said in John 6:35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." From there, Elijah travels to the mountain of God, and I love that he runs there. There's a whole history at this mountain before Elijah ever arrives.

This is Mount Sinai, where Moses met God in the burning bush, where the Ten Commandments were given, where Moses struck the rock and water came out. Moses was also sheltered here as God's glory passed by, unable to see God fully, put instead into the cleft of the rock and covered by God's own hand until the glory had passed. Moses had a visual encounter. Elijah, on the same mountain, gets an audible one. It says the word of the LORD came to him, but God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. Imagine that wind, strong enough to break rocks apart. You'd think God was in the middle of all of it, but he wasn't.

Then came a still, silent voice, and God spoke to him in that moment. God wants to speak to you too. If you're not drawing away daily to hear from him, you're missing his rhema word, for your marriage, your children, your business, your health. If you'd rather live according to the headlines or the algorithm that tells you how to think, you can do that, or you can say, "Enough. I need a rhema word." We are in a season where we need those words. Here's what I love: this mountain shows up again in the New Testament, at the Mount of Transfiguration. I have a hard time believing it's anywhere other than Mount Sinai.

And who appears there with Jesus? Moses and Elijah, both archetypes and precursors to Jesus, back on the mountain, but this time in full revelation, talking with Jesus face to face rather than only hearing or glimpsing him. "And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus." They were getting a rhema word, together, with the Son of God himself. I told you last week I've been in some spiritual formation counseling, and my counselor challenged me to pray in silence for only three minutes a day for three months, just thinking, "Spirit, you are within me, and I am with you." That first three minutes was rough.

I kept checking the clock. But it's been about a week and a half now, and I found myself yesterday sitting in silence three separate times for an hour each, something that would have sounded impossible to me not long ago. There's something that draws you in once you start, and I want to just sit with him. So this week, the challenge is this: change your geography, and place yourself more often in the places where God dwells. That could be among the poor, in a hospital, in an elderly home, with a neighbor, sitting under a tree in your own backyard. You know where the mountain of God is, and you know the place that's the valley of the shadow of death.

I'd avoid those places for the sake of your own soul and spiritual formation, so that we can become a church with the beating heart of God, drawing near to him the way John did, resting his head on Jesus's breast at the table, in the presence of his enemies, comforted simply by knowing Jesus was real and hearing the heartbeat of God.