In the 20th Chapter of Joshua, immediately after they split up the promised land, God has the children of Israel setting aside cities of refuge. God does not pick the cities, the children of Israel do, and in verse 7, they pick Kadesh, Shechem, and Kirjath-arba to be those cities of refuge. I claim that those cities were already prepared for their purpose (for God knew He would speak through Joshua to tell the children of Israel that He wanted them to set aside cities of refuge and He knew what cities they would pick as well as where those cities would be located and the environs of those cities).
I believe there were people involved in the selection of those lands and those cities that were not aware they were involved. Maybe they were unbelievers that were not killed but knew the lay of the land better and so God used them to help the children of Israel understand the lay of the land. Maybe some of the children of Israel were adopted from other cultures - they were loving adopted and an active part of the people of the children of Israel, but were also unaware of all the promises of God (for there are many) and so might have engaged in activities not specifically mentioned in scripture, but that led to the selection of those areas for the city of refuge.
In Luke 19, we have Jesus sending two of his disciples to a village near the mount of Olives where a man will have a colt tied. They are to take the colt, tell anyone who asks that it is for the Lord, and bring it back to Jesus. I claim that the man who owned the horse was prepared for it in some way, possibly through dreams, or it was an extra colt he was planning on giving for a sacrifice because it was particularly anointed, or something even more amazing. But the Lord prepared the way for even something as simple as the untying of a colt.
I believe there were men that God sent to the man with the colt that did not know they were doing the Lord's work. Maybe the man had been visited by four or five people and told him that his first-born colt was anointed of God and clearly something that should be given as a sacrifice. Maybe he was meeting his brother (who he had not seen in years) and was planning on giving the colt as a gift, but did not have peace and so did not quite know why he brought the colt - in such a situation, I would see the brother as working on God's behalf but NOT knowing anything about doing the will of God.
Over and over again, we see in Psalms and Proverbs that wisdom and folly are associated with certain choices and we see evidence of a system where wisdom appears when one is engaged in Godly activities and foolishness is evident when one is not. And most of the activities in which wisdom appears correspond to events that take some degree of preparation. Take for example when scripture says that there is wisdom in the multitude of counsel. That does not happen overnight. Sometimes that cannot happen for weeks or months. And that is one part of one verse in a set of scriptures loaded with such wisdom. So wisdom takes some planning and is not immediate and we are being prepared for it in the same way that God prepared the children of Israel to set aside those cities of refuge and God prepared the man's heart to part with his colt.
I believe that there are many who are not chosen by God to be aware of how our own actions will reflect an increase or decrease in wisdom, but are attenuated to the system of cause and effect God has placed upon our lives, such that they give us Godly wisdom or show us the results of foolish living.
And so I realize that we each are being prepared for many things, most of which we will never know about, often for events we will never be aware exist.
The call to action of the day is: Be a walking praise report and seek guidance!
-* Be a walking praise report *-
- Thank God for the things He brings to mind that He has made possible in your life, both all the steps leading up to them, as well as the realization of the reality of the event!
- Thank God for being a part of someone else's opportunity for testimony, knowing that your actions and thoughts are being used to guide someone else to Christ!
- In prayer, with fear and trembling, seek the Lord's guidance about how you can more closely walk His path for your life.
- Take literally the verse that commands, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" and pray for insight as to how that can and should be manifest in your life.
