Latest / Gospel Talks Podcast / #82 - Divine Appointments: No Accident We Met.
Transcript
- 0:00Ever uh click with somebody right away and make a friend immediately, or cross paths with somebody you would never normally cross paths with, but hesitate to take the opportunity
- 0:09to say anything about Jesus because you start to come up with reasons why it's not a divine appointment?
- 0:15What is a divine appointment, and how do we know we're in one?
- 0:19This episode is for the Christian who wants to be able to recognize divine appointments and know what to do with them.
- 0:28Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.
- 0:37I'm George Binoka and with me today in the studio is the founder and author of the exchange, Jeff
- 0:42Musgrave.
- 0:43Hey Jeff, how are you?
- 0:45We're doing good.
- 0:46It's beautiful weather out here in Colorado today.
- 0:48I gotta imagine it's a heat wave over here in Arizona and California.
- 0:53in in January sometimes.
- 0:55uh
- 0:56we don't even get much of a spring, know, so yeah.
- 1:00Well, um I'm really excited about this topic.
- 1:03Just even off air, we were just talking about, you know, there's two sides of struggle when it comes to this topic of divine appointments and your section in giving the exchange
- 1:13that you've written there, the outline is it's gold.
- 1:15I mean, it's pay dirt, you know, and so I'd love for our audience just to, cause I've had this struggle in my own mind of.
- 1:22You're in the middle of something, you don't know how to discern it, you don't know what to do with it, and how do you know?
- 1:27Yeah.
- 1:27And we're working right from giving the exchange.
- 1:31mean, the outline that we're going to follow in our conversation here is, is right from giving the exchange.
- 1:37So anybody who has given the exchange book already, it starts on page 26.
- 1:43And it's, it's a great tool to help us remember that God is always at work.
- 1:49mean, when we see these God moments, it's, it's not just
- 1:54uh cool.
- 1:55It's literally God's saying this is where I am.
- 1:58And I want you to join me in this.
- 2:00So it's I love this concept.
- 2:04And I'm, I'm so dependent on the fact of providence.
- 2:09I mean, God is constantly in control of everything that happens in my life.
- 2:13And to be able to put together a concept of
- 2:17Providence and God inner working with me and and and my choice is getting involved with them.
- 2:23That's it's just really, really fun stuff.
- 2:26It's where life is.
- 2:27Yep, I 100 % agree.
- 2:29I think the thing I've struggled with though, all my Christian life, is that I sometimes am trying to sense those moments, you know, a divine appointment.
- 2:37I'm trying to decide, is this God's providence?
- 2:40And I'm kind of using my feelings as a judge.
- 2:42And I always walk away with a little bit of regret when I don't take it, but I don't know if I should have regretted and if I shouldn't have regretted.
- 2:50And I mean, what's the grid work?
- 2:53How do you even know?
- 2:55What's evidence of how these things work?
- 2:58What are the facts?
- 2:59Yeah, well, I think the very first fact is, he's the Lord of the harvest.
- 3:04It's his harvest.
- 3:06And what he's looking for is laborers.
- 3:08And if we put ourselves into that category, we were, we're not in charge of all of that.
- 3:14And we don't have to fret.
- 3:16All we have to do is be available and be God's laborer.
- 3:20And let God deal with the heavy stuff that's kind of above our pay grade.
- 3:25and knowing that God is sovereign and knowing that he is working.
- 3:28All we do is live in dependence on him to lead us.
- 3:33And so I love this prayer.
- 3:35Lord, would you give me an open door today and make it obvious because I'm a little dense.
- 3:41And just just ask God look, put this on him.
- 3:45He's big enough and and wants to work with us enough.
- 3:49that he can really, really genuinely help us.
- 3:53Does that make sense?
- 3:54yeah, it makes great sense.
- 3:56And I guess I would say there's other layers of struggle that come with this.
- 4:01I'm sure we're gonna get to them.
- 4:02But you're right, I think we have to be people who take risks.
- 4:08this week was an interesting week for me as a pastor because there was some disappointment that came after having a great weekend.
- 4:15There was some disappointment that came.
