Theodor Geisel did not particularly like children. But as Dr. Seuss—his literary alter ego—he knew how to reach children at their level. His whimsical drawings, silly made-up words, and memorable rhymes made him a staple of children’s literature. Children learned about the ups and downs of life through characters such as the Cat in the Hat, Horton the elephant, the Lorax, and the Grinch.
One of Dr. Seuss’s most interesting books is Oh, the Places You’ll Go! It is the story of a boy starting out on the adventure of life. With shoes on his feet and a brain in his head, he can choose which paths to follow. But no matter which path he chooses, he eventually ends up in the waiting place.
The waiting place is where the doldrums extend over the horizon. It is a dreary and depressing place—at least the way Dr. Seuss describes it. Everyone is waiting for something insignificant to occur, like watching paint dry or grass grow. According to Dr. Seuss, the waiting place is not the place anyone should aspire to be. Yet, according to God, the waiting place may be the perfect place to be.
[God] gives strength to the weary,
And to him who lacks might He increases power.
Though youths grow weary and tired,
And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary. (Isa. 40:29–31)
When life grows dreary or you become weary of the rat race, God has strength to spare—and to share. God’s abundance of strength can replace your abundance of weakness. All that is required is for you to “wait for the LORD”—for His replenishment of supernatural strength.
Those who desire to experience an extraordinary life learn the value of waiting on God’s timing. Waiting time does not have to be wasted time. God often calls on us to take a time-out, because waiting has always been a part of God’s plan for those He uses in a powerful way. God’s most extraordinary servants have had to learn that significance is developed not on the playground of activity but during the quiet recesses. For example,
“In life, God will always work sovereignly, strangely, and slowly,” pastor and author Steve Farrar says. “He will take time, but He will not waste time. His delays are not necessarily His denials. And when He delays, He often doubles the mercy.”1 It is during these divine downtimes that God is at work transforming our lives.
Or, to put it in the words of Rick Warren: “When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when he wants to make a giant oak, he takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering.”2
Why God Makes Us Wait
Extraordinary people are grown through struggles and suffering—through waiting. If you find yourself in the waiting place, before pulling your hair out in frustration because God’s clock seems to run at a glacial pace, consider these reasons that God makes us wait.
Waiting Reminds Us of Our Need for God
Most of us are eager to move quickly from a past failure to the next big thing God has planned for us. But after we experience a major failure in life, God often calls for a divine time-out so that we might reflect on the cause of the failure and renew our relationship with God.
At other times, however, God calls us to wait not because of failures but because of successes. When we are experiencing the blessings of God, we sometimes conclude that we deserve the success we are experiencing at work, in relationships, or in ministry. In Texas, we call this “getting too big for your britches.” Before God can continue to use us, He sometimes has to bench us to remind us of our need for Him.
In his short career as the University of Texas’s head football coach, Charlie Strong had to bench one of his all-star players, Malik Jefferson. Touted to become a Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, the “Predator,” as Jefferson was called, got too big for his britches after an outstanding performance in the 2016 season opening game against Notre Dame. In the weeks that followed, the Predator looked more like the prey, as offenses ran over and through him. Coach Strong benched him—and Jefferson got the message. You win and lose as a team, but each individual on the team must do his job. “I wasn’t trying to get better,” Jefferson later said. “I thought everything would be handed to me, and I had to realize you have to work for things.”3
After a few weeks on the bench, Jefferson came back into the huddle and became the Predator once again.
Whenever we experience success in life, it is important for us to remember that whatever we accomplish for God, we accomplish because of God. As Paul reminded the Philippian Christians, “It is God who is at work within you, giving you the will and the power to achieve his purpose” (Phil. 2:13 Phillips). Occasionally, we must wait in time-out—or ride the bench—for God to remind us of that important truth.
