In what order do the events of an ASPX page execute. As a developer is it important to understand these events?  

If you try to access it in Page_Load that is way previous than Control's own  Render method. See the Page/control lifecycle goes like this for the Page  and controls (being already in the controls collection, dynamic ones play catchup) 

 1. Instantiate 

2. Initialize 

3. TrackViewState 

4. LoadViewState (postback) 

5. Load postback data (postback, IPostBackDatahandler.LoadPostdata) 

6. Load 

7. Load postback data for dynamical controls added  on Page_Load (postback) 

8. Raise Changed Events (postback, IPostBack Datahandler. RaisePost Data Changed) 

9. Raise postback event (postback, IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent) 

10.PreRender 

11. SaveViewState 

12. Render 

13. Unload 

14. Dispose null