- 4:17And the disappointment wasn't anybody's fault.
- 4:19just, you know, sometimes in the Christian life that happens.
- 4:23You feel like you took a risk, you took an opportunity, and there's a disappointment.
- 4:27And sometimes you're just left scratching your head going, man, what did I do wrong?
- 4:30I mean, here, like I work for the exchange.
- 4:32I am in this material thinking about this material.
- 4:34This is number 82 episode podcasts.
- 4:37I mean, we spent 40 hours talking about evangelism together on a microphone.
- 4:43sometimes in person, sometimes separate from each other.
- 4:46That's crazy to think about.
- 4:47And still, I kinda go sometimes, I feel lost because I'm looking at the result, and it's not the result I want, but I'm trying to figure out what were the inputs that were wrong.
- 5:00How do you work through that kind of thing where you don't get in a predicament like that where you feel like, man, it's not working?
- 5:06Well, let's back up and kind of get that 40,000 foot view first, get the big picture.
- 5:11And I think the biggest issue is to help us remember divine appointments emanate from God's divine agenda.
- 5:19By that, I mean the meta narrative of history is redemption.
- 5:23God has been rescuing the souls of men from the time of Adam until now.
- 5:29And the fact is that uh
- 5:32it's God's agenda, not mine.
- 5:33And he's the one who drives the agenda.
- 5:35And the way he drives the agenda, many times is by putting us into these divine appointments, a divine appointment, just simply stated, and this is just definition.
- 5:46There's there's the whole concept and word divine appointment, it's clearly in the Bible, we see it everywhere.
- 5:53I was just thinking about the hundreds of illustrations we see in the Bible, but
- 5:58The word isn't in the Bible.
- 6:00It's it's kind of a uh made up word that we use to help us see what God is doing around us.
- 6:07But here's my definition.
- 6:09A divine appointment is when God providentially empowers you to touch a life in which he's already been working.
- 6:16And sometimes it is not until later that we actually see that it was a divine appointment.
- 6:23Does that make sense?
- 6:23So
- 6:24we can actually be in divine appointments and not even know it.
- 6:27God's the one who sets them, God's the one who carries them out.
- 6:30And it's not until later.
- 6:32So if if this is the cat fact, I think in terms of, you know, God is in control of everything, there's nothing that's really not a divine appointment, if we put the
- 6:42definition too broadly.
- 6:43So there are two key elements that if we have these two key elements, then
- 6:48were able to identify them a little easier.
- 6:51The first would be providence that God's in charge.
- 6:53God is doing something unusual.
- 6:56And the second is evidence.
- 6:58And that means I, I see it, I get it.
- 7:01Because God does things that I don't see.
- 7:03And I actually believe that when he does show me his hand, that it is an invitation from him to get involved.
- 7:10It's kind of like Jesus says I am
- 7:13doing what God told me to do because he is showing me and and I join my father in his work and that's that's I feel like that's my job as a Jesus follower is To see where God is at
- 7:25work and join him there.
- 7:27So these two elements are really really important in In our book.
- 7:32I've written it out this way You know, you're in a divine appointment when and it's kind of like you just use that template and and so
- 7:39There are, I've got about nine of them here.
- 7:42I'm sure there are many, many, many others that we could have, but these are just common divine appointments.
- 7:49You know you're in a divine appointment when you enter into a situation and it's obvious that God was at work before you got there.
- 7:57This is just one of those clear indications.
- 8:00This is the one where sometimes it's not until later that you actually see it.
- 8:06In the book, I write a story that I've entitled she needed to know.
- 8:09And I didn't know she needed to know when I first met her.
- 8:13Her name was Chris.
- 8:14And when I went to Chris's home, she and her mother were sitting on the floor with stacks of money around them.
- 8:22And I'd never met them before.
- 8:23There was a woman in our church who had called Chris and asked Chris if she wanted more information about
- 8:29our church and then asked me to go by and visit with Chris.
- 8:33So I'd never seen Chris before.
- 8:35She'd never seen me before.
- 8:36We were complete strangers.