Waiting Allows Us to Recharge Our Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Batteries
Success gives us a shot of adrenaline—and like the Energizer Bunny, we believe we can go on and on and on. Unfortunately, if we keep going without taking a break, we discover that success can be draining. Eventually, even vigor gives way to weariness and stumbling—what an avid hiker friend of mine calls “dumb feet.” At those times, when a hiker’s feet are stumbling on the trail, threatening to send him careening off the mountain, he needs to sit down, drink some water and eat a snack, and allow his feet to rest.
Jesus’s disciples experienced something like spiritual “dumb feet” after their rousing success of preaching, healing, and driving out demons. Jesus had divided His disciples into teams, and after a period of ministry they came to report “all that they had done and taught” (Mark 6:30). They had been faithful and done well. But Jesus knew that successful ministry leads to a never-ending cycle of ministry, until the inevitable comes—burnout. If time is not taken to rest and recharge, it is easy to develop spiritual “dumb feet.” So Jesus told His disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while” (v. 31).
We all experience times when we need to pull back from work and the hubbub of our daily schedules and take a break. And if we will not do it voluntarily, then the Lord just might make us do it involuntarily.
Waiting Can Prepare Us for an Even Bigger Mission
After I finished college and married my wife, Amy, the legendary pastor Dr. W. A. Criswell hired me to serve as the youth pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. I was elated to have the opportunity to work under Dr. Criswell at the first megachurch in America, ministering to hundreds and hundreds of teenagers. Yet I knew God’s ultimate plan was for me to serve as a senior pastor.
During the seven years I was on staff at First Dallas, I talked with pulpit committees of some fairly large congregations. However, nothing ever came of these discussions. Then, one day, I received a call from Lee Graham, chairman of the search committee of First Baptist Church of Eastland, Texas—a small town ninety miles west of Dallas. I had no interest in going to Eastland. Amy, on the other hand, was interested in at least having a conversation with Lee and the committee members. I finally agreed to meet with the committee. After the meeting, I was not that impressed, but Amy said, with tears streaming down her face, “Robert, I believe we are supposed to go to this church.”
Within a month, we moved into the little parsonage of this county-seat church. I cannot describe the culture shock of moving from a major metropolitan city like Dallas to a small, rural town that claimed a population of 5,200. We had a highway that ran through the center of town, right by our home. On Friday afternoons, my younger daughter and I would sit outside on our porch and watch the cars go by—about one every twenty minutes. That was our entertainment.
Honestly, the first several years I was there, I did everything I could to go to a larger church. But God had a different plan for me. During the seven years I was in Eastland God taught me priceless lessons about leadership, ministering to people, and study (I had plenty of time for that!). As I look back over my spiritual journals from those years, I realize what a gift that experience was and how God was preparing me for my next assignment.
Elijah experienced something similar in his life. He had accomplished his first mission—to pronounce the judgment of no rain or dew on Israel (1 Kings 17:1)—a mission in and of itself that was no small thing. But compared to his next public assignment, which would be confronting 850 frenzied, sword-wielding Baal worshipers, his confrontation with Ahab was a relatively small challenge. After all, Ahab was a passive and henpecked man. Elijah had little to fear from the king. However, that could not be said of his wife Jezebel! She was the real threat. Ahab may have been a snake, but he was only a garden-variety snake. Jezebel was a true viper.
So, before throwing Elijah into Jezebel’s pit with her Baal-worshiping priests, God sent His prophet to a waiting place to prepare him for the mission to come—just as He will probably do with you at some point in your life.
Training Camp for God’s Servant
“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours,” James 5:17 informs us. He had the same weaknesses and fears we do. He stood against the corruption and idolatry of his day—the same kind of corruption that is present in our day. And Elijah did so with the same resource readily available to each one of us: faith. I am not talking about some undefined optimism that everything will turn out okay in the end. Elijah needed the kind of faith that could look a corrupt king or queen in the eye, declare God’s judgment on their wickedness, and then enter a winner-take-all contest in which he would be outnumbered 850 to 1. That kind of steely faith can only be hardened and purified after it has endured God’s crucible of testing.
