Signs

Tonight at Lifechurch, Craig's main message from the "At the Movies" movie Signs was... when strange things happen, do you see it as the hand of God or as a coincidence?

I thought about this for awhile and was surprised to find out something a little weird about how I have always thought of things. First, it seems that if things happen out of the blue, then I totally accept them as the hand of God and his intervention into life. Don't usually question it.

But, the really weird thing I realized, is that if I pray for something from God- and then it happens, I usually wonder at least once if it was really him answering my prayer or if it was just a coincidence. Isn't this weird?

So I started thinking- have there been any signs lately I haven't noticed? All I had to do, upon arrival home from church tonight, was to look back in my journal. This shed a lot of light on the matter. Back in May, I prayed for two very specific things. I don't want to share but they were SPECIFIC. And I was praying really hard for these things... for about a month.Then, PA school happened. I was consumed with all of the new things to do and totally forgot about my prayer. Then, within three days of PA school starting, out of the blue the two things I prayed for happened.

But the weird thing? I never even wrote them down in my journal or remembered I had asked for them! It was as if these two answers to prayer came and it didn't even cross my mind that God had just provided what I had asked for so fervently. In looking back, I guess at the time they seemed like coincidences to me. Only now does it all become clear.

And I know its not just because I asked for them that they happened. They happened because they have a place in the plan of God, like all affirmative answers to prayer. "The Lord works out everything for his own ends..." And yet, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."