Late last year we received word that our homeowner’s insurance premium had risen about 200%. When I called and spoke to the company, the rep that I spoke with said “Wow! That’s really high!” Through some manipulation with coverage, I was able to get the premium lowered to where the increase was more like 100% instead of 200%. While that is still very high, I thought it was manageable. Through what was almost a comedy of errors on their part, however, I found out a few days ago that they had actually cancelled our policy!

I stood my ground, however, and got the company to reinstate our policy. Yay! Until yesterday.

Yesterday I went to pay our mortgage and found that our mortgage had increased by almost 40% (I’ll let you do the math, but, for example, if your mortgage is $2,000, your new mortgage is $2,800). Loring looked at me and said “High-five! We know that we’re doing something right, because the enemy is after us full force!”

So, we prayed. And we also tried to move money around, doing everything in the natural and praying that God takes care of the supernatural.

God is always faithful!

A friend contacted us last night and told us “The Holy Spirit really put you on my heart and I was wondering… do you have Zelle?”

We have to remind ourselves of this over and over again. When we called to the mission field, the first thing we heard, after the calling was confirmed was “Don’t worry… God know what you need for every step of the way!”

Joshua 1:9 says: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

One of the things that we love to do in the morning is to sit on our front porch, drink coffee, pray, and do a daily devotion. We also love to watch the birds that show up for breakfast. We have cardinals, blue jays, red-headed woodpeckers, doves and assorted finches. Every morning. This morning, I heard God say “look at them”. I knew that what He was really doing was quoting Matthew 6:26:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew 6:26 (NIV)

So, I got my camera, shot a couple of pictures, and considered the birds. They aren’t worried about their next meal. That doesn’t mean that they sit around and wait for the provision to come to them. They work very hard to identify and gather what has already been supplied for them.

God, teach me to identify and gather what you have for me. Forgive me for not trusting you and for looking for your provision in all of the wrong places.

Acts 13:2 says ‘While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set [them] apart for… the work to which I have called them.”‘

We know that we are called to ministry in Honduras. But more than that we have a call to God Himself.

I asked Paul this morning, if God had shown us the path and given us all the steps and provisions already would we be sitting here? Would we every morning be seeking His face, and ‘inquiring of the Lord’ every Sunday night by the fire? We started that out of our desperation for answers.

Whatever you need, the answer is Jesus. We know that, we say that – but what does it really mean? As I sit here I realize that whatever we do – the steps we take toward moving, even what we do in Honduras – really is not the point. God doesn’t need us. He has a plan for Honduras (with or without us) because he loves the Honduran people. His plan for US is more of Him, above anything we could ever do or accomplish. If we pursue anything else besides Jesus we’ve missed it. Everything will grow from losing ourselves in Jesus.

We hear preachers who have mind-blowing wisdom and see people minister with signs and wonders – we ourselves have seen the miraculous around the world. We want to ask these people, “How do you do it?” Or, “How do you get God to do it?” You don’t. You seek Him. You follow Him. You obey Him. You LOVE Him. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing the miraculous or the favor of God or answers and guidance and provision, but the really important thing, the place where all of your confidence will come from is being lost in Him. Everything else will flow from that.

I’ve often told single women that if they’re looking for a godly man – stop looking. Unless you fall in love with Jesus, and allow the Holy Spirit to change you and heal you, unless you pursue being a strong woman of God, confident in every situation with or without a partner, then when that godly man encounters you, he will walk right by you and not see you because you are not prepared for him. You are not ready to support him and walk alongside him.

I think of ministry that way now too. This is the meaning of “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you”. It’s not seeking the things of the Kingdom it’s seeking the One who IS the kingdom – the embodiment of Heaven and kingship. Our Lord should be our only focus, and then, in a way, it doesn’t even matter what the answers are to our questions. We won’t be confused, we won’t be afraid, we won’t be disappointed, because we will have the only thing that matters. HIM.

I typically travel on short-term mission trips as part of a team. There is typically a pastor leading the team, along with some other team members. A couple of times, however, I’ve been on my own.

It was during one of these trips that I was preaching at a small church in one of my favorite Russian villages, Illyinski, Russia.  The pastor there calls me “Dyadya Pasha”, or Uncle Paul.

After preaching the congregation took up an offering. I was blown away. This was a first. I had never received a love offering before. What made this even more special was that the people of this village are very poor. I immediately put the offering into a little change purse. To this day I have no idea why I was carrying a change purse. I never do.

Thirteen years later, I found the purse again. I counted the money (I must have counted it when I received the offering, but I don’t remember how much it was). When I counted it today and did the conversion to the US dollar, the coins are worth about 20 cents.

My question was never “what can I do with this money”, and, with it only being worth 20 cents today, I can’t ask this question now, either. However, my prayer is that God did something amazing with the seeds that the people of Illyinski planted all those years ago. Giving out of their poverty, it really reminds me of Luke 21, verses 3 & 4:

“Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

Since then (which was over 40 years ago, I still haven’t found a good way to carry a pen. I usually carry them in my right pants pocket, but they go flying every time I have to reach for my keys.

Knowing this about myself, I tend to collect a lot of pens. If someone is giving away a pen to promote their business, I always take one… two if they say “Here! Take two!”. However, it never fails that, when Loring asks me for a pen, I have to go searching for one.

This is why throwing away a perfectly good pen is difficult for me. Well, at least it was a perfectly good pen eighteen years ago when we moved into our house. It had a value, and, it probably still does.

The challenge that we have right now is that God is calling on us to leave behind many things that hold value. The pen is just a symbol of it. This time in our lives is full of letting go of valuable things and only keeping the things that we really need to define our home.

As I was contemplating this today it made me think of Gideon. God was calling Gideon to lead an army against the Midianites to save Israel. To give you the story in a nutshell, Gideon had an army of 32,000 men. God told him “You have too many men”. So, all the people who were afraid were allowed to go home, that was 22,000. Now Gideon has an army of 10,000. It’s still too many and God pares it down again to only 300.

I hope that you realize that my pens are just a symbol of what God is asking us to leave behind. We have so many close relationships, so many things that we, as people who live in the USA, take for granted. However, we know what God is calling us to do, and we know that it means setting aside many things that we have collected over the years that still have value. From the simple, like a few pens, to the extremely difficult, like people and relationships.

Please pray for us as we begin our journey!

We love you and covet your prayers!