The act of trying to duplicate another man’s results in your life is always a futile project. It never produces the right results of peace, fulfilment, joy, or intimate communion with God. Rather, it brings about pseudo-interactions with God. This is because it is not possible to have revelations from God out of the quest to fulfil borrowed desires.
The acquisition of knowledge from books and other sources leads to illumination and not revelation from God. Revelation always comes as God responds to the genuine desires of our heart. It always comes when we face challenges in our quest to realise our divinely-inspired aspirations.
Attempts to act solely on illumination often leads to misdirected zeal and eventually to frustration. However, reliance on revelation breaks out in practical strategies on the immediate steps to take in order to fulfil the hearts’ desires. Revelation to Naaman meant washing in the Jordan seven times. To the widow at Zarephath, it meant giving out her last meal to a prophet.
Revelation from God always carries the creative characteristic of God. God’s many-sided creative views are always reflected in the revelations received from Him. This is reflected in the startling differences between the instructions given to both Moses and Joshua when they both faced the same set of circumstances at different times. Exo 14:1516 says, ‘And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward: But lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea to Joshua these were the instructions, ‘Now therefore take you twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man. And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above and they shall stand upon an heap. And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people And as they that bare the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest,) That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho (Josh 3:12-16).
Thus, when they were faced with the same situation, Moses and Joshua received different revelations. Moses was instructed to stretch out his rod over the Red Sea and it parted. Joshua, on the other hand, was instructed to tell the elders of each tribe to carry the Ark of the Covenant ahead of other Israelites into the River Jordan. In God’s manifold wisdom and two unrelated events, God achieved the same result of creating a pathway in the midst of water using two different methods. This reflects the beauty of God’s creativity. The depth of God’s wisdom is so boundless that there is always a personal touch in His revelation to every man. You must therefore be patient and meditate on the knowledge that you possess until revelation is imparted.
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