Last Tuesday evening I went with my son, John, to a presentation on the Landmark Forum, which is a three day personal development course. During the evening some very excited and enthusiastic people, who had completed the previous weekend's course, spoke about how they had benefited. - which is what you'd expect, seeing it was a 'sales' night.!

As I listened to the stories they told about how they had already taken steps to repair broken family relationships, had gained back self esteem, were making plans to further their careers which had been in the doldrums or making plans for changes in their lives, I thought that what they'd gained from the weekend is much what they'd be gaining if they had accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Though, for most of us, it seems to take the Holy Spirit longer than one weekend to make the changes in our attitudes that these people were talking about. Maybe we're not so needy, or maybe we're less open to change! Maybe it takes longer for us to hear and accept what the Holy Spirit is telling us!

So, I was giving thanks to God for the changes he had brought about for those people during that course - and I was wishing someone would give him the credit.

No, I didn't sign up to do the course, because I believe that God, through his Spirit, has been doing the same things for me over many years, and will continue doing that for the rest of my life. Those of you who knew me 35 years ago will know how much I've changed.

Tuesday evening, plus the Lectionary readings for this week, made me think about how we, as Christians, can deal with times of troubles and disappointments - our 'down' times.

And we all have down times, don't we? Something I read recently said that there are mornings we wake up cheerfully saying, "Good morning, God." and others when we wake up and say, "Oh God! It's morning".

The readings we've heard this morning told us stories about two people who were going through bad times:

Elijah was going through a time of discouragement and depression. We might wonder why, because this was straight after he'd challenged the prophets of Baal to put their god against his in a contest. And Elijah's God had won, hands down! Remember when on Mt. Carmel, they set up two altars and sacrifices, one for Baal and one for the God of Israel, and they got everything ready for the burnt offerings, except they didn't bring the matches. So the contest was to see which god could light his own barbeque. The 400 prophets of Baal danced and shouted to Baal all day with Elijah taunting them about Baal's failure to act, and the fire never came Then, before Elijah called on his God, he had his altar well and truly soaked with water to make it even harder. Then he prayed. There was a flash of fire and the offering, the wood, the stones of the altar and the left-over water were all consumed and reduced to ash. The people fell down on their faces and worshipped God. The prophets of Baal were slaughtered. Elijah had seen God prove his power in a spectacular way.

Then, because of that, Queen Jezabel, as fanatical a worshipper of Baal as Elijah was of God, ordered Elijah killed. So he was scared and ran away.

In today's reading we saw him hiding and so depressed he was asking God to kill him. Mind you, we know he didn't really mean that, or why did he run away? He was having a real 'pity-party' - indulging in self pity. When God asked him why he was there, he whinged: Look at all I've done for you and how much good it's done. The people still don't listen. They won't change their ways. There's no-one worshipping you but me. And now they're trying to kill me!

How often do we do something similar? After a 'high' experience, we go down in the dumps for no obvious reason - a kind of reaction. And when that happens, we think negatively, we don't remember God's goodness to us. We focus on our feelings and look inward - always a spiritually dangerous thing to do. It's one of those things we tend to do as being part of a self-centred humanity.

That's what Elijah was doing. He was ignoring the positives. He devalued what had happened at Mt. Carmel. By implication, he dismissed the people of Israel as utterly faithless. He disregarded the faithful Obadiah, King Ahab's household comptroller who he knew to be a faithful and quiet worker for God, and the possibility that there may have been many more like him. He said he was the only prophet left alive, yet he knew Obadiah had hidden 100 prophets in caves when Queen Jezabel had tried to kill them all off.

His attitude was extremely negative and God had to bring him up short, give him a reality check and send him back to work (verses 16-18, which weren't read this morning, tell us about that) God showed Elijah that it isn't always though the big and spectacular that he works, but through the quiet and seemingly unimportant events and people.

The other person was the demon-possessed man we heard about from Luke's gospel. Now, he really did have some problems. Jesus sorted them out for him - and then sent him back to work, just as God sent Elijah. This man was so troubled, he was totally out of control, he had completely lost his sense of identity and he was living like a wild animal.

I don't think anyone here has been that far 'down', though I know that there are some who have felt as far down as Elijah was.

What do we learn about God in these passages that would let us know we can confidently go to him when times are tough?

God is powerful - he can produce storms, earthquakes and fire at will. So, surely he's powerful enough to help us.

God has authority over all, including the spirit world. The demons in Luke's story knew who Jesus was and knew that he had total authority over them. They knew he could send them where he liked and they had no say in it.

God cares and he knows what we need better than we do. Jesus did not hesitate to order the demons out of the man. It was his immediate reaction. He didn't need to be asked.

