Does Everything REALLY Happen for a Reason?

I can’t tell you how many times that, after someone experiences an unfortunate setback, I’ve heard them say, “Well, I guess everything happens for a reason.” I’m never quite sure what to say when I hear that. There are two very different ways to interpret that statement – one I have reservations about and the other I completely endorse.

Interpretation #1 is born out of a vaguely spiritual, quasi-agnostic worldview. Judging another person’s spiritual condition is always perilous. However, I have noticed some patterns. Some people, by their own admission, don’t embrace the biblical view that Jesus is indeed God whose death and resurrection provide the only mechanism for dealing with their rebellion against God and coming back to him. These are good people who often have some sense of spirituality. But that spirituality is often not well-defined and borders on agnosticism. They may believe in a “higher power” but not necessarily the personal God as revealed by Jesus. In my opinion, when these folks say everything happens for a reason, it sounds a bit flabby and comes across more like wishful thinking than confidence in God.

Interpretation #2 is based on a clear commitment to the picture of the sovereign, all-wise, loving God that emerges from the Bible. Besides the Bible, the book that has helped me more than any other in my Christian life is Trusting God by Jerry Bridges. It thoroughly documents three key attributes of God:

·       He is sovereign over absolutely everything – This includes people, world events and nature.

·       He knows what he is doing – He is all-wise.

·       He loves you completely – This is most dramatically demonstrated by Jesus’ sacrificial death for the forgiveness of sins.

One of my favorite illustrations of God’s sovereignty highlighted in Trusting God is the Exodus 34 account where God instructs all of Israel’s men to leave their homes and appear before the Lord three times a year. Vacating the land left Israel absolutely defenseless and vulnerable to its enemies. Bridges explains that the equivalent in today’s world would be shutting down all commerce, halting all educational activities, and removing all military presence. What do you think our enemies would do?

Here’s the incredible part. In Exodus 34:24, God doesn’t just say the surrounding enemy nations wouldn’t invade the land. He promises they won’t even want to do so. Although these are not people attempting to serve the living God, he still controls their hearts. Think about that. Israel’s foes don’t profess any loyalty to God or his people, but God promises to even reach into their hostile hearts and override the natural instincts of fallen humanity. This is astounding! If God controls even the desires of barbaric nations, what does he not control?

I know. These statements about God’s absolute control of everything raise all kinds of questions about free will, personal accountability, the problem of evil, and host of other issues. I can’t address all that here, but Jerry Bridges provides great insights and demonstrates how Scripture thoroughly supports the statements about God’s absolute sovereignty over everything. He also offers compelling biblical evidence concerning God’s wisdom and love.

The takeaway from Trusting God is that, if God truly rules over all, knows exactly what he’s doing, and loves you beyond imagination, what can happen to you that exists outside those parameters? Clearly, nothing.

So back to the original question:  Does everything really happen for a reason? The short answer is “Yes.” But there is a world of difference between the vaguely spiritual, wishful thinking Interpretation #1 above and the comforting Interpretation #2 so fully described in Trusting God.  The confidence we have is embodied by Romans 8:28, one of the most-quoted New Testament verses:  “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” So, yes, you can trust that God has his purposes. But you also have to be OK even if his plan remains somewhat mysterious. In hindsight, we can often see things more clearly, but we can’t demand an explanation.

If you are still living under Interpretation #1, what would it take you to get to Interpretation #2? Let me suggest that Jerry Brooks’ fantastic book can point you in that direction.

God Led Us to Buy a House in a High-Risk Fire Zone and on a Major Earthquake Faultline

(Please read through to the end. The bottom line on this story is probably different from we you are expecting.)

Unexpected Wrightwood snowstorm in November

During the height of this summer’s California wildfire season, God clearly led us to buy a vacation home in the high fire danger zone of Wrightwood, California. As a bonus, our new house is also on the San Andreas fault. We learned about this property on a Monday, put an offer in the next Friday, and had it accepted three days later.

Are we crazy?

No, not really. Despite the breakneck speed and the risky circumstances, we immediately recognized this as a remarkable answer to several years of prayer. Both of our children’s families live in the Los Angeles area, and, since we live outside Atlanta, we have been seeking ways to be more involved in their lives.

Over the years, we thoroughly explored housing options in Greater LA, but the combination of extremely high prices and choking congestion left us seriously discouraged. Additionally, none of the areas we considered would have any draw for our kids, and we feared setting them up for guilt trips, making them feel obligated to “visit the old folks.” Furthermore, we hated the idea of leaving Marietta, GA, our charming city with a great small-town feel.

The Wrightwood house checks all the boxes:

• It’s in an attractive mountain town close to both families and is literally four doors away from one of our son’s best ultramarathon running buddies.

• Real estate costs in Wrightwood are about half of what they are in LA.

• Our vacation house creates a “home base” for family gatherings and also serves as a weekend getaway place for our children.

• This solution allows us to visit three or four times a year and yet remain fully engaged with our church and friends in Marietta.

I would say this whole experience is one of maybe half a dozen times in my life where God’s will was indisputably clear. 

You may think I’m relating all this to point to God’s great goodness to us. Certainly, this is an aspect of the story I’m delighted to tell. However, there is a far more important lesson here:  once God makes his will known, you must be all in with no looking back, regardless of the direction things ultimately take.

Our decision to buy the house set in motion hundreds of decisions, some of which took us well beyond our comfort zone. But if God was truly leading us, what else could we do but move forward and trust God?

As an example, there was a last-minute communications hiccup that left us without fire insurance for the first 18 hours we owned the house. Remember, we are in a high fire zone, and this was while the California wildfires were making national news every single day. Since we were 100% convinced that God was leading us to buy this house, that means everything – both positive and negative – that happened as fallout from this decision is, by definition, part of God’s will. Even if the house had burned down before the insurance kicked in, we would have to embrace that terrible outcome as part of God’s plan. In fact, ironically, it would probably have reinforced our trust in God’s sovereignty if it had been destroyed. What are the chances that a house that stood unscathed for 53 years would randomly burn down within a random18-hour period in 2020? We would have to believe that God had ordained that incredible timing.

Please don’t miss the significance of this perspective. If we are committed to doing God’s will and carefully and prayerfully seek to discern what it is, we must embrace all that results – even the parts we don’t like – as part of God’s plan.

In his awesome book Trusting God, Jerry Bridges drives home three powerful points about God:

He controls absolutely everything.

He love me completely.

He knows what he’s doing.

If you truly believe this, I defy you to come to any other conclusion than that we must embrace every downstream consequence of the decisions God leads us to as being part of his will.