The Lord has taught me much about faith. The main lesson\u2014it isn\u2019t faith if I can figure out how it will work.<\/p>\n
Over 20 years ago, I took my first big step of faith and, in the middle of deputation, flew to New Zealand for 6 months without enough money to survive. I told Lewis before we left, \u201cI don\u2019t know how we were going to live in a foreign country for 6 months and keep the house we were renting in the States and pay the bills in both countries.\u201d He asked if we should cancel even though we had the plane tickets. I said, \u201cNo. I just don\u2019t \u2018see\u2019 how it will work out.\u201d We got on the plane, and six months later, returned to the States. Praise the Lord, we never missed a bill. Plus, we even repaired the air conditioning in our van for deputation.<\/p>\n
Then we finished our deputation and moved permanently to New Zealand on Christmas Day 2010. Lewis said, \u201cYou know we\u2019ll never own a house again.\u201d I said, \u201cI know. I\u2019m on the plane, aren\u2019t I?\u201d After two years in New Zealand, my oldest daughter and I went viewing open homes in our town on Sunday afternoons. One Sunday, I came home and threw the pile of home papers that had collected on our kitchen counter into the trash. My faith fell into the trash can that day as well.<\/p>\n
A few days later, our landlord knocked on the door and told us we\u2019d have to move. Lewis started looking up a house that was financially out of our reach. With my lack of faith at the time, I was reluctant, but a month later, we were moving into that house.<\/p>\n
The housing market was different then; it was a buyer\u2019s market. The house we bought was probably in the worst shape of any other homes in the area because a widow had been alone in it for the two years since her husband\u2019s death. It had been on the market for two years, and nothing had been done to it.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/waterfall-2-11385-photo-scaled.jpg\")
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Two weeks later, I sat crying with ivy dangling on my head from a collapsing fence. The gardens were overgrown, the retaining walls were collapsing, and the house needed major updates inside. I cried out, \u201cDear Lord, I hope you haven\u2019t given us more than we can handle.\u201d Thirteen years later, God had given us the strength and the finances to fix the home and gardens up to match the neighborhood. By the way, we got into the house for what we were paying in rent. When our mission board and sending church found out we could buy a home instead of rent, they agreed it was a better use of God\u2019s money.<\/p>\n
The months and years lapsed. Not only were my plants growing\u2014my faith was growing. If we allow God to work in our lives\u2014our faith should never stop growing. We may hit speed bumps in life that slow our faith growth down, but that\u2019s not due to our loving Saviour, it\u2019s due to our human determination to control everything and not let go and let God control our lives.<\/p>\n
Fast forward fifteen years in New Zealand, and God miraculously opened a door for us to return to the States. We didn\u2019t plan this, but God obviously had other plans for our lives.<\/p>\n
After heaps of preparation and shipping our container, we put the \u2018For Sale\u2019 sign in the yard, sure that the house would sell immediately. Three months passed, and we dropped the house price. We figured the Lord was testing us to step further in our faith and trust him to provide financially and not to lean unto our own understanding.<\/p>\n
Proverbs 3:5 \u201cTrust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Another two months passed\u2014no house sale. We took a huge step of faith and put the house up for auction. I Peter 5:7 \u201cCasting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.\u201d<\/em> I was casting our cares in prayer, but still, I was a nervous wreck. I know I shouldn\u2019t have been, but I\u2019m human. The auction came and went. Not a soul came to bid on the house.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, I realized that Easter was a month away. Lewis and I talked and agreed to drop the price again. We needed to get a hold of God with specific prayers to sell the house. I wanted a contract on Easter Sunday to lay at the foot of a small wooden cross, which we had on our kitchen counter, to represent our sacrifice to him. Our Lord sacrificed his life on the cross, and we would sacrifice our house for him. We knew, in our eyes, this wouldn\u2019t give us much money to work with for buying another house, but we figured we had nothing left to sacrifice but our lives and the house. Being missionaries, we had already sacrificed everything else, our Stateside home, family, friends, jobs, dreams, etc.<\/p>\n As a side note, many who saw our house listed for sale in New Zealand saw a huge number and probably thought we came back rich, but that was New Zealand dollars. The cost of living is double over there. So, take your home price, double it, and that would be the cost of your home in New Zealand dollars.<\/p>\n Praise the Lord, he sold our house, and we were signing the contract on Easter Sunday EST. I laid our copy of the signed contract under the little wooden cross on my kitchen counter. Things moved quickly. We settled. The agent took her fee, which was high enough for her to take a three-month world trip. Then we paid the m Hebrews 11:6 \u201cBut without faith it is impossible to please him\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Okay, here we were Stateside-bound on probably my last international flight anywhere in life. \u201cThis has to be the largest step of faith I could ever possibly take,\u201d I told Lewis and kept telling myself, knowing we didn\u2019t have enough money. Reality had also hit several months prior, as we realized I would also need a part-time job when we returned. We\u2019ve been together in the ministry for 23 years, and now we are separated. \u201cFaith\u2014keep having faith\u2014God has a plan for it all,\u201d I keep telling myself.