Pastor and author Chuck Swindoll notes that Marine Corps recruits undergo a crucible of testing to earn the title United States Marine and the right to wear the eagle, globe, and anchor emblem (or EGA, as Marines call it). New recruits are shipped to either Paris Island or Camp Pendleton, where they suffer through thirteen weeks of drill instructors running, marching, and pushing them until they begin to think and function like Marines.
But that is just boot camp—the easy part. The “fun” is not over yet. Next, these Marines-in-training have to endure a fifty-four-hour marathon of forty-mile hikes, obstacle courses, and combat exercises—all accomplished on very little food and very little sleep. The Marines call it “the Crucible.” The Crucible is what makes a Marine a Marine. Recruits who finish the Crucible are awarded their EGA and finally have the right to call themselves United States Marines.
Elijah would ultimately become an even more formidable warrior than any Marine, but God had to put him through a vigorous training program—first at the boot camp of Cherith and then through the crucible of Zarephath.4
Basic Training by the Brook
After Elijah’s initial confrontation with Ahab, God told the prophet to leave Samaria and go to the wilderness. “The word of the LORD came to him, saying, ‘Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan’” (1 Kings 17:2–3).
Why would God send the one man in all of Israel willing to stand up to the godlessness that had gripped the nation to sit beside a small creek in the desert? I do not think it was for Elijah’s protection. God was more than capable of ensuring that no harm came to His prophet without hiding him in the desert.
Instead, God reassigned Elijah to the wilderness for two other reasons. First, Elijah’s withdrawal from the national scene was itself a judgment against the nation of Israel. The Hebrew word for “hide” in verse 3 could be translated, “Go away from here and turn eastward, and remove yourself by the brook Cherith.”5 In other words, for the time being, Elijah was to leave his public ministry behind.
One theologian has said that Elijah’s temporary removal from the national life of Israel was God’s judgment against the nation.6 Just imagine what our country would be like if suddenly God told every preacher of His Word to stop preaching and go hide for a few years. Without the proclamation of God’s Word, our nation would soon collapse under the weight of its own sin. The Old Testament prophet Amos predicted a day would come when the Israelites would experience a famine of the Word of God (Amos 8:11–12). Israel suffered under a physical famine by the word of Elijah; now they suffered under a spiritual famine without the word of Elijah.
But judgment was only one reason that God commanded Elijah to “hide” himself by Cherith. God would also use this parenthesis in Elijah’s ministry to prepare him for a great future mission. By isolating him in that uncomfortable place, God was teaching Elijah to trust Him in ways he had never trusted before. This deepening of Elijah’s faith was not optional but essential for the future assignment God had in mind for His prophet.
My own Cherith experience was my first pastorate, in that small county-seat town. During those seven years, I felt cut off from family members and lifelong friends in my hometown of Dallas. I was suddenly removed from the security of ministering in my home church, where people were willing to overlook the mistakes and shortcomings of a novice minister. Although not removed completely from ministry like Elijah, I was in a place of obscurity where I was forced to trust God like I never had before.
Perhaps you are in a similar place in your life in which you feel cut off from others and even from God. Your Cherith may be the result of
Although your present circumstances make you feel cut off from the life you dreamed of, God is using this experience to cut down your reliance on anything or anyone other than Him so you might learn to trust God completely. Learning to depend upon God fully is vital for anyone who wants to experience an extraordinary life.
Skills for Spiritual Success
During Elijah’s boot camp experience, God taught his servant three vital skills necessary for spiritual success—skills we must develop as well if we want to experience a significant life.
Cherith Teaches Us to Walk with God Daily
The path God calls us to walk is one of faith and obedience, not sight and independence. Paul encouraged the Corinthian believers with this truth: “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7).
