Several years ago, sports-shoe maker Nike ran a series of ads themed, “What are you getting ready for?” One showed an NFL football player throwing himself down a steep, rocky hill. Another had a soccer player doing everything in life with his feet. The point? What we do today is getting us ready for something.

What are you getting ready for? Whatever it is, training will be needed:

• Hours at the piano learning scales and practicing sonatas.
• Days in the hot August sun enduring two-a-day football practices.
• Years in a laboratory preparing for a career in medical research.

It seems that for much of life there are seasons of preparation. And the more intense something is, the more intense the training will be. This was true for Elijah as well. God had a plan to build more depth of trust and character into his servant. Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee wrote:

You get the impression that Elijah was a rugged individual, and he was. But there’s something else that should be said here about him—God had to train this man. God has always had a method of training the men He uses by taking them to the desert…. This is God’s method for training His men. Now He is going to take out this man Elijah and teach him several things he needs to learn (Thru The Bible, Vol II, p.283).

 

GOD’S DIRECTION

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Get away from here and turn eastward, and hide by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan. And it will be that you shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”

Gilead was east of the Jordan River, so God was sending Elijah back home to a brook that was no more than a wadi—a seasonal stream that carries water only during the winter rains. Wadi Cherith seems like an unusual place for God to provide food and water during a 3-year drought. Perhaps there was a cave or a shelter there. We don’t know. What we do know, however, is that Wadi Cherith is in the teeth of the wilderness—a hard place to live and a hard place to learn.

Elijah would have to travel over 30 miles on foot through barren land to arrive at a less-than-hospitable place. But this is where God sent him. Elijah had much to learn, and the days of solitude would furnish much-needed moments of reflection and learning.

 

ELIJAH’S RESPONSE

So he went and did according to the word of the Lord, for he went and stayed by the Brook Cherith, which flows into the Jordan.

Notice that God made promises to Elijah that were directly linked to his response: He obeyed God’s Word, believed God’s promise, and went to the Wadi Cherith. Undoubtedly, faith is always a critical issue in our relationship with God, and Elijah responded with trust and obedience.

Elijah made the long trek to a lonely place and settled in here.It must have been an interesting first day at Cherith. Did he watch the skies, wondering if ravens would really show up? This was a new experience for Elijah. As German biographer F. W. Krummacher wrote:

Come, let us pay a visit to this man of God in his new dwelling place. Dead silence reigns, interrupted perhaps by the cry of the solitary bittern, while among the heath and juniper bushes broods the ostrich. All is wilderness and solitude. Not a human footprint is seen (cited by W. J. Petersen, Meet Me On The Mountain, p.37).

Imagine the isolation he felt. Alone in the desert, Elijah would learn of his God in this hard place.

 

GOD’S PROVISION

The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook.

There at Wadi Cherith, God’s promised provision nourished Elijah. Notice how God provided:

• Ravens, voracious birds of prey, would never naturally relinquish their food. Perhaps God used these particular birds to impress upon Elijah the real source of his food so he would trust God for His provision instead of the birds themselves.
• Bread and meat twice a day (compared to the manna and quail in the wilderness).
• Water from Cherith.

God provided in a way that was unique yet connected to memories of past expressions of His faithfulness. God always uses the proper means to accomplish His purposes and training in the lives of His children. This is true whether those means are natural (Wadi Cherith) or supernatural (raven-delivered sandwiches). He remains Jehovah-Jireh, “the Lord that provides.” God’s faithfully kept promise is part of Elijah’s preparation.

 

ELIJAH’S TRAINING

And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” So he arose and went to Zarephath.

Bible teachers believe that Elijah was in the wilderness for over a year. And even though food arrived daily, his anxiety level must have been rising. For as the drought continued, the river became a stream, then a creek, then a mere trickle.

This was part of God’s training of Elijah. Imagine what must have been happening to the prophet’s faith as the water level in the brook dipped lower and lower. God could have brought water from the rocks, as He had for Israel in the wilderness, but He didn’t. The water was running out.

Remember, Elijah was “a man like us.” How might he have responded:

• Wanting to panic?
• Wanting to give up and die? (as he later wanted).
• Wanting to reverse God’s judgment because it was affecting him personally?

This is all part of the training process. Elijah needed to know that he could trust God far more than water—even in the desert, and even when the brook dried up. He needed to learn that:

God knew all along that the brook would dry up. It was inevitable. The wadi was dependent on the heavy rains of late autumn and early winter. And when those rains did not arrive, the brook disappeared.

God’s care was not hampered when the brook dried up. It would be easy for Elijah to assume that he had been forgotten by God. But he had to learn that he was dependent on God, not the brook.

God was still in control, even when the brook dried up. In fact, God was so in control that He totally disrupted the comfort zone that Elijah had become used to. Why? To stretch him in new ways.

When our comfort zone is shattered, it doesn’t mean that God has lost control. But it may mean that we’ve stopped hearing the voice of God because we’ve grown too comfortable.

Even as the water receded, Elijah stayed at the brook until he was instructed to go elsewhere (“Arise go” [v.9]). The lessons of trusting and obedience were being imprinted on his heart.

So God sent him from the wadi on a journey to Zarephath. What do we know about this town?

• It was 80-90 miles northwest of Cherith, on the seacoast in Gentile, not Jewish, land.
• It was in the heart of a land dominated by Baal worship.
• It was the homeland of Queen Jezebel, priestess of Baal, the god that Elijah had challenged.

He was moving from the frying pan directly into the fire. What would Elijah find there? A widow to care for him. That’s not very promising. Widows were normally the poorest of the poor. In a time of famine, they would be the first to run out of food, not the last. Elijah, then, is commanded to go into hostile territory to someone who will have nothing with which to care for him. Why? Because God is training His servant to walk by faith, not by sight—and nobody said it would be easy.

 

Applying It

What lessons can we learn from the “Wadi Cherith Training Center For Spiritual Service”?

• Sometimes God’s children suffer along with unbelievers.
• Sometimes when we think we are ready for Mount Carmel, God sends us to Cherith because we are not as ready as we think.
• Sometimes God’s hiding place isn’t an easy place.
• Sometimes the lessons we need to learn require that things get worse before they get better.

Welcome to Elijah’s world, as he personally experiences the power (and price tag) of spiritual training. Author W. J. Petersen writes:

Sometimes we don’t understand God’s dealings. We don’t know why we were sent to Cherith in the first place; we don’t appreciate the fact that God uses dirty ravens to feed us; and we certainly don’t understand why the brook has to dry up. The fact that we don’t understand is simply a sign that God’s educational process isn’t complete yet. He is still teaching us and we’re still learning (Meet Me On The Mountain , p.44).