- 8:38When I knocked on the door, there was a young man that opened the door and kind of almost prevented me from coming in.
- 8:46It was kind of like he was a barrier.
- 8:48But I told him the story that Sue from our church had asked me to come by and visit with Chris.
- 8:53And he opened the door behind him just slightly and leaned over his shoulder and asked, Hey, Chris, there are some people here from the church.
- 9:01Do you want to talk to them?
- 9:03And I had no idea what was going to happen because I didn't know Chris at the time.
- 9:08And Chris yelled from the inside.
- 9:10Yeah, bring them in.
- 9:12And so we went into this room.
- 9:14And there was really no furniture that you could sit on.
- 9:17And
- 9:18Chris and her mother were sitting on the floor.
- 9:20I didn't even know it was her mother at the time.
- 9:22I just knew that there was this 20 something and this 40 something sitting on the floor.
- 9:27And they had stacks of money around them.
- 9:29mean cash.
- 9:30And I'm thinking whoa, what has happened here?
- 9:34I didn't make a minute in a drug deal.
- 9:37And I I
- 9:40knew that if I'm standing up and they're sitting on enough ground, this is not going to be a comfortable conversation.
- 9:45I wanted to be able to talk to them about the Lord.
- 9:47And so I got me and my team kind of sat down on the floor, this young man that was there.
- 9:53So there were there were several of us sitting on a floor around these stacks of money.
- 9:58And I started kind of just making small talk.
- 10:01And I have to tell you, George, I was in a hurry.
- 10:04And I
- 10:05I went a little faster than I probably should have.
- 10:07And I kind of cut to the chase.
- 10:09So I didn't get to know her very well.
- 10:11But I wanted to get to the gospel.
- 10:13And so I, I just said, are you guys interested in spiritual things?
- 10:17And we were there from the church.
- 10:18She had asked us to come in and said she wanted information about the church.
- 10:21I felt like it was a pretty safe question, but I was not ready for her answer.
- 10:26She said, yes, we want to know how to live forever.
- 10:29we've been studying the Bible every Monday night, they've been doing a Bible study every Monday, and they were studying the Bible specifically to ask this question, what happens
- 10:39to people when they die?
- 10:40And so she told me this, and I was so excited, I just jumped right into the gospel.
- 10:45And I realized, you know, whenever I try to give the gospel, I try to ask a couple of diagnostic questions, so that I can
- 10:52tailor the gospel to the specific needs of the person I'm talking to.
- 10:56And so I had realized about halfway through I had not asked those diagnostic questions because I got too excited.
- 11:02And I stopped and I asked the diagnostic questions come to find out this uh woman who I still didn't know was her mother was a believer, but neither of these two young people
- 11:12were were believers and recognize that that their need
- 11:17and continued the conversation.
- 11:19And I have to tell you, George, it was not a good night for me.
- 11:22I I kind of got off my game a little bit and was, I didn't do a very good job.
- 11:28And here's the great thing about the gospel is that we don't really have to be great at it.
- 11:34We just have to be willing to share the truth.
- 11:37both Chris and that young man trusted Christ as savior that night.
- 11:42come to find out.
- 11:43Chris had a twin sister who was killed in an automobile accident.
- 11:47The money that was sitting on the floor was money that they had raised to give to the organ donation program that they had given her twin sisters organs to in this sudden
- 12:00death.
- 12:00And, you know, Chris needed to know
- 12:03what happens to people when they die.
- 12:05It's one thing to lose a sibling, it's another to lose a twin.
- 12:08And that's, that's what had prompted all of this divine appointment.
- 12:13And it really wasn't you were asking the question, how do I know?
- 12:16Well, frankly, it really wasn't until looking back on it in hindsight that I realized, oh, this, this was divine appointment, God set this all up for me.
- 12:26And if you think about it,
- 12:28I could never have made that happen.
- 12:29There's no way I could have timed my visit to her home in a timeframe in which she desperately needed it.
- 12:38But God could and he did.
- 12:40And that's what a divine appointment is.
- 12:42I'm not in charge of it.
- 12:43God is.
- 12:44Yeah, I love that because ultimately what you're saying is, trust God.
