"Elijah knew the brook was just a resource and that God was his source."
In 1 Kings 17, Elijah walks in on the most evil king Israel has known, announces a drought, and is immediately sent into hiding at the Kerith Ravine. Ravens bring him bread and meat morning and evening. He drinks from the brook. And then the text says something that goes by so fast you'll miss it — sometime later, the brook dried up. Then the word of the Lord came to him. Not before. After.
Ashleigh Mayfield teaches this passage in three movements. God is faithful to provide — the ravens and the brook were in place before Elijah ever felt the need, the same way the ram was already caught in the thicket before Abraham climbed the mountain. God is faithful to develop you — Kerith in Hebrew means to cut off, and God hid Elijah at the exact moment he looked most ready to be used, because what happened at the brook was the catalyst for every miracle that came after it. And God is faithful to direct you — but sometimes the direction only comes after the provision is completely gone.
She tells it through her own story. In 2014 she and her husband were asked to leave a church over a pastor's affair that wasn't theirs, with two kids under five and no income. She drove 45 minutes to interview for a nine-dollar-an-hour job she didn't want to take, and left with a forty-thousand-dollar salary she hadn't applied for. Nine and a half years later, running a business that had made her the fifteenth-highest income earner in her company, she watched her commissions fall month after month while every door she knocked on stayed shut and God stayed silent. Three weeks of crying. Not released. Staying anyway.
If you're in a season where the thing that sustained you is visibly running out and heaven hasn't spoken yet, this one is for you. At some point our faith has to be greater than our feelings — and we have to stop evaluating God's faithfulness by our circumstances and start evaluating our circumstances by God's faithfulness.
Scripture — 1 Kings 17.1-7, 1 Samuel 17.37, Genesis 22.13, James 5.17-18, Ephesians 6.12-17, 1 Kings 18.20-40
00:00 Welcome — Turn to 1 Kings 17
00:50 David, Goliath, and the List in My Notes App
03:07 The Big Idea — God Is Faithful in Every Season
04:04 Scripture Reading and Prayer — 1 Kings 17.1-7
05:20 King Ahab, Jezebel, and the God of the Rain
06:41 Point 1 — God Is Faithful to Provide
07:28 2014 — When the Rug Got Pulled Out
09:35 The Nine-Dollar Interview That Wasn't
12:28 Abraham and the Ram — Genesis 22
13:12 Fear, the What-Ifs, and Doing God's Job for Him
14:10 Point 2 — God Is Faithful to Develop You
14:47 Three and a Half Years of Drought — James 5
15:55 Why God Hid Him Instead of Using Him
17:24 The Secret Place — Worship, the Word, and Prayer
19:24 Can You Pray for Seven Minutes?
20:26 Deep Roots, the Oak Tree, and What Kerith Means
21:16 The Armor of God — Ephesians 6
22:28 The Miracles That Came After the Brook
23:39 Your Pastor Isn't Your Main Source of Development
24:41 Point 3 — God Is Faithful to Direct You
25:37 When My Own Brook Started Drying Up
27:36 April and May — Watching the Numbers Fall
29:44 Three Weeks of Crying and Waiting
30:43 The Lord Released Me — Resigning
31:25 Are You Sitting Down? — The Call
32:36 Where the Power of God Actually Was
33:31 The Last Scoops — He Never Complained
34:44 Faith Greater Than Feelings
35:36 Provide, Develop, Direct — The Three Points
35:58 Closing Prayer
