A prophet must listen to God, and a prophet must obey God. Elijah heard the word of the Lord, and Elijah obeyed the word of the Lord, even though, logically, it probably didn’t make sense to him. Verse 9 says, “So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed a widow was there gathering sticks.” There she was, exactly as the Lord said she would be. This was the place, and there was the widow, so Elijah pressed ahead and obeyed God.
We know that God could have kept the water in the brook flowing, so why did the brook Cherith dry up? This may seem irrelevant to us; after all, not many of us will find ourselves in the wilderness dependent upon water from a brook. However, there are other kinds of streams in our lives that we depend upon, and sometimes God allows those streams to dry up as well.
Too often, the Church is fearful when they should be faithful. Elijah must have known what would happen when he marched into the king’s court and pronounced a famine. Ahab was wicked, and the threat of death for doing what God asked Elijah to do was very real. If we are going to live the Elijah life, then we must be driven by faith and not by fear.
If we pay attention to what God is doing in our lives, I believe we will discover that God prepares us for what is coming before are even aware it is coming. Often, it is only when we look back that we see and understand that God is always two steps ahead of any problem or challenge that the enemy tried to put in our path.
