The Secret God Taught Elijah in Hiding

Hello, and a warm welcome to you. I am so glad we can spend this time together digging into the riches of God’s Word. Have you ever felt like you are stuck in a divine waiting room, that your life is in a holding pattern and you are unsure of what God is doing? If you have ever felt hidden, forgotten, or completely out of resources, then I want to encourage you to stay with me through our entire time together, because we are going to uncover how God uses those very moments to forge an unshakeable faith within us.

Let’s begin with a verse that I find to be one of the most encouraging in all of Scripture, found in the New Testament book of James chapter 5 verse 17. The writer, speaking of a spiritual giant, a true heavyweight of the faith, says this: “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months.” Elijah, the prophet who could call down fire from heaven and stop the rain in its tracks, had a nature just like ours. He wasn’t a superhero in a special costume; he was flesh and blood, a man who knew anxiety, frustration, and fear, just like you and me.

Think about that for a moment, and let it really sink in. We often place these biblical figures on pedestals so high we can barely see them, thinking they were made of something different, something holier or stronger. But the Bible goes out of its way to tell us that this man, who stood before kings and confronted dark powers, was cut from the same cloth as us. He had good days and bad days, moments of incredible courage and, as we will see in his story, moments of deep despair, and that is precisely why his life has so much to teach us about our own walk with the living God.

Our journey with Elijah begins in First Kings chapter 17, and it starts with a bang. Elijah, seemingly out of nowhere, marches into the court of the wicked King Ahab and makes a bold, defiant declaration. He says in First Kings chapter 17 verse 1, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.” What a moment of breathtaking courage, to stand before a powerful, pagan king and declare that you, in the name of God, are turning off the water supply for the entire nation.

After this incredible display of spiritual authority, you would expect God to send Elijah on a victory tour, a speaking circuit to tell everyone of the power of the one true God. But God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Instead of a platform, God gave Elijah a hiding place, a place of obscurity and silence, which brings us to our first great lesson from his life: God often prepares us in private for the work He will call us to do in public.

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.” God’s command was not to go and preach, but to go and hide; to retreat from the public eye and enter a season of quiet dependence. He had to learn that his significance did not come from the grand proclamations he made, but from his simple obedience to the God who made him. It was by that lonely brook that Elijah entered God’s school of trust, a place where his only companions were the sound of trickling water and the flapping wings of ravens that God sent to feed him morning and evening.

Let me tell you about a man I knew years ago named Frank, a brilliant engineer who was at the top of his game. He had a corner office, a great salary, and the respect of all his colleagues, and he loved using his position to be a witness for Christ in the workplace. Then, a corporate merger happened, and almost overnight, his entire department was eliminated, and Frank found himself out of a job. He spent months sending out resumes, going to interviews, and facing one closed door after another, and he felt like God had put him on a shelf, forgotten and useless.

During that long, difficult year, Frank’s “brook” was a small corner of his basement where he spent hours each morning, not just looking for jobs, but praying and studying the Word like never before. He told me later, “I thought my identity was being an engineer, but God used that time to teach me that my identity is being a child of God, completely dependent on Him for my daily bread.” It was in that place of obscurity, just like Elijah, that Frank learned to trust God’s provision and timing in a way he never had in the corner office.

That is the lesson of the Brook Cherith. It is in the hidden places, the quiet moments, the seasons of waiting when we feel unproductive and unseen, that God does some of His deepest work in our souls. He strips away our self-reliance and teaches us to look to Him, and Him alone, for our sustenance. If you feel like you are at a brook today, hidden away and wondering what on earth God is doing, take heart; this is not a punishment, it is a classroom, and your instructor is the God of the universe, forging in you a faith that can withstand any storm.

But what happens when the brook dries up? What do you do when the source of provision you have come to rely on, the very thing God Himself provided, suddenly vanishes? That is exactly what happened to Elijah, and it leads us to the next stage of his training.

