You may notice that I haven’t blogged in over a month (or maybe you didn’t notice). Either way, the reason being, our life has been a little bit crazy! I started working part-time at Eastern Mountain Sports at the end of March. That, coupled with pastoring and church planting, has made for a busy summer. When I started, I was working three days, but I found that was too much so I was able to consolidate my hours into two days instead. This has been much better. I finally feel like I’m in somewhat of a groove with work and ministry.
Additionally, our landlord is selling the property where we live so we have to move by September 1. Finding an apartment in the city can be a fiasco! It’s much like buying a home. Many of the rental properties are listed by realtors. It’s a huge thing here. You have to have the money, up front, for the first month, security deposit, brokers fee (if it applies) and sometimes the last month as well! This amounts to four months of rent up front, which to many (including us) is a small fortune. Luckily, we found our new apartment listed by the landlord on Craigslist so we didn’t have to pay a brokers fee, but we still had to pay first, security and half of the last month. Can I just say, God has been faithful? The first time we had to do it the Lord provided everything we needed and it was no different this time!
Part of walking with the Lord is learning how to trust Him – even when we don’t understand what He is doing or how He is doing it. Remember, God can see the BIG picture! We only see in part. Proverbs 3:5-6 has been a standard for us during this whole church planting process. From the time we were praying about stepping down from BASIC, God impressed this verse on our hearts, and 3 years later, He is still speaking through it. Here it is,
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; (6) In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. (NKJ)
We didn’t understand why God asked us to step down from BASIC in 2008 without knowing what the next step would be. We didn’t understand how we were going to come up with a large chunk of money to live in one of the most expensive areas in the country (Cambridge, Mass) to plant a church. And in our recent apartment search, we didn’t understand why after a month and a half of searching outside of Cambridge (more space for less money) why the only door God opened up was inside of Cambridge (and I could give many more examples). It’s beyond us.
Our job is not to understand, it’s to follow where He is leading.
Church planters, leaders, and followers of Jesus – this should be a lesson to us. We can’t figure everything out with our rational mind. God is beyond our understanding. Things don’t always add up the way we think they should. God knows what He is doing. Walk with Him, trust Him, and follow where He leads! Peter and the disciples didn’t understand why Jesus kept talking about dying. Joseph didn’t understand why he had to be sold into slavery and put in jail. Gideon didn’t understand why God told Him to keep reducing His army and use lamps and trumpets to defeat a huge army. And if we are walking with Jesus, we aren’t going to understand everything He asks of us. I’ll close with a quote from Bill Johnson,
If I understand all that is going on in my Christian life, I have an inferior Christian life.
How about you? Any stories about trusting the Lord that could encourage us?
Wow. Praise God. We are so happy for your guys. This topic is something I struggle with daily. I have always been a builder. Whether I was building an actual building or building a business I always want to know how I’m going to get that goal or project accomplished. So when God asks me to lean not on my own understanding and trust Him it goes against every thought and reason of my flesh. Yet every time (and I mean every time) I obeyed Him and took this scripture to heart God has always blessed my family greatly.
Along with Proverbs 3:5-6 I remind myself daily of Matt 6:26-27.