Warning: this is a long story.
I recently wrote an article called, “What is a
Miracle,” to distinguish between the everyday wonders of God’s creation and
a true miracle. I said that something like a blossoming flower or a beautiful
sunset are not miracles; rather, they are evidence of God’s continuing power
and order in His creation. A true miracle, I believe, suspends, or overrules
natural things and is by definition beyond nature – supernatural. As I said
before, I believe God does still performs miracles, because I have been the
witness of at least one and the subject of at least two in my own experience. I
sometimes question the veracity of the TV miracle workers who prance on today’s
stages, but I don’t doubt that God can do miracles today.
I firmly believe that God works in human lives (even
unbelievers’) to work His will. I may never know if God caused a delay in my
schedule that caused me to arrive late at an intersection where someone had
just run a red light and would have smashed into my car. I won’t necessarily
know if God ordered my steps so that I narrowly avoided a contact that would
have exposed me to a deadly virus. I strongly suspect that God arranged my
career moves so that I was in the right place to do His will even though I did
not know what that specific task might be. That line written by William Cowper is
true that, “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”
My opinion was strengthened by John MacArthur’s devotional
thought today. He wrote, “Providence is how He orchestrates, through
natural means and processes, all things necessary to accomplish His purposes in
the world. It is the most frequent way He works and controls the daily course
of human events. The only other means the Lord uses to intervene in the flow of
history is miracles. But He does not perform miracles in the same way now as He
did during the days of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets. However, God has
continuously used providence from
eternity past to coordinate the infinite variety of factors necessary to
accomplish His perfect purpose.”[1]
I am not a hardcore cesssationist like MacArthur, but I do
agree with his assessment of how God works today. A story from my past will
illustrate. I had finished a graduate degree in Michigan in school
administration and was looking for a position in a Christian school. My father
knew a guy who knew a guy who had a school in California. (1) To my surprise, I
received a call one evening from said gentleman in California asking if I would
be interested in checking out their school. After a brief interview, he offered
to fly my wife, Karen, and I out. They put us up in a board member’s home and
treated us more like royalty than candidates, and after much prayer, we
accepted their offer.
They also wanted to obtain a used school bus which was
prohibitively expensive in California, and since I was then transportation
liaison at the school where I taught, I had access to economically priced
busses. They offered to buy a bus and pay the expenses to get it to the coast.
(2) We found a bus, removed the seats, and put them in a 15-passenger van I
owned and planned to tow behind the bus. Then we loaded all our worldly
possessions in the bus. We had a friend who had been a stevedore who helped us
pack so that there was not an inch that was not filled. (3) We left Michigan –
me, Karen (seven months pregnant), and our two children – thinking God had set
us on His path for us.
The first hint that all was not going well was the tow bar
pulling out of the mounts on the van bumper within a hundred miles of home.
After two failed repair attempts, and the towbar coming apart again, we landed
in a small town in Iowa where a welder in a farm implement repair shop did what
I had asked the two previous mechanics to do: weld a carrier to the frame of
the van. He also reinforced the towbar itself as he determined it was
underrated for the weight we were pulling. (4) We thanked him, paid his
reasonable bill, and headed west again.
Unfortunately, we didn’t even get out of Iowa before the
next problem struck: the bus began to spit and sputter and smoke. We pulled
into a rest area, and I called an International dealer a few miles down the
road. I asked if they could send a mechanic with an ignition condenser because
I believed that was the source of the misfiring. He said he would send a driver
in a tow truck in case it was needed. The driver arrived shortly but without
the condenser. He listened to the rough running engine and declared that it
couldn’t be the condenser. His only option was to tow us in. We unhooked the
van and piled the family into the tow truck.
After twelve hours of shop time and a night in a motel, they
still had not discovered the problem. They drained and refilled the gas,
replaced the fuel pump, installed a new carburetor, but it still ran like #%@*.
