Women at the well it’s time to rejoice – PART ONE

widow zerepath

Posted by Julie Edensor on 11 June 2016 | Comments

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Women at the well it’s time to rejoice – PART ONE

Key Words Typology:

SON-Life of Christ in You (life that may appear to be dying-spiritual death– one that needs to be raised up again)

WIDOW-Bride Of Jesus Christ (one left upon the earth who’s Husband can not be seen, enduring in a time of‘ famine’)

PROPHET– Prophetic Word (that which comes to challenge the affections of His Bride ‘I AM hungry will You feed me?’– This requires His bride to give up her natural reserve i.e.– oil & flour– yet in doing this  the outburst of God’s richest blessings is produced in our life– our dying Son is raised .

ZAREPHATH– Refinement, the Bride's smelting house!! It’s here God’s has His dying widow supernaturally  reserved for the reception of His prophetic word.

CHERITH– It is the chosen place for God to bring us to the end of our natural resources, forcing us to go to God’s widow for a precious supply. Divine hospitality!

HUNGER, GATES, STICKS, UNREASONABLE INVITATIONS, IMMINENT DEATH ………BUT THE RAISING OF THE SON!! 1 KINGS 17  v  1/ 24

Behold the scene before us. The land is laid waste and desolate; a famine has affected the land under Queen Jezebel’s reign. Jezebel who desires to stop the prophetic Word and destroy the life of the precious Son.

Yet God in His mercy has a deprived widow coming to the end of her natural days awaiting the reception of the prophetic Word. One who is facing her extremity knowing it’s His ultimate opportunity.

Here in the midst of her need we see a prophet raised up by God.

1 Kings 17V1 /6:  Behold Elijah!  The greedy, great hairy prophet from Tishbe in Gilead.

2 Kings 1 v8: Behold one that was bound with a leather girdle bound around his loins.  We are told in Eph 6v 14 to gird our loins with the belt of truth. This leather girdle speaks of severity of separation and describes one who walked apart from all resources of man. Elijah was not a wearer of delicate garments; he was God’s man for the day of idolatry in a land under the reign of Jezebel. When Satan has done his worst God will do His best.

The natural brook Cherith which had sustained him had now dried up!  The natural brook had to be drained, and dried up before the great victory of Mount Carmel.  We have to learn too, that as our brooks dry up we need to turn to Him!  Psalm 65 v 9- “The river of God is full of water.”

How desperately we need God to bury our self-life in the darkness of a Cherith or a tomb, so as to hide it or keep it in a place of death! We must all win power in a hidden Cherith. Before the triumph of Carmel there has to be a brook Cherith, and a Cherith always leads to a Carmel– the mountain top where we cease to hesitate between two opinions— “If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” 1 Kings 18 v 21. The wonderful and regular provision of those beautiful black raven messengers of God,  1 Kings 17 v 4—those unclean creatures (Leviticus 11 v 13/15) which had feasted upon the dead corpses after the flood—Genesis 8 v 7, the raven and the dove represent two natures, carnal and spiritual. The dove is clean and feeds on the olive, the raven is unclean and feeds on death.  The raven represents an aspect of our nature that remains unclean, unchanged by the ark.   Right to the end the dead things of the world remain attractive, especially to certain inclinations in us.

“Nature fails but grace does not. The supernatural never has to cry ‘I am unable to help’  it was the brook that dried. Widow …………….. the greatest events are linked to feebleness. It is where the woman is obedient that the miracle is to be performed…...The Son is raised!!!”

Yet we see now under the command of God, they can be restrained from eating His obedient prophet’s meal! As the command given to the great fish that carried God’s disobedient prophet to spew him out at God’s destination, not leaving him to drown in the middle of the ocean!  That great fish was the transporting agent for the delivery of ‘God’s prophetic Word.”

Psalm 148 v 7/14—Therefore, dragons, beasts, creeping things, flying fowl, sun, moon, heaven, fruitful trees are called to praise Him.  Every created thing created by Him and for Him!  Colossians 1 v 16.

Some scholars believe that the bread and flesh that these ravens brought to Elijah had been offered to idols under the trees in forests and the birds knowing no different made free use of them!  How ironic, how marvellous His faithful prophet would not go hungry!!

There is a story told of one of the heroes of the Reformation who had hidden from his would-be murderers in a cave which was so covered by bushes that his enemies failed to find him.  He dared not leave his retreat even to eat, but a hen came and laid her eggs in the cave, and so he was kept from dying of hunger!!

Other Protestants besieged in Beziers in France were delivered by a drunken drummer who, going to his quarters at midnight, rang the alarm bell of the town, not knowing what he did; and just then their enemies were making their assault.

A spider, by weaving her web over the mouth of an oven hid the servant of Christ....

Dr Tate and his wife, in the Irish rebellion, were flying through the woods with a sucking child, which was ready to expire.  The mother going to rest it upon a rock, puts her hand upon a bottle of warm milk, by which it was preserved.

Blandina, the slave girl facing imminent death in Ancient Rome for her testimony to Christ was transported with joy at the hope of salvation and a future life, she folds her hands and raises her sweet clear voice in a hymn of thanksgiving, declaring that she should now be ready to leave the world at any moment, for all her fears had been crushed beneath the heel of the Saviour.

When at last she was exposed to the wild beasts, the mouth of the lion was unto her the door of heaven.  But the lions seemed awed by her courageous, majestic bearing, and withdrew, crouching, into a corner, when neither blows or alarms could drive them upon the victim.

