Brian Bloye, founder and lead pastor of West Ridge Church in the metro-Atlanta area is a man with a passion to see churches planted all over the world. However, he came to InnovateChurch with a burden to touch the hearts of pastors who are discouraged. “Some of you are in a dry-brook season,” he said, referring to his text, I Kings 17:1-7. In the passage, God sent Elijah to the Brook Cherith, where he had fresh water and the ravens brought him food to eat. Then, as verse 7 says, “And it happened after a while that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.

God had sent Elijah to this place of protection after he had confronted the evil King Ahab and his equally evil wife Jezebel; they had brought the idol Baal into Israel to replace Almighty God. Elijah told them that it would not rain and it did not for three-and-a-half years. Some might ask why God would allow the brook to dry up when Elijah had been following God’s commands. Bloye answered: Elijah, who was God’s man for the hour, faced this challenge “for the purpose of being totally dependent on God.” God wanted to get Elijah alone to “build him from the inside-out,” he added.

Bloye then recounted his own dry-brook season of a few years ago when he faced several challenges, including the death of his father, who served on staff with him at West Ridge Church, the moral failure of another colleague, and other related problems. “Sometimes we start questioning God and questioning ourselves,” he admitted. But then he added, “This was the season of my life that God did the most intense work in me. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything … God was deepening my faith.”

He reminded pastors of other biblical examples of men facing seeming calamities prior to God bringing them great reward, including: Joseph in prison; Moses in exile; Paul’s three lonely years in Arabia; Jesus’ 30 years of near obscurity.

“God is more concerned about growing you and developing your character,” Bloye said, “than He is in making you comfortable.” He then referred to Isaiah 49:14 in which God promises never to forget His people. “Remember that a dry brook is often a sign of God’s pleasure,” Bloye reminded, “and not a sign of God’s displeasure.” With cheering words to pastors going through their own dry-brook seasons, he added, “God is preparing to work in you … Just stay in the brook with Him until God moves the cloud away