This is a story of the faithfulness of God, what He can do when you obey, and what struggles you can be spared from if you wait on Him.
The spotlight belongs to the Lord, and I truly mean it when I say that God did all of this. The only thing we did was obey Him- admittedly, not even quickly sometimes but ultimately we obeyed the Lord and He was able to work in all of things to do with our new home.
Our house hunt began before we even knew that’s what it was...
We lived in our first home for 9 years. We had actually tried to move two times before this one and we kept running into obstacle after obstacle, and it wasn’t one of those “you’re doing the right thing, the Enemy is just trying to stop you” kind of things. It just truly wasn’t the right time.
Looking back from where we are right now, I know without a shadow of a doubt that we moved to the right place at the right time- God’s timing. Not every step was without opportunity for uncertainty, but just as you can see through crystal, we can see God’s hand on everything we went through to get here.
Right off the bat, I want to acknowledge the fact that I had very little to do with the house I’m sitting in right now. I'm just smiling to myself rereading the irony of that statement. I believe God wanted me to see just how He can work and make things happen that I could never do on my own. And, I got that message, God- I got it.
First of all, I didn’t even choose this house. It didn’t come up in the many, many homes I looked through on my real estate app. It’s actually in an area that I had pretty much written off because- full transparency- I didn’t think with our budget that we could get the land we wanted and a nice house. I had us looking in surrounding towns that we knew deep down we would not be satisfied with for the long haul.
The first thing I didn’t do? Get a real estate agent. A company we were working with actually connected us to the agent we used and she was an absolute Godsend. She was the one for the job- so many other things fell into place because of this one step.
The second thing I didn’t do? Find this house that I can now call mine where I am happily writing this blog post. The agent sent to us by the Lord Himself found out about this property before it was even on the market. Yet another chess move on God.
Thankfully, we hadn’t made our agent go to more than one other property that we found before this one came up- we were definitely trying to make things work on our own. We could have waited patiently and saved ourselves heartache and disappointment if we had just waited on Him.
We got really close to making an offer on a home that in hindsight would have been such a let down. Before I go any further, let’s just be real and clear on this one truth: We are blessed in this country, abundantly blessed! The house I'm referring to needed a lot of work and to even make the land what we wanted, we would have had to excavate. But, to have a roof over our heads is such a blessing. I do believe exactly what our pastor preaches, “God wants us to have a little bit of Heaven to go to Heaven in.” We do NOT have to settle for less than His best.
There is nothing wrong or showy about shouting from the rooftops of God's goodness in your life. In fact, it is a story just like this one that strengthened mine and Bryan’s faith two years ago. From the platform at the annual women’s conference at my church, a faith-filled lady was sharing her house story and it rocked my socks off! I went home that day fired up about how the goodness of God will work in our lives, too.
For three+ years, I had been writing almost every day, “I live on a 5-acre farm. I live in a big, beautiful country house.” We knew what we wanted and had been praying and believing. But this year, we started praising Him for it, too!
Prayer, belief, and praise are all intertwined. God absolutely loves the praises of His people. Psalm 22:3 says that He actually “inhabits” and dwells in our praise!
Before we even saw this house, Bryan and I turned on praise and worship music several nights in our bedroom and just praised like we had won a million dollars. It’s that kind of praise that builds your faith that God will do great things in your life.
Fast forward to the offer on this farm… I had a number in my spirit that we put on our paper to submit to the sellers along with a letter. In that letter we told the sellers of our vision for this place and what we had in our hearts to do. The letter idea was also not mine- it came from a sweet friend anointed by the Holy Spirit to tell me about it. I had the pleasure of thanking her in person last week for obeying the Lord to tell me this idea.
As negotiations ensued, we were tempted to feel like we weren’t going to come to a resolution, but the Holy Spirit stopped me that day from responding to the latest text about our offer. In no more than 10 minutes, what we wanted was accepted! I’m telling you… the absolute GOODNESS of our God!
This whole deal was also based on the sale of our home. For 15 days, we had showings but no offers. 15 days doesn’t seem like a lot but when you live in a neighborhood with houses that sell literally within just a few days on market, we were feeling discouraged.
Discouragement quickly left when we were encouraged by a good friend who was also in real estate- his words to me that day lifted my spirit and had me hoping again. I just love how God works through people! So many people in my life in this season have helped this dream become a reality.
Just four days later, we received an offer well above our asking price. Whoa! It makes me want to run around this office right now just thinking back about how God worked! And, the Lord had told me during the 19-day period of selling our house these exact words, “Watch Me Work” and we most surely did.
God's move. Checkmate.
We acquired our dream property for $15k less than the asking price, our house appraised for more than our agent thought it would- she was in shock and awe! Despite the tests we went through, God was so faithful and I can say that we have experienced His goodness.
I have been encouraged so many times by people sharing their stories of faith- I hope this is an encouragement to you! "Faith is having something before you see it."
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