Me: I see you are at your friends place again.
Prodigal: Yes, they just moved in so I am helping them unpack and get settled in.
Me: My stories are shared so that you can see that real people have their prayers answered by God in different ways all the time.
Prodigal: I am beginning to see that God is involved in our lives and he doesn’t always do things the way we thought but they are perfect in the end.
Me: I have a story from my friends Keith and Becca and they just moved like your friends.
Prodigal: I would love to hear!
I have known Keith for several years and it has been a blessing to see how God has worked in his life. I have seen him work in houses situations, in his ministry calling and also finding him a Godly wife. Keith and his wife just moved to the Philippines to be in full time ministry. Keith emailed how God worked in finding them a house. I am going to share in his exact words.
Hey Jennifer, you gotta hear about how we got our condo. Looking back at things, God was really working in our house search to give us the right place.
We were trying to rent a really awesome condo about 20 mins from church (we were living about an hour from church), but were having trouble because the owner wanted us to give him 2 months deposit and 10 post dated checks for payment. We can’t get a checking account here because you have to have a banking relationship (savings account) with the banks for 6 months before they will give you a checking account. But a friend was going to introduce us to a bank manager who would make an exception and grant us the checking account. However, while we were inside opening up the checking account, the bank employees rushed over to us and told us our car was getting towed. Long story short, we ended up not getting a parking ticket (despite being told it was ok to park there), but had to pay them the amount of the parking ticket “not to tow our car.” Ugh, what a hassle. So we never did open the checking account. It turns out that was God divinely intervening in our house search.
Because we couldn’t get a checking account, we started looking for other apartments. God put us in touch with a very nice real estate agent who also attended a Baptist church. He showed us another unit in the same building, but FAR, FAR better. It was $200 less per month, was FULLY furnished, and came with two parking spots instead of just one…. and the owner said we could pay cash on a month-to-month basis.
I love this story because this is how God works. We have plans and we start to go in one direction and nothing seems to work. That is because God has different plans and he wants us to turn around. It is only once we turn around that God will show us how everything lined up and he gave us something better. Keith thought that the first condo was the best but God showed Keith their was something better.
Psalms 119:35
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.
Jennifer Van Allen,
www.faithincounseling.org
www.theprodigalpig.com
