 It had been one of those weeks again where we did not know if we would have enough money to buy food. I am sad to say that it was an all too familiar feeling as weeks like this seemed to occur with greater frequency. It’s funny how every time this happened (and it really happened often) we would question if God would really come through for us again. We have short memories when it comes to God’s goodness. I remember reading the stories of the Israelite's in the desert and thinking, “what’s wrong with them?” I mean, honestly, to have witnessed the ten plagues, have crossed the Red sea, seen water come from the rock, manna every morning, the cloud by day and fire by night, how could you possibly doubt God? The Israelite's did. They quickly forgot and started to complain. I used to wonder how that was possible until I realised that I do it myself. Almost every day. In our married life we often went without. We were quick to complain and grumble to the Lord (and everyone else) and yet the Lord always came through when we needed Him. Even though we could not often buy groceries, we never went hungry. In fact, it was normally when we felt like we had hit rock bottom that the Lord provided the most and the best. We took this photo on a day when our fridge and our cupboards were empty and the next thing we knew we were sitting down to a feast of croissants, cheese, jam and strawberries. To top it all off, we even had flowers for the table! We would never have bought this for ourselves, but the Lord provided something beautiful in a moment that started to feel very hopeless. It was in our weakness that He showed us His strength. I love that passage in 1 Corinthians 1 where Paul talks about God using the foolish things to shame the world’s wisdom. It’s something that we can really testify about. We have seen and learnt that obedience to God, following His next step, doesn’t always make sense to the world (in fact a lot of the time it doesn’t make sense to us either), but we have seen that obedience makes worldly wisdom look very foolish. When we felt like the Lord was leading us to buy a house it made no sense at all. We were really struggling financially, yet the leading was so strong. It really felt like a miracle when things fell into place so suddenly and so easily that we were able to buy our own place. We loved this house and thought that maybe God was asking us to settle for a while longer before He would send us to France. Imagine our surprise then when just 18 months later we felt just as strongly that now we needed to sell. I am not a financial whiz at all but even I know that this doesn’t sound like a good plan. Surely I will make a significant loss on our investment? We prayed and decided that God has never led us astray and so we will be obedient again and put our house on the market to see if it would sell.
It sold. It sold in 6 days. Not only did it sell but it also sold at a profit, enough for us to settle a large portion of our hospital debt from Luc’s birth. God’s wisdom really does work! We packed up our house, ready to rent and wait to see what the Lord would lead us to do next. It was the day before we moved out when we got the email from our friends at the ICG. They had been praying and felt led to ask if we might be interested in coming to pastor the church in Grenoble, France. The exact city we felt God had been calling us to all this time! God’s leading, one step at a time. Read more... |
