Lesson 3: Seeking an unknown God

Read Joshua 1 and 2.

Rahab’s life had been centered around a different god and a different worship all her life. We do not know when she began seeking the true God, but it was known throughout the land that the people of Israel were coming. Jericho was one of the leading cities of the land, traders from the east as well as from Egypt would have stopped in Jericho to sell and to buy goods. Traders and travelers always brought news of things happening from the places they had been.

The news of Egypt’s armies being destroyed forty years earlier when they chased the people of Israel into the Red Sea would have been news Jericho would have heard long ago. It is also clear that news of the spies from Israel, who had come into Canaan shortly after the Egyptian army was destroyed, would have been known. Rahab told the Israelite men who came to her house the stories the people of Jericho had heard about the victories Israel won over the kings and their armies just in the past few months, too.

Rahab probably felt like many of us do sometimes – she did not know enough about this God she was hearing about to know what she was supposed to do. How could she know what would please this God who was doing such amazing things for the people of Israel? Would He even accept her since she was not an Israelite?


God has made us a wonderful promise in Jeremiah 29:13 – “You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” No matter how we become aware of Him, we must seek Him with whatever information we have about Him. We must seek Him honestly, and He will reveal Himself to us. Then we must do whatever He asks of us – and most of the time He will simply say, “Come to Me.”

Rahab believed she would be able to find God through the men who came to Jericho as spies. How did she know who they were or how to find them when they came into the city? While the Bible does not give us the details, we can only say that God honored Rahab’s search for Him by somehow bringing these men to her attention.

Was it by chance Rahab found these men or that they found her? Do you believe in chance or in luck? I pray that as a believer you trust in God rather than chance or luck. His promise in Romans 8:28 is that He makes everything in our lives work out for good. That means He will allow nothing to come into our lives which He cannot make into good for us as a believer in Him. Does that mean we can do anything evil and He will change it for us? No, sin always has consequences. God says He uses for good the things that happen to us that we do not choose, but we must allow Him to do so by not becoming angry and bitter over these circumstances.

*In what way are you seeking God today?