Our House Story: Part 2

Source: t.isaac.io via Aleks on Pinterest

Wow, do I take forever to get through a story or what??

So, as I mentioned in this post, we had decided to take a break from house hunting and went on our 3-year anniversary cruise. The week after we got back, our plans radically changed.

Our good friends (who were actually my former roommates from college. You may remember them from my Love Story with Jesus series) were trying to sell their house. They were moving to Atlanta at the end of the summer to start training for church-planting. We were in the same church small group and each week their prayer request was that God would call someone to buy their house. The house was built in 1950 and is located in downtown Statesboro. The location is super convenient, but not in the best area of town. Everyone who came to look at the house was mostly turned off by the neighborhood. In fact, we had said many times that we would not have bought that house if we were them because of the area. We literally had no desire to live there.

But as I mentioned in my God Choices series, sometimes God calls us to do things we never would think to do on our own. One night, driving home from small group, Scott said, "I have a crazy thought." And I immediately said, "You think we should buy their house?" He wasn't 100% sure, but he said he felt like God was prompting him to take action as we were closing the group in prayer that night. I had a similar feeling, and admitted that I had the same crazy thought. We talked about how it would answer so many prayers. We would have a house, they would sell theirs, and there would continue to be a strong, Christian couple living in that neighborhood, which we all felt was important in serving those in that community. But we have been known to be a little hasty in our decisions and then backing out, and we had even previously done that with this particular couple in the past when we thought we might want to rent out their attic apartment (another cool feature to that house!) and then decided it was too small and impractical for us. So, we promised we would not mention it to them for at least a week. In fact, we decided not to talk to anyone about it for a whole week while we prayed it over. We didn't want others' opinions about the neighborhood or the age of the house to impact our decision. We wanted to make it fully based on what God wanted.

We prayed for a week. We checked in with each other throughout. We were both still feeling good about it. In fact, I was getting more and more excited about the prospect of living in a hurting community so we could maybe make an impact by building relationships, meeting needs, and hopefully sharing the Gospel with others. So, we decided to tell the couple that we were considering it, and we asked for a formal walk-through of the house. We had been there many times, but never looked at it from the perspective of potential buyers. We took the walk-through. There were some flaws, mostly to do with the age of the house. But it had been modernized and updated in many ways, they had it decorated so cute, and there was nothing so wrong that it would be a deal-breaker.

The next day at church, the message was about courage. Our pastor talked about having the courage to follow God's plan and take action, even when it's hard or scary. We felt it spoke to us on many levels...actually taking action on buying a home, buying from friends, buying a house that was considered a risk. We met with the prayer team at the end of the service and had them pray with us. Afterwards we decided to go for it! We called our friends and told them we were ready to move forward with the purchase. It was an exciting moment and we all rejoiced.

Unfortunately the joy was short-lived. By that afternoon, after we started telling people, Scott was hit with massive doubt and regret. People who we love and respect were cautioning us about the danger of the neighborhood and the risk of buying an old house. Some were going as far as practically begging us to reconsider. But my perspective was that God had called us to make this decision, we prayed about it and felt affirmed in our decision. So we had to stick to it, even when doubt and fear set in. I wasn't sure if it was just natural fear in following God's plan when it's hard, or if some of it was actually doubt from the enemy. But I was determined to push forward.

(more to come tomorrow!)

{Part 3}