Every journey begins with a step.  This is the story of our first step…

Some people have been wondering, “How do you make such a drastic life change”?  From having a comfortable lifestyle of a great job, family, friends around you to leaving it all is not an overnight decision, it’s a process.  In fact, sometimes the process can be difficult.  Living with family for the last three years, going through illness and adjusting to having two children can either draw you closer to God, or can pull you away and make you question everything you believe in.  God sometimes doesn’t immediately change our circumstances, because He is most concerned with the state of our hearts and desires to grow them more than anything else.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

In the past 3 years, He has shown us we in fact, can’t do anything without Him.  It has been the most beautiful lesson anyone can learn.  It’s in the times of the fire, that the pure gold comes out, as long as we keep our eyes fixed on the Overcomer and Giver of Life, Jesus Christ.

For the past three years, we wanted to have our own place and when we tried to buy a home, it was not working.  We have been married for 9 years and of those 9 years,  the first 6 we have always been involved with leading a ministry, the past 3 we have been serving the local church.  For the past few years I went from being completely healthy, to an awful sickness that hits every organ of my body that medicine won’t take care of and it leaves doctors confused.   I guess you can call that season the wilderness.  I found myself questioning everything I believe in and every time He was faithful to bring me back to Him, the answer to every problem.  I found that when the focus was on me or my circumstance, there was a lot of confusion and chaos.  When I fixed my eyes on His love, His word, and having relationship with Him, the peace flooded in and the hope returned with a vengeance.

We prayed for direction for the past three years, not knowing why we couldn’t find a home.  The past 6 months, I sensed His voice telling us to start selling our possessions and having no idea why.  March of this year while visiting my parents in Arizona, we decided to stop striving to find a home and started to obey and aggressively sell our possessions.  When we started to sell our things like furniture and kids items, it was effortless and easy, in fact, people were fighting over our stuff.  We still didn’t know why.  Finally, after fasting and praying and being obedient to what God was telling us to do, we started to have a heart for Australia.  For those of you that don’t know us, we have always had a passion for young adults, specifically from the ages of 18-25.  There is a missions organization called YWAM that specifically targets this age group.    However, to join the organization, you first have to complete their 5-month Discipleship Training School (DTS).  We called a close friend who runs a YWAM base in Australia to ask some questions in June.  He said the guy leading the DTS in September is a father of 6 children and will understand the challenges of being a student with YWAM along with parenting kids.  This would be a new challenge for us and them, as they haven’t had a family do a DTS in over a decade; most students are recent High School or University graduates.  We had to make a decision and make one fast so we applied for the September school while still praying about it.

While we were praying about it, we couldn’t help but acknowledge some of the barriers that would have to come down for this to even be a possibility.  One such barrier was Timothy’s large collection of fig and fruit trees.  We prayed and asked God to sell the trees for us if He wanted us to go.  The story of God’s extraordinary response is covered is covered here.  We also had a car to sell, but God already had a buyer lined up that was looking for something just like what we were selling.

I, being the sick one, was ready to go because I had a strong sense this was the next step of our lives.   I realized in a season where God became my focus and my everything and realizing that everything else doesn’t matter in life but Jesus Christ and His love, that it was easy for me to give it all up to follow Him. Timothy however, being the breadwinner and leader of the family wasn’t so ready to quit an amazing job of 10 years and make this commitment unless he heard clearly from the Lord.  God began to speak to him while confirming His word using a variety of different means.  Then, July 2nd, we attended a conference a few hours away from us to see a prophetic speaker that we followed online.  There God spoke loudly and clearly in an overwhelming display of His mighty Spirit to confirm that it was indeed time to surrender it all and obey His call.

With only 8 weeks until the school started, we had about $45K to raise.  Not to mention still having to watch 2 kids, being invited to speak at churches, still being ill, selling possessions, paperwork, tying up loose ends, organizing fundraisers, saying goodbye to family and friends, create a website, and too many other things to list.  All things are possible when God is with you and you focus on Him.  The grace, strength and ability to get most of this done was nothing short of a miracle.  I believe it was the beginning of our breakthrough season as God has spoken clearly, this is not the end, but only the beginning.   We still aren’t at our financial goal and I am still not 100% healed, but that’s where the faith and trust play in.  The quicker we learn to trust and obey, the quicker the victory comes.

There were many more amazing details to our story that will likely come out over the coming months as we share this adventure with you.  We hope our journey encourages you in finding hope once again, finding purpose to your life and maybe even speaks to you in your own circumstances you’re walking through!