I asked if they had replaced the condenser, and they said no. I insisted they
do so immediately. You guessed it: it ran like a charm. (5) I demanded that
they remove the $300 carburetor and labor, but I agreed to pay $60 for the fuel
pump but not the labor to install it. The bill was still over $300, but we were
back on the road again, although we were now off our schedule by days and over
budget by hundreds. We went back to reattach the van and continued.
We sailed out of Iowa and enjoyed the flat country of
Nebraska, though it was somewhat boring. At that point, boring but moving was a
delight. Somewhere in western Nebraska, the temperature had risen to over 100,
and there was a thirty-mile-per-hour crosswind to fight. Worse, I couldn’t get
the bus any higher than 3rd gear which meant we were travelling at
about 19 mph. Then the engine began to overheat. I pulled to the shoulder to
let it cool and discovered a stream running beside the road. (6) After the
engine cooled, the kids and I carried water from the stream in soda bottles to
refill the radiator. We got back on the road, staying in 2nd or 3rd
gear (11 to 19 mph) to keep the engine from overheating again.
When we arrived at our intended stop for the night,
Cheyenne, Wyoming, we discovered it was Frontier Days which meant there was not
a motel room for fifty miles. When we shared our awful day with the waitress,
she said we should be glad we had reached the top of the continental divide. We
had been climbing all day without knowing it! It was good news, but we still
had over a thousand miles to go, and our supply of travelers’ checks was nearly
exhausted. We went on to Rawlins where we could get a motel for the night.
Since this was before the days when everyone relied on plastic to survive, we
had nothing but a checkbook from a Michigan bank. Fortunately, we had a
long-time friend who lived in Salt Lake City which was on our intended route.
She agreed to cash a personal check for us to complete our journey. (7)
We arrived in SLC after the banks had closed for the weekend.
Our friend, Nancy, who was a doctor, went to a grocery store she frequented,
and the manager agreed to cash a local check for $300 which she planned to
cover with our check to be deposited in her account on Monday. (8) We left the
next day and drove to Las Vegas where we were undoubtedly the most unique vehicle
the strip had ever seen. We were in a 66-passenger school bus with luggage
strapped on top pulling a 15-passenger van with our son’s hobby horse on top.
We left at 2am so we could cross the desert into California before it heated
up. I’m sure the people on the strip that night thought they had seen a live
replay of the Clampetts on parade.
I have told this story many times in the four decades since it happened. The disaster, disappointment, and depression it caused have paled over time, but one thing has stayed clear. God was with us in at least the eight ways I have numbered, and I will never know what else He may have orchestrated to get us to California safely. I will quote MacArthur again: “Think about it. The vast scope and endless outworking of divine providence, in which God draws together millions of details and circumstances to achieve His will each day, is a far greater miracle than the relatively uncomplicated, one–time supernatural occurrences that we usually term miracles. Belief in God’s providence is, therefore, one of the greatest exercises of faith we can have and a major contributor to our general preparedness and peace of mind as we encounter trials and hardships.”[2]
We have come to call the apparently ill-fated journey to California “The
Ordeal.” The truth is, we don’t know why God called us to California or why He
allowed us to be tried in so many ways; perhaps Satan was trying to thwart
God’s plan for us. But we believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that God was in
it all the way. I am reminded of the verse I have referenced before: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with
you, and through the rivers, they shall not flow over you. When you walk
through fire, you shall not be burned.” We are not promised deliverance
from trials but divine providence in the midst of them.
In the years since the trip, whenever trouble comes to call on the road or
at home, we can say with certainty that God will get us through, not with
miracles necessarily, but with His gracious providence. When we recognize the
kind of things that represent that providence, we smile at one another and say
it’s one of God’s little “coincidences.” I pray you may have the same faith in
the trials you face.
Related posts: Working All Things for Good; Speaking of Illness; OMG It’s Me!
[1]
John MacArthur, Strength for Today
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).
[2] John
MacArthur, Strength for Today
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).
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