Is it Answered Prayer or Coincidence?
Tuesday True Tale #65
Not long ago, my beloved truck sprung an oil leak. Since it's pretty new, I was concerned it might be an expensive repair. I couldn't find where it was coming from, so I took it in to be checked. My mind ran with worst-case scenarios, and with limited cash on hand, we prayed hard. We asked the Lord for an easy, no-cost fix for two days. When I went to pick it up, the outcome was an easy, no-cost fix. The nylon drain plug was tight but had split, causing a slow, undetectable leak. They replaced it for nothing.
So what's the big deal? Some people wouldn't even pray about such a small thing. That's life. Things break down, or they wear out; just fix them. But it is the unknown, the potential problems, and the unknown costs that cause anxiety. So we pray. We are invited to pray about anything that we care about. Philippians 4:6 tells us not to be anxious about anything but to pray! When we do, God promises to respond according to his will and our best interest. So when we pray for a particular outcome, and it occurs, why do we sometimes wonder if God actually worked on our behalf?
Had I not prayed about the oil leak, would it still have been just a bad plug? Would it still have been an easy, quick fix? Was I unwittingly asking God to supernaturally repair a blown head gasket and split the oil plug just to answer my prayer? I don't know. It doesn't matter; what does matter is my response to receiving the outcome for which I petitioned God. The circumstances were not remarkable, but the answer was precisely what I had asked. Coincidence, you say? Sure, I could think that it was just a special concurrence of events with no apparent connection; or I could give God the glory and trust that he had something to do with the outcome because he is sovereign and always has something to do with the outcome. Always.
Shortly after our five-month-old granddaughter Maggie was born with Down Syndrome, we were told she would need open heart surgery to repair some holes in her heart. For four months, we prayed that the Lord would heal her heart, but he chose not to do that. When the surgery was scheduled five days before Christmas, we prayed for a safe, successful surgery, a quick recovery with no complications, and that she could be home for Christmas.
The Lord answered. Maggie was home in three days. The Lord ensured a safe, successful surgery and a quick recovery with no complications, and she was home for Christmas with a day to spare. Sometimes God "over" answers! We asked for silver, and he gave us gold. As mundane as my little oil leak problem was, I know God answered that prayer. Maggie's heart condition was critical, and the Lord's response was extraordinary. There are so many ways Maggie's surgery could have taken a wrong turn, but it didn't. The surgeon said, "everything went perfectly!" He was a good surgeon, but we have a great God. Our prayers were precise and God, in his great mercy and love, answered precisely; there is zero doubt of this.
You may agree with me about Maggie, but the oil leak is a stretch. Why is that? Do we acknowledge God as answering our prayer only when it's a fantastic story? God is the God of amazing but also the mundane. Either way, God works in us through our prayers and responses, regardless of their significance. It was no harder for God to protect me from an expensive truck repair than to protect Maggie from a surgery beset with terrible complications. Prayer instructs us. It impacts us when we pray and see, or do not see, the answers we desire. We learn about God from his response, and we learn about ourselves from our response. When God chooses to grant our petitions, we should thank him with equal fervency in which we asked for it. When God chooses not to grant our request, we should thank him for his kindness in withholding what was not in our best interest. Most importantly, we should never be so offensive to God as to degrade answered prayer to mere coincidence[1].
[1] The word coincidence is used only once in the New Testament, and it was by Jesus Himself in Luke 10:31. Coincidence is translated from the Greek word synkyrian, which is a combination of two words: sun and kurios. Sun means “together with,” and kurious means “supreme in authority.” So a biblical definition of coincidence would be “what occurs together by God’s providential arrangement of circumstances.” (https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-coincidence.html)
We should always be prayerful in all things