Elijah was afraid. So he ran for his life. He came to Beersheba in Judah. He left his servant there. [4] Then he traveled for one day into the desert. He came to a small bush. He sat down under it. He prayed that he would die. “LORD, I’ve had enough,” he said. “Take my life. I’m no better than my people of long ago.”

1 Kings 19:3-4 NIrV

Yesterday we studied “A Good Day Gone Bad,” and learned how easily we can ruin our good day anticipating a bad tomorrow that may never come.

At the heart of this ruination is fear.

Elijah would have been fine if not for fear. Nothing negative had happened, nor would it ever happen. The only thing that ever happened to Elijah was fear, but fear is all that needs to happen because fear erodes faith. Fear eats faith like termites eat wood. Fear is like an infection that starts small, but over time can put you in the hospital or worse in the grave.

Elijah’s fear turned to stress the way sugar turns to fat. His answer was to travel and isolate. After traveling as far away from people as he could, he took a long deep slurping gulp of “drug-free stress relief,” or what we commonly call “quitting.”

What is our goal for today? We are going to resist the temptation to let fear induced stress make us quit for relief. Instead, we are going to rely on God to get through, realizing fear is an emotion we can conquer especially when it is based on tomorrows that may never come.