What to do when the joy runs out
1 Kings 19:1–8
When I was a child, we sang a song in Sunday School with complete and total conviction, “I’m in right, outright, upright, downright, happy all the time.” Later, as we got older, we sang At The Cross, “It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day.” I sang both songs without a second thought, and I meant every word.
But here is what I know now that I did not know then. Those songs are not wrong, exactly — the theology underneath them is good, and the joy they celebrate is real. But the claim that I am “happy all the time” or “happy all the day” is more than any of us can honestly deliver. Because if we are being truthful with one another, the Christian life includes seasons when the joy is quiet, when the weight is heavy, and when getting out of bed in the morning feels like a small act of courage all by itself.
Elijah knew that feeling. And his story, tucked away in the nineteenth chapter of 1st Kings, is one of the most honest and human passages in all of Scripture.
Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.” Elijah was afraid and ran for his life… He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life.”
1 Kings 19:1-4 (NIV)
Let that sink in for a moment. This is not a struggling new believer. This is Elijah — the greatest prophet in Israel’s history, a man through whom fire fell from heaven, who faced down four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel without flinching, who prayed down rain after a three-year drought. If there were a Mount Rushmore of the Old Testament, Elijah’s face would be on it. And here he is, sitting under a desert shrub, telling God he is done.
Try to Identify What Brought You Down
The first thing worth doing when you find yourself under the broom tree is simply to pay attention. Elijah’s collapse had real causes, and God did not ignore them.
Fear was at the center of it. It was a fear that came from a death threat delivered by one of the most powerful people in the ancient world. Jezebel was not bluffing, and Elijah knew it. Fear has a way of shrinking our vision down to the one thing we are most afraid of, and in that shrinking we lose perspective on everything else.
Exhaustion was another factor. Elijah had just run a spiritual and physical marathon: the confrontation on Carmel, the slaughter of the prophets, the race ahead of Ahab’s chariot in the rain. His body was spent. And when the body is spent, the soul is not far behind.
Focusing on what someone else said (in this case, what one woman said in the heat of her own rage) had discounted everything Elijah had just watched God do. He was measuring his future by a threat instead of by a testimony.
Those three things, fear, exhaustion, and an unhealthy focus on the wrong voice, are still doing damage to people of faith today. Naming them honestly is the beginning of finding your way back.
Take Care of Yourself
What God did next is almost startling in its simplicity. He did not send a sermon. He did not open heaven and deliver a divine rebuke. He sent an angel with food and water and told Elijah to get some rest.
God met the burned-out prophet not with a theological argument, but with bread, water, and a nap.
Twice the angel came. Twice there was food. And the second time, the instruction included something important, “The journey is too great for you.” God was acknowledging that what lay ahead was demanding, and that Elijah needed to be cared for before he could be sent anywhere. His prescription was prayer, sleep, nourishment, repeat as needed.
I think about the first few days after our explosion. I could not eat. I could not sleep. My mind would not rest and my body refused to follow any kind of normal rhythm. What I learned in that season is that self-care is not selfishness. It is stewardship. You cannot pour from an empty vessel, and God is not asking you to try. He knows the journey is too great for you, and he knows what you need to take the next step.
Remember That Everyone Has Down Times, Even People of Faith
One of the loneliest parts of a dark season is the quiet, unspoken conviction that no one else who really believed would feel this way. That is simply not true, and Scripture will not let us pretend otherwise. Moses told God he would rather die than carry the burden he was carrying (Numbers 11:14–15). Joshua fell on his face in despair after a defeat (Joshua 7:7). Jonah sat in the heat and asked God to take his life (Jonah 4:3). Job, in the raw honesty of his suffering, said his soul loathed his own life (Job 10:1). Jeremiah cursed the day he was born (Jeremiah 20:18). The exiles in Babylon hung their harps on the willows and wept, unable to sing (Psalm 137:1–2). David, the man after God’s own heart, wrote that he flooded his bed with tears (Psalm 6:6).
And then there is Jesus, who wept at the tomb of a friend (John 11:35), who wept over a city that would not receive him (Luke 19:41), and who was called by Isaiah the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). The grief of Jesus was not a contradiction of his divinity. It was an expression of his love. If the Son of God could weep, then weeping is not a failure of faith.
Remember You Are Not Alone
While Elijah slept under the broom tree, something was happening that he could not see. God was paying attention. The angel touched him not once, but twice. The Lord of heaven and earth looked at this exhausted, defeated prophet sitting alone in the wilderness and said, in effect, “I see you. Get up and eat. You are going to need the strength.”
The psalmist put it plainly, “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).” That closeness is not a reward for those who have it all together. It is a promise specifically for those who do not.
I have lived that promise. In the darkest stretch of my own life, I noticed something happening around me that I had not planned and could not explain. New strength arrived when I had none left. New friendships formed in the middle of the wreckage. The Lord began to speak in ways and through people I had never anticipated. I was not alone. And neither are you.
Remember It Will Not Always Be This Dark
Psalm 30:5 is one of the most hope-laden verses in the entire book of Psalms, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” The night is real. The psalm does not pretend otherwise. But the night is not permanent. Morning is already written into the promise.
Elijah got up from under the broom tree. He traveled forty days to Horeb. He heard the still, small voice and he rose from that encounter to go on and do more of what God had called him to do. The broom tree was not the end of his story. It was a resting point in the middle of it.
That is what broom trees are for the people of God. They are not endings. They are pauses.
Do Not Be Afraid to Get Help When You Need It
Pastors have to be careful when we talk about sadness and depression, because we never want to send the message that prayer and faith are all anyone needs to solve every problem. That is not true, and pretending it is has caused real harm to real people. There is a difference between a hard season and a clinical condition, and that difference matters.
I reached out to a trusted friend who works as a Christian counselor, and I asked him how we know when we have crossed from ordinary stress into something that requires professional attention. His answer has stayed with me. He said to watch for the moment when you begin behaving more and more out of sync with your own values — when the person who always keeps promises starts fudging on them, when the person who believes others are counting on them stops getting out of bed. He told me that if hard things are happening and we are exhausted but we can see an end in sight, most of us can muddle through. But severe depression and severe anxiety shut us down entirely, and that is a different situation requiring a different kind of care.
Getting help is not a lack of faith. It is wisdom. You would call a doctor if you broke your arm. The mind and the soul deserve the same care as the body, and there is no shame in seeking it.
The broom tree is a real place. Most of us have sat under one at some point, and some of us are sitting there right now. If that is you, I want you to know that God has not looked away. He sees exactly where you are. He knows the journey is too great for you on your own, and he is not asking you to make it that way. He is asking you to get up, eat something, rest a little, and take the next step — because the voice in the silence has not stopped speaking, and the morning that Psalm 30 promises is still on its way.
A PRAYER
Lord, some of us are sitting under the broom tree today, and we are too tired to pretend otherwise. Meet us here, the way you met Elijah, with grace. Touch us, feed us, let us rest. And when it is time to rise, speak to us in the silence and send us forward. We trust that the morning is coming. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
John W. Crowder 
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