Moved! (Part 3)

Now we had an offer on the table for the blue house, and it was time to also put our house on the market to sell.

Immediately God began speaking to me.  Much of the messages He spoke seemed very cryptic at first, but looking back we can see how each and every word He spoke fit perfectly into His plan.

From the very beginning God said to me "I've Got This."  Seems like funny words coming from the God of the universe, but He said them nonetheless.  Those words said so much to me.

First, they said that He does indeed 'have this' blue hose buying, and current house selling situation.  He is in control no matter what we think, or what could possible come down the road.

Second, it seemed to be a warning that this would not turn out to be the simple buy-and-sell process that we expected.  A reminder for us to lean on Him when confusion and trials come.  Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

Another thing He kept repeating to me was the words "1-week."  Although He said 1-week, He never did tell me exactly what that 1-week meant.  Hubby and I made various speculations.  Everything from 'we will sell our house in 1-week' to we will sell our house with just 1-week left on our contract.  But this 1-week phrase kept us on our toes and on our knees in prayer with God.  After-all, He was the only one that could answer the questions about His timing.  We ended up accepting the offer 1-week before our original closing date of June 8th, 2018.

Then God started speaking to me in dreams...again.

I had two dreams that both happened in real life just as they had played out in my sleeping hours.

The first dream was me in our house and many people coming wanting to buy it.  Two of the people that wanted to buy our house in the dream were people I recognized from our neighborhood.

Well, that happened.  We had over 30 people come to look at our home.  That feels like a lot when you home-school 3 kids and have to keep the house clean and make yourself disappear at any given time so strangers can come look at your home.  Also, two of the people that wanted to buy our house were from our neighborhood!  One was the newly married children of some neighbors of ours, but they were not sure they could scrape together the money or not.  And another one was a couple that was buying a larger house in the neighborhood and didn't like how the inspection reports came back, so they were trying to decide if they should make an offer on our home or not.

Then I had another dream.  In this dream we had 3 offers on our home and in the end of it all had to choose which offer we were suppose to take.

Guess what?  That dream also happened.  We had one offer on the house that we decided not to take.  Then we had two more offers and we had to decide which one we was for us.

The offers were actually pretty stressful because they were basically the same offer by different people, and they all came near the very end of our contract period.  It all came down to timing.  We were running out of time for when we needed to close on the Blue House, so we needed to choose the offer that would fit into that time frame and not drag out the selling process even longer.

You see, the sellers of the Blue House said that they simply would not extend our closing date, so if we accepted an offer that dragged out the closing of our house then we may be left homeless due to the owners of the Blue House not cooperating with us for an extension.

So, we prayed.  We prayed and prayed and prayed.  We did not want to move twice.  We didn't want to go hunting for another home when it took us years to find this one.  We didn't want to be homeless trying to find a place to live in a lurch.  We were down to the wire for our contracted closing date on the Blue House.  It was the end of May, and our closing date on the new house was set for June 8, 2018.  Yikes!

So what did we do?  I sent out text messages to some of my prayer team friends and asked them to pray.

I also sent messaged to a few of my close prophetic prayer teammates and asked them to let me know if the Lord told them anything about me to let me know.  (I did not give them details about my situation because I wanted them to hear from the Lord and not be swayed by my personal details.)

Wayne and I sat in the closet and prayed a lot.  God spoke a lot.  But the decision was ultimately ours.  Do we move forward and lean on God, or do we pull the plug and stop now?

I told God that if this all worked out and we did indeed close on our New Blue House on the official closing date that I would make a stone of remembrance to sit at the front door: Established - June 8, 2018 - By the Glory of God

After all those prayers and prophetic messages coming in from my friends and all the words the Lord had been speaking I decided that Wayne and I needed to sit with two men that I have known, loved and trusted since I was a small child.  They are both prayer warriors and prophetic prayer ministers, and maybe what they would say would make sense of this situation for us and help us decide.

The men agreed to let us come sit with them, and they prophesied over us, then they listed to what was going on, gave advice and prayed.  We left feeling like we should keep moving forward.

I'm sure that everyone we spoke to throughout this particular time thought we should just stop, but that was not what Wayne and I were feeling.  Would we pass this test or go down in a brilliant flame of destruction?

You see, at this moment in time we had the ability to halt everything.  We could not accept the offers on the table to sell our house.  Then our contract on the new house would fall through because of the inability to sell our current home and close timely.  We would simply stay where we were, lose our earnest money and and continue life as usual.

The problem was, I knew that God was calling us to something different, and I also knew that if we didn't move now we probably never would move and step out to that something more that God was calling us to.  It reminded me of that dream I had about my hubby's birthday where we were all still in the same place, a family, but discontent and not living to the potential God had for us.

