A place called Cherith
Hello Hello Hello everyone! Wow have I missed sharing with you all!!! It’s been way too long! We have had a few “bumps” in the road including major technical difficulties with our blog domain but …..finally…. we got it up and running! Yay! So with that said, let me share with you a little something I’ve been studying….
The scene is 1 Kings 17 and Elijah has just entered the scene. A little background on Elijah…. We find right out of the shoot that Elijah is a prophet from Tishbeh, among settlers from Gilead. Tishbeh is a remote, obscure, insignificant place that to this day is “hidden”. So in other words Elijah was a nobody from nowhere. Now, after years and years of evil leadership and countless warnings, God was done! 1 Kings 16:33 tells us, “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. He sent His prophet Elijah to King Ahab to declare “there shall be no dew or rain these years, except at my word (1 Kings 17:1-6) At this point God commands Elijah to leave the court of King Ahab, “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…. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook” Side note …..the name of this brook is extremely significant….. why? Because names and numbers throughout the Bible have very significant and specific meanings! So, the name CHERITH is a Hebrew word that means “cut off from, cut down – as being cut off from others or from the blessings of a covenant”. Elijah, unbeknown to him, was about to be “cut off and isolated “ and embark on some raw, hard-core spiritual training! In other words…. SPIRITUAL BOOTCAMP TRAINING! God had things He wanted to accomplish deep within His servant’s INNNER LIFE! Ya know, like immediate obedience, courage, and the Fruit of the Spirit (character). Things that would prepare Elijah for his journey for God. In THIS place Elijah learned to completely trust and rely on God and God only. Daily Elijah waited upon the Lord for his sustenance and direction….make sure you get that part….every morning and every night he waited for God. Only in this place of isolation, silence, and loneliness could Elijah relentlessly pursue and learn to thoroughly trust His Heavenly Father and prepare him for all that God wanted Elijah to do for him! Eventually…. that very brook GOD brought Elijah to DRIED UP. Now, that doesn’t make much sense to us does it? You know that old saying “I’m at the end of my rope”? Well Elijah just found the end of his rope. I’m sure he was wondering … What the heck Lord?? ….YOUR the one who brought me here. What’s the deal? No water?? The brook is completely dry?? THIS is where we stretch guys! Ya see… through out our walk with God, there will be times (cycles) of God’s call to SPIRITUAL BOOTCAMP TRAINING. It’s designed to bring us up higher, to grow. It’s designed for our development toward maturity! We are to go from “glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) not stay as infants in Gods kingdom! Maybe your at Cherith (your dried up brook) right now. Maybe your dried up brook is a relationship gone wrong and it’s lonely, or maybe it’s the job promotion you thought you should have had but didn’t get, or maybe you thought you were going the right direction and God said…nope and shut it down leaving you confused. Whatever your CHERITH looks like …. Just know GOD SEES YOU!! He hasn’t forgotten you….He’s got work that He (and only He) can do in your inner life! He’s preparing you! So actually, get excited because your about to move to a brand new place!
