Course Qualification #1: Imperfection, the Earthen Vessel for Faith Building
This Study Guide is not based on flawless faith, or sterling performance achieved by some outstanding saint or Christian leader. Rather, it shows, step by step, how God picked and took a simple young boy out herding sheep and grew and trained him in Almighty God's rough trade school of real life, molding him with the Word of God and his experiences into an instrument that God could use with greater and greater effect. From youth to manhood and married life, Elijah was trained and equipped in faith by God's teaching, guiding Spirit. Aurica joined him in the same faith-training and faith-adventure.
Qualification #2: Listening Closely to God, Waiting and Obeying Implicitly and Promptly
This is maybe hard, something unaccustomed, but we can learn this! Was Elijah somehow different from other boys, that God should single him out? And why did God rescue him, and two companions, out of the many thousands who tried to escape across the border and died, shot by the guards or drowned in the Danube River? Christians perished at the same border, right along with non-Christians. Some were Christians just as committed to the Lord as Elijah and Aurica. Yet we do not know their stories, only Elijah's and Aurica's, and clearly God prepared them for the great miracles of their deliverance. Elijah, his faith built up, proved obedient to God, listening and waiting year after year and then finally hearing God telling him what to do when the day of deliverance finally arrived. This is what we know from his account. How vital, then, to do the same! Life and death, s crown or reproach, hinges on how we choose to respond to this qualification.
Qualification #3: Are you Ordinary? Average in most ways? Even "run of the mill"? If so, you're what God is looking for!
More than anything else, this account clearly indicates that ordinary people can be made great overcomers. You could not begin life in more ordinary circumstances than Elijah did. He faced life as a village boy with some sheep to tend, and later he became a low-paid plasterer on government projects. What a hopeless, humdrum existence was his fate! Why? God is merciful to all, but Elijah also did what the scriptures said for him to do, passages such as: