It’s amazing how little we get to visit with people that we go to church with.  I know that our primary reason for getting to service isn’t for social time, but that is also an important part of the equation.  We need to spend time building relationships with other believers as well as our relationship with our heavenly father.  We’ve been watching an Andy Stanley series on how we push everything we do to the limit and leave no margin.  We all try to fit as much as we can into the day,  spend up the the limit where we feel uncomfortable, and don’t understand why our social and spiritual lives are so hard to maintain.  This series is all about how, as we surrender our time and finances back to God and let him steer us towards the priorities He feels are the most important for us, we’ll get margin back in our lives.  We’re seeing that this is true for us.

We signed the papers on our new house on the 12th without selling ours thinking it would be much easier to show and sell ours after we had moved.  This decision kept us from moving for a long time and we decided that we should do it this way to make things easier.  They sent us the paperwork to list our house and brought a yard sign.  On the 15th I sent the realtor a picture of the front of our house and was going to work on better pictures over the weekend, but we had an offer in on the 17th that was also very close to what we were hoping to get out of the house.  On top of that, we were waiting for a handyman to come do some painting, wallpapering, landscaping, repairing that the realtor had suggested we do.  We also had lightbulbs out inside and other things that probably should have kept the house from going.

God is amazing!  This isn’t a coincidence.  We aren’t just lucky.  For this house to, in this market and area, have sold in two days to the first couple to come look at it is beyond luck.   God cares.  I learn more about him every day now and it strengthens me and my faith to see how much a great and awesome God provides for us and cares about our smallest needs.

We are moving to a new house in three weeks. We’ve been looking at this house for months, but every time we were close to buying it we’d get afraid and back off. A couple weeks ago the house disappeared from the listings. We thought it had been sold which was a relief in a way. Both of us were watching the site, though, and it came back on so we realized that this is the house we had to have. We have “enough” room at our current house, but we really wanted a place where the kids could bring their friends over and would give them their own rooms so that they can do homework, have some time to themselves, or whatever.

We are trying to sell our current house now so pray that we find a buyer in the next few weeks so that when we move we won’t have to deal with anything at the old place and can focus on enjoying the new one.

We were able to go out with some friends to see Fireproof and eat at Mijuri Saturday night.  Fireproof is the newest movie put out by Sherwood Church.  The first two, Flywheel and FacingThe Giants, are also great, rated PG, and new favorites of the kids.  We’ve watched a couple of interviews and documentaries on the church and the movies lately and it is great to see how much they believe in what they are doing.

This one had Kirk Cameron in it and is a story about a firefighter and his wife who have drifted apart and are nearing divorce.  His dad asks him to wait forty days and take the “love dare” which shows him how important small things can be to keeping a happy marriage.  He also reminds him that unless we love others (especially our spouse) as unconditionally as God loves us we can’t truly experience everything that God has for us in our relationsships.

Anyway, if you get a chance to go see the movie you should.

We took several pictures and put them up here