- 12:49I not only trust God, bring the opportunities, I trust God in the opportunity.
- 12:54I trust God for the outcome of the opportunity.
- 12:57It is not about skill and aptitude.
- 13:00It's about willingness.
- 13:01And I think that's a big distinction you just made for everybody because so many people feel like it's about performance.
- 13:07Like there are just some people
- 13:09who are good at this, like there are some people who are good at basketball, and then there's some people that are five foot, and they're not gonna be good at basketball.
- 13:15And it's like, well that's not how the gospel works.
- 13:17It's about willingness.
- 13:19It's not about IQ, aptitude, personality, any of those things.
- 13:22Yeah, and in fact is a divine appointment recognizes that God is the one who is wooing this person to himself.
- 13:30God is the one who is, is drawing them.
- 13:33And I we like to call them pre believers, you don't know them and you don't know them until they're believers.
- 13:39But you, God is the one who's doing all of that.
- 13:42And all I do is just respond to the open doors that God gives me here.
- 13:49Here's just a
- 13:50really, really important thing for all of us to start doing.
- 13:54And that is constantly be asking God, God, give me open doors and then make this promise to God.
- 14:00If you open a door, I'm going to walk through it.
- 14:03And if we just live like that, you're going to find lots of divine appointments because God is really, I mean, he's in saving business.
- 14:09He hasn't quit and he's, he's out there rescuing people right now.
- 14:13He just wants us as his laborers to get involved.
- 14:15Yeah, that's such a phenomenal prayer.
- 14:20really believe that, you know, it's one of the things I'm going to change, you know, after this podcast I'm going to commit to change is when I wake up in the morning and pray.
- 14:26I think I need to just start praying, Lord, open some doors.
- 14:29Give me opportunities and then give me the courage to walk through them.
- 14:33Yeah.
- 14:33And you know, what I find is when you're walking through doors, you have no idea how far that open door is going to take you.
- 14:41uh It may just be for this time, opportunity to have a good conversation that later would lead to a soul conversation.
- 14:50We just don't know.
- 14:51We're just going to walk through life expecting God to work and going as
- 14:58far into people's lives.
- 15:00So in other words, I want to have conversations with as people as I can.
- 15:03I want to take all those conversations as deeply as I can.
- 15:06And as God allows me to find soul needs and offer them an invitation to see Jesus, I go as far as God will let me go with that particular moment.
- 15:17I think that's such an important piece of theology you're giving us right there is, you know, the Kingdom of God is—the Kingdom of Jesus is big, and we are one soul in that
- 15:26Kingdom.
- 15:27And to think that we have to get all the opportunities and we have to be the one to do, like Paul said, some water, some sow God gives the increase.
- 15:36We're not always going to be on the increase end of things.
- 15:39Sometimes they're gonna be on the water end and the sow end sometimes we might be in the ground before the seed sprouts out of it.
- 15:46And it's okay because it's Jesus' kingdom.
- 15:50He can decide to shift things around wherever he wants.
- 15:53Absolutely.
- 15:54And I think that recognizing that I'm just a laborer, I mean, that's all I am.
- 16:00And I'm working under the control and the instruction of the boss.
- 16:08And all I have to do is just follow the boss.
- 16:10I mean, if he tells me to work somewhere, I go work there.
- 16:13Divine appointments are about the fact that God wants to use everybody.
- 16:16And uh there are people that he's going to bring into your life that he's not going to bring into anybody else's life.
- 16:21And that's why it's important for everybody to see themselves as a laborer, because God, God brings people into my life that my pastor is never going to meet.
- 16:30And I have to be ready.
- 16:32Yeah, I think that's an area where I really struggle if I'm being honest.
- 16:40As much as I know to trust God, as much as I talk about this stuff as a Christian, there is still a struggle somewhere because we so zealously want to see that person come to
- 16:50Jesus.
- 16:50There is a struggle, there is a patience that comes with divine appointments, like any appointment in life.
- 16:57Sometimes you're sitting in the waiting room
- 16:59and you're like, I just wanna make this happen, you know?
