Dreams

Last week I met up with some friends and went to Passion City Church in Atlanta. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a new church that is lead by Louie Giglio and Passion ministries. I thoroughly enjoy the way Louie speaks with boldness and enthusiasm about the Lord. Last night, part of the message was about trusting God with your dreams. It was so applicable to where I am right now. I feel like I have a lot of dreams about what the future holds for Bryon and I in our pursuit of serving in full time ministry. It has been easy for me to become anxious about the process it is going to take to get there and about what life will look like once we're there. The verses that Louie zoned in on were Phil. 4:4-7 where it talks about being anxious "for nothing". This was so challenging to me! I tend to want things mapped out for me way in advance and when that doesn't happen, I become anxious. I think I try to justify to myself why it's o.k to be anxious about the things I'm anxious about, but if I take these verses seriously I have to admit that there is never a good reason to be anxious. My anxiety is evidence that I'm not trusting that the Lord knows my desires and that He is ultimately in control of them. If only this was easier to remember!

Speaking of trusting the Lord, Bryon and I are searching for a new home to live in for this next year. We are currently in an apartment but our lease is up at the end of the month. We are looking for a place to rent that has a backyard for Bryon's dog because Bryon's parents are selling their home and need us to take him off their hands. Unfortunately I'm allergic to animals so we need to find a place where we can have him outside and in the garage. It hasn't been easy to find a place in our price range that meets our needs and isn't completely run down. We found a place last week that we both really really like. When we went to look at the house there were three other couples looking at it at the same time. I felt like we were embarking on a popularity contest to see who got the house! The lady renting the house isn't making a profit from it. Supposedly she really likes the house and wants to move back into it later on in life so until then she's just renting it out at cost. We filled out the application that night and turned it in the next morning to try to get in the running before the other prospective buyers. We were told that everyone who looked at the house was serious about wanting it. Over the past few days, the realtor has been in contact with us and has been checking our references and running our credit information. I'm afraid to get my hopes up too much, but I'm thinking those are positive signs that we have a good chance of getting the house. Meanwhile, we are continuing to search rental homes in the area... just in case!

The journey continues...

It's been a while since my last post. I have decided (and evidence shows!) that I'm not very good about being consistent with this thing. Oh well. I'll do what I can and maybe one day I'll be better about updating.

A few weeks ago, Bryon and I decided to take a week off from socializing with other people in order to spend time together praying in the evenings. We did this to seek the Lord's guidance for our future, but more importantly to center our relationship more on Christ. We truly desire to have prayer be a priority in our family and taking a week off to focus on that has helped us jump start that discipline. I have to say though, at the end of the week I was a little discouraged that we didn't have a major breakthrough regarding which direction we are supposed to be heading. We came up with some goals for this year but we were still just as undecided about what steps we should be taking in preparation for next year. A few of the options we were thinking about were whether or not to go to school for more education, go somewhere to receive ministry training, or go directly into working with at-risk youth.

Bryon and I have been praying for a while about moving to W.V. to work with the youth in the Appalachians. I mentioned this briefly in a previous post. It seems like we have both gone back and forth over the past few months (and rarely on the same page about it). Although we didn't get a clear answer about our future after our focused week of praying, the Lord gave me peace that He is in control and that if we're supposed to go to W.V he would make it clear to us both at the same time. I think He wanted to teach me that things don't always happen in my timing and according to my plans. I have a long way to go in learning this lesson! Over the past few weeks, we have been feeling a stronger discontent with where we are at and a strong peace to be moving forward with serving full time in W.V. I'm not really sure what this means and how long this process will take, but I'm so excited to get started on this journey! At this point, we need to figure our how much money needs to be raised as well as begin gathering some much needed prayer support. We know that gathering prayer support from our friends and family as we begin this process is absolutely vital. It is very intimidating to both of us to have to raise financial support so I know we'll need all the prayer and encouragement we can get! I'll keep you all updated as we trudge along in this process.