I seriously doubt I can articulate clearly even half of the incredible events that came to light today, but I will try….
The backdrop: my wife and I, being convinced it was God’s leading, are living on a 1000 acre property 3-4 hours from Perth. We have two children under two and there is no power, no running water, no toilet, no phone coverage.
It is quite harsh – but a *large* number of ‘God-incidences’ 1‘co-incidences’ that were direct answers to prayer had lead us here…
We are working at trying to set up a camp to help recovering addicts. I don’t recall the exact job I was doing when a 4wd drove up. It was the farmer who owned the land and was letting us stay for free. Some of his friends from a church ~50km away had come to visit with their son, who was a drug user and was running away from (a drug debt?). We will call him ‘Kent’.
We stopped what we were doing to have a chat (not knowing their history at all). I remember I felt to say something specific about God, which triggered ‘Kent’ into sharing a dream he had that lined up with that. He asked to come back and stay to learn more about ‘God’.
It just so happened that the following week, a friend, a struggling recovering addict, was also coming up to visit / help. We will call him Sean. I won’t go into details of all the God-incidents that led to me meeting Sean or being called by another friend as Sean was suicidal. Or the God-incidents that led him to being at a church where God showed what true joy was the night he secretly vowed to end his life or….you get the idea.
So Kent and Sean came for a 4 day stay to do some work & learn about God. There were *many* conversations that were simply remarkable, (they must have been inspired), but even more than that – there was a synergy between the three of us that was unmistakeable.
At the end of the 4 days, Kent asked to be baptised and invited his family to a cow paddock in the middle of winter where we baptised him in a cow trough. It was powerful. But was it real & lasting?
Kent & Sean left, and we continued to work at getting running water, a toilet and other luxuries…
Around a year later, we made the decision to give up, it was too hard, we could not cope. We left and re-started life in suburbia.
[Fast forward ~15 years!]
The phone rings and it is Kent – he tells me he is thankful for how God used the stay with us. He is married and serving God in a church, but also in a program for struggling teens. He excitedly tells me:
“you will never guess who walked in, who is going to be working with me serving together? Sean !!!”
That’s right, Despite only knowing each other for 4 days in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, God had led them both to eventually meet in a church program to help others in a totally different part of the country years later!
Fast forward another couple of years to today. I get a message on social media asking ‘is that you Adam?’… It was Simon – a man I had not heard from in 15+ years. This man had crazy interactions on drugs & in the spiritual world – things that can not be written here, but *full on*.
God did some amazing things in Simon – and for a short time he was a fire brand. But he decided that he wanted to get back into drugs despite my pleas. The last I heard from him, he had seen a finger write out part of the words of Jesus from the Bible on his shower screen (!). It was a warning for him to follow, but despite my pleas, he ignored it & went his own way. I thought he had died years ago.
But he tells me that God has been protecting him and he went to church twice yesterday… “God has a plan!” Amazing – it made my day, I was stoked to hear from him.
An hour later, doing an online Bible study, my eyes glance towards a question I answered last week. “When have you surrendered everything to the Lord in an especially challenging time?”
When I read the question last week, a memory came to mind and I didn’t know why: we had been desperate for money for weeks, struggling – could not even afford food. We were praying for God’s help and someone came and handed us thousands in cash. The second it touched my hands, I knew I was not meant to take it – so I gave it back. 2 Later we found out that was the right move At the time of reading the question, I had no idea why this situation came to mind.
But tonight, right now, it was glaringly obvious. So obvious it brought me tears…
You see, Simon was actually a very close friend of Sean! They used to hang around & do heavy drugs together. God brought this memory to mind as tonight it would mean something profound – it was all connected.
And just as a kicker, our study topic tonight: (no joke) – where the King sees the finger of God writing on the wall warning him he has been judged for his idolatry & excesses! Whaaaaat?! Crazy.
Thinking about this simple situation was like looking at the neural network of a brain: so many different twists and interconnected events, all fitting together perfectly.
God is incredible: He is orchestrating events both in personal & private ways, but also on the world scale. We get caught up in the details, but He *always* has His way!
Amazingly, He uses all our feeble efforts to rescue those He has called 3 1 Cor 15:58 . Wow.
Lord, help us to always remember Your faithfulness, Your plan, Your purpose, Your power, Your victory. Please forgive us, empower us and convict us to speak boldly for You to those lost, deceived and heading to a hopeless eternity. Be glorified through all we do.
#tapestryofgrace
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
Romans 8:28-30 (NLT)
Footnotes:
- 1‘co-incidences’ that were direct answers to prayer
- 2Later we found out that was the right move
- 31 Cor 15:58