Hold Fast

September 18, the deadline for the balloon payment on our property in Dryden, arrived and we hadn’t been able to arrange financing. No bank would loan us money on bare land.. We had lost the land, along with the tens of thousands of dollars we had already put into it. We had to be off the property by the end of the month and we had nowhere to go. At the same time things were still unsettled at work. The new group had hired me to work in the Walk-in Clinic, but my salary would be based on production without benefits and I wasn’t sure if this would work out. A few months before this probably would have been the last straw, but our hearts had changed. We felt an amazing sense of peace and our prayer was no longer “Why?” but “Thy will be done.” Somehow we knew God would work “all things together for good.”

There is a song by Mercy Me which has been a tremendous help to me during these last few years. At times, as we struggled through the cold, dark winters, the words of the song seemed to echo my deepest thoughts. The song goes, “Will this season ever pass? Can we stop this ride? Will we see the sun at last? Or could this be our lot in life?” That’s how I felt. It seemed like we were stuck on a merry-go-round we couldn’t get off. But the chorus goes, “Please do not let go. I promise there is hope. Hold fast, Help is on the way. Hold fast. He’s come to save the day. What I’ve learned in my life, One thing greater than my strife, Is His grasp. So hold fast.”

We did “hold fast” and God did “come to save the day.” We did lose our property, but within two weeks God made us aware of an old church school for sale by the Cashmere SDA School. It is a wonderful building on a beautiful 5 acres with gorgeous mountain views. Cashmere desperately needed to sell the school and we desperately wanted to buy it.

The first time we walked on the property we knew we’d come home. The building was like an open canvas which, with a little work, would be a beautiful home. The church accepted our offer and then, when they learned of our situation, graciously let us move our motor home onto the property and use the kitchen and bathrooms, before we’d actually purchased it. They refused to accept any rent. They even let us do some remodeling required by the mortgage company before they would finance the property.

At the same time, the changes in my job have turned out to be for the best. The cash out of benefits I received from the Clinic and a significant jump in income by going on production allowed us to qualify for the loan. We signed the papers in February. The place is ours. Or maybe I should say it’s God’s, because I truly believe He has put us there for a reason. He wants us to use it to continue the work of spreading the Good News started there long ago by faithful Christian teachers.

We are amazed at what God has done. What started with despair has ended in hope. Losing the land seemed so terrible, but the home we have is so much better. Changing employers filled us with anxiety, but now I am blessed with a much better schedule and a much higher income. Instead of shivering in a motor home this winter, we have enjoyed the warmth of a beautiful building. And all the other trials we have faced in the last 3 years have, in hind sight, turned out to be blessings. They have given us a new faith and reliance on God that will serve us well in the years ahead and into eternity.

All of us face times of discouragement and despair at some point in our lives. When these times come we have a choice. We can either give up on God or give in to Him. We can let go or hold on by faith. As for “me and my house”, we have seen God’s “thousand ways” at work in our lives. We know he is faithful to provide. We are going to “hold fast”  because “What I’ve learned in my life, One thing greater than my strife, Is His grasp.”

Hold fast, my friends, help is on the way!

The Worst of Times

Though he slay, yet will I trust in him,” Job 13:15

After 2-1/2 years of living in our motor home, struggling to make a home on our land in Dryden, I received a phone call in August from the lady we’d bought the land from. We’d bought the property with a land contract, believing our house in Chehalis would surely sell before the balloon payment came due in September 2010. It didn’t and now she wanted to know when we were going to pay up. I immediately started a frantic search for financing and also put the land up for sale.

Unfortunately, at the same time, I was informed by my employer they were restructuring and the ER and Walk-in Clinic would be run by an outside group. All at once we were facing not just the probable loss of our land, but the possible loss of my job. We were looking not just at homelessness, but at bankruptcy. The clouds were gathering and we weren’t sure we’d survive the storm.

In God’s Amazing Grace, p. 114, Ellen White states, “The powers of darkness gather about the soul and shut Jesus from our sight, and at times we can only wait in sorrow and amazement until the cloud passes over. These seasons are sometimes terrible. Hope seems to fail, and despair seizes upon us.”

She might have been talking about us last summer. At times God seemed so far away. I would climb the hill at the back of our property and cry out, “Why?” but there was no answer. I have never felt such despair as when I watched my wonderful wife boil water on the stove for her daily shower or whip up delicious meals on the motor home’s tiny stove, all with hardly a complaint. She deserved better. I felt I deserved better. But God didn’t seem to care.