Then he sat down and talked with the man - the Bible doesn't say what they talked about. I wonder if Jesus might have been talking over his future plans with him. His life and those of his family and friends would see a big change after this.

Each individual is important to God. In the midst of Elijah's self pitying, God addressed him by name, reminding him that he was personally important to God. Jesus asked the man what his name was. Names were important. Knowing someone's name was thought to give you some kind of power over them. Also, if someone asked your name, it meant that they wanted to get to know you, spend time with you - you were important to them. Our names are important to us? How do you feel when someone calls you by the wrong name or even spells your name incorrectly? The demon-possessed man probably hadn't heard his own name used for years - so long that he'd probably forgotten it himself. But Jesus wanted to know it.

God doesn't impose himself upon us if we don't want him but he's there with bells on when we do. We have free choice. When the local people asked Jesus to leave the area, he went immediately. In the midst of his depression, Elijah prayed - and God was there for him.

God has work for us to do - all of us, not just Ministers, Elders and church leaders. He had work for Elijah, for the other 100 prophets, for people like Obadiah in important positions and for the many ordinary faithful Israelites. He had a job for the man no longer possessed with demons. In 1 Peter 2: 9, Paul describes all Christians as 'the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you - from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.' (The Message) I'll read that again. We're all…….

God wants lots of children to care for and to carry on his business. The other Lectionary passage that we didn't hear today was Galatians 3: 23-29. One of the things that passage tells us is that through faith in Christ we are all children of God - or it actually says sons of God. In Biblical days it was only sons who could be heirs and the passage says we are all sons, no matter what race, level in society or gender we are. So we are all God's heirs, sharing this position with Jesus, the 'begotten' or 'born' son of God. And, like any caring father, God wants to protect, care for and encourage his heirs to be the people he wants them to be so that they can carry on his 'business' properly. He expects his heirs to join him in working for his kingdom - to help him in bringing salvation to people. Because God is never satisfied that he has enough 'heirs' for his kingdom!

So, this is the God we can rely on to be there in times of trouble or on our 'down' days.

Now, what do we do about it when we have those 'down' times? Our psalm for today gave us a few clues. The psalmist gives us a pattern. This is what he does:

1. He longs for God. It's like a raging thirst. We need to get into habits of getting close to God in our good times, so it will be just second nature for us to look to him when times get bad. If we haven't practised getting closer to God in our good times, when the crunch comes, it will be that much harder for us to do it. When we're feeling down, as this psalmist knew, God can seem a long way away.
2. He remembers what God has done for him in the past. He doesn't just remember in a casual way. He makes a firm, conscious decision to call those things to his mind. When we're feeling down, as Elijah found, remembering the positives doesn't come easily. We need to make a deliberate decision to recall them. We need to make a decision that we're going to focus on God's goodness rather than on our present trouble or our feelings. Again, if we've made it a regular practice to praise God when we're feeling OK, that will be easier to do too when we're feeling not OK, won't it?
3. He remembers God in creation. Even when we can't recall good things in our lives, we can look around us and see the wonderful world God has created for us to live in.
4. He prays - and prays honestly. He's not afraid to tell God when he feels God is far away and not doing anything to help. God appreciates us being honest with him. We won't hurt his feelings if we criticise him! We don't have to 'pussyfoot' around God. (But we do hurt his feelings when we don't talk to him at all).
5. He acknowledges that God can help. He asks God to help and tells God honestly when he thinks God isn't helping quickly enough.
6. He reminds himself three times during the psalm that he can put his hope in God and that he should praise God continually, even in times of trouble.

So there we have a plan of what we can do on our 'down' days.

Now… all that is OK for us. What about people who don't know about God's love for them and how to be close to God? Should we send them to spend over $400 on a Landmark Forum weekend? They seem to get good results! We could.

OR…do we help them to know Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit in their lives to be their helper, guide and comforter? Do we help them see what God has done in their past and encourage them to hope for the future? Actually, that's what we've already decided, when we did our Mission Statement, that this church here to do. Have a look at it in your newsletter.

Who is supposed to carry out that Mission? Remember that 1 Peter1:9 tell us that we are all to be priests and ministers. So it's the job of all of us. And if we all do our job, we should be seeing some excited people around here too.

We can do our job by telling our family, friends, people we meet what God has done for us - in a natural way through our conversation. We can invite them to an Alpha course. We can invite them to a worship service, depending on us having a service that's suitable for the people we're talking to. We can invite them to a Bible study (well, if we go to one, we can) or one of our other groups where they can hear others talk about what God has done for them.

God has a job for all of us to do here in our own area (just as Jesus gave to the demon possessed man) Let's do it.