I wonder if I have lost this value of the Levites, a value of compassion. The cities of refuge were cities that were appointed to the Levites.

 These were the cities of refuge chosen for all the people of Israel and for any foreigner living among them. Any who killed a person accidentally could find protection there from the one looking for revenge; they could not be killed unless they had first received a public trial. – Joshua 20:9  GNT

It was an honour to have this appointment given to them. They were being called to be the judges in those cases where God was needed to be invited. There was need for a protector of oppressed innocency and kindness to a refugee. For while this person could not leave this city, they were in a place where they were surrounded by the servants of God. They could instruct, pray for and help them and bring them to a place of healing.

It is in our safe place that we can receive ministry from God. I believe that is what happened with the early church.

Then the apostles went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is about half a mile away from the city. They entered the city and went up to the room where they were staying: Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Patriot, and Judas son of James. They gathered frequently to pray as a group, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. – Acts 1:12-14  GNT

They were all together, as frequently as possible, and they all prayed. The secret of their successs was obedience, meeting together and being in prayer.

The 120 individuals are providing me a simple lesson – it is a privilege and a responsibility to attend meetings of prayer. Those times of prayer are frequent and consistent. What I admire the most is that they all prayed together – there was one heart and one mind – there was unanimity about the matters to what they prayed for and that makes me think that they were in harmony, united by the love of God.

I think prayer means that they were including praise, worship, thanksgiving, adoriation, confession and intercession.

Jeremiah has three responses to success as well – worship, humility and trust.

Lord, there is no one like you;
    you are mighty,
    and your name is great and powerful.
Who would not honor you, the king of all nations?
    You deserve to be honored.
There is no one like you
    among all the wise men of the nations
    or among any of their kings.

But you, Lord, are the true God,
    you are the living God
    and the eternal king.
When you are angry, the world trembles;
    the nations cannot endure your anger.

The Lord made the earth by his power;
    by his wisdom he created the world
    and stretched out the heavens.
At his command the waters above the sky^[b] roar;
    he brings clouds from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning flash in the rain
    and sends the wind from his storeroom.

The God of Jacob is not like them;
    he is the one who made everything,
    and he has chosen Israel to be his very own people.
    The Lord Almighty is his name. – Jeremiah 10: 6-7,10,12-13,16  GNT

 

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.  It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed. […] If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to ‘appreciate’, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude.  It is along these lines that I find it easiest to understand the Christian doctrine that ‘Heaven’ is a state in which angels now, and men hereafter, are perpetually employed in praising God. […] To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God-drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds.  The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  But we shall then know that these are the same thing.  Fully to enjoy is to glorify.  In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. – C.S. Lewis