<\/p>\n Since we arrived back in the States, many have said, \u201cYou must have faith.\u201d The last 23 years have been filled with faith-building steps. I give the Lord all the credit that my faith grew gazillions while in New Zealand. For example, during times like sitting alone in a waiting room, while Lewis was having back surgery, and I didn\u2019t know if he would ever walk again. It also grew when I received a call that I had cancer for a second time. As I write this, I think about how I shouldn\u2019t be alive. In 2021, God had the \u2018Social System\u2019 in New Zealand discover my appendix needed removing. After the surgery, the surgeon told me that it was filled with a rare, aggressive cancer. If the appendix had ruptured, I would have died in a matter of weeks. I could write a small book of all the times God grew my Faith in the past 23 years of ministry.<\/p>\n Fast forward again, our plane landed in the States, and we didn\u2019t even know where we were staying in Westminster until 48 hours prior. Our life was in a container sitting on the church\u2019s parking lot (thanks to a dear friend). We had clothing and our whole life in three suitcases each as we sat in our Sending Church\u2019s profit room (we have the best sending church in the world) and pondered our next step.<\/p>\n Almost two weeks later and two days before we left for Westminster, I asked Lewis, \u201cDo you know where we are staying yet?\u201d His reply, \u201cNo.\u201d Okay, I must confess, my faith hit a speed bump, and I had to take a walk around our sending church’s parking lot. All we had been through, and we didn\u2019t even know where we would lay our heads in two days. Then, thanks to dear friends who are letting us use their basement as a temporary home, we finally found out where we were staying. Now, we are looking for a home, and we will have a mortgage. We didn\u2019t come back to the States independently wealthy, like some think. We have expenses and bills like everyone else. We can only afford an entry-level home; finances are very limited because we\u2019ve had to absorb almost all our moving expenses ourselves. But God blessed us in miraculous ways over the last 15 years in New Zealand, and he will help us here. If God hadn\u2019t given us a house in New Zealand, we wouldn\u2019t be in Westminster, because even if I had a full-time job, we couldn\u2019t afford to live here. So, over 13 years ago, God had a plan when we bought our house in New Zealand. He knew that we\u2019d need that house to survive.<\/p>\n God built our faith strong each day, and it continues to grow stronger each day as I learn to rely on him instead of people. Hebrews 13:5 \u201c…I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.\u201d<\/em> God didn\u2019t leave me in the waiting room during Lewis\u2019s surgery, he didn\u2019t leave us in New Zealand, and I know he won\u2019t leave us here.<\/p>\n Years ago, the verse Hebrews 11:6 \u201cBut without faith it is impossible to please him\u2026\u201d <\/em>hit home personally for me. It was in the middle of our years in New Zealand. Since that time, I\u2019ve made it a personal daily prayer of mine to make sure I\u2019m having faith in my Heavenly Father and Saviour. I want to be pleasing to him. So, I continue striving to build my faith through his strength. Psalms 46:1 \u201cGod is our refuge and strength…\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Recently, some people have told me to have faith. They must have hit me on a faith speed bump day, but I told Lewis, \u201cThey have no idea what we\u2019ve been through and the faith steps that we have made in 23 years and the faith steps that we are making now.\u201d But that\u2019s okay. My Heavenly Father, who knows the heart, knows.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to encourage everyone who reads this to take the time to analyze your faith. Have you been pleasing to God today? Remember my simple definition of faith above, \u201cIt isn\u2019t faith if you can figure out how it will work.\u201d If God desires you to do something and you can\u2019t figure out how\u2014do it anyway. Let God work out the details. Notice Hebrews 11:6 doesn\u2019t say if we have sin, we are unpleasing to God. Sin\u2019s another story. It says that if we don\u2019t have faith in God, we aren\u2019t pleasing to him. Ponder that verse and analyze your faith today. Is your faith growing? Are you pleasing to the Lord?<\/p>\n Living by faith in Jesus above, (Public Domain)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" …In Jesus Above I love this hymn written by James Wells in 1918. In New Zealand, since it rains regularly, while hanging my clothes outside, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[45,375,392,374],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Bible-close-up-vert-1-13203-photo-scaled.jpg\")
ortgage off, paid the container shipping company, bought plane tickets, paid off other accounts in New Zealand, and wired the remaining money back to the States. The exchange rate was the worst in our fifteen years in New Zealand. We got .60 US cents for every New Zealand dollar.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sonbeamsandshadows.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Faith-Barn_5845-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nTrusting, confiding in His great love;
\nFrom all harm safe in His sheltering arm,
\nI\u2019m living by faith and feel no alarm.<\/p>\n