PART 2 - WHAT ABOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION?

 

 

                           PART 2 - WHAT ABOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION?

                                       (Written for the Local Newspaper)         

   In my last article I wrote about ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ One may then ask, “Doesn’t God help us in our time of need?” Indeed He does, and far more often than we realize. Typically, after a near miss, a miraculous escape, an unexpected provision, we call it luck, fluke, coincidence, karma, but in the sight of the Almighty there is no such thing. He merely chooses to remain the anonymous, unrecognized, or unacknowledged Intervenor. Years ago, a young street girl told me that she never thanks people when they help her. Instead she thanks God because she knows that the help really comes from Him. I found her conviction extraordinary.

  The Bible says that God is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe. Do we get rescued from everything? Not necessarily? Elisha, perhaps the second most powerful prophet next to Moses died of a sickness.  All of Jesus apostles were martyred, except for John. Nevertheless Jesus said, “Ask, and you shall receive, seek, and you shall find, knock, and the door shall be open to you…”  It is important to first establish a couple of facts regarding asking. 1 - God is not a big servant genie waiting to answer our every beckon and call. 2 - He will not break His laws nor violate His character in order to answer our sometimes manipulative prayers. There are occasions, however, when He overlooks our folly to be gracious, and that is why I love Jesus today.

  The most common way God helps us is by what I will term PETITIONED INTERVENTION. He wants us to ask! Typically when we’re in a jam, we may cry out to Him for help. Most of us have done so an untold number of times. Shamefully, that is possibly the main reason many of us pray. Furthermore, your rescue may very well have been the result of someone else’s prayer and not just yours. How is your standing with God?

  Another way He helps us is by what I call Unsolicited Help. A friend recently recounted to me an incident he had. He, his wife, and young son, were caught in a fierce storm while canoeing on the Yukon’s Lake Laberge. The lake is notorious for being very dangerous. He felt certain they were goners, when all of a sudden and catching them by surprise, a large boat pulled up beside them. Two men lifted them out of the canoe and brought them safely to shore. He did not know the Lord at the time, nor did he pray. But after talking to the rescuers who recounted their perspective, and told him that it was by mere chance they spotted them, he now acknowledges that it was God that rescued them.

  The next way God helps us is by UNSOLICITED CARE. Jesus said that His Father makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. I was watching a documentary about our sun. The scientists were saying that our sun is actually very extraordinary. From what they were saying, our sun is amazingly stable compared to other comparable stars that they observe. Apparently, typical suns like ours produce fierce solar flares about every hundred years (how they figure that I do not know) that would decimate all life on earth and rip away our delicate atmosphere. That is Unsolicited Care. There are many things in our existence here on earth that we assume and take for granted, but do not recognize, that except for God’s Sovereign Care we could quickly perish.

    Finally, and the most critical is the UNSOLICITED HELP that God has provided for us and our eternal souls - the sacrificial life, death, and resurrection of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Most didn’t ask for it, nor did we even care. But God loved us so much that He Himself took the initiative. Now that is what I would call the pinnacle of DIVINE INTERVENTION. (Next PART 3, Divine Retribution)