It’s interesting how Facebook has been reminding me of my memories in such a well-timed manner of late. Either my phone’s spying on me (pshaw!), or God knew something one year ago that neither Facebook nor Apple did.

I am right now in the midst of replacing my kitchen tap — a multistep process in my world — and voila, here comes this notification:

What’s more interesting than the timing is that my new kitchen tap is similar to the one in this image, except that it is wall-mounted. (The American word is faucet, but I am using the Indian word so the title can have a little pun. Every now and then, the title must have a little pun.)

I remember spending a fair bit of time searching for an image to go with that post last year. In fact, it took longer to find the image than it did to write the post — and I don’t type fast even on my phone.

I was delighted when I finally found the right image, because I liked what I saw both inside and outside the window. What I didn’t realize then is that God was also giving me a vision of my new tap.

My kitchen tap dance — or should I call it a Facebook anniversary waltz? — reminds me of how God typically speaks to us and how we hear Him. Here are four principles I’ve learned:

1. God often speaks to us ahead of time, and usually in symbols rather than directly.
The Holy Spirit didn’t tell me, “One year from today you will have a kitchen tap like this.” He simply planted a picture of the kind of device He would lead me to pick when the time was right.

2. We must ask Him for what we need.
I did not get God’s communiqué about my kitchen tap automatically. I had a part to play as well — and that was to ask. I asked God to lead me to the right image last year and to the right tap this year, and both times He did. As Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given you” (Matthew 7:7). And again, “Ask and you will receive” (John 16:24).

3. We must continue to walk by faith.
As we walk by faith, God gives us a vision of the things He has for us in the future. And as we continue to walk by faith, we reach the place of being able to receive the things He has promised. The faith chapter of the Bible makes this very point about Abraham, the man of faith: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went” (Hebrews 11:8, emphasis added).

4. God knows our needs before we do, so we can trust Him with the future.
When I wrote that post last year, I didn’t know I would need a new tap — but God did. He knew before I knew, let alone before I asked. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8, emphasis added). And of course, this verse immediately precedes what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

My kitchen tap is a small thing compared to the Kingdom-related things God has for us — like sharing the good news with others and overcoming obstacles in our own lives. But we learn to have faith for the big things by having faith for the small things. As I say in The Blessing of Melchizedek Devotional, maturity is mastering the basics.