I can’t claim this title as original. I owe it to a woman who was part of our very close-knit small group, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years ago. She actually helped open my eyes to many things. I’ll not share her name for privacy’s sake. But she used to say, “I don’t believe in ‘coincidences;’ I believe they are God-incidences.” I have to agree with her. I believe God speaks to us everyday in the circumstances around us, if we only pause for a moment to listen (שמע).
We are all like Elijah, I think, praying for miracles, big things, and not stopping to recognize how very powerful it is that the Creator of the Universe (or as some say today, Universes) would speak yo us individually in our lives. God showed him to listen for the still, small voice (1K19:10-12 KJV).
First, I’m going to tell you about a tiny incident that occurred today, the kind of thing that happens to us all. And I am going to tell you it was God speaking (other writers out there have other names for these occurrences, one being “God-winks). And then you will be convinced I’m just a crazy old person. And I’ll explain why I no longer care whether people think I’m crazy about God-related things. Because we have gotten more and more intimate, the older I’ve gotten, with the time we have spent, and continue to spend, together. That’s okay••• much of the world thinks people who are close to God are crazy. And I am fine with being included in that group.
Speaking of crazy, we have all gotten used to some pretty crazy things right now. But God speaks to us through the occurrences in our lives. And we need to be listening.
Today I was at a medical facility, not a big scary hospital or anything like that, but a private place where these days one can go and get some lower-key, individualized treatments. I went to spend some time with a friend who gets treatment there. The friend has been going there for treatment since before this virus-that-went-viral time. And it has to be part of the treatment she gets to have her temperature checked. Routine stuff. A routine the nurse has been doing for a long time••• before corona time. And the routine has been to get temperature checked by one of those vital-sign machines on wheels that you all have seen. Those machines have a thermometer probe that goes under the tongue that you hold for a few seconds. Turns out my friend had just been drinking a cold drink, so her temperature registered as barely alive. And the nurse said I’ll have to come back later to check your temperature. I casually remarked, “You should get one of those infrared thermometers they are using everywhere now, that are not affected by what you’ve had in your mouth.”
The nurse said, “Funny you say that, but I was just at (large department store/market) yesterday and I noticed the display and thought about getting one but didn’t.” And I told her, “That was God talking to you. God points out things to us all the time, but we often do not pay attention.” She looked at me like I’m crazy. So••• I’m crazy to the world if I get insights from God. I’m fine with that. So, I’ll pose a little scenario to you for your own life to ponder. And then I’ll ask you to consider that not everything that the world thinks is crazy is crazy. Perhaps even, it is just the opposite. Jesus/Yeshua said in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, “The last will be first and the first last.” Not everything is as it appears. This “rock” on my walking path suddenly moved.”
Have you ever had your day ahead all planned out, more things than you can likely do, you are getting ready to head out the door to begin the day, and as you are leaving, your attention is brought to some little thing on the table or the countertop? It isn’t a “hit you over the head” kind of thing, just a brief moment of attention. You quickly pass it by because you are already focused on all the other things on your list. As you are out and about a situation arises where you could have used that item, and you say to yourself, “I wish I had•••” Those brief attention-getters, I believe, are God-incidences. They are not coincidences. And I cannot prove it to you. You can only prove it to yourself by beginning to take notice of such situations and following through the thought and/or action. And the attention-getter could be a person, an event, an object. (These are the “multiple witnesses” aspects about which we spoke early in the website.)
And I believe that when you begin to exercise that little attention-focusing part of your brain, like with anything you exercise, it will get stronger. Soon you will begin to notice that you are being “spoken to” more. A billboard you have driven by every day for a year all of a sudden catches your attention, never really noticed before. And then that day, or a few days later it will be a reminder when something related to that message comes up. Over and over (Multiple Witnesses Post 02), Scripture tells us two or three witnesses establish truth, although one must pay attention to who the witnesses are, because there are also warnings about false witnesses. A great example of that would be social media (if you doubt this, read 1 Kings chapter 12). 
God won’t be speaking in the big things, but in the still, small voice. If there are “high hands,” “raised fists,” a lot of tumult, that is of people, not of God.
I am blessed to have six children, and I find as I get older I want them, if possible, not to have to go through some of the trials I put myself through. I recently sent them a letter saying to them, in essence, what I say to you now. As you go through life, pay attention to all the little details. They may come back to you soon or they may come back to you much later. But they will come back to you. And God is weaving a story for you that hopefully you will recognize and learn from.
Are these just the musings of an old person? Is this just the years causing me to “wax poetic?”