I knew we were far better off then some, but when you’re in the thick of it it’s hard to see through another’s eyes. There came a point last year when I truly began to doubt if God even existed and, if He did, if He really cared. I knew I was not perfect and I am painfully aware of my failures, but we were His children. Why didn’t He fix things? I seriously considered throwing in the towel. I mean what good is it to be a Christian if your God doesn’t care or has turned a deaf ear to your prayers?

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my wife was having a similar struggle. She was amazing. She hardly ever complained, but inside there was a rebellion brewing. She too was seriously considering telling God to go take a hike.

Things came to a crisis this last spring when it looked like I’d lose my job. I studied my Bible. I prayed. I went for long walks. Finally, when I just couldn’t take it anymore, I gave up. No, not on God! I gave up on myself, on trying to direct my life, on trying to get my own way. I decided to stop trying to figure it all out and just trust God. I made a conscious decision that, no matter what, I would never give up on God. I was His and even if that meant living in a motor home, or worse, for the rest of our lives, I was not going to let go. I came to realize I didn’t really need to know “Why”, I just needed to know Him. Nothing else really mattered. My God knows what He’s doing and He loves me. That’s all that matters in the long run.

I learned later Ana had made the same choice by herself at the same time. God had led us separately through the clouds of despair, so we could hold fast to Him together when the storm finally broke upon us. And break it did.

From Mountain High to Valley Low

Job 40:6, “Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm…”

We’d been enjoying our time caretaking a 200 acre ranch in Central Washington. The isolation and stark beauty of the place had brought us peace in the midst of the busyness of life. But resting time was over. Winter had come!

Storm after storm pounded the ranch that winter. We struggled to keep the ½ mile long, winding drive open with an old tractor and shovels. One instance I particularly remember. A howling wind woke me at 2 AM. Normally I enjoy the sound of the wind, but we had just spent four hours the previous day digging through huge drifts to cut a path for our cars. My muscles still ached and now the wind was undoing all our efforts. It was like nature itself was out to get us. I felt like crying.

Sometimes the wind was so strong it knocked us over. At other times it filled in the path almost as fast as we could shovel. Every night, coming home from work, we had to stop at the bottom of the drive and put chains on our van just to make it up the hill.

Spring brought little relief. When the snow finally melted the road turned to muck and we had to put chains on just to get through the mud. Most nights we went to bed exhausted, only to wake to new challenges with the morning light. It was the hardest winter of our lives. But at least we were in a house. We didn’t realize then how special that would feel in a few months.

In the spring the owner decided he wanted renters, not caretakers. There was no way I was paying rent to stay there. As hard as we worked that winter we should have been charging him. By then we’d bought a 16 acre lot in Dryden, WA, so in June we moved our motor home onto the lot, set up tents, and spent the summer getting electricity in, a well installed, and building a small barn. Our plan was to camp there for a couple months until our house in Chehalis sold, then build a new house by fall. Well, the house didn’t sell and in October the snow and cold came with a vengeance. The boys and Danny, Ana’s brother, moved into the barn and Ana and I lived in the motor home.

The winter was brutal, with heavier snow than normal. We had to park the cars up by the road and haul our laundry and groceries on sleds ¼ mile through the snow. At times we couldn’t get the interior of the motor home above 45 degrees. We hauled jugs of water and heated it on the stove for showers. The pipes in the well house froze.

In the summer the wind was nearly constant and our shoes and eyes filled with black dust. In the fall we’d be awakened at 5:30 AM by the workers in the orchard down the valley singing off tune in Spanish. We kept telling ourselves our situation was just temporary. This last summer, 2-1/2 years later, we were still “temporarily” living there.

But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, it was very good, in spite of the challenges. The valley was beautiful, with beautiful orchards and tree covered mountains on both sides. It was a welcome change after our months in the high desert. I tramped through the hills and enjoyed the spectacular views from the ridge at the top of our property. And just as God had spoken to us on a stormy desert mountain, He now spoke to us in a beautiful mountain valley. Slowly our priorities changed and we began to understand what really mattered. We learned how little we really needed. All our “stuff” was in storage units and we didn’t really miss it. We had each other, a roof over our heads, and food for our tables. What more could we ask? God was good and we had a home (sort of).

Then everything changed…

A Desert Place

James 1:2 says, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but my first response to trouble is not great joy. In fact, joy is rarely even in the picture. But, since moving to the Central Washington area 4-1/2 years ago, I’ve had more than one “opportunity for great joy” and I’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way. Although I admit I haven’t found these troubles especially pleasant, I’ve seen God’s “thousand ways” demonstrated over and over. In the next several posts I want to share the story of our journey and how God has truly turned our troubles into opportunities for great joy. Hopefully our story will help you next time life throws you a curve.

