For all our major life events as a family, God’s timing has always been perfect. I won’t go into great detail here (ask for clarification if you like), but in everything God has always given me exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

The list is quite extensive, but in all these things, God has had us in the right place at the right time.

For example, how Fiona and I met, on the CB radio. I’d decided to just have 10 minutes on the radio before I went to housegroup, and long story short, that was how we met.

How I got my first job – we’d decided not to go to Church that evening but instead went out for a walk together, and met my future boss on that walk.

When we moved down from Leeds to Devon, we were looking for somewhere to live. I called our future landlady on a prompting from God, and she ‘just happened’ to be a Christian lady who didn’t mind us having our dogs in her house; furthermore, ours was the first message on her answering machine so we had first dibs on the house. Turns out she even knew a guy who’d been one of our Church leaders in Leeds.

Sometimes it’s been last-minute stuff: Fiona’s transfer to Leeds University from Liverpool, so that we could get married, was given to us on the day before she was due to go back to Liverpool. We just had to trust Him.

My current job was handed to me on a plate when a friend pointed it out to me in the local paper. Our house that we have now was set up for us perfectly – vacant possession; we were moving out of rented and had just sold our house in Leeds, tenants in situ, to another bloke who wanted the tenants in there. Everybody happy.

We found out about Fiona’s potentially life-saving operation via some friends at exactly the right time, who then went on to pay the cost upfront, and then fund-raised it back again. Wow.

…..and in all this there was no effort. It was all just natural, just getting on with life and letting God point things out as He needed to.

There was no need to be frantically thinking that we needed to be in a certain place at a certain time for God to be able to do His thing – ‘Perhaps I should be at that meeting, or go to see that person…’. Sure, sometimes God will lead you in that way – and He leads different people in different ways – because for me, in truth, it doesn’t work like that. All the major things that have happened to us have been just given to us. At the right time and in the right place – which was just where we happened to be at the time.

And you can trust God to do this, because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7 says ‘Cast your cares on Him, because He cares for you’. Ever had a meeting at your house, say a make-up party, a Tupperware party, or a housegroup perhaps, and you take all the visitors’ coats (as long as they’re not too wet!) and just pile them up on one of the beds? That’s the picture I have for that Scripture; you just pile up the worries one on top of the other, onto Him, because He cares for you!

He cares for you like nobody else can, because He’s God, and He loves you! He’s perfectly capable of bearing your burdens, helping you carry the load and, ultimately, using them for your good.

You can trust Him. And His timing is always perfect.