128- Following God’s Trail – #10

July 1, 1984 – Father, I am having a hard time believing YOU are asking us to stay in Reno. PLEASE SHOW ME.

I am having a hard time trusting You with our finances, and in finding very suitable housing here in Reno, and in finding a kindergarten acceptable for Tim. You promise to gently lead those who are with young. I am letting it all go and believing Your Word.

Here’s the story: Dan had been working for several months with the contractor on the new building for our church. It was full-time work and they worked well together.

In one week, two of the church elders went to Dan independently and both felt strongly from the Lord that the timing of our going off to Bible School was premature. We were dumbfounded.

The pastor offered him the job of foreman, overseeing the building of the church and managing the many volunteers who wanted to help out.

We prayed and fasted seeking the Lord.

We handed over the keys of our solar house to Peter and Marilyn Clarke and instead of driving 3,000 miles east across the country, we drove 5 miles west to a house in a quiet subdivision on Grandview Avenue. The rent was more than we wanted to spend but we were under pressure to find a place quickly. It was within a few miles of the church and in the same area of town we had been living for 2 years.

There was an elementary school across the street which had a very good reputation. I had been prepping Timmy: “Your teacher will love you. You are such a smart and cooperative boy. She will be so happy to have you in her class. Teachers love children who will work with them, obey them, and who want to learn.”

As it happened, they did not have room in the filled-to capacity first grades for my precious first born, and I was actually relieved. I had been reading, School Can Wait, by Raymond and Dorothy Moore.

July 22, 1984—Our 6^th anniversary.

On our 6th anniversary, our sons were 5, 4, 2, and one month old. We had moved 7 times, including living in two foreign countries for short periods. Dan was 36 and I was 39.

We were crushed. All of our plans had been put on hold. We had laid down our vision for Japan and for Bible School, and we were in some subsidiary plan. God knew.

We believed we had been led by God to this point of surrender. We learned later that we were experiencing “the death of a vision.”

I went to google to get an explanation of the death of a vision and found a good one at http://www.thegoodbook.com. Pastor Cecil Thompson writes:

We are all fired up when the vision is fresh and new, but almost without warning things explode. Instead of seeing our vision fulfilled, it is like death has destroyed the vision. “What do we do now?”

Reeling, floundering…what’s going on, God? We were hastily trying to pull ourselves together after the explosion! We knew we had heard from the Lord and had walked with God to this point. All of the other “visions” and “God ideas” had come to pass, so what was this all about?

We believed by faith that God had specific purpose in letting us be deflated. We did not believe God was capricious, impulsive, and unpredictable. We decided to trust Him.

But we also had to regroup quickly!

Spoiler: We DID go to Elim Bible Institute two years later. And we could clearly see the wisdom in the delay.