- 17:03And that's when we mess stuff up, because we push, we go faster than God, you know?
- 17:08how have you, how do you help people understand what is biblical pace in these kind of divine appointments?
- 17:15How do you know when to go, stop, reverse, you know, all those kind of things?
- 17:18Yeah, I, I don't like this thought as trusting my gut.
- 17:24It is trusting the Holy Spirit, but he lives inside of me and he prompts me.
- 17:28And I just think you have to walk with God and listen for that prompting and then and then be willing to follow prompting.
- 17:38I think that the question
- 17:39ah Is this the right time is really an unwise question.
- 17:44I think that what we need to be asking is, is God opening this door?
- 17:48And the best way to see if God's opening the door is just to jiggle the doorknob, you know, and, and if if the door is open, you walk in it, if a door is not open, you you make
- 17:59plans to come back and, and visit that opportunity again in another timeframe.
- 18:05What's cool about that, Jeff, is this just happened this morning for me.
- 18:11This young person came and sat down in our living room.
- 18:14I got my GPS out, if you guys don't know what that is, it stands for Gospel Presentation System.
- 18:19And this was a counseling situation.
- 18:23And let me tell you, by the way, if you think the gospel is so helpful to...
- 18:29every area of ministry.
- 18:30I mean, it is the foundation of every area of ministry.
- 18:33So I just started pre-marital counseling two weeks ago with a couple in Colorado, and I start with the gospel.
- 18:40And even in counseling situations, other kind of counseling situations, the first time I'll sit down, I'll listen to them, but then the first session, the first like, you know,
- 18:48actual session where I'm giving truth, it's the gospel because I mean, it's the foundation of how you see everything.
- 18:54Well,
- 18:55I sat down, went through the whole GPS.
- 18:57At the end of it, I said, are you ready to trust Jesus alone?
- 19:02And she said, that is, I am really scared to do that.
- 19:06And I said, okay.
- 19:08And then boom, like providentially a thought, God put a thought in my mind, which is now you need to show her from the Bible how to trust God.
- 19:16And I think sometimes what happens is we set ourselves up for failure in these divine appointments because we think here's the expectation.
- 19:23This is what will happen the first time.
- 19:26And it's like we should stay away from those.
- 19:29We should just say, like you said, let's jiggle that doorknob and see what happens.
- 19:34yeah.
- 19:34And I think that we can expect the Holy Spirit to help us.
- 19:38And I mean, that's why he's here.
- 19:40He's the helper.
- 19:42And he not only helps me to be able to explain it well enough to where someone can get it, he not only helps me to kind of have those gut instincts, and I don't really think it's
- 19:54good.
- 19:54I think it's him.
- 19:55um But
- 19:57but he also helps them.
- 19:59I mean, the Bible says he's in the world convicting them of sin and righteousness and judgment.
- 20:04And so we can just depend on the Holy Spirit and literally, not just I'm trying to depend on him, but just kind of most relax and believe that he's doing this.
- 20:15He's helping me he's helping them.
- 20:18You know what I love too is we've said this way in the past if you go back to the first 10 episodes More time more truth more time more truth If you have more time more truth as
- 20:27tools in your approach in your philosophy of evangelism Then divine appointments become really pleasant for you Because you know that the appointment itself is not the end-all
- 20:36be-all um
- 20:38absolutely.
- 20:39Absolutely.
- 20:40And in fact, if we miss a divine appointment, that doesn't mean we can't go back to that person and revisit the opportunity.
- 20:45Yep.
- 20:46Well, we covered one out of nine.
- 20:48So I'm dying for the audience's sake to know what the other eight are.
- 20:52Because I don't think we want this to be a nine-part series on Define Appointments, but this is such good stuff.
- 20:58Yeah, it's it's kind of one of my favorite subjects.
- 21:01Because this is all about him and what he's doing.
- 21:04And I think that's one of the things we have to remember about evangelism.
- 21:08This is not me drumming up business.
- 21:10This is this is the Lord of the harvest, literally growing his crop, and doing his work.
- 21:17And we just get the privilege of being a laborer and joining him in his work.
- 21:22so much.