We used to live close to a lake. Every morning as I drove to our church in downtown Dallas, I often had to navigate through the fog produced by that large body of water. When the fog was especially thick, traffic crept along at a snail’s pace. I had to drive “by faith, not by sight.” And that meant slowing down.
God is not in the habit of revealing His entire plan for our life all at once. If He did, we would race forward without ever feeling the need to slow down, listen to His voice, and wait on His direction. While God does not unravel His entire blueprint for our lives, He can always be trusted to reveal to us the next thing we need to do. Every Christian who wants to experience an extraordinary life needs to answer the question, “What is the next thing God wants me to do?”
For Elijah, God’s answer came through a simple command: “Go away from here and turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan” (1 Kings 17:2–3). God did not reveal to Elijah what every day would be like at Cherith, the next phase of his training at Zarephath, or the daunting contest that awaited him on Mount Carmel. The Lord simply revealed to His servant what he was to do next.
What was true in Elijah’s life is true in yours. Usually, God only reveals as much of His plan for your life as you need today. Do not worry about what He has in store for you in the next year, the next month, or even the next day. “Tomorrow will care for itself,” Jesus said. “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34).
Cherith Teaches Us to Obey God Completely
When God recalled Elijah from the palace and redeployed him to the wilderness, he did not balk. Elijah did not dig in his heels and remind the Lord that He was the one who had dispatched him to Samaria on this risky mission in the first place. Nor did Elijah protest the unreasonableness of going into hiding when his influence was making such a difference in the culture. Instead, when the Lord told Elijah to pack his backpack for a camping trip, he obeyed instantly: “So he went and did according to the word of the LORD, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan” (1 Kings 17:5).
When our daughters were young, Amy and I tried to teach them the value of obeying the first time, every time. It did not always work. Sometimes, our commands were met with either “Why?” or an outright “No!” I remember once being on top of a mountain on a family vacation when my five-year-old started running toward the edge. Our cries for her to stop went unheeded, and the only reason she did not go over the side of the mountain was that I could outrun her (at least back then!).
Of course, it is not just children who struggle with obedience. I think about the honest confession of my friend and mentor Dr. Howard Hendricks, who said, “The Lord and I have a running argument. I constantly attempt to impress him with how much I know. He constantly seeks to impress me with how little I have obeyed.”7 If a godly leader like Howard Hendricks struggled with obedience, then why should you or I be surprised by our difficulty in obeying God immediately and completely?
However, Elijah not only preached God’s Word to others but also practiced God’s Word himself. When God spoke, Elijah listened and obeyed. God’s prophet in hiding was a living illustration of what the New Testament writer James had in mind when he exhorted Christians to be “doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves” (James 1:22).
Immediate and complete obedience is often difficult, but it is also necessary to experience God’s favor.
Cherith Teaches Us to Trust God Absolutely
God promised that He would take care of Elijah at Cherith. Though the means of God’s provision seemed unusual, Elijah trusted God without reservation. The Lord said to Elijah, “It shall be that you will drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there” (1 Kings 17:4).
After Elijah found a spot to set up camp, the Lord dispatched ravens to feed His hungry prophet. Twice a day, morning and evening, those big black birds brought Elijah bread and meat, and he drank from the clear, clean water of Cherith (v. 6).
Every day Elijah experienced the truth one of Israel’s kings had written years earlier:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight. (Prov. 3:5–6)
If Elijah had chosen to “lean on his own understanding,” then he would not have retreated to Cherith after his initial successful encounter with Ahab. Instead, he would have embarked on a speaking tour throughout Israel! He would have called the people back to faithfulness, cajoling the nation to repent from its idolatry. He probably would have immediately challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown on Mount Carmel. After all, Elijah was a hot commodity in Israel. Everyone was talking about this up-and-coming unknown prophet who had the courage to confront the most powerful person in the nation.
