The House Story!

So here it is........
Sunday August 5th, Garrett's Aunt has a vision of us praying in front of the house, so we go over to the house after lunch and pray over it and give it to God. Almost making us late to the commissioning service of course. Garrett's Aunt Barbara prays about someone renting our house. My (Sophi) only thought is, "Yeah right, we just took the property off the rental market, like that is going to happen, our only hope now is to sell it." Such faith I have eh?
Monday morning was all about final packing and weighing. I (Sophi) couldn't sleep anymore so I was up and on the move. I have now become a type A personality to get us out of here on time. 11:00 is what we are shooting for. It was between 9 and 10 when I looked at my phone and noticed a missed call. Reception up by the mountains was not so good for the cell phone. I listened to the message and it was an inquiry from a friend about the house we had for rent. My first inclination was to not call back. I was getting tired of the same reaction every time I told people how much our mortgage was and wasn't in the mood to get my hopes up just to have them shattered again. I decided to call back anyway. I was shocked to find that this house was exactly what she was looking for and could afford! She was even willing to pay 6 months rent in advance and would come right over to give me a check. Having known her and her family the whole time we have been at Pomona First Baptist we were very confident that this was a very good situation. Only one God could provide. She arrived 10 minutes before we left for the airport! God rented our house only minutes before we were to fly away. As I was going over all the details in my mind I realized that this was the only day that something like this could have happened. It would be the only day that we were not under any contract to any company, rental or sales and were free from any obligation. We were free agents and could rent for as much as we owed. At any other time if we would have rented the house it would have cost us several hundred dollars out of our pocket each month and more if something needed to be fixed. The idea of that really put the stress on keeping our house! With this family in our home they are willing to pay the mortgage each month and fix anything that goes wrong themselves. This is quite possibly the best missionary support we have yet!
I had told several of you that it really felt like God was just saying ,"No" to all our attempts at renting and selling and that I was having a hard time trying to figure out just what he was going to do since we could see his hand so evidently in all other areas of our lives as we prepared to move to Lithuania. We know from experience that all the details of our live are important to him, but his timing is always his own.
The 12 steps I have learned over the past few years from Celebrate Recovery were really helpful in giving over my anxiety one day at a time and sometimes every moment of the day! Satan really tried to conquer us on this issue, but we continued to trust that God was in control. Even though humanly it was difficult some days! OFTEN it was a matter of obedience and a force of the will to focus on the promises of God and not get caught up on what only our human eyes could see. We realize that if God would have worked things out in our time we would be so much worse off right now. Either we would be hurting for money each month and worrying about expenses in the states or we would have sold our home and made no money on it. God squashed our attempts at both of these because he had better plans for us. He wanted us to keep the house and not have any worries attached to it. What a better plan eh? It is so easy to look back now and see the waste of time it was to worry even for one minute and not trust completely that God can and will manage ALL the details of life and has the best plans in place if we can only wait on his timing and not rush into action on our own because satan has convinced us that God no longer cares about us. Yes, I have to admit, I was ready to bite into the apple. It is humbling to realize how human we truelly are. And how little faith we really have. God is good, all the time. I hope this is an encouragement to you in your time of waiting on the Lord to answer your prayers! My input on this would be to really wait. If we would have taken care of this situation by ourselves we would have missed out on what God was going to do and would have cheated ourselves out of seeing his hand and provision for our needs and would once again feel like we were self sufficient and didn't need God after all! This experience has prepared us for much bigger trust issues I know we will face in the coming years. I am so glad that we did not run from this time but sat in it and learned how to give it to him daily as he allowed our character to be better developed! Don't get me wrong, this was not an easy test at all and we did not pass with flying colors. We were both willing to throw in the towel at one point or another. But we were confident that God was teaching us a lesson that we both needed to learn! It is awesome to know who is in control of our lives even when we fight it!
So that is the story! Hope it was worth waiting for!