I went to Joyce Meyer this weekend with the girls. We had a
great time. I like Joyce, but I LOVE my
girlfriends. We stayed up way past my
bedtime, ate way more than we should have, and laughed a whole lot.
One thing Joyce said that struck me in particular was this: there’s no such thing as luck. There are no coincidences with God. Everything that happens in our lives happens
because God ordains it. This made me
think: if there’s not such thing as luck, then I have to surmise that there’s
no such thing as “unluck” either.
Lately, I’ve felt pretty unlucky, especially when I start to compare
myself to others around me. But, if I’m
going to stop believing in luck, then I have to stop believing in its nasty
alter ego, too.
Allow me to share a bit about our last three Life Group
(Sunday School) lessons. A little over
three weeks ago, I posted a blog about waiting.
I posted it on a Friday. (My
teacher does not have Face.book and does not read this blog.) On Sunday, she taught a lesson on
waiting. It was like she had read my
blog, knew my heart, and had planned that lesson just for me. I sat there taking notes just in awe of the
way God chose to speak to me about my situation.
Last week, our lesson was about making the place you are
your mission field. Tara (our leader)
did not know at the time, but that Sunday in service, we had a missionary
speaker. Her lesson tied in with his
lesson like they’d been collaborating for weeks.
Probably the most “freaky coincidence” happened this
morning. Back Story: on our way home
from the conference, we spent the whole ride discussing our role as Godly wives
and the various struggles that we face in our marriages. I feel the need to stress that this was NOT a
husband bashing session and that our conversation was encouraging and God
honoring. We decided that Tara (who was
not with us) needed to plan a lesson on marriage and cover the topics we were
discussing. We went so far as to say
that we needed to separate into two groups so the men could talk about manly
things and women could speak more freely about women things. We decided that it’d be most beneficial if
we broke into gender groups sometime, so we could speak candidly and feel more
comfortable than we would in mixed company.
Fast-forward to this morning when our lesson began and Tara
started talking about guarding our tongues, especially as women. She quickly got to the heart of the
conversation we had on the van ride home.
The girls on the van started eyeing each other with accusatory glances. When she divided the room with men on one
side and women on the other, we were convinced someone had “snitched”! After the lesson ended, we told Tara about
our discussion in the van. Turns out,
Tara had planned the lesson for the week before but changed her topic last
minute to the mission field lesson.
Several of the girls from the trip had not been in class the week
before. Had she done the lesson then,
half of us would’ve missed it entirely.
The timing of the lessons the last few weeks has just emphasized
to me what Joyce said at the conference.
There really aren’t coincidences in the lives of God’s children. Nor are there mistakes, and as unlucky as I
feel sometimes, I still have a lot of hope.
If God is orchestrating the details of my Sunday School lesson to speak
to my heart, I know he’s got everything else working for my good, too!
