God at Work - Journal Entry #2

Life: an adventure, a journey with Jesus!
The House Rental

Another leg of the journey is complete! We have seen Jesus in new ways during the month of December. He orchestrates the paths we take, our steps. He does, if we let Him. We have many God stories to share. Let me share one with you.

This story began months ago, but in December, at the right time, in His time, the end of the story began and it is now being written. The original plan was for us to sell our house and liquidate our assets in preparation of our move to Peru as full time missionaries. We are instructed in scripture to seek counsel of Godly men. For some reason, this didn’t occur to us in the plans of selling our home. It was the adult children who began to encourage us to re-think this plan. Then, and only after their planting of the seed, did we seek counsel of a dear friend. The plan was changed to rent the house, and store a minimum number of personal items in our 10’ x 16’ wood shed. Finding the right person/couple to rent the house would become a priority prayer request. If we didn’t secure a renter, we would pay the mortgage and our neighbors and children would check on the property regularly.

We listed the house on Craigs List. We put a “for rent” sign in the front yard. We told everyone we knew that it was available for rent. We had taken the first step. We had to sit and wait. Several inquiries were received. Single Moms who couldn’t afford it, a young couple who had 2 dogs, a family with 4 elementary school aged children, two emails from out of the country offering strange arrangements (scams). No serious inquiries. Our thoughts began to run wild, but we weren’t going to tell anyone! We thought…Time is of the essence; it’s now December. We thought…renting would really help with the budget. We thought…We don’t want an empty house. On the other hand, we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. People warned us and told us their personal horror stories and experiences. Friends and acquaintances both cast doubt in our plan of action. We prayed and asked our Sunday School Class to pray for us as we needed wisdom in this decision.

Early in the month of December we had a visitor to our Sunday School class and found out that it was Pastor Douglas’ father-in-law. He and his wife were thinking of relocating to Georgia from New York. Pastor Douglas asked Don about the availability of the house and asked us to consider whether or not we would want to rent it to Gary Laws and his wife. A week went by and we didn’t hear again from him. We began to ask ourselves, why? Doubts were creeping in again. We were at the Bridgeway Church Christmas party (our attendance is another God story to be shared at another time) and Joy asked Cathy what her father’s plans were. She said they were waiting to hear from us! If we had only known. We didn’t realize the ball was in our court. Since it was, we picked it up and ran with it! Don, Douglas and Gary agreed that night to meet the next week to discuss the house rental.

We had a wonderful time sharing with one another where God had been using us in our individual lives and what we felt His plan for each of us was for the immediate future. Gary and his wife are retired Salvation Army Officers, he has been a pastor and preached for many years, and is presently writing and fulfilling speaking engagements. His wife has not enjoyed good health these past couple of years, and moving closer to Cathy would be helpful. It was our privilege to invite them to pray about the opportunity to rent and live in our house in our absence. This they did. We did. Pastor Douglas told us a couple of weeks later that if it was okay with us they would like to have us draw up a rental agreement. What a fantastic Christmas present to be able to take down the “for rent” sign in our front yard!

Please rejoice with us as we once again know, without a doubt, that God brought the Laws and Norrises together in His perfect timing. What more could we ask for than to have members of the body of Christ pay us to manage our property in our absence! Do you recall the verse that says “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” Galations 6:10 Well, we feel blessed to partner with Mr. & Mrs. Gary Laws in the fulfilling of this scripture. We are there for them and they are there for us. What beautiful music we can enjoy when we listen to the Maestro.