But that was the very thing God did not want Elijah to do—not at that time, anyway. God wanted His prophet to regroup, rethink, and renew his soul. And in Elijah’s process of waiting for his next assignment and trusting the Lord to provide for his needs, God would refine and strengthen his faith.
Cherith seems like an odd place for a successful prophet to wait, but it was exactly the place where God wanted Elijah.
The Waiting Place
What about you? Are you where God wants you to be right now—even if it is in the waiting place? If so, He will provide. Not necessarily all at once, but day by day. Learn the lesson Elijah learned: trust the Giver of gifts more than the gifts themselves.
Notice the Lord did not send Elijah to a river but to a brook. Anyone who has ever been to Israel, especially east of the Jordan, knows just how dry and dusty it can get in that wilderness. Water is a life-or-death commodity. At any moment, the water in the brook could evaporate.
But this is how God often works. He rarely places us in the lap of luxury, where abundance threatens to turn our affections away from Him and toward the world. And He never places us next to rivers when He is testing us, preparing us for something significant. In those cases, He places us next to a trickling brook, a place where we can learn to trust the One who blesses and not the blessing.
Also, notice that God fed Elijah from the beaks of ravens. Ravens are considered the clown jesters of the bird world. They love to slide down snow banks and play games. In the wild, they play catch-me-if-you-can with wolves. Maybe because ravens are practical jokers, they are not the most reliable creatures on which to depend for your sustenance! Yet the Lord chose ravens to provide for Elijah’s daily meals. Every day Elijah was forced to trust God to use these most unlikely and unreliable creatures to provide for his needs.
A colleague of mine underwent a two-year Cherith-like experience when he was laid off from his job. Though his wife taught school, her income was not enough to pay the mortgage, buy groceries, and keep three kids in college. They had to completely trust God for the difference and walk in faith day by day. He was able to cobble together enough work to cover their bills . . . until the bottom fell out of their hot water heater. They did not have the money to cover this additional expense. But God had shown Himself faithful thus far in paying their bills, so they believed He would show Himself faithful in replacing their hot water heater. And He did! God sent one of His ravens to provide the necessary funds to buy a new hot water heater and to pay the plumber to install it.
Maybe you are in a Cherith-like situation in which you are being forced to trust God to provide for your material or emotional needs. Remember, the same God who created the brook and directed the ravens that sustained Elijah is in control of the people and the circumstances that can meet your most pressing need.
God could have used His servant Obadiah to care for Elijah. After all, Obadiah had already hidden one hundred prophets in a cave and given them bread and water (1 Kings 18:4, 13). But God provided Elijah with an even better cuisine: bread, water, and meat!
That is the way it is with the Lord. When we are forced to trust Him only, He is able to provide “far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). But to bless us with abundance, God must first put us in a place where we are solely dependent on Him. That way, when God’s blessings start flowing into our lives, there is no doubt about their source.
We do not know how long Elijah camped by the brook Cherith, perhaps up to six months. However, we do know that as the drought and famine deepened in Israel—the same one Elijah had predicted—the brook transformed from a steady flow to a trickle, from a trickle to a few muddy pools, and from a few muddy pools to a parched and rocky creek bed (1 Kings 17:7).
After the water ran out, Elijah’s response was remarkable. He did not take matters into his own hands. He did not pack his bags and look for another brook. He remained right where he was, sitting beside the dried-up Cherith, because that was where the Lord had called him. He would wait until God called him to some other place, until “the word of the LORD came to him” again (v. 8).
This is a hard lesson we all must learn. Trusting God means remaining where God has placed us until He tells us to move. While I was experiencing my own Cherith in that small west Texas town, there were many times—especially in the early years—when I was looking for any opportunity to leave. But a wise mentor asked me, “Do you believe God led you there?” “There was no doubt He did,” I replied. My mentor responded, “Then the same God who led you there will lead you from there—when He’s ready.”
