#89. Relentless Determination
Then she saddled a donkey, and said to her servant, “Drive, and go forward; do not slacken the pace unless I tell you. And so she departed, and went to the man of God at Mt. Carmel. So it was , when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to his servant Gehazi, “Look, the Shunammite woman! Please run now to meet her, and say to her, “Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?” And she answered, “It is well.”
II Kings 4:24-26 NKJV
How earnestly do you pursue the knowledge of the Lord, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, the conformation to His death, so that by any means possible you might attain to the resurrection from the dead? When Paul uses these words in Philippians 3:10-11 he prefaces them by saying he counts “all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul expands this by saying he counts all things as rubbish (literally, dung) that he might gain Christ and be found in Him. Forgetting what lies behind and reaching for the things ahead, “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
The Shunammite’s determination to see the will of the Lord through Elisha was relentless. Nothing would get in her way. She would not let the roughness of the road, the pain to her body, nor the weariness of the journey stop her until she was with the man of God at Mount Carmel. Have we ever seen faith like this?
The haste of the Shunammite’s journey was noticeable from a great distance. Certainly the dust and perhaps the noise of the carriage at great speed alerted Elisha to her approach, and he recognized the Shunammite woman. Her relentless determination uphill towards the summit of a mountain no less caught the attention of the prophet of God who would see to her well-being. Elisha sent Gehazi to inquire of her as we considered last time, and the Shunammite confirmed it was well before coming to Elisha himself.
The Shunammite woman would not rest until she had seen Elisha. Her godly mission would not be hindered by physical pain or natural barrier. By any means possible, with all her strength, she would come before the prophet of the Lord at Mt. Carmel, the mountain of the Lord’s great power.
Do you and I have such determination to come before the Lord? Do we run the Christian race like this Shunammite did, not looking back to the ease of the world, not looking aside for relief from the present distress, but looking ahead to that One from whom our help comes, to the Lord God Almighty? Christ has gained Heaven for us but we are not yet in heaven. We are not yet perfected, Paul says, because we are not yet in glory. So press on that you may lay hold of that eternal life that is yours only because Christ Jesus has made you His own. Run the Christian race. Pursue the prize of the upward call of Christ. Remember the relentless pursuit of the Shunammite woman and pursue the Lord and the power of His resurrection after her example and that of Paul.
Run that you may win Christ!
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