What now? Is my season here over?

A.W. Pink wrote in The Life of Elijah that it was for the prophet’s own good that the Lord bade Elijah to “hide thyself” for he was in danger from another quarter than the fury of King Ahab. The greater threat was not persecution, but success.

Pink warns that the success of Elijah’s supplications could easily become a hindrance to his spiritual life - filling the heart with pride and hardening it against the suffering of a nation already under judgment. Elijah had prayed in secret and then, for a moment, made a bold confession before the king. Yet greater service still lay ahead.

The day was coming when Elijah would again stand in the public arena - confronting Ahab, routing the prophets of Baal, and turning a wandering Israel back to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the season immediately following that first confrontation was not ripe. Elijah was not yet ready.

Pink explains that the prophet required further training in secrecy and isolation by the Brook Cherith. There, over three years, Elijah would be personally fitted - secured - in the way God forms His servants. This is how God trains His men and women: not on platforms or under the bright lights, but in deserts.

Those whom the LORD uses typically earn what might be called a BsD in theology: the Back-side-of-the-Desert. Moses earned his, as did Job, and David, and Joseph. And so will anyone personally equipped and primed to speak for God in public.

A.W. Tozer observed the same pattern. God trains His people in the desert not through grand displays, but by leading them “by ways they have not known” [Isaiah 42:16]. There He breaks self-centeredness, as with Jacob at the Jabbok, teaches deep trust, and reveals His man-ward side in Jesus Christ through inward transformation, not outward fanfare or showmanship.

“Ah, my reader,” Pink writes, “the man whom the Lord uses has to be kept low: severe discipline has to be experienced by him, if the flesh is to be duly mortified.” Three more years were required; years of seclusion and complete reliance. God reduces a man to his minimum so that He may fill him with His maximum.

“How little is man to be trusted,” Pink continues. “How little is he able to bear being put into the place of honour! How quickly self rises to the surface, and the instrument is ready to believe he is something more than an instrument.” Even sacred service can become a pedestal. But God will not share His glory with another, and so He hides those seduced by success and tempted by its trinkets.

Christ Himself provides the illustration. In Mark 6, the apostles gathered to Him, eagerly recounting all they had done and taught. His response was corrective and gracious: “Come aside by yourselves… and rest awhile.”

It is only by retiring from public view and getting alone with God that we learn our own littleness. As Pink concludes, “Every servant that God deigns to use must pass through the trying experience of Cherith before he is ready for the triumph of Carmel.” And he adds with disarming honesty: “To be removed ‘into a corner’ [Isaiah 30:20] is a much severer trial than to address large congregations every night, month after month.”

That insight gives context to the quiet testimony of Jason Taylor, former pastor of Bar None Cowboy Church in Tatum, Texas. After a severe storm in the spring of 2025, Taylor found himself asking the question many faithful pastors eventually face: “Lord, are You telling me What now?” His reflection, shared publicly, does not resolve the tension quickly. It honors it.

That reflection can be heard directly in Pastor Jason Taylor’s own words here:

▶ Jason Taylor, “What Now?” [Spring 2025]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cZZltHG5Is

God’s ways often appear strange to us, especially in the quiet aftermath of a debilitating storm. Yet God’s children, adopted through Christ, learn to order their lives in commitment to and reliance upon Jehovah, leveling and paving the road by removing obstacles to moral progress, even when the destination is not yet visible.

As Michael V. Fox, the Jewish Hebrew scholar, observes, spiritual wisdom cannot be purchased; not because it is prohibitively expensive, but because it belongs to an entirely different category of value. No currency, diploma, degree, platform, manifesto, or achievement can be exchanged for it. “Wisdom belongs to a different category of value and hence cannot be acquired in [a secular] fashion.”

The tragedy in America is that with the forfeiture of our Judeo-Christian heritage and the Biblical culture established by the Founders, wisdom itself is no longer prized. Contemporary culture cannot comprehend why God hides His servants before entrusting them with public authority, or why Cherith precedes Carmel. The question after the storm is not ‘what shall we do now?’, but what kind of men and women is God forming us to be?

Still, there is always reason for hope. Gideons and Rahabs are entering the public square of America.

David LaneAmerican Renewal Project