No Such Thing as Coincidence

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!