Podcast Introduction

This is history Tuesday, and we will finish the book of Esther by reading chapters 6-10, which will also complete our reading of the entire Bible for season 12 of the Lifespring Family Audio Bible, the last “live” season of the show. I’m calling today’s show, “Coincidence? I Think Not.”

Design: Steve Webb | Photo: Tim Webb

Comments on Esther 6

Do you believe that God orders events in the lives of people to accomplish His plans? There are some people who believe that once God finished His work of creation, He stepped away and let events on earth happen on their own. Seems like a foolish notion to me.

Here in Esther 6, we have an example of how God orchestrates the events of man for His purposes.

The king is unable to sleep on the very night that Haman is plotting to kill Mordecai, so he does what many of us do. He decides to read a book, hoping that will make him sleepy. Think of it. Ahasuerus is the king of the most powerful kingdom on earth, so he could have done almost anything for a diversion, but he chooses to read a book. He orders that a book of remembrances be brought to him. He had a kingdom of 127 provinces, so I can imagine that this book of remembrances had several volumes, can't you? But the person who was tasked with bringing the book brought the volume that included the account of how Mordecai saved the king from assassination. And the servant opened the book to the very page with that record. What are the odds? Well, with God, the odds are 100%. Without God, who knows? There had to have been many remembrances in the book, but on this specific night, this specific page was opened. 

Do you believe that God orders events in the lives of people to accomplish His plans? Of course He does.

Has God ever intervened in your life like this? Can you remember a time where the course of your life was changed by a seemingly random event?

Let me tell you about a time this happened to me.

It happened in 2004. It was a Saturday in September, I think. I turned on the radio to listen to a talk show about technology. It was normally a call-in type show where people would ask the host for help with their tech devices. But when I turned on the radio, the host was interviewing a guy, and the guy was telling the host about new thing he had invented where radio-type shows could be automatically downloaded to people's computers. And better still, every time a new show was created, the new episodes would just show up on their computers. And then, they could transfer the new shows to their portable mp3 player and listened to whenever they wanted. This idea sounded pretty interesting to me, having been in radio in the late 70s and early 80s. 

Of course, this new invention was podcasting. The interviewer was Leo Laporte and the interviewee was Adam Curry, whom I am now happy to not only call my friend, but ecstatic to call my brother in the Lord, but that's a different story. Or is it? 

Just a week or so before I heard this interview, I had asked God what more I could do to serve Him. I was already the tech guy at my church and putting a lot of time into that, but I wanted to do more for God since He had been so very good to me and had blessed me with a wonderful wife, great kids, a business that paid the bills and a home. I just wanted to be available to do whatever God had for me. I prayed and asked God what more I could do, and His answer was a very clear, almost audible, "Proclaim my name."

So, was it just a random event when I heard Adam Curry telling Leo Laporte about podcasting? I don't think so. God prompted me to turn on the radio at just the right time, and on November 13, 2004 I uploaded the world's first Christian podcast to my church's website. Within days I received emails from around the world telling me stories of how God was using my podcast to bring them to Jesus. God was using my little podcast in miraculous ways. 

But the story doesn't end there.