Or, we had the power to accept one of the offers on our house.  Pray it would close on time (the realtors and title companies said it was impossible to close that quickly because turnaround was longer than 3-weeks.  They insisted that we WOULD NOT close by June 8th.  Period.). 

Or not close on time and know we have to now look for another home while living in a temporary place and moving twice.

Since we felt like we must move forward to obey God, which offer do we accept?

Will we sell and close on our house in time to close on the new home?  According to the Title company that was impossible.  But we serve a God that make the impossible possible.

Eeek!

Your Honor Is Showing

It amazes me at how young our precious children begin to show that sin nature they were born with.  It is almost immediately!  My 18-month old already has fits of temper when he does not get his way, and defiantly says, "No" if I ask him to do something he doesn't like.  But as a Mom (or any parent) it is our job to continue teaching our children through these tough moments.  Don't get me wrong, I have great kids that love to listen and obey (sometimes), but that immature and selfish part of them shows from time-to-time.

So what do we do to combat this?  I have a lot of patience, do a lot of praying, and we communicate all the time!  Yes, I have long and meaningful conversations with my toddlers.  Actually, I started having these conversations with them when they were still in the womb.  I truly believe that learning begins even before birth and does not end here on earth until we take our final breath.  I also know that our children will act as old as we treat them, so I always treat them as if they do/will understand; but I also make sure they understand and not just assume they do. 

OK, so you communicate...what else?  I try to teach them manners, obedience, respect and honor.  These can be so easy to teach and so tricky to teach all at the same time! 

Manners are something that my hubby and I have taught our kiddos from day 1, and it has been successful.  Simple things like saying 'please', 'thank you', 'sorry', 'may I', 'yes Mam', 'no Sir'...  We just simply remind them to say these phrases at appropriate times, and we use them ourselves; after all, we can't expect our children to do something that we don't do ourselves.  And guess what, both of kids use these phrases almost without fail.  Actually, if one of my kids forgets to say one of those, like 'thank you', the other child says it for them...really cute!  So if you want to incorporate manners it isn't too difficult.

Obedience is a little trickier than manners because now we are dealing with the child's own personal will and sin nature.  They are quick to obey if it is something they want to do, or if you bribe them, but what about when it is something they don't care about or simply don't understand?  I have found that obedience is easier for them when they comprehend the 'why' behind the task or question from Dad or Mom.  One example would be when my son climbs up and stands on our glass table.  I could simply yell at him to get down and get angry when he doesn't obey, because as you know standing on that table is really fun.  Or I can tell him to get down so he doesn't fall and so the glass doesn't break because that would hurt.  Not only is he more inclined to listen to the explanation, but he may think twice before getting back up on that table next time!

Respect is a whole other creature.  It is a mixture of obedience and understanding along with desire.  Huh?  Well, for instance, my daughter once went through a stage where she loved to pull on my shirt and clothes (now my son is in that stage).  I can yell and get aggravated telling her to stop ALL DAY LONG, or I can explain.  "Sissy, don't pull on Mommy's shirt because it can stretch it out or tear it, and then it would be ruined.  Remember, we respect our clothes and don't destroy them."  Ah Ha!  Now I see, we respect them and don't destroy them.  We do the same thing with our toys.  Can you believe that with two children ages 18-months and 4-years old that we have never lost or broken a toy?  That is also part of teaching respect.  After playing all day we have our kids put their toys away (we actually do the majority of the putting away, but they help) and while singing the 'Clean Up' song we also tell them that we put the toys back where they belong so we will always know where they are when we want to play with them next time.  We respect our things so we don't have to replace them.  Somehow the idea of respect rings true in their little minds already.

Honor?!?!?  Now how do you teach honor?  I'm not really sure.  I think of honor as a desire to please and respect.  Wikipedia defines honor as: 'an abstract concept entailing a perceived quality of worthiness and respectability that affects both the social standing and the self-evaluation of an individual or corporate body such as a family, school, regiment or nation.'  So basically we become worthy of honor through respect!  Wow, that is intense.  The Bible has a lot to say about children honoring their parents.  Actually, honor is the first commandment that also comes with a promise.  What is the promise?  That you may live long in the land the Lord is giving you!  OK, so pretty important.  I think you teach honor by being an honorable person.  By lavishing love and grace over your children, and by honoring those in authority over you.  Yup.  So if your children or others do not honor you then evaluate what you are doing to get/recieve that honor...your answer may lie there.  I will find out when my kids become teenagers and adults, but for now I will relish having my little ones honor me to the degree they can, just as I learn to honor my God above.

“Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— Ephesians 6:2

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12

Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 5:16

Do you have good manners?  Do you teach your children good manners?  What are manners anyway?  How about obedience, respect and honor...how do you handle those?  Leave your comments below and let's learn from eachother!