Here’s a fun thought experiment. Think through all the things in your life that had to occur just so in order for you to be where you are today, including where you live and who is nearest and dearest to you. Films and novels have captured this fact that every event in our lives is but one link in a long chain (or network) of causes and effects that stretches back to the beginning of the world.

In my own life, I can think through the long series of notable events that had to take place in the precise order and time that they did for me to end up at the church college group where I met my wife, Whitney. If any one of these events had occurred even slightly differently, there is little reason to think I would have met her when I did.

If you are a Christian, the same thought experiment can be done for considering how you came to faith in Christ. Whether you consider the home in which you grew up, the time in history in which you were born, or the church where you ended up, there is a convergence of events that had to take place for you to even hear the gospel. We like to use the word “fortunate” when we think about all this, but we need to understand that according to the Bible, all these necessary events took place according to God’s design, not mere happenstance.

God Determines the When and the Where

When Paul preached to the Athenian philosophers, he said that there is one sovereign Lord and Creator who is responsible for all we have—including the very breath in our lungs. Paul then says God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27a).

What a profound statement! God determined the when and where of every nation. But what is true of nations is also true of individuals. After all, He is a personal God who deals not merely with nations in general, but with individuals in particular.

Consider how personally God deals with King David’s life:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb... Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:13, 16, ESV)

Nothing about our lives—not even the when or the where—is accidental. God can tell Jeremiah the prophet that even before He formed him in his mother’s womb, the Lord had already set him apart for his life’s task (Jeremiah 1:5). Is this only true of Jeremiah? Or does God form each of us in the womb having already planned what our life would look like? Job speaks of everyone born of woman when he says, “A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed” (Job 14:5, NLT).

None of this teaching on God’s providential planning of every human life nullifies the truth that we make real choices as image bearers of God. We are not just mechanistic cogs in a grand machine, but precious individuals with loves and fears, who are responsible for our actions.

J. I. Packer uses the word “antinomy” to describe this apparent incongruity between God’s absolute sovereignty and the genuine choices of His creatures.[1] While we tend to pit God’s sovereignty against human responsibility, the Bible never does. Both truths are taught in Scripture, so the Christian must accept both. Whatever cannot be reconciled in our finite minds can and is reconciled in the mind of God (Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33-36).

If God is absolutely sovereign, there can be no accidents. Nothing about your life can be chalked up to mere happenstance or dumb luck.

“Forbidden by the Holy Spirit to Speak”

In the book of Acts, we read the story of Paul’s first journey to the city of Philippi. It’s fascinating to see all the events God used to providentially bring His Apostle to these people.

It all starts with Paul, Silas, and Timothy setting out to reach the people of Asia (the northwestern region of modern Turkey) with the gospel. They know God has called them to proclaim this message of grace, but they aren’t exactly sure where yet. Consider how the Holy Spirit sovereignly directs their steps:

“And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.” (Acts 16:6-10, NIV)

It can seem kind of strange at first when we read that they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia” (v. 6). We might think, Why wouldn’t God want Paul to preach the gospel there? And then we find out that they wanted to go to Bithynia, but again “the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (v. 7). We wonder, What’s the deal? Doesn’t God want those people to hear the gospel and be saved, too? Elsewhere, we read that God does not wish “that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, ESV).

But we can forget at this point that God in His perfect grace is also sovereign. He is King over all, and He never acts arbitrarily or on a whim. And while we don’t understand all the reasons, what we need to see is that God had a sovereign appointment for Paul. It wasn’t in Asia, and it wasn’t in Bithynia. But it was in Macedonia, and Philippi was smack dab in the middle of Macedonia. This reminds us that ultimately the salvation of the lost is not up to us; it is up to God. He is the One who does the sovereign work of salvation, and He’s working out His perfect plan according to His timetable.

We aren’t called to debate with God about what is best. He alone is God. Scripture tells us that He is the Potter; we are the clay.[2] We don’t get to tell God what to do. He is the One in charge of this whole show, and the more we get on board with His plan, the better things will go for us in the long run.

