1 Kings 17:2-7
"2 And the word of the Lord came to him: 3 “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4 You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. 6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. 7 And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land."
A close study of the record of Elijah's career will reveal that there is rather more written of his personal spiritual experience than about his public ministry, and there is surely a great lesson for us in this. The reason why he was so mighty in his public encounters with men and in delivering the word of the Lord is that he had proved God so wonderfully in the secret place. Our passage today provides ample evidence of this. After thundering the word of judgment to Ahab, we may well suppose that it became dangerous for Elijah to be within the radius of the king's fury, and it was as much for protection as for provision during the famine that God directed him to the hiding-place at Cherith. But what lessons he learnt about the faithfulness of God in his long hours of solitude as he lived, a day at a time, on the heaven-sent provisions. It is one thing to know in theory that God will provide, but quite another to prove it in experience. It was this experimental knowledge that made him so sure of God, and when a man is sure of God he can wax mighty in his service. The Apostle James reminds us that Elijah 'prayed earnestly that it might not rain' and the astonishing picture that this presents is of a man holding firm in preventive prayer in the solitary hiding-place of Cherith keeping the rain back by the power and integrity of his intercession. Well might Ahab learn to fear such a man who could so move the hand of God against him!