Journey

Journey

a long and often difficult process of personal change and development

 

This year I thought I would try something new, I want to document my changes, the

 good and the bad throughout the year, to show God’s love and how he has taken and takes care of us.

 

Week 1.

So let me start by explaining my journey of how I got to where I am now.

Last year I applied for a job in the public service, to me this was the job I always wanted. Permanent with a 6 figure salary, challenging, able to provide for my family of two gorgeous little ones, (my son Zachary 7 years, who has the challenges of facing a life with Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD and my daughter Aurora 4 years and my beautiful wife), I loved the field, loved the job, it was perfect.

During this process I became good friends with a few of my work colleges and found shortly after this that God had different plans for me. One of these friends was going through a real tough time in his personal life. His marriage was on the rocks, money issues, and to top that all off he had a really bad case of termites in his house. I felt that I needed to help this guy, as his situation was not ideal, oh did I mention that this friend was going for the very same position I was.

So over the course of time I used some of the skills God had given me and started to rebuild some the issue spots in his house that the termites had gotten to. One night I found myself talking to him about God, he asked if I wanted money for what I was doing for him and I replied to him that God gave me the gift to fix things and that this was a gift from God, not me.

That one night got me thinking about everything I was doing.  Information Technology was the field I was involved in and although I loved this work I always felt over the years that this was not what God had in store for me. Then I got to thinking about my very best mate, whom lives far away in Brisbane and how God was using him at the Rhema Family Church as a youth pastor and how God had transformed his life.

So I prayed.

 

Dear God,

I pray that you transform my life, so I hand this job situation over to you and ask that you give the position to my friend from work as I know that this would benefit him more. I pray for him in his current situation and that you will help heal him and bring him closer to you.

Amen

 

Little did I know, but that prayer would change my life forever.

 

A few weeks later I found that I did not get the job, and that my friend got it. Now you’re thinking I would have praised God for giving him this job, WRONG. In my stupid selfish ways, I cried out to God,

Why did you give the job to HIM?? You know full and well that I needed this JOB!

I was angry, I was saddened, but God being loving, reminded me that this is what I had asked for.

This was a huge wake up call so I started to reflect on what I had asked for and once again I started thinking of my very best mate in Brisbane, and this got me to thinking that the time might be perfect to enrol in Rhema Bible Collage and follow God’s calling instead of my own desires.

So after praying and talking with my beautiful wife, we took the plunge and applied for Bible School. This was a HUGE, hard step, as we were living in Canberra and the school was located in Brisbane. We had no money to pay for such a big move or for tuition fee’s, my wife had never lived anywhere but Canberra and in a short few weeks I would be unemployed. Very scary if you think about it! But we both came before the Lord and asked him that if this is what he wanted us to do, that he would make it possible. We promised we would do whatever he asked of us even though it seemed impossible. Through him the impossible is possible!

These next few weeks, confirmed full and well that this is what we should be doing.

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

 

That verse would help us through the following month.

 

After that, we were accepted into Rhema Bible College! So we prayed again that if this is your will Lord, help us move our belonging and ourselves to Brisbane. The next few days where a blessing. I sold some of the spare equipment I had around the house and earned $1200 to put towards our move. My wife and I where thankful to God for the quick answer to prayer. Sadly satan had other plans, he started attacking my wife and I where it was going to hurt the most, money. Yup you guessed it he was going to try and make me broke so I could not get my family to Brisbane and ultimately Bible College.

 

After some prayer, God asked me to get rid of the things in my life I held higher than him. So I sold my skyline. This brought our money up high enough to get us all to Brisbane!!

 

But of course once again satan started his attack, and two days after I sold my skyline, our only other car, our family car, broke down with irreparable damage.

 

So to recap, I now had no transportation at all,  we had to be out of our rental property with two weeks and I was 1 week from being unemployed. This was really tough for me and my wife, as the money we had saved up for our move now had to be spent on a new car.

 

Once again God had a plan for us! A few weeks later, we had managed to move our family into my parent’s home, and I was able to sell my badly broken family car for scraps for $1500. After reflecting one night, I started seeing a pattern and could see that God was taking care of us no matter what happened, and that I was still trying to control too much and not give it all up to him.

So I changed, I gave it all up to him. I went up to Brisbane a week before Christmas with all my family owned even though we had no house to put our belonging into, knowing that God would make a way. I had 4 days to find my family a home and a car. Yep, that’s pretty silly when you think about it!  But I knew from how God was working in our life that he would provide for us. We were following his direction and fully relying on him for our needs!

In less than a week God gave us that home and car. The Lord is great! Again, the Lord is GREAT!!

I remember on the 15 hour truck trip heading back to Canberra, having one song playing over and over in my head.

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom power and love
Our God is an awesome God

How true is that! I look back now and think even through the tough times, he was there lifting us up and setting us on the journey towards getting to know him more.

Well, today is the 7^th of January 2013, my family is now living in Brisbane, and we are set to start College in two weeks time. We still need more money to continue living here and covering our tuition fee’s, but we are going into this year knowing full well that God will provide for our family, so that we can learn more about him, grow closer to him, and ultimately share his word with others!

Our God is an awesome God.