‘Divine Appointments’
Throughout our days of service to the Lord,
He desires for us to comprehend and be aware of His ‘Divine Appointments’. If
we are led by His Spirit and prepare our hearts to recognize His working in the
events He has predestined to occur in our lives, we truly can see with the eye
of the Spirit His setting up of ‘Divine Appointments’ in order for us to be
effective in witnessing for Him and giving Him the glory through it all.
My wife and I made a trip to the seashore
of South Carolina
to do some ‘salt water’ pier fishing. During our stay we knew ahead of time
that we would be involved in an interview of sorts when a salesperson would try
to sell us some property. So, we began praying on the way down for this person
and as a result of our prayer God set up a ‘Divine Appointment’, and here is
how it went.
We began with the salesman, a young man
named Sebastian from Paris,
France, giving
us about a half an hour of his presentation when the Lord interrupted and I
spoke to him about the Gospel Message. I shared my testimony with him and he
had already spotted my New Testament in my back pocket and was aware of my
Bible ‘leanings’.
Well, it just so happens that the Lord had
gone before us and prepared the way! He, the salesmen, then told us of another
‘Baptist preacher’ that had witnessed to him a few months earlier and he had
gotten to know him quite well, having had dinner with him etc.
As soon as I heard that I turned up the
heat as it were, and told him of God’s working as we prayed in bringing us to
him and that the Lord was dealing with him in an unusual way, and eventually
telling him of his need to receive Christ, for today could be the day that He
might be suddenly taken from this life to face eternity without a Savior!
Now, I would like to say I led him to the
Lord right then and there, but that did not happen. What did happen was he
hurriedly left us go our way, and was visibly shaken due to these events which
he himself recognized was a ‘Divine Appointment’!
My wife caught a few fish during the next
few days of our stay and we headed home, but the Lord kept impressing me about
His desire to set up more ‘Divine Appointments’ and I had already been
witnessing to a number of folks back home, but there was one man that I had
given my testimony tract to and never could find him alone so that I could
follow-up.
Well, when we got home I prayed about this
guy and asked the Lord to set up an appointment with him, and the Lord said,
‘Get going, now is the time!’ so, I went down to the local ‘watering hole’
where the men of the area sit around and sip coffee and ‘chew the rag’ as my
Great-Grandma Wolfe use to say, and wouldn’t you know it, when I got there he
was there too, but someone was sitting with him at the table.
So, I got my coffee, knowing that the
Lord had sent me, I went over to the table and just as I arrived, the other man
got up and left us there all alone and…you know the rest! Yes, God had gone
before me, and this 65 year old ‘60’s throwback’ with a Harley shirt and
pony-tail down to the middle of his back listened intently and then told me
that a friend of his in Mississippi was sending him preaching tapes and written
messages every week, and once again the Lord demonstrated to me, and my lost
friend, that He had gone before and prepared the way!
The next appointment the Lord gave me was
another local Harley type whose name is ‘Hippie’, yes, that’s all he is known
by there at the watering hole, but, once again I knew the Lord was setting up a
situation where I would have the opportunity to be alone with him and give him
the Gospel. He had some motorcycle parts I was interested in and so I went to
his house-trailer one Saturday morning, and just before I got there two other
bikers went in before me.
I knocked on the door and there was quite
a scene, 11:00 in the morning and they are drinking beer, Hippie, his wife, and
the two bikers, but they all seemed to know me and called me Wolfman and Hippie
said we could go and look at the parts, however, they were at another location.
Hmmm…we went alone, to the garage he spoke
of, and on the way back I shared my testimony including the Gospel and told him
that the Lord had sent me, so he turned to me and said ‘Can I ask you a
question?’ And I responded, ‘Sure’ and he said ‘Do you have to go to church to
be a Christian?’
Through that question the Lord gave me the
answers Hippie didn’t expect and in the process he told me his wife was an
Independent Baptist and he was a Southern Baptist [but not saved]. He then
discussed with me some of the things that were keeping him from receiving the
Lord. To make a long story short, he was moved to see that I cared and thanked
me sticking out his hand to me as we departed.
In Acts 2 the Lord set up a
multitude of ‘Divine Appointments’ when the 120 were filled with the Spirit and
three thousand were saved. There are four things that occur when the Lord sets
up His Divine Appointments and they are all shown in this rather lengthy
passage, but for the sake of brevity, we will just do a survey of this powerful section of Scripture.
First of all, there was the preparation of
God’s servants. They, with an attitude of expectation [faith] prayed and were
in ‘one accord’ in unity communing with the Lord. These conditions must be met
for the Lord to have His way in setting up His appointments for you.
Believe that God is going to do what He
promised by expecting Him to act! Exercise your faith in God by expecting Him
to do what He said He would do! And, of course we must be in communion with
Him. The illustration here involves a group of 120 people. Remember, 108 of
them were not Apostles but
common people just like you and me!
Secondly, there is God’s divine intervention
which in this situation was the miraculous outpouring of the Holy Spirit and
the all of the 120 being
filled and speaking in the languages of the (18) different people groups
represented here.(v.1-13) They did not speak the Gospel at this point but
rather ‘The wonderful works of God’.
Now, we must expect the Lord to show
Himself strong on our behalf when we go out to witness for Him, just as He did
in the examples above. In every personal illustration I gave, the Lord had gone
before and performed His work by having someone, something happen in the lost
person’s life prior to the witness thereby showing that He was in it!
The third thing that happened is Peter
explained or interpreted the meaning of these supernatural events/divine appointments
(v.14-21). And so the Lord told me to do the same when witnessing to those who
were lost. As soon as the Lord opened up the events that occurred in their past
to me, He gave me opportunity to explain that He was supernaturally working in
and through the things that had already happened to them.
Peter then demonstrates for us the final
and most important point, and that is he preached the Gospel unto them
(v.22-40). And, we must follow his example. Our personal testimony is the most
powerful witnessing tool we have when it is intertwined with the Word of God!
Peter told them of the events he had
witnessed concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, intertwined and supported it all
with powerful quotes from the Old Testament which they were familiar with. Then
he responded to their question with an invitation, and the result of his
‘Divine Appointment’ was three thousand of those souls were saved!
The very same thing to a lesser degree of
the Spirit’s manifestation happened in all of the above personal illustrations
the Lord gave me to experience! He is the God of all flesh, nothing is too hard
for Him, He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think
ACCORDING TO THE POWER THAT WORKS IN US.
Therefore, we must pray on, in the Spirit,
for His ‘Divine Appointments’ and expect to see Him act on our behalf, for He
has promised to ‘show thee great and
mighty things which thou knowest not’ (Jeremiah 33:3) if we will but call
on Him and expect Him to do what He has promised!