In our minds, in our flesh, we live in four dimensions (perhaps there are more••• I’m not here to debate that), the fourth being time. God exists outside of time. Time is a part of what God created. That is what allows qualities that we recognize like omniscience and omnipresence. What that means is that, while to you and me, our lives are playing out on a timeline, mind-blowing to us as that might seem, it is all simply “there” in God’s Presence.
I want to share with you three passages from Scripture that hopefully will help you see that these are not simply my ideas. But, after the passages, I am going to give you a few word definitions (in my style you’ve likely gotten used to), to challenge you to look at such passages with a somewhat different viewpoint than you have had before. Don’t take my word for it.
First we will look at two passages from Isaiah, familiar to you as one of the well-known prophets in Scripture. These two will reflect on the quality I have been telling you about, that God speaks to us about things before they take place. This is also an encouragement to us not to try to erase history, because history is for our education, that perhaps we not repeat the same mistakes that have plagued our ancestors.
Isaiah 46:8-10 ESV
8 “Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
The next Isaiah passage is a back-door way of telling you what God is like, by telling you what things that are not God, but may purport to be (like in 1 Kings 12 and in the “high hand” image above [see Numbers 15:30]) cannot do, God is giving proof of what he can do. This is a contrapositive argument. Proof that they are not God is that they cannot do what God can do.
Isaiah 41:21-29 – The Futility of Idols – ESV
21 Set forth your case, says יהוה;
bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob.
22 Let them bring them, and tell us
what is to happen.
Tell us the former things, what they are,
that we may consider them,
that we may know their outcome;
or declare to us the things to come.
23 Tell us what is to come hereafter,
that we may know that you are gods;
do good, or do harm,
that we may be dismayed and terrified.
24 Behold, you are nothing,
and your work is less than nothing;
an abomination is he who chooses you.
25 I stirred up one from the north, and he has come,
from the rising of the sun, and he shall call upon my name;
he shall trample on rulers as on mortar,
as the potter treads clay.
26 Who declared it from the beginning, that we might know,
and beforehand, that we might say, “He is right”?
There was none who declared it, none who proclaimed,
none who heard your words.
27 I was the first to say to Zion, “Behold, here they are!”
and I give to Jerusalem a herald of good news.
28 But when I look, there is no one;
among these there is no counselor
who, when I ask, gives an answer.
29 Behold, they are all a delusion;
their works are nothing;
their metal images are empty wind.
So, you know there are many prophets in Scripture. And the Jewish people and Christian people consider different books as “prophets,” so we aren’t diving into that argument. What we will do is agree that Isaiah is a prophet, and other familiar names like Ezekiel, Elijah, and Jeremiah are prophets. Those two passages above are from a well-known prophet, and one that is quoted often in the Greek Scriptures (GS), as well.
I’ve asked you before to be willing to put aside your assumptive reasoning, the way that you have been taught, or have read, in many Bible translations. I am going to hit you with a few rapid-fire word definitions from the EDBH to see if you may change some mental pictures you have formed. We are going to use a combination of the definitions and the cognate meanings as we have been doing, but in a more abbreviated fashion so you get them quickly and can perhaps cast aside some assumptions. Let’s begin with a couple of your mental pictures:
⦁First, the root for “prophet,”
p.146 נבא transmit God’s word; CM move/speak directly
⦁You’ve of Isaiah going about “naked,” which is
p.192 ערם collect; combine for future use; CM combine/separate
another related word for naked: p.192 ערה bare; make sensitive; absorb impressions; CM absorb/expel
⦁Elijah was “gird in leather/skin,” which is also sometimes rendered naked
p.182 עור awaken; absorb external impulse; CM expose/conceal
Numbers 12:6-8
6 And he said, “Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I, יהוה, make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. 7 Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of יהוה. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?”
And then, rapid fire: ① “vision,” ② “dream,” ③ “riddle/parable.”
① p.237 ראה look; see and understand; CM satisfy needs
② p.81 חלם connect disparate elements into functioning whole; CM bind/loosen
③ p.75 חוד puzzle; present obscure ideas; CM constrain by external force
So, my plea to you is to be prophets in the sense presented here, not that you run around without clothes and act like a crazy old person, but that you make yourself sensitive and absorb impressions from what is going on around you plus your reading in God’s Word, that you see and understand, connecting the different elements/witnesses, and once having done that, you speak directly about where you see God at work in your life. They will be parables. They will fit into a bigger picture. You and those around you (those “in your tent”) will have your/their lives improved by that.
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