If you are just happening upon my blog today you had better back up one post. This story is a continuation from yesterday....
OK, are you caught up now? So, Lindy and I were in the midst of selling one house and rehabbing another while I was pregnant. Can you say stressful? We were getting ready to launch ourselves into parenthood and we had an abundance of roofs over our heads--but we really only wanted one roof over our heads. I was having a lot of fear and doubt because our house was not selling right away and we owned two houses. We had only one loan for two houses but it was a very LARGE loan.
Now, my nature is to be a practical, analytical person and I was having some serious trouble seeing with my finite mind how we were going to work everything out. My problem was that I was relying on my own intelligence but not having faith in God to work everything out. The Bible says that faith is the "substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." That means that faith isn't faith until it's beyond our own human abilities to solve whatever issue we are facing. I think when we get to the end of our own solutions God has us right where He wants us. I also think that he doesn't mind seeing us squirm a little to see how we are going to react to our circumstances.
So, I was getting really "squirmy"--figuratively-speaking--and at one integral moment Lindy and I were both in the master bathroom of our 115-year-old house (House #1). I don't remember our whole conversation but I'm sure it involved some amount of hormonal expression (whining) on my part about our situation. At the particular moment that is so clear in my mind to this day, Lindy stood in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. He kind of shook me and told me that my problem was that up until this point in my life I had never really had to trust God for anything. Everything had just always happened, more or less, the way I expected it to and this was the first time I was facing a situation that I could not solve. Now, as is also my nature, I'm sure I probably argued with him at first and told him that I did trust God and I had always trusted God. After all, I had been a Christian all my life. You see, I thought I had trusted God but my faith had never been tested up to that point. This was a big moment for me and I realized that Lindy was right...I had never truly had to rely on God to solve a situation for me. Lindy basically told me that although I had wonderful parents they had sheltered me from this sort of thing and now that we were married I needed to learn how to trust God on my own without my parents...and right quick. You see, Lindy's a smart guy and he knows that when God tries to teach you something if you don't learn it the first time...you just might be going over that same mountain again. And...since I was married to him and we were now one flesh he wanted me to get on board quick with learning to trust God so that we wouldn't be going over this mountain together again and again. The next "mountain" might look different than this one but until I learned this lesson God was going to allow us to experience circumstances that would give me the opportunity to learn to trust Him.
Fortunately for me, I mean us, the light of understanding came on in my heart and I began to really trust God to take care of our house surplus situation. Does that mean that as soon as my heart became enlightened to this revelation that our house immediately sold and that our life has been happily ever after since that time? Nope. In fact, we owned both of those houses for 18 months and this was only the beginning of that journey. Looking back, I think that God wanted me to learn once and for all that I could trust Him for anything. I know Lindy learned through this process too, but I believe the testing of our faith was really all mine. Even then, he had amazing faith that is still evident today.
God totally, miraculously blessed us in the process and we were better off in the end than we could have imagined. My faith had been tested and I had passed the test!! Since I went through that experience at that time I can look back now when we go through difficult times and know without a shadow of a doubt that if I put my trust in God He will take care of me and my family. It may look different or happen differently that I expect, but that's just the excitement of serving God. My job is not to see to the end of every circumstance, my job is only to trust in Him to bring me through to the other side.
I hope that if God is testing your faith you will see it for what it is and rise to the challenge of learning to trust in Him. Believe me, you want to learn this lesson quick so you can move on to the bigger and better things He has in store for you.
Maybe a future blog post will tell the whole tale of two houses. It's a humdinger...
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