The wild cow, was as reluctant to attack Blandina as the other animals had been, and the hands of her cruel persecutors were at length compelled to release her from her agony.  Her good fight fought, and her sufferings ended, she passed through the dark valley of the shadow of death into the Golden City...

The wonderful James Hudson Taylor when in desperate financial need in China proclaimed “God has His ravens in China.

He truly is our Ephesians 3 v 20!!  He is able to do exceeding, abundantly above all that we could ask or think of Him, according to the power that works in us!

“I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread.”  Psalm 37 v 25.

God often uses the most obscure means to furnish our needs.

God’s precious Bride we need to learn the value of the Brook Cherith, His hidden, but honoured place!  Where everything we receive has been measured and provided by His hand. Psalm 145 v 15/16—”The eyes of all look to Thee, and Thou dost give them their food in due time,  Thou dost open Thy hand, and does satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

“God often uses the most obscure means to furnish our deepest needs. We as Bride’s need to know His hidden but honored place.” “and He said , ‘truly I say to you no prophet is welcome in His own home town. But I say to you the truth , there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months when a great famine came over all the land ; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, But only to ZAREPHATH, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.” Luke 4 v 24/26

Cherith today is your portion, why do you refuse to occupy a position assigned to you by God’s grace?  It can only be due to the fact that you fail to see certain virtues and qualifications in yourself.  This provision is not what you deserve today, but what Christ deserves.  By refusing to believe God, all His promises ‘His daily provision for you’ on the ground of your own unworthiness you make Him a liar.

Enjoy the Brook while it flows, drink of it, but, be warned, it will dry up!

Ecclesiastes 3 v 1/8 - There is an appointed time for everything.  And there is a time for every event under Heaven.

1 Kings 17 v 7—and it came to pass after a while, (a whole year) that the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

No matter what situation we are in, either good or bad we are to always be assured that scripture tells us “it came to pass!”

Brides by the well, upon leaving our Brook Cherith (the place of our natural resources)  we must not mourn or lament for these past days.  As patient Job mourned for his past days “Oh that I were as in the months gone by, As in the days when God watched over me;  When His lamp shone over me; And by His light I walked through darkness:” Job 29 v3 He knew what he had lost, but did not know or yet realise, what he was to gain!

1 Kings 17 v 8/9, “Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Arise, go to ZAREPHATH, ........and stay there; behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” Elijah heard the command and he had to go, leaving his place of regular supply, to receive from one, herself destined to die!

Why go to ZAREPHATH?

We now have to go the place called Zarephath, ministry now has taken that form.  It is where the woman is obedient that the miracle is to be performed …..…………..The Son is raised!!!

Elijah in his obedience to God had made the 100 mile journey from Cherith to Zarephath to be met at the gate by a poor widow about to prepare her last meal Here she is, a picture of Christ’s Bride today!  Desolate, hungry, poor and about to die!

BUT SHE WAS THERE! God had communicated to her that she was to go and meet His servant.   She was to go the extra mile, give the coat as well as the tunic…. She was to be what Isobel Khun calls a ‘second miler’, and so are we!

No longer would there be a flowing brook of water, but the water that would revive him would be from the jar that was in her hand.  Ministry now depended on the frailty and obedience of the widow. 1 Kings 17 v 10, “Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink.”

Would she do it?  Would she follow the command of God, even to giving all of what she had got?  The greater request then came “As she (and it had to be her) was going to get it, he called to her and said “Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand.”  1 Kings 17 v 11.

She was about to learn the great joy in obedience to God and sacrificial giving to His saints . . . Her jar of oil with only a little in, and her last bowl of flour was about to be filled every day supernaturally, in 1 Kings 17 v 5 we read ..”that she and he and her household ate for many days (margin—a whole year).

In 1 Kings 17 v 16 we read that the bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty… But read on!  Greater trials, greater testing's, her son died—no breath was left in him!

Today for many Christians They Feel I have given sacrificially, I have gone the second mile, I have been obedient to the command that God has given me!  But feel within me that the life of Christ is dying.  Our hope and faith appear to be failing!  But there is Good News’ - God, by His Holy Spirit asks us to place that dead lifeless son into His arms . . . . .

In 1 Kings 17 v 19 we read what the prophetic word says to us “GIVE ME YOUR SON”!  Elijah carries him up to his room and calls upon the LORD!

The child’s life returned unto him and he revived!

That wonderful prophetic word then brings the child down from the upper room and gives him to his mother:  saying “See, your son is alive.”

In Romans 10 v 17 we are told that faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.  Only the word of God can keep the Son of God alive in our hearts in these feeble, difficult times!

Elijah took responsibility for the death of the son in the widow’s life, he carried him up to the upper chamber where he was living, and laid him upon his bed, nowhere else would have done!! The widow was about to declare    “Now I know that the word of God in your mouth is truth!” 1 Kings 17 v 24.

‘ We all need to cherish the season of Cherith in our lives, knowing that only here we develop a tried and tested foundation to which we can build upon.  ere we learn the value of God’s lavish provision through remarkable means!! God always seeks to make His name true in our lives!! He makes our extremity His ultimate opportunity!! Many despise this period of complete solitude, they like Job long for former days!  “Oh that I was in months gone by, as in the days when God watched over me; when His lamp shone over my head, and by His light  I walked through darkness;  as I was in the prime of my days, when the friendship of God was over my tent;  when the Lord Almighty was yet with me . .. Job 29 v 2/5.  Job did not know that Shaddai was more his friend now than ever!  The Lord never watched over His servant more than while he was in the crucible . . . He does not withdraw His eyes from the refining pot when the precious gold of His redeemed is being tried by fire!

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