Let us not lose a sense of God’s presence and of His providential workings in our every day lives.

<p>Let us not lose a sense of God’s presence and of His providential workings in our every day lives.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor

Divine Appointments

Father, we thank you for your blessings another day of life, and we just pray your spirit will be present as we consider your word and how to apply these truths to our lives.

We thank you and ask in Jesus name, amen.

You know, I'm always amazed that God knows everything and I know that sounds like a kind of an obvious statement but I love reading the stories in the Bible where God makes it clear that he not only knows our address, he knows everybody's address.

And you have a number of occasions in the Bible where God sets up what we call divine appointments.

1 example of that is here Moses is in the wilderness and Moses being called by God.

God shows him signs and wonders and miracles, and Moses is just recoiling at the idea that he is gonna go and stand before Pharaoh, and here he ran away, he was being hunted for murder, and that just the whole thing really frightened him.

Finally it says, you know, God says, look, if I tell you to do something, you should always do what I tell you.

It's amazing how long it takes us to learn that, that when God asks us to do something, we should do it regardless of the consequences.

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, And he said, is not Aaron the Levite your brother?

And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.

And the Lord said to Aaron, go into the wilderness and meet Moses.

So it was like, God says, look, Aaron's on his way to meet you, and Moses doesn't know that.

Aaron doesn't know it, but God says, look, I'm gonna work out an appointment.

And God is guiding them both to rendezvous somewhere before they go and they meet.

And I just think, you know, God arranges those appointments for us all the time.

Sometimes He might tell you someone's coming to meet you, but how often have you ran into somebody and you thought, oh, that was a divine appointment.

God sent them to be at the right place at the right time, and then He sent me to be there at that exact moment.

Sometimes God arranges divine appointments where you're not supposed to be somewhere and he helps you avoid disaster.

My father missed the plane and he was really upset when he missed the plane and the plane crashed.

And someone told me it happened to him twice in his life.

He's a pilot, so he flew more frequently.

You can read about Elijah in 1 Kings 17, verse 7.

And it happened after a while, the brook dried up because there'd been no rain in the land.

And the word of the Lord eventually came to him and said, Arise and go to Zarephath, which belongs to Zidon, and dwell there.

See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you." Now, when God said that, the widow knew nothing about it.

That when he finally meets her and says, go make me a piece of bread, She says, if I make you bread, my son and I will starve.

But God then spoke to her and said, just do what he said.

And God had a person picked out that was going to take care of Elijah.

She didn't know it until the moment came.

And but Elijah knew that there would be someone there.

I can't count how many times in my life that God has arranged just the right person at the right time.

I think you've heard my testimony before.

I was hitchhiking cross-country and there are 2 places I was trying to go in California.

1 was, I was gonna move up to the cave but I wanted to stop and see grandma in Desert Hot Springs.

I'm not religious but it was 1 of the first prayers I prayed, and I'm sure it was, you know, a very muddled prayer, but in effect I said, you know, Lord help me get a ride to where I'm going.

I'm getting picked up by these drunks and these crazy people, and I'm so tired, I'm so cold, if you could just get me a ride.

I had no money, and I prayed, and I think in that prayer I apologized well as a pagan could for my sins.

I don't even know if I called them sins back then.

But as soon as I finished praying this white man stopped.

He picked me up and he drove me 1, 500 miles to my grandmother's house, had me meet with my grandmother, and then took me to the cave, and then gave me $40, and he fed me all the way to California.

He was a born-again Christian, but he also wanted to go meet David Carradine who played Kung Fu.

So I stopped with him in Hollywood so he could meet David Carradine and then he took me to Palm Springs.

It's a lot more of a story, it's not in the book.

But it was clearly a divine appointment when he took me exactly where I needed to go.

Nathaniel comes to Jesus, he says, "'Lord, how do you know me?' Sometimes we meet the Lord and we think, "'You mean you knew me?' And Jesus said, "'Before Philip even called you to introduce you to me, I saw you under the fig tree.

Ellen White says he was under the fig tree praying about this message of John the Baptist that he had found the Messiah.

So Nathanael's there praying, and he's under a fig tree.

Probably a hot day, he wants shade, and he's praying about, you know, is this the 1, Lord?

And then Philip comes and says, we found him.

And he said, Rabbi, you are the king of Israel.

If you saw me praying, that would be evidence.

And Jesus says, are you impressed by that, Nathaniel?

You're gonna see bigger things than this.

He would become 1 of the apostles, look at the things he would see.

And he said, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel.

In Luke 22, Jesus tells the apostles, he said, look, we're going to have to borrow someone's house for our Passover meal.

And he says, but God's worked out a place.

Behold, when you enter the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water.

And you can see them, this guy's going up and down the street and maybe he looks over his shoulder he says I don't know if you guys are following me he goes in the house they follow him upstairs and this is maybe a servant then they meet the person of the house and they found it just as he had said to them so they prepared the Passover.

How many of you have heard Tim Jones's testimony that he was watching our programs and he became convicted about the Sabbath truth?

And after I don't know how long he was watching, 1 day he says, well I can't just know this, I've got to do something about it.

So he woke up and he was fighting so much about the conviction, it never occurred to him he didn't know where to go.

So he gets his suit on, he walks out his front door, he lives somewhere near Antelope, and he's standing there, he said, okay, Lord, now where do I go?

And right at that moment another family walked out to their car and they looked like they were dressed nicely and they got in their car and the Holy Spirit said follow them.

So he hopped in his car and he starts to follow this family and he figured they were maybe God was gonna lead them to a church.

And so he thought they'd go up and down a couple streets and go to a local church.

He said that he followed them and followed them.

They went on the freeway and they're going down 80.

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Divine Appointments

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