- 21:23Do we want to try to cover the other eight scenarios on divine appointments?
- 21:30I know there are some other evidences that I mean I've talked through this actually one time and it's phenomenal.
- 21:36It's just a great way to spot something but and like you said there's probably lots of other examples.
- 21:40Well, the reason that I felt like this would probably take us a while is because there are so many good stories.
- 21:46And I, I actually believe stories are quite instructive.
- 21:49In other words, they're not just they're not just a motivate.
- 21:52They are they are sit there so that that was how he knew that was a divine appointment because of the story.
- 21:57And so I don't have a go ahead.
- 22:01we want to make an executive decision right now to just, let's make this a couple more episodes?
- 22:06I I love the stories.
- 22:07I I hear a story like that, my heart is lifted as a pastor because sometimes I'm discouraged, you know, and it's like, that didn't go the way I thought, you know, and so
- 22:15it's really helpful to sit down and listen to these.
- 22:18Yeah, I think that'd be great.
- 22:19Next time, maybe we'll just kind of reiterate what we've talked about in terms of what a divine appointment is, and then just go straight into you know, you're, in a divine
- 22:28appointment when maybe just focus on some stories next time.
- 22:31I that, I love that.
- 22:32Well, if you guys get anything out of this and you're wondering what is the next action item, it's like Jeff said, pray.
- 22:38And when I end the episode, I'll be kind of encouraging you guys to pray a certain way, but before I do that, let me just tell you about two things that are really important.
- 22:47Number one, this podcast, The Exchange Ministry, is not funded by the sales of books.
- 22:52We sell those books to pay the overhead of the books, pay the cost of shipping.
- 22:57those kind of things, the cost of storing, all those, the cost of printing and editing and all the things that go into having all the technologies and media available on different
- 23:05platforms that we have.
- 23:06The primary way that we're funded as an exchange, what we're so thankful for is for our donors.
- 23:11We have incredible donors, so generous.
- 23:15They make the exchange possible.
- 23:17The budget would be impossible.
- 23:20The whole ministry would be impossible if God did not give us the donors we have.
- 23:23And if you're wondering,
- 23:25Oh, do I got to be a billionaire to be an exchange donor?
- 23:28No.
- 23:28Most of our donors are very much normal Americans, financially speaking.
- 23:33And if you can think about it like this, a $10 donation, a $10 a month recurring donation goes a long way.
- 23:40A lot of those.
- 23:41that's kind of what we see in terms of what is really, really critical to our ministry is somebody like that faithfully and generously making
- 23:51this podcast making the whole ministry possible for $10 a month, that is so crucial to us.
- 23:57And we say that not because we're wanting money for money's sake, but we wanna make this thing go even wider, help more churches, help more Christians all around the world.
- 24:07That money goes to fund when we help people internationally.
- 24:11Internationally, we give away the material for free.
- 24:14The reason we can do that is because donations like that one.
- 24:16And for those of you that are our donors, we thank you so much.
- 24:19your incredible, your generosity, it makes this ministry possible.
- 24:24And we're very excited about the things coming up.
- 24:26We're constantly working every week to go further and do more and expand what we can do for Jesus Christ.
- 24:32The second thing I wanna talk about is if you're listening and you feel like you could really use Jeff in your church, that a seminar, an in-person seminar, because let me tell
- 24:41you, me sitting across from Jeff having a conversation like this does a lot more for me in some regards
- 24:47than it does just reading something Jeff writes because there's just something about being in front of somebody and them encouraging you and you seeing this is real, like this
- 24:55happened.
- 24:56And so if a seminar like that interests you or you feel your church needs that kind of boost and reorientation towards evangelism, please email us at george@exchangemessage.org
- 25:07and I'd love to help you guys set up a time to go on a call with Jeff and figure out how we can help your church.
- 25:14With that, I'm gonna admonish you.
- 25:16Next step, pray to the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth laborers, that He would open our eyes to the open doors, that He would give us open doors, and that He would
- 25:26give us the courage to walk through them and start jiggling doorknobs.
- 25:30We love you guys, and we will see you next week.