There are no accidents – God has orchestrated these divine appointments in your life.
Have you ever experienced a divine coincidence?
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I sure have. I remember the time I struck up a conversation with the owner of Brown’s Photography Shop right here in Agoura. Her name slips me now, but I left a gospel tract after I shared my story of how I broke my neck and found Jesus. Well, every now and then, the Holy Spirit brought her to mind, but I didn’t see her for [I don’t know] maybe a year or two. Well, after that time was up, Ken Tada and I traveled to Beijing, China on a ministry trip. In between our responsibilities, we had a chance to drive north to see the Great Wall of China. Ken and a couple of our Chinese friends even carried me up to the top of the wall where I could wheel in between the crowds of people. And who did I run into? The lady from Brown’s Photography Shop. Honestly, we were both so stunned. Here we both were on the other side of the world in a crowd. I mean, what are the odds that I should run into someone from our hometown, someone that I’d been talking to about the Lord?! Believe me, that was a divine coincidence.
But it begs the question: because God is sovereign, are there such things as honest-to-goodness coincidences? Well, of course there are, I just explained one. Are they planned by God? Of course they are. After all, God’s sovereign. But wait a minute, can the two go together? Of course! Take what happened in Acts 17. The Apostle Paul is in Athens, Greece, waiting on his friends to arrive. And while he is there, he starts preaching to a crowd [and let’s pick it up at verse 17]; it says, “Paul reasoned…in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.” Now, some of those window-shoppers who just happened to be meandering through the marketplace on the day Paul was preaching; they ended up becoming believers. Yet the coincidence of that day’s leisurely stroll—people examining cantaloupe, chatting with neighbors—was really no coincidence at all because Ephesians says that believers have been chosen “before the creation of the world.”
The trick—well, it’s no trick at all. The Gospel of Matthew says that “with God all things are possible” and yes, that even includes bona fide coincidences. God arranges for natural events to occur at specific times in order to further his ends. In other words, he plans coincidences. Discovering how or to what extent will be one fascinating feature of heaven! But in the meantime, it’s no mistake that your car broke down and that kindly stranger helped you. It’s no accident that at lunchtime the same young man keeps coming by your office hawking sandwiches. The people you meet, the people you live near, the folks who sit in the pew in front of you they are all there by divine appointment. Why? So that you might fulfill God’s purpose: to make Jesus Christ real to everyone around you. And so, the lesson is simple: if you experience a divine coincidence [and surely, you will], it’s no accident. It’s no throw of the dice. God planned it. And if he went to all that trouble, planning that so-called happenstance between you and someone else, he wants you to make the most of it. Because before the foundation of the world, he had in mind that you would make Christ real in that coincidental encounter.
Thank you for listening to this little story and of course, this important lesson. And I’ll see you next time on Sharing Hope.
© Joni and Friends