Well, when you go out on a limb that you think God is calling you to climb, you shouldn’t be surprised when He comes through on His end every bit as much. Our new house search was no exception.
Several months ago as we prayed about housing, I felt a continual impression that God didn’t want us to even bother looking yet. Weeks went by and the feeling didn’t subside (though we did visit Craigslist several times just in case my “impression” was undigested pepperoni). The first time we would really get to visit Louisville was this past weekend, and I felt like he wasn’t saying “No,” so we planned a house-hunting trip. We made a list of houses to see and charted it on Google Maps.
Day 1: Lots of houses: some nicer, some ugly, some small, some dirty. The only one we really liked had a realtor who was uncomfortable about how many children we have. Then, about 7pm Jenn saw a “For Rent” sign as we drove around. I called the number and we planned a 10am appointment for the next morning. Day 1 finished with nothing but hope for tomorrow. We prayed a lot that day, begging God to come through.
Day 2: 10am – The house was beautiful. Loaded with options. We went back to the College to eat, think, and pray. The more we think about this now, the more amazed we are at how much we received. We signed the deal and left a deposit check.
This morning I was praying with Jenn and said, “God, I don’t know why we had to go looking all day until we found this place, when you knew where it was all along.” A scripture came to Jenn’s mind immediately that seemed to answer the question. In Matthew 7:9,11, Jesus says, “which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?… If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Jenn felt like God was saying, “You asked me for bread, and I wanted you to see some stones so that you could really appreciate when I gave you bread.” He sure did give us bread, and the previous day’s lesson was worth it. Here’s what He gave us…
- 10 minutes from the Pastors College, and less than 10 minutes to most of the other students
- 4 minutes from Kroger
- 3 BR, 2 BA, Dining room, Living room, and family room
- Full, unfinished basement and 2-car garage!
- Ceiling fans in every room
- Fenced back yard
- Really clean, inside and out
- Fresh paint, 1-yr old roof, 8-yr old vinyl windows
- Nice neighborhood and landlord; previous tenants were there for many years and said they miss the neighbors (the landlord was texting the previous tenant asking about utilities so they seemed to have a good relationship)
- Walking distance to some small business ice cream and chocolate shops
- They let us do a 10-month lease (instead of 12) for no extra charge. It was also the same price as some other houses we looked at that were not nearly as nice.
- The property was “accidentally” (pronounced “providentially”) listed in the incorrect category on Craigslist, so we were one of only two people who looked at it, and the other person never called back. So we didn’t have to compete with others who were interested in longer leases, etc.
- It wasn’t listed until last week, so we would not have found it had we traveled many weeks ago when we wanted to go.
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