Check out what Swindoll has to say in these excerpts .

Self-pity is a pathetic emotion. It will lie to you. It will exaggerate. It will drive you to tears. It will cultivate a “victim mentality” in your head. And, in the worst-case scenario, it can bring you to the point of wishing to die, which is exactly where Elijah was.

He said, “For I am not better than my fathers.”

Who ever said he had to be? Nobody told him that he had to be better than his fathers. He told himself that!

We open the door for that pathetic liar, self-pity, when we establish an unrealistic standard and then can’t live up to it. Self-pity mauls its way inside our minds like a beast and claws us to shreds.

Let’s allow God to set our standard. He is always loving, always affirming, always accepting, always faithful to uphold us.

And it was the faithful Jehovah God who now stepped on the scene after Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah had played their parts in this unfolding drama.

And he lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat.”

Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.

And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you.”

So he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.

1 Kings 19:5–

God met his servant, Elijah, in his desperate moment of discouragement and despair. This is mercy at its best, beautifully portrayed by the Master Himself. 

First, God allowed Elijah a time of rest and refreshment. No sermon. No rebuke. No blame. No shame. No lightning bolt from heaven, saying, “Look at you! Get up, you worthless ingrate! Get on your feet! Quickly, back on the job!”

Instead, God said, “Take it easy, my son. Relax. You haven’t had a good meal in a long time.” Then He catered a meal of freshly baked bread and cool, refreshing water. That must have brought back sweet memories of those simple days by the brook at Cherith. How gracious of God!

Exhaustion can make you turn emotional cartwheels. Fatigue can lead to all sorts of strange imaginations. It’ll make you believe a lie. Elijah was believing a lie, partly because he was exhausted. So God gave him rest and refreshment, and afterward Elijah went on forty days and nights in the strength of it.

Second, God communicated wisely with Elijah.

Then he came there to a cave, and lodged there; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

1 Kings 19:9 

God didn’t come to Elijah and say, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, young man.” He didn’t say, “Snap out of it, son. You shouldn’t feel like this.”

Instead, God asked a question—a simple question of clarification: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

And Elijah came back with his self-pitying whine.

And he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, torn down Thine altars and killed Thy prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”

1 Kings 19:10 

Elijah was believing the big lie: “I’m all alone here. I’m the only voice left for God. And they’re trying to kill me!”

 
But God graciously listened to him. God didn’t say, “That’s dumb, Elijah. How stupid can you get?” God did not rebuke his despondent prophet.

Instead, God said, “Elijah! Get up and walk out of this cave. Man, it’s dark in here. Go out there and stand in the light. Stand on the mountain before Me. That’s the place to be encouraged. Forget Jezebel. I want you to get your eyes on Me, Elijah. Come on, I’m here for you. I always will be.”

Third, God gave Elijah a close, personal friend.

Elijah had to get his eyes back on the Lord. That was absolutely essential. He had been used mightily, but it was the Lord who made him mighty. He stood strong against the enemy, but it was the Lord who had given him the strength.

Often we are more enamored with the gifts God gives us than with the Giver himself. When the Lord brings rest and refreshment, we become more grateful for the rest and refreshment than for the God who allows it. When God gives us a good friend, we become absorbed in that friendship and so preoccupied with the friend that we forget it was our gracious God who gave us the friend. We so easily focus on the wrong things.

How much like that child we are. We are shut away in our cave of loneliness and discouragement, and then God brings along the gifts of rest and refreshment, wise counsel, and close, personal friends. And we fall in love with the gifts, rather than the Giver!

He gives us a verse of Scripture, and we worship the Bible rather than the One who gave it. He gives us a loving wife or husband or friend, and we fall more in love with the person than the One who gave us that important individual. He gives us a good job, and we love the job more than we love Him. And all the while He stands at the window and says, “Look up here. I gave that to you.” He longs to have us look up and say, “Oh, thank You, Father! I miss You. I want to be with You.”

Elijah reminds us to look up.

Let’s look up after the Lord graciously delivers us from our depression.

Let’s look up when He allows us rest and refreshment following an exhausting schedule that has taken its toll on us.

Let’s look up and thank Him when He gently and patiently speaks to us from His Word after we’ve climbed out of a pit of self-pity.

Let’s look up and praise Him when He faithfully provides the companionship and affirmation of a friend who understands and encourages us.

Let’s look up and acknowledge the Giver more than the gift.

Let’s say, “Thank You, Lord, for telling us all about Elijah,” who is an unforgettable example that there is nowhere to look but up.

 Charles R. Swindoll, Elijah: A Man of Heroism and Humility (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008).