After some time, we read in First Kings chapter 17 verse 7, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land. The very drought that Elijah had proclaimed had now come to affect him personally. This is a critical point; our obedience to God does not exempt us from the difficult consequences that ripple through a fallen world. This brings us to our second point: God tests our faith in the crucible of lack to reveal the limitless nature of His supply.

So, the Word of the Lord came to him again, with another strange command. He was told to arise and go to a place called Zarephath, which belonged to Sidon, a pagan region, and to find a widow there who would provide for him. Think of the irony; God sends His prophet from a dried-up brook in Israel into the heart of a pagan land suffering the same drought and tells him he will be cared for by the most vulnerable person in that society, a poor widow. God was stretching Elijah’s faith, teaching him that His provision is not limited by geography, nationality, or economic conditions.

Elijah obeyed, and when he arrived at the gate of the city, he saw the widow gathering sticks. He called to her and asked for a drink of water, and as she was going to get it, he raised the stakes. He said, according to First Kings chapter 17 verse 11, “Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” Her response is one of the most heartbreaking and honest replies in all of Scripture.

She said, “As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” She was at the end of her rope, preparing her last meal on earth. And into this moment of utter desperation, Elijah brings a word from God that must have sounded like the cruelest of jokes: “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first.”

This was the ultimate test of faith, not just for Elijah, but for this dear woman. She was being asked to give away the very last thing she had, to put the needs of God’s prophet before the survival of herself and her own son, based only on a promise from a stranger’s God. It reminds me of a young missionary couple I read about who were serving in a very poor village. They had just enough money left for one more week of food for their family when they learned that another family in the village had absolutely nothing, their children were starving.

That night, the husband and wife wrestled with what to do. Every logical part of their brain screamed to hold onto what little they had. But they felt the clear prompting of the Holy Spirit to give it all away. With tears in their eyes, they packed up all their remaining food and took it to their neighbors, then went home to their own empty pantry and prayed, “God, we’ve done what you asked. Now we are in Your hands.”

The next morning, a truck from a mission organization that never, ever came to their remote village made a wrong turn and ended up right in front of their house. The driver, seeing their mission sign, said, “I have a truck full of food that was supposed to go to another town, but they just radioed and said they don’t have storage for it. Can you use any of this?” They spent the rest of the day unloading a supply of food that would last them and much of the village for months. Their small, costly act of faith in the face of lack unlocked a storehouse of God’s abundant provision.

That is exactly what happened for the widow of Zarephath. She chose faith over fear. She took her last handful of flour and her last little bit of oil, and she made a small cake for Elijah first. And because of her obedience, God performed a quiet, daily miracle in her home; for the bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke by Elijah. God did not give her a warehouse full of food; He gave her enough for each day, teaching her, and Elijah, the profound truth of daily dependence on His inexhaustible supply.

Perhaps you are at your Zarephath today. You are looking at your resources, whether it is your finances, your emotional energy, or your physical strength, and you are down to your last handful. God may be asking you to do something that seems completely illogical, to give when you feel you have nothing left. Be assured that when God tests our faith with a command to give from our lack, it is because He is about to open the windows of heaven and show us that His supply is limitless, and His faithfulness never runs dry.

So, after the private preparation at the Brook Cherith, and the personal test of faith at Zarephath, what was it all for? God was forging a man of iron faith for a moment of national crisis. This leads us to our third and final point: A faith that is forged in private is the only faith that can stand in the public square.

Three and a half years have now passed, and the land is bone dry and spiritually destitute. The people of Israel are limping between two opinions, trying to worship both the Lord and the pagan god Baal. And God says to Elijah, “The time for hiding is over. Go, present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.” The stage is now set for one of the most dramatic confrontations in the entire Bible on the top of Mount Carmel.

Elijah, one man, stands before King Ahab, four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, four hundred prophets of Asherah, and all the people of Israel. He issues a clear and simple challenge. “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” He proposes a test: two bulls, two altars, no fire. The god who answers by fire, He is God.

You know the story. The prophets of Baal spend hours crying out to their god, leaping on the altar, cutting themselves in a frantic, useless ritual from morning until noon. Elijah, having been steeled by years of trusting God alone, watches with a calm confidence, even mocking them. He knows that an idol, no matter how loudly you yell at it, is just a block of wood or stone.