If you are convinced God has called you to a particular place—a job, a church, or a relationship—then stay there until God moves you. As another wise friend said to me in a different situation, “Sometimes it takes more faith to stay somewhere than it takes to go somewhere.” Elijah had the faith to stay at Cherith and learn invaluable lessons that would prepare him for an extraordinary life.
But his Cherith experience did not last indefinitely—and neither will yours. Eventually, God was ready for phase two of His servant’s training regimen.
Crucible by the Sea
No sooner had Elijah survived God’s boot camp by the brook Cherith than the Lord commanded him to go to “Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there” (1 Kings 17:9). And there in Zarephath Elijah would face a period of even more intense training for his future mission.
To reach Zarephath, Elijah had to travel across almost one hundred miles of hostile territory. The trip was especially dangerous since Queen Jezebel had put a price on his head—and bounty hunters were looking to collect.8 However, worse than that, Zarephath was ground zero for Baal worship. Located just eight miles south of Sidon—Jezebel’s hometown—Zarephath was the site of a smelting plant that produced the metal to manufacture the idols of Baal. The name Zarephath comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to melt” or “to smelt.” The noun form of the word means “crucible.”
While Cherith represents the testing of Elijah’s faith, Zarephath represents the refining of Elijah’s faith. In the refining process, gold or other metals are melted under intense heat. Impurities rise to the surface and are removed. Then the molten liquid is poured into a mold of the object the craftsperson wishes to make. And in the case of what was being manufactured in Zarephath, that object was the idol Baal.
The purpose of Cherith was to cut Elijah down—to test whether he would walk with the Lord daily, obey the Lord completely, and trust the Lord absolutely. The purpose of Zarephath was to “melt” Elijah down so that any impurities in his faith could be removed and he might be poured into the mold God had designed for him.
What God did for Elijah He must do for anyone who desires to be significantly used by Him. Just as the Lord tests our faith in our own personal boot camps, He refines our faith in our own personal crucibles. Specifically, God refines three vital qualities for anyone desiring to live an extraordinary life: humility, contentment, and gentleness.
Zarephath Refines Our Humility
Just as God did not send Elijah to a river but to a brook (at Cherith), so the Lord did not send Elijah to a wealthy sea merchant but to a poor widow (at Zarephath). “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you” (1 Kings 17:9).
Zarephath was not just another test of obedience; it was also a test of humility. To be cared for by a poor widow who did not have enough to meet her own needs must have been a humbling assignment for a man who only months earlier had stood in the presence of the king of Israel. But this experience was a lesson in Humility 101—a basic course for anyone wanting to be used mightily by God.
Beyond developing humility in Elijah, the Lord was accomplishing something else by sending His prophet to a Gentile widow. This was yet another sign of God’s judgment against the Israelites. After all, on his one-hundred-mile journey from Cherith to Zarephath, Elijah passed countless widows in Israel, yet the Lord did not permit any of them to care for His servant. That honor went to a Gentile widow. This was precisely the point Jesus made in Luke 4:25–26: “I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.”
God extended the privilege of knowing Him—and the abundance of life that comes through a relationship with the living Lord—to a Gentile widow. But God could only extend that invitation through a messenger like Elijah, who was willing to humble himself to become God’s mouthpiece.
The humbling experience of having to entrust his care to a poor widow (and a Gentile widow at that!) forced Elijah to empty himself of pride so he could be the vessel God could use for His purpose. Even Jesus “emptied Himself” of the privileges of heaven to be God’s instrument to bring salvation to the world (Phil. 2:5–8).
If God’s plan for His servant Elijah and His Son, Jesus, included experiences that forced them to empty themselves of any positions or privileges they could boast about, then do not be surprised when God designs similar experiences for you.
Zarephath Refines Our Contentment
Once Elijah arrived at the gates of Zarephath, he saw a woman collecting wood. The prophet, no doubt thirsty and famished after his one-hundred-mile trek, had a simple request: “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink. . . . Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand” (1 Kings 17:10–11).
