Don't Get Ahead of God
Once we are saved and we are children of God, He is there to guide us and to go ahead of us to prepare the way for us. I believe this is primarily done by the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit resides in every believer. However, we have to be sensitive to Him and what He is saying to us, or else we can get out of step with Him. It is at those times that we have our greatest problems and defeats in life.
King David usually asked the Lord for guidance before he acted, which is what all of us should do. The second time the Philistines came to attack him after his appointment as king over all Israel, the Lord directed him in an unusual way. (I Chronicles 14:15) He told him to circle around behind them with his army and wait until he heard a sound of marching feet in the tops of the poplar trees. That would be the signal that God was moving ahead of them to strike down the Philistine army. It would have been a defeat, if David had not waited on the Lord.
We can all be impatient and head strong at times. We sometimes have the mindset that it is better to go ahead and do something, even if it turns out to have been the wrong thing later. That is not God's way. God's way is for us to ensure that He is ready to go before us and give us the victory. We must resolve to go by His timing and not to get ahead of Him. We do this by asking the Spirit to show us the way and give us signs or signals of when to act. Then, everything will work together well.
This is part of "waiting on the Lord." We do not rush, but we spend time with the Lord in prayer as we make decisions, and we ask Him to show us when to go and where to go. The other part of the "waiting" is expecting God to direct us. It is our confident expectation that God is there for us to give us victory. We just have to listen for the Spirit, the sound of marching feet or some other signal before we move. I pray that we will all be patient, wait on the Lord and not get ahead of God.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Chronicles 17-21.