Then, when the time of the evening sacrifice arrived, it was Elijah’s turn. He did not rush. He deliberately took twelve stones, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. Then he dug a trench around the altar and had the people drench the sacrifice and the wood with twelve large jars of water, so much so that the water ran all around the altar and even filled the trench.

Why did he do this? He was making it humanly impossible for the sacrifice to burn. He was intentionally creating a situation where only a supernatural act of God could bring the fire. He was demonstrating his absolute, unshakable confidence in the God who had fed him by a brook and sustained him from an empty jar.

Then Elijah prayed a simple, beautiful, God-glorifying prayer. He did not shout or work himself into a frenzy. In First Kings chapter 18 verses 36 and 37 he prayed, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again¹.”

And the Bible says, “Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench.” The fire of God was so powerful, so total, it consumed not just the offering, but the wood, the stones of the altar, the very dust beneath it, and even the water in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” One man, filled with a faith forged in the lonely places, became the catalyst for a national revival.

Do you see the progression? You cannot have the power of Mount Carmel without the preparation of the Brook Cherith and the testing of Zarephath. The courage to stand publicly for God is born out of the confidence gained by trusting Him privately. God calls us to stand for Him in our workplaces, in our communities, and in our families, but that public stand must be fueled by a private walk of absolute dependence on Him.

So where are you today in this journey of faith? Are you by the Brook Cherith, feeling hidden and forgotten by God? Or are you at Zarephath, looking at your last handful of flour, being asked to trust God in a way that defies all logic? Perhaps you are facing your own Mount Carmel, a moment where you must stand up and declare that the Lord, He is God, in the face of overwhelming opposition.

The invitation for you today is not to try and be Elijah. The invitation is to give your life fully to the God of Elijah. He is the same God who commands ravens, who multiplies oil, and who answers by fire. He sees you, He knows your situation, and He has a plan to forge in you a faith that is real, resilient, and ready for whatever He calls you to do. Will you stop faltering between two opinions and place your whole trust in Him today?

I want you to take a quiet moment right where you are. Close your eyes if you are able. Just breathe, and let the noise of the world fade away for a moment. Picture that quiet brook, the still water, the sound of the wings of the ravens, and know that God’s eye is on you in your hiddenness. See that small jar of oil, feel the texture of that last handful of flour, and recognize the gentle voice of God asking you to trust Him with your last and your least. See that drenched altar on Mount Carmel, waiting not for human effort, but for divine fire. In which of these scenes do you see yourself today? Tell Him. Be honest with Him. He is here, and He is listening.

Your story matters, and your journey of faith can be an encouragement to others. I want to invite you to take a step of engagement right now. In the comments section below, would you be willing to share which part of Elijah’s journey you relate to the most right now? Simply writing “The Brook,” “Zarephath,” or “Carmel” can be a powerful declaration of where you are and will allow us to pray for one another. And if this message has spoken to your heart, please consider sharing it with a friend or family member who might be in their own season of waiting or facing a great test of faith.

Let us go to the Lord in prayer.

Father in heaven, the God of Elijah, we stand in awe of Your power and Your wisdom. We thank You that You do not leave us as we are, but that You lovingly shape and mold us through the experiences of life. For my friend who is at the Brook Cherith, feeling isolated and unseen, I pray for patience and the assurance that You are doing a deep and necessary work in their soul. For my brother or sister who is at Zarephath, facing a terrifying lack and a difficult choice of faith, I pray for supernatural courage to obey Your word and the joy of seeing Your miraculous provision. For the one facing their Mount Carmel, needing to stand for truth in a hostile environment, I pray for a holy boldness that comes not from them, but from a deep well of trust in You. Turn our hearts back to you again, O Lord. We ask all of this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Now, friend, as you go from this time, may you go with a renewed sense of God’s purpose in your life, even in the waiting. May you walk with the courage of one who knows that the God who answers by fire is with you. And may the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.