Providing water was no problem, but offering Elijah bread—well, that was a big problem. It just so happened that the widow had been preparing the last meal for her son and herself before they ran completely out of food. After that, she and her son would slowly starve to death.
Today we have Social Security and other agencies to care for the needs of widows. For Christians, caring for widows is an indication of how healthy our faith is. James said, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). Our church has a vibrant ministry to our nearly four hundred widows.
But in Elijah’s day there were no financial safety nets for widows—and no churches. Nevertheless, Elijah assured the widow that God would provide. But God’s provision would come only after the widow demonstrated her faith by her obedience to God’s command. Many times, we try to make a deal with God: “If You will meet my need, then I will obey your command.” God’s response? “No, you go first! You obey my command, and then I’ll meet your need!”
It was the same with the widow. Elijah relayed God’s instruction and promise to her. God wanted her to use her last portion of flour to feed Elijah. Then God would keep her flour bowl full so that she and her son would have plenty to eat. She obeyed, and her bowl ran over with flour!
She and [her son] and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the LORD which he spoke through Elijah. (1 Kings 17:15–16)
According to James 5:17, the drought lasted “three years and six months.” If Elijah stayed at Cherith for the first six months, then he spent the remaining three years at the widow’s home in Zarephath, where he ate the same meal every day. Now, I like salmon and broccoli for lunch, but I do not think I would like it every day. But God promised only to keep the widow’s bowl full of flour and her jar full of oil—and that was it. He made no promise that her pantry and refrigerator would be filled with hamburger meat, sirloin steaks, or Häagen-Dazs ice cream! There wasn’t even enough flour and oil to last beyond the needs of that day. Instead, God provided just enough food—the same food—to meet their needs for each day.
This was exactly how God provided for the people of Israel in the wilderness. He provided enough manna for each day, and everyone ate until they were satisfied . . . until they became dissatisfied and grumbled against the Lord. The daily menu consisted of manna—manna soup, manna soufflé, and ba-manna bread. They wanted something different, so God sent them quail. And then they got sick of quail, complained again, and were struck with a severe plague while the quail “was still between their teeth” (Num. 11:33).
Elijah did not make that mistake. He refused to grumble against the Lord for providing the same meal at breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for three years. Instead, he allowed those years in Zarephath to teach him how—as the apostle Paul would write many centuries later—“to be content in whatever circumstances I am” (Phil. 4:11).
Contentment doesn’t come easily for any of us (which is why Paul said he had to learn to be content). All of us naturally have an insatiable desire for “more” or “different.” As long as we are consumed with earning more money, living in a better neighborhood, working at a higher paying job, or having a more supportive mate, we will never focus on fulfilling the unique purpose God has for our lives. It took three years of bread and water at Zarephath to quench Elijah’s desire for “more” and “different.”
Do not be surprised if God plans a similar experience in which you are forced to develop the invaluable quality of contentment.
Zarephath Refines Our Gentleness
After teaching Elijah how to be content with His provisions, God turned up the heat and put His servant through one more refining experience. The widow’s son died unexpectedly, and she was quick to blame her new houseguest for the tragedy. “What do I have to do with you, O man of God?” she asked. “You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!” (1 Kings 17:18).
I do not know exactly what sin she had in mind, resulting in her son’s death. Perhaps her son had been the result of an immoral relationship. Or maybe she had been a Baal worshiper prior to Elijah’s arrival. Whatever the case, she believed God was punishing her for some sin. And Elijah’s presence became a twisting of the knife in her heart. After all, he was a “man of God,” and she was a sinful woman.
Elijah did not rebuke her for her sin or her lack of faith. He did not say, “You got that right, sister. I am a man of God and you are a sinner!” Rather, Elijah put into practice Proverbs 15:1: “A gentle answer turns away wrath.” This firebrand who earlier had confronted Ahab and pronounced judgment on Israel’s idolatry gently said to her, “Give me your son” (1 Kings 17:19).