***

We came to Wenatchee full of optimism. We were sick of the rain in Western Washington and the recruitment advertisement promising “300 days of sunshine per year” sounded wonderful. The job offered great benefits and a nice increase in pay, we loved the area, and Wenatchee’s economy was booming. It looked like a great move and we could hardly wait to get started.

I moved there from Chehalis a couple months ahead of my family to start my new job and to find us a place to live. I hated being away from my family, but it had to be done and God had provided me with a free apartment while I looked for a house. Unfortunately, we were moving just as the real estate market was peaking in Wenatchee and I couldn’t find a place to buy which we could afford.

After weeks of fruitless searching I gave up on houses and started searching for land to build on. It had always been my dream to build a house. Little did I know this dream would turn out to be a nightmare (more on that in a future post).

By that time, my wife and youngest son had joined me. Our other two children were working at Sunset Lake, a youth camp in the Cascade mountain range. We bought a used motor home to live in until we could find a permanent home. We never dreamed it would end up being our home for a good portion of the next 3-1/2 years.

The first month we lived in the parking lot at work. There was a Dutch Boy Coffee stand,  just a few feet behind our bedroom window. It opened at 5 AM and closed at 11 PM and the employees loved to play their music loud. Sleep became a precious commodity. Eventually our real estate agent arranged for us to be caretakers of a 200 hundred acre ranch high on a desert hill in Malaga called Dead Horse Ranch (to learn more about our time there check out the blog I kept then at http://a-desert-place.blogspot.com/).

The Dead Horse Ranch was like something right out of Little House on the Prairie (except for the double-wide we lived in and the wind which never stopped). As far as the eye could see there was not another house. The wind blew constantly and coyote howls echoed through the hills at night. In addition to caring for the house we were also in charge of 7 horses and 4 peacocks. Have you ever heard a peacock? They make a very effective alarm clock. Sleeping in was not an option.

There was a strange, stark beauty about the ranch. I loved to go out in the fields in the early morning, revel in the isolation, and talk to God. I came to realize God had given me a special gift. Life had been incredibly busy and God knew I needed a break. In bringing us to this place it was as if He was saying to me, “Come…apart into a desert place, and rest a while….” (Mark 6:31). It was just what I needed. All my frustration at not being able to find a house to buy paled in comparison to the peace I found that fall on that high desert ranch. I’d never felt so close to God as I did wandering that wind-swept place. What I didn’t know was that in a couple months I was going to need every bit of the peace I’d stored up on those early morning walks. Winter was on its way!

A Reason to Hope

“Dow Plunges 630 Points”

“Stocks Plunge After S & P Downgrade”

“Twelve Million in Danger of Starvation in Somalia”

“Foreclosures at All Time High”

“America’s Job Crisis: Worse Than You Think”

Bad news has become the new norm it seems.  On a daily basis headlines like these adorn every newspaper. Every night, on television and radio, news anchors and financial pundits seem to shout with one voice, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” The stock market is in a tail spin as America’s credit rating is downgraded. Consumer confidence has plunged and thousands wonder whether they’ll still have a job when Christmas rolls around.

Of course, it’s not just our national and personal financial situations which have us looking for a hole to crawl into. Each of us struggles with our own personal demons – health worries, depression, marital problems, guilt – I could go on and on.

In times like these, with bad news seeming to lurk around every corner, how can hope survive? How can we confidently plan for the future when we’re struggling just to get through today? How can we help others when we’re in such a mess ourselves?

As I’ve been thinking about these things a quote from the book Desire of Ages, page 330,keeps repeating in my mind. It says there:

Worry is blind, and cannot discern the future; but Jesus sees the end from the beginning. In every difficulty He has His way prepared to bring relief. Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us, of which we know nothing. Those who accept the one principle of making the service and honor of God supreme will find perplexities vanish, and a plain path before their feet.

What an incredible promise! I especially like the line which says, “Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us, of which we know nothing.” We get discouraged so easily, while God already “has His way prepared to bring relief.” We look at our finances, our health, our marriages, and we groan with despair, but God is whispering to us the whole time, “Look up! I’ve got a thousand was to provide for you. What are you worrying about?” After all, doesn’t Paul promise in Philippians 4:19, “… my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

So I got to thinking, if these promises are true, then there must be thousands of stories of God’s provision out there. So, that’s the mission of this blog, to discover and share those stories with you. And maybe, just maybe, as we share these stories of “His Thousand Ways” and talk together about what it means to trust in God, we can find a reason to hope. And “those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31.

So, how about you? What has God done for you? Which one of “His thousand ways” has he used to provide for you? Leave a comment or email me at HisThousandWays@live.com.