The third thing that helped Elijah was to get life back in perspective. He felt that God had forsaken him and that he alone remained faithful to the Lord. His reasoning went something like this: "Here I am, doing my best to serve the Lord and look what happened. God has forsaken me. I alone am left. It's me against the world."

Depressed people often feel like that. They have problems because they pay more attention to negative events than to positive ones, focus on immediate rather than the long-term consequences of behavior, are overly hard on themselves, attribute success to outside forces and failure to their own lacks, and in general reward themselves too little and punish themselves too much.

Unfortunately Elijah had arrived at the wrong conclusions. So at that point, the Lord chose to reveal just how warped and distorted his view of things had become.

Ultimately all depression can be traced back to some distorted view of life. In Elijah's case, he had a distorted view of himself and a distorted view of God. He needed to know that God was there and that there were others who had not bowed to Baal.

First, God reveals Himself to Elijah in a new and fresh way. He sent a tremendous wind, a cyclone, that ripped through the mountain. But God was not in the wind. Then God sent an earthquake that shook the whole mountain; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, He sent fire and lightning, but God was not in the fire.

Then there came a still small voice through which God spoke to Elijah. The Hebrew expression "still small voice" literally means "a voice of low whispers, a sound of gentle stillness."

Elsewhere in the Old Testament, wind and lightning and earthquakes are often associated with God. They are ways that He manifests Himself to us. Yet here God speaks to Elijah in a voice of low whispers.

It is as if God is saying, "Just because I have not spoken to you as I have to others in days gone by, doesn't mean I am not here." Though God was silent, He was not absent. Though Jezebel was thundering, she was not in control. God was quietly going about His work. We need to remember that.

Following World War II there was found on the wall of a basement in Germany these words:

"I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.

I believe in love, even when I can't feel it.

I believe in God, even when He is silent."

God is the God of wonders but He is also the God of whispers. Elijah not only needed a new perspective of God, he needed a new perspective of himself. He thought he was the only one who was still faithful to God. God had to remind him that He had seven thousand prophets who had not yet bowed their knee to Baal. In fact, God had already chosen Elijah's successor and He commanded him to go and anoint Elisha for this work.

Elijah thought he was more important than he really was. He thought everything depended on him. We sometimes feel the same way. Listen, if God's work depends solely on you and me, God is in serious trouble.