🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

I still recall the inflection of my husband-to-be’s voice in 2015, when he told me God gave him a specific amount to budget for our housing. The amount seemed outlandish and irrelevant. Even the largest home in our rural town in Mpumalanga, South Africa rented for half of that. Yet we knew we stood in a sacred moment. The Lord was preparing a way we couldn’t see yet. I nodded, “Ok. Let’s do it.”

We moved to Cape Town two years later. Our first month’s rent was the exact outlandish amount my husband heard from God. Ten years later, the economy has changed dramatically in Cape Town. We’ve moved again and again as landlords in financial strain put their properties on the market. That seemingly outlandish amount God spoke became too low a long time ago.

We started praying for new housing a few months ago. The house we were renting was increasing again. My husband encouraged, “God’s always upgraded us. We can trust Him.” I had already scoured the Internet front to back, memorized maps, and crunched numbers. I spouted discouraging facts instead of leaning into his leadership and trusting our loving Father. But I still did the legwork! I extended my search radius, drove neighborhoods, prayed desperately, and started asking realtors to lower the price to our original budgeted number. Most of them laughed.

Then I got an unexpected message one day about a house I couldn’t forget about. I’d previously been assured there was no chance of lowering the price, but now the realtor was offering a slight discount. The lovely house was still beyond our original budget, so I made our offer again. Politely. Outlandishly. The home owner accepted! Outlandishly!

I had been skeptical. I doubted and despaired. But “the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.” (Psalm 103:8) His goodness, abundance and trustworthiness does not depend on the facts, nor our moods and attitudes. There’s no pressure to always get it right because God does. He IS. Just keep going back to Him.

Listen to Pat Barrett’s “Count on You”.