Ways God Speaks To Us

Divine coincidences are where things just happen to fall together in such a way that the hand of God is evident in your circumstances. As you sit back and look, you can see that God has been orchestrating events to lead you into the center of His perfect will. Sometimes this can be fairly simple and sometimes it can be quite elaborate. Sometimes the leading of God is very clear as the events are unfolding. Other times His plans may seem very elusive and unclear until they have been accomplished.

Here is an example that a pastor from Cleveland shared at a conference. He was in the midst of putting together a book on the spiritual heritage of the greater Cleveland area. He had been praying for the Lord to give him revelation along these lines. One day he took his car to the shop for routine maintenance. The mechanic's name was Milan. He dropped the car off and went home. He called to see if the car was ready, and inadvertently misdialed the number. Someone answered and he asked, "Is this Milan?" The person replied, "No, Milan is another 20 minutes down the road from here." They hung up. The pastor thought that was odd, then realized he'd misdialed. But he had discovered that there was a place called Milan not from where he lived. So he redialed, got the mechanic and found his car was ready. On the way to pick it up, he stopped at a traffic light. The car in front of him just happened to have a bumper sticker on it that said, "Milan, Ohio."

The pastor began to wonder if maybe God was trying to tell him something about Milan. First a mechanic by that name, then coincidentally misdialing and being told Milan is a city, then the bumper sticker for Milan -- all within a few hours. So after he got his car, he drove to the city of Milan. When he got there, he happened to encounter someone who told them how the city had been founded by a Christian community and that there was an old library from the city's founding fathers. When he went to this library, he found several important documents that helped him with the research he was doing on the area. God had used the coincidences about Milan to get him to that city to allow him to find the little out-of-the-way library that contained these documents key to the research he was doing.

Let me share a story from my own life. I got a phone call from a friend who is a Christian businessman in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He owned a company and the company was facing a crisis. He called me to inquire of the Lord regarding his company situation. I shared what the Lord gave me, prayed for him and then we got off the phone. Just as soon as I put the phone down, I felt prompted to go there and be with him in this "time of crisis." I did not know if that was my own heart reaching out to him or if it was a prompting from God. Then this silly idea hit me, "I wonder if there is a seat sale." So I called the airlines and ended up on hold for a very long time. While on hold, I decided I should figure out the dates to ask for when asking for a fare quote. I looked at my calendar. I was pretty much booked solid with trips for the next three weeks. I finally flew home from the last of my back-to-back trips on July 15. So the earliest I could get there was July 16, a Monday. I wondered how long I should stay and decided a week felt right. So I decided to fly home the following Sunday, July 22. Coincidently, July 23 was my Mom's birthday, so I had to be home for that. So the dates I chose were based on the coincidence of my schedule.

Just after I'd come up with the dates, the ticket agent took me off of hold. I asked if they had a seat sale by any chance. "Oh. I am sorry, we have seat sales only between a few destination cities at the moment, so chances are very high that it won't be the cities you want." So I shared that I wanted to fly from San Francisco to Ottawa. "You won't believe this," the agent said, "but we do have a seat sale for those destinations, but today is the last day of the seat sale and it is almost completely sold out." The fare was exceptionally low, only a couple of hundred dollars. I asked her to try the dates I'd selected. She said she'd try but I should not get my hopes up because the computer said the fares are all sold out. I was on hold for a few minutes while she checked. "You're not going to believe this," she said, "but I have precisely 1 seat available on each of those two dates. I checked the seats on flights on several other dates just out of curiosity and they were all sold out. But the dates you want are available and you are getting the last seat at that fare on both of the flights."

I ended up arriving in Ottawa three weeks after the crisis started. That particular crisis was over, but I went anyhow since I had the airline tickets. I arrived on Monday evening. Tuesday morning a new crisis hit and God had me there for that situation. I was able to give the word of the Lord and minister personally to a some key people because I happened to be there at the "right time." It all seemed like coincidence, but it was really God leading through circumstances.

Look back over your own life and I bet you will be able to find some times when God lead you through divine confidences. The things just happened to fall into place to get you in the right place at the right time. It is one of the ways God really enjoys leading His people. In fact, this happens so often that some people have coined phrases to describe this such as "God opened a door." Another popular phrase is, "When God shuts a door, He always opens a window." This refers to God leading His children through circumstances. He can stop things that are not right to do and He can make opportunities for things He does want us to do. There are many scriptural precedents for God leading us through divine coincidence. Let me share one with you.

God used coincidences to lead a young Saul to Samuel to be anointed as king. You can find the story in 1 Kings chapters 9 and 10. Saul's father owned a herd of donkeys that were missing, so he told Saul to take a servant and go look for the donkeys. As they looked for the missing livestock, they just happened to come to the city where the prophet Samuel was, so Saul decided to ask the prophet if God would tell him where the donkeys were. God had already told Samuel that He would send Saul to him and that he was to anoint him as king. But, from Saul's perspective, God did not send him to the prophet to receive a message from God. He was just looking for the missing donkeys, and coincidentally there happened to be a prophet in one of the cities where Saul searched, so Saul decided to ask the prophet if God would tell him about the donkeys.

There are many other biblical examples of God leading people through what looked like a series of coincidences but was really the hand of God. This is one of the ways that God speak to us and leads His children.