It’s intriguing to me that God gets Paul’s attention here by appealing to his compassion. In Paul’s dream, he sees a man from Macedonia pleading with Paul, “Please, Paul. Come here and help us!” We know this is primarily about meeting their need for salvation, because verse 10 says that Paul immediately concludes God called them “to preach the gospel” to those Macedonians. So this man in the vision is saying, “Paul, we’re lost and without hope! We are doomed if you don’t come tell us about the risen Lord.”

All by Grace

When they come to Philippi, things initially go very well. Paul and his buddies find a group of women just outside the city meeting together by the river. And Paul begins to open the Word of God to these women, telling them the good news that forgiveness of sins is freely offered to them through the Lord Jesus. Wherever Paul goes in the book of Acts, he calls people to repent of their sin and trust in Jesus as their sin-bearing Lord and Savior. He nearly always gets a mixed response from people when he preaches the gospel.

But for whatever reason, the author Luke zeroes in on one particular individual, a woman named Lydia and her response. “One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). Isn’t that beautiful? “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what” Paul said.

As Christians, we can wonder, Why does God have me where I’m at right now? Why this job? Or maybe, Why can’t I find a job? Why this neighborhood? Why this health issue? Why this hardship? But what if God has you exactly where He wants you right now? It may not be where you’ll be forever or for very long, but what if God has a purpose in putting you in the situations you face every day? What if God wants to use you where you are right now in a way that He couldn’t use you otherwise?

If we see nothing else from Lydia’s conversion, we need to see this: God is sovereignly orchestrating His plan in every person’s life. No one comes to Christ by accident. God is working out His plan. When you take a step back, it’s amazing to see how this all worked out. Remember, Paul wanted to go to Asia. God said no. Paul wanted to go to Bithynia. God said no. Finally, God gives Paul a vision to bring his band of merry men to Macedonia, and finally to Philippi.

And when they get to Philippi, it just so happens that they find a group of women meeting by the river outside the city. What a coincidence, right? What good luck! And it just so happens that God was preparing the heart of a woman in that group named Lydia who was about to receive the gospel. Amazing, isn’t it? All along, God was setting Paul up. He says, “I’m going to use you to bring My gospel to Lydia, Paul. And Lydia’s going to believe. Lydia’s Mine.”

There are no ultimate accidents. There are no coincidences in God’s mind. He is working out His perfect plan for the good of His people and the glory of His name. We serve a sovereign God, a God far more powerful and good and merciful than we could possibly imagine.

If you are a Christian today, it is because God worked out all the details for you to encounter the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord. He brought the light of truth into your heart, where before there was only spiritual blindness (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). If someone led you to Christ, it wasn’t sheer luck that you happened to know that person. God is in the business of rescuing people from their sin according to His perfect and sovereign plan. In evangelism, we have an essential part to play, but we didn’t write the script.

And when we share the gospel, we are simply jumping on board with His plan that is already in motion. We’re not the master engineers here. He’s the One who wrote the blueprint for His plan of redemption. So what does that mean? That means all the glory goes to Him for saving us. We don’t even get a smidgen of the credit. Because it’s all by His grace.

J. I. Packer points out that this is actually good news. When we share the gospel with others, we are participating in a mission that cannot fail. And the fact that we pray for the lost to be converted is proof that we really do believe He is sovereign in salvation. Packer writes:

“When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God’s power to bring them to faith. You entreat Him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests on the certainty that He is able to do what you ask. And so indeed He is: this conviction, which animates your intercessions, is God’s own truth, written on your heart by the Holy Spirit.”[3]

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5, NLT). You have been saved by grace! Not human effort.

Have you repented and trusted in the Lord Jesus for salvation? If not, I urge you to do that today. If you have, have you thanked God for your conversion?

Soli Deo Gloria.

Have thoughts on this post? Feel free to comment below!

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[1] J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 23-24. As Packer explains, an antinomy is something in theology that has “an appearance of contradiction,” but “is not a real contradiction.”

[2] See Jeremiah 18:5-6; Romans 9:19-21.

[3] Packer, 19.