House of God

06:06 house , provision , safety 0 Comments

How can anyone afford to buy a house? Even before we got married, my wife and I knew that God has called both of us, as individuals, but also as a couple, to His service. Knowing this, and knowing that debt is one of the main reasons why people who want to be in ministry often aren't, we had no idea how we would ever be able to buy our own house.

When we first got married, my wife and I were renting a small cottage on a remote farm. Our rent was extremely low, and included our basic services as well. At the time we were paying less than 100USD per month for a 60sqm cottage that was ideally suited for a newly married couple. We knew, however that if we wanted to grow our family, we would have to move somewhere larger, and our isolation was also a concern.

In July of 2011, we were subject to not one, but three burglaries at our house. By God's grace, we were never at home when the burglaries happened. After the last burglary, we had next to nothing left. Everything apart from the clothes that we were wearing, and the large furniture items had been stolen. Because of this we knew that the time had come for us to move on.

We had been looking for houses in the nearby town, but the prices were so high that we knew we would never be able to find anything without tying ourselves down for at least 20 years. We did however find a small house that had been repossessed by the bank. It was small, run down and at about 30k USD still above what we could afford but, in faith, we made an offer on it of 25k USD. Weeks went by and we heard nothing. Weeks turned into months, and we saw that the house had not yet been sold, but we still heard nothing, so we contacted the estate agent appointed by the bank. She told us that she had not heard anything from the bank, but that she would call them to find out.

A couple of days later, we received a call from the estate agent to inform us that the bank had lost our offer. She also told us that the bank, who had been trying to sell the house for years had finally just had enough, and decided to re-list the house at only 8 thousand dollars. We were able to pay half of the property from our savings, and within a year we had payed off the loan we had made. At 26 years old we became debt free property owners by the provision of God.

The burglaries, which at first seemed like a significant setback, had turned out to be the catalyst that had placed us in the position where God could provide for us. The house may not be much to look at, but it is just one more in a series of events that reveals God's hand in our lives.