Elijah carried the dead body to the upper room and laid him on the bed. He wept before the Lord, pleading, “O LORD my God, have You also brought calamity to the widow with whom I am staying, by causing her son to die?” (v. 20).
Elijah then stretched himself out over the body—nose to nose, toes to toes—as if to transfer his life to the boy. Then he prayed, “O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him” (v. 21). He did this three times. The third time, the Lord answered, and “the life of the child returned to him and he revived” (v. 22).
How did Elijah know God would answer his prayer? He didn’t. Until this time no one had ever come back to life after death. This was the first time God had resuscitated a dead body. Elijah did not have precedent to rely on. No How to Pray Someone Back to Life manual was available for purchase. All Elijah had was faith—the unshakable belief that nothing is impossible for the living Lord.9
However, what is most striking to me is not so much Elijah’s audacious request and God’s supernatural answer but the manner in which Elijah made the request. The widow blamed Elijah for her son’s death—and by implication she blamed the God Elijah represented.
Yet Elijah refused to respond in anger to the unfair accusation. Instead, he dealt gently with her anguish and took up her case before God. He prayed, “O LORD my God, why have you brought tragedy to this widow who has opened her home to me, causing her son to die? . . . O LORD my God, please let this child’s life return to him” (1 Kings 17:20–21 NLT).
It takes a gentle and compassionate person to absorb someone else’s anger—especially when you are innocent of their charges—and to make their grief your own. Yet this is what Elijah did. When he took her boy out of her arms, he took her grief—her anger, confusion, and doubts—and made them his own. And he poured them out before the only One who could do something about it.
The miracle of restored life, coupled with Elijah’s gentleness, caused the widow to embrace the Lord and His Word. She said, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth” (v. 24).
Once again, we see Elijah living out the unique purpose for which God had placed him on earth: proving to the world that “the Lord is God”—just as Elijah’s name predicted.
The Gift of Gentleness
Gentleness—a genuine compassionate concern for others—is the mark of anyone who wants to be used of God in an extraordinary way. Author Peggy Noonan illustrates what gentleness looks like in an encounter her former boss President Ronald Reagan had with a widow.
Frances Green was an eighty-three-year-old widow living on Social Security. Every year, she sent one dollar to the Republican National Committee. One day she received an RNC fund-raising letter inviting her to visit the White House and meet President Reagan. She failed to notice the suggestion of a sizable donation. She thought the RNC had sent her the invitation because they appreciated her annual dollar.
Scraping together every cent she could, she took a four-day train trip from Daley City, California, to Washington, DC. She arrived at the White House gate at the appointed time, but the Secret Service guard could not find her name on the list and would not let her in. Heartbroken, she did not know what to do. A compassionate Ford Motor Company executive who witnessed the exchange pulled her aside and asked her to meet him at the White House gate on Tuesday morning at nine.
When Tuesday arrived, it was a busy news day—that morning Attorney General Ed Meese had resigned and a military action was taking place abroad. The Ford executive, having provided White House officials with the information about Frances the day before, gave Mrs. Green a tour of the White House and then took her to the Oval Office, sure that the president would have no time for her. But when the Ford executive peeked in, Reagan waved him in. Frances Green followed.
When Reagan saw Mrs. Green, he called out, “Frances! Those darn computers, they fouled up again! If I’d known you were coming I would have come out there to get you myself.” They sat in the Oval Office and talked of California and days gone by.
Noonan, Reagan’s biographer, wrote, “If you say on a day like that it was time wasted, there are a lot of people who’d say, Oh no it wasn’t. No it wasn’t.”10 Time is never wasted when we exhibit gentleness or contentment or humility or trust or obedience—qualities that can only be learned during our time in Cherith and Zarephath.
And qualities that are essential to experiencing the extraordinary life.