When Your Brook Begins to Dry Up

Then the Lord said to Elijah, “Go away from here . . . and hide yourself by the brook Cherith. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. And it happened after a while, that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.”  I Kings 17: 3, 5, 7   (NASB)

When Your Brook Begins to Dry Up

God told Elijah to prophecy to evil King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, that no rain would fall for years, except by God’s word. Elijah obeyed, and God immediately told him to go into hiding in a desolate area by the brook Cherith. 

God lovingly provided for his needs there. The ravens brought him meat, and he drank life-giving water from the babbling brook.

But soon Elijah noticed the stream wasn’t running so quickly. 

The sound of rushing water once comforted him as he lay down to sleep. But now he stared up into the darkness haunted by a foreboding trickle. The tall green grass was gone, the animals were gone. Death circled in the sky, and Doubt may have choked him like the perpetual swirling dust of the scorched earth.

In the face of desperate thirst, Peace can evaporate into Panic. We can imagine Elijah crying out to Jehovah facedown in the dry riverbed. 

“God, you told me to come here! What are you doing? How long must I suffer?” 

But God was silent.

Does that sound familiar? Is something drying up in your life and there’s nothing you can do to reverse it? Does the loving Father seem like a lukewarm Friend?

Sometimes in obedience, you pursue what you're convinced is your Divine calling. And then your stream begins to dry up. 

Maybe God opened doors for you to change jobs. But when you did, you transitioned from one hostile environment to another. 

You may have eased into a relationship after much prayer, but within a few years the other person morphed into someone you didn’t recognize. 

Elijah didn’t expect his brook to shrivel. Likewise, God sometimes surprises us with a radical pruning or leads us to a crossroad of crisis with no good answers.

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Has God shaved your ego? Has he shaved your head? Has He taken away every prop? 

Or has He given—divorce papers, a diagnosis, a prodigal son?

We cry, “God, you knew this was going to happen. I’ve tried to obey you. Why is my world falling apart?”

John Bunyan, the 17th-century preacher, knew that feeling. He was shoved into prison for preaching against the Church of England, painfully separated from his wife and four children.

Charles Swindoll writes in his book, “Elijah:”

[Bunyan’s] brook of opportunity and freedom dried up. But because Bunyan firmly believed God was still alive and working, he turned that prison into a place of praise, service and creativity as he began to write Pilgrim’s Progress, the most famous allegory in the history of the English language. Dried up brooks in no way cancel out God’s providential plan. Often, they cause it to emerge.

Dried up brooks cause God’s plan to EMERGE.

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God needed to teach Elijah gut-level, soul-wrenching Trust. Later he would summon every bit of that Trust to bring fire down from heaven in a breathtaking showdown with the prophets of Baal, bringing wayward Israel to its knees. God would use him like no one else in history. 

God had a plan for Bunyan, for Elijah, and He has a plan for you in the crucible. A plan to work miracles in you.

A plan to make you a miracle.

Jesus’ Message:

Child, 

Your brook may be drying up. But I am the Prince of Peace, not Panic.

Rest assured, I am deeply concerned about your dried up brooks. I will come and minister to you in due time. Until then do not trust that which is Seen. If you do, you will miss my blessing and all I have planned for you. 

I must teach you to trust that which is Unseen. To trust in One who hovers over you, aching for you to look deeper, farther, higher, to all that I am doing for you. 

If you had any idea how I am working for you behind the scenes, you would never doubt Me or My ways. 

I am molding you into My vessel. I will transform your tears shed in the wilderness into Living Water; to be a Stream in the Desert for parched souls. No one is better suited than he who has walked that barren mile himself.

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My disciples’ hopes dried up too when I did not save Myself from the cross. You see, they had their eyes on an Earthly Kingdom. But their expectations were too small. 

I am training your eyes to see beyond your circumstance; to see My Heavenly Kingdom. I desire you to see the Story I am writing for you which concludes at the End of your Rope—where your deepest desire is to be filled with Me. The End of your Rope is where My Kingdom comes. And there you and I become One, fulfilling My purpose for you from the beginning of time.

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After My resurrection, I appeared to My disciples and addressed their worries, assuring them, “I am with you to the end of the world.”

Beloved, I am with you too. Though Hell seems to prevail, remember I am your Conqueror! I am your Strength and Song in the heat of battle. 

You are Mine. And I will never leave your side.