#faithjourney: answered prayer

I have been ITCHING to write a follow up to our faith journey for well….. 8 months now.

I sit here thinking back over how finite I am. How I’m so human and God is so God.

I remember VIVIDLY telling God how He should do things.

Here was my prayer,

“God, I will go WHEREVER you want me to go. I’ve made it really easy for you. I want to go back to Florida, and here are your options for you to choose from as far as jobs. Amen.”

I want the beach. I want sun. I want my friends. I want to be comfortable.

Everyone has faith… until they actually have to walk in it.

Ouch.

So, you can read up on our journey thus far here, but here is the Cliff Notes version.

--> 1 year ago, God told us to sell our dream home in Indian Trail, NC. Kicking and screaming, we put it on the market. It sold in 6 days.

--> 8 months ago, God woke Matt and I up the same night and told us he needed Matt to quit his job. That was 9 days before Khase was born.  

Make sense to you? Me either.

At this point I felt God needed my help. So, we PERSUED many options.

He would close a door and I would be standing there with my shoulder pushed up against it trying to keep it from shutting.

Meanwhile, Matt was working side jobs from sun up to sun down.  So between him painting, coaching cheerleading, and my business, we never missed a bill. Ever.

During that time, I remember him having many interviews, sending out applications to jobs that, in my opinion, he was over qualified for, and trying to FORCE many things to happen.

A misconception of stepping out in faith, is that it’s this beautiful road paved with roses, and God will show you in like a day or two what you are supposed to do.

Not the case.

In fact, it can be kinda ugly while you go through it.

I once heard, “If you live your life by what makes sense, you aren’t living a life of faith.”

Having just had a baby, I was already emotional, but going through this gave post partum a WHOLE new meaning for me.

You know what helped get me through it?

I remember reading a chapter in Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson where he would say Build a Testimony.

Build a testimony.

To me, that meant live a life that no matter what way you look at it, God has to get the glory for the outcome, because it has NOTHING to do with you.

And if I ever want my boys to grow up being God-fearing men of faith, then I want them to know their parents showed them how.

Matt and I had an agreement that we would walk through EVERY door that opened until GOD shut it. That was our deal. No backing out.

So fast-forward to January.

Matt was scheduled to head up to Alaska to do a DNOW weekend with my cousins youth group up there. I was ecstatic for him, as he has a passion for evangelism, and he always wanted to go to AK.

2 weeks before Matt was about to leave, my cousin, who is the youth pastor there, called and asked if Matt would be interested in sending his resume, as they were looking for a worship leader.

Immediately I said No.

Remember.. beach? Sun? I don’t do winter. Especially not 364 days of the year where there is only 1 “warm” day & it’s in the 40’s. (just kidding. They have warm summers, but this was my initial thought.)

I fought this one hard. And honestly, I THOUGHT God would really do this to me, because I also said I would never marry a preacher and you can see where that landed me.

;)

Matt reminded me of our deal. Let GOD close the door. Not Jessica.

So, reluctantly, I agreed for him to send his resume, not realizing that a day later, they were going to call to have ALL of us fly up there.

Really, Lord?

2 weeks later, we packed the whole family up, all our snow gear, and headed up to Anchorage, AK.

Everything was great about this church. The people, the staff, the “family” atmosphere. They loved on us as if we were their own and treated us like royalty.  We loved it there!

At the end of the week, I thought to myself....this might be it!!

God has lined EVERYTHING up. We hadn’t done A THING.  

My biggest FEAR was missing the BEST God had for me because I was too STUPID & worried about being comfortable.

If God had the BEST for me in Alaska. Then that’s where I was going. 

No if’s and’s or but’s about it.

In my mind we were moving.

We came back from AK on a high from just having gone to camp with them. It was perfect. 

The kids were awesome, the camp went awesome….

They sent us home and told us they wanted to pray about it for 2 weeks and wanted us to as well.

2 weeks came and went and we got a call that they wanted Matt to fly back out, lead worship again, and go on their staff retreat because they had not made a decision yet.

We said we were going to keep walking through the door. So they bought the ticket.

That night we were RESTLESS.

And when I say restless, I mean, up at 2am and couldn’t sleep a lick after that. 

We had some hesitations about some things and it was like God was saying LOUD & CLEAR, “This is not it.”

So the next day, we called the church and explained the check in our heart.  We didn’t feel like God wanted us to keep walking through this door.

I was confused, because I told God, “God, I’m ok with this! YOU HAVE ME! I have accepted this and want what you want!”

Then I felt God say to me almost as CLEAR.AS.DAY…

“Jessica, I wanted to know that I had your heart. “

Right then, I had an Abraham moment.

Remember when God told Abraham to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a sacrifice? 

Without a hint of hesitation, Abraham rose early that morning, saddled up his donkey, and headed with his son to where God had told him. 

His plan was to sacrifice his son that day.  He even built the alter and tied his son Isaac to it! Just as he was raising his arm to put the knife in Isaac’s heart and angel  called to him and told him to stop.

(Genesis 22:9-12)

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’

‘Here I am,’ he replied.

12 ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’

Wow.

So, let’s go back to the 2 weeks we were praying about Alaska.

During those 2 weeks, Matt got a phone call from a church in Alabama looking for a student and college pastor.

They asked for his resume and references.

At the end of the day, they had contacted all his references and called for a first interview.

Without going into too much detail, let’s just say God was ALL OVER IT.

For the next few weeks we had interview after interview, skype after skype. God would open up another door and we would just keep walking.

Their vision aligned EXACTLY with what we believed and we were falling in love with the students, leaders, and staff and we hadn’t even been offered the job yet!

This is where I thought if God were going to close the door… it will be here.

We started looking at housing, and if you have ever rented before, you know that you MUST show proof that you make at least 3 times the amount of the rent payment.

Well, that's going to be a problem.

You see, we have been living on “faith” for the past 8 months and GOD has provided our money.

I don’t think they would buy into that story even if we would have written it on paper and gave it to them.

But, trusting God, we filled out the application and left that part out.

The Administrative pastor called us THAT DAY and told us the application went through, and we have house.

Excuse me, what?  

The house is yours.

And not only that, they were showing it to someone else that EXACT day and SOMEHOW they went with our application and not theirs.

Jessica can’t do that.

God did that.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to visit this church in Alabama I’ve been talking about.

It’s called Vaughn Forest in Montgomery, Al.

We met with the leadership, the staff, the students, the volunteers, the adult leaders the elders, and it just CONFIRMED to us that THIS is the road that God has so EASILY paved for us.

We were at home. And we could FEEL it.

After 8 loooong months, God showed up.

He went before us, and like Matt always says, God just rocked our faces off.

Cause this was HIM. Not us. We would have ruined it. We would have tried to take credit. But we can’t.

I thought it was Alaska. 

And I was ok with that, but God gave me something even better. He just wanted to see if he REALLY had my heart.

If I would do something UNCOMFORTABLE.

So, ladies and gentleman, starting May 1^st, we have accepted the student/college pastor position at Vaughn Forest!!!

We are actually packing up THIS WEEK and heading that way!

We are about to embark on a journey that we have prayed about for a very, VERY long time.

Thank you for all your prayers & your encouragement. I love that so many of you have followed our journey and have asked about it.

There is so much more to this story that I will continue to share with you guys, but for now, we are going to MY home state, and where the BEST football team in the world resides… ALABAMA!!!