Teaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Elijah and Baal

Series: Bible Stories
Sermon: Elijah and Baal (8.10.25)
Watch the messages HERE. 

In her testimony for Christianity Today, Caresse Spencer recounts how she demolished her faith in pursuit of her "best life."

“In 2020, I typed two lethal words: F- God. With that, I resigned from Christianity. As the world fell apart due to the pandemic, my faith crumbled too. I stripped my vocabulary of the term God, soaked in the oppression of my past. Anger consumed me.”

Caresse began questioning Christian teachings, especially around sexuality and biblical contradictions. Years of suppressing her desires left her feeling robbed and burdened by faith. Torn between the God she once served and what she perceived to be her true self, she finally chose herself, embarking on what she called a “world tour”- exploring queer love, polyamory, sex, drugs, and even other religions. “I said yes to everything I had once denied myself and believed I had found freedom.”

Initially, the rebellion felt exhilarating: “There’s a rush that comes with rebellion and a thrill in doing things once feared.” But anxiety and emptiness crept in. She found herself “floating in a vast emptiness - lost and scared. Life had lost its meaning.” When rebellion no longer satisfied, she was left with “no God, no faith, no love, no peace.”

Suicidal thoughts became a constant presence. At her lowest, she cried out, “Help me!” and then a Christian friend called, asking if she was okay. For the first time, she admitted she was not. Her friend’s support pulled her back from the brink.

Later, her sister gently asked, “Do you want to surrender?” Caresse accepted: “It was the invitation I’d been waiting for without even knowing it. I said yes to surrendering my pride, confusion, rebellion, and emptiness. My life changed in an instant.”

Now, she talks to God about everything and has found peace. “God refused to let me die in disbelief. Because of this grace, I now understand that the only way to find true life is to lose it first.”

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.” Bonhoeffer’s quote sits appropriately under the shadow of Jesus’s famous charge in Matthew’s gospel:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)

We have to choose. God will not be shared. We cannot have Jesus as savior unless we make Jesus our Lord.

I love the story of Elijah and Ahab on Mt. Carmel. It’s such a thunderous expression of the only living God’s confirmation of his power and faithfulness. I even love Elijah’s attitude; he knew the whole time this thing was gonna go his way. He may have worried about physical death at the hands of Ahab, Jezebel, and the several hundred enemies of God on the mountain that day, but he wasn’t the least bit worried about whose “god” would show up that day - Elijah knew his would, because he had before.

We know he will again.

God’s kingdom is backwards to what the kingdoms of the world look like. We have to “die” in order to “live”? Yes, we must die to ourselves - deny the false gods and idolatry of comfort and control and earthly definitions of pleasure and success - in order to live forever with the God who created life and sustains it.

As for you and your house, who will you choose?

TO KNOW GOD AND MAKE HIM KNOWN! 

- Pastor Brady