Bless the Lord, O My Soul

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.  He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leave remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.  --Jeremiah 17:7-8

God is faithful!  He is rich in grace and abundant in mercy.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.  One generation shall commend Your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.  On the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works, I will meditate.  They shall speak of the might of Your awesome deeds, and I will declare Your greatness.  They shall pour forth the fame of Your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.  The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  The Lord is good to all, and His mercy is over all that He has made.  --Psalm 145:3-9

A lot has happened since I last wrote in this venue.  I want to testify about the grace and mercy of the Lord.  I do not want to magnify myself, because as you will see I had very little to do with it.  Instead, I want to brag on God a bit by telling you what He has done for me.

My wife is an elementary school teacher.  Last year she had a difficult year--she had landed a job with a charter school, and really liked her administration.  However, the students were difficult--disrespectful, disruptive, and destructive.  She would take the hour-long commute to work, trying to psyche herself up, and then use the hour-long commute home to unwind.  It was taking a toll on her physically, mentally, and emotionally.

To top it all off, at the end of the year, she was told she would be transferring to another campus:  same charter school, same administration, but another half hour from our home.  Not wanting her to spend three hours a day in traffic, we began praying about our situation.  We knew that God was in charge, but we could see two solutions.  Either we were to move closer to her job site, or she would need to change schools.

There were problems with both of the potential solutions.  On the one hand, she really loved the people she worked with.  If you ask a teacher whether they would prefer good students or good admin, most of them would tell you that they would rather have good admin.  So changing jobs was a possibility, but not without some risk: what if the new school had the same type of students, but with an administration that did not support her?  On the other hand, our rent was ridiculously cheap, so moving would be expensive.  Eventually we wanted to purchase a home, but our credit rating was not the best, and we had very little for a down payment.

What to do?

We prayed for God's guidance, and a home became available.  My niece and nephew decided to move, and put their house on the market.  This house was in a great neighborhood, less than 20 minutes from my wife's new school.  I spoke with the owners, and they were willing to sell me the house below market value.

Still, I had to find a lender, and that was no small task.  I applied with an online lender you have probably heard of, and was turned down.  Discouraged, I searched for a local lender through some connections we had made.  A friend of a friend suggested a local lender who had experience with borrowers like me with less than perfect credit. 

I sent in an application, and waited.  We begged God to intervene, but the process dragged on and on.  We waited and waited, and the seller started calling to ask when it would be done.  Honestly, I lost faith.  I took the delay as a sign that we were going to be denied again, and started praying that God would give my wife a job closer to us.

Finally, the call came: we were approved!  But the closing date was just two weeks before school started.  In fact, both my wife and my nephew (who had found a job teaching Art in a high school near his new home) had started in-service training. Both of them had to take a day off to be at the closing.  Not impossible, but not ideal by man's standards.  Also, the finance company seemed to be having trouble telling me what the closing costs would be.  If you have purchased a home before, you know that the lender will typically gather information about your income and savings, and then they will warn you not to spend any of the money you have saved, or open any new credit accounts.  Well, on the day before closing, I was told that the closing costs would be five to six times what we were expecting.  I called to ask what that was about, thinking that perhaps the deal would fall through at the last minute.  An adjustment was made to the paperwork, and when I arrived at the closing they informed me that there would be zero due at closing.  Never in my life have I heard of a real estate transaction with zero closing costs.  Praise God!

Next, there was the issue of moving before school started.  With my wife doing required in-service at her new school, I took off work and hired a local "Two Guys And A Truck" outfit to pack up all our belongings.  What had seemed so cramped in our little rent house seemed so spread out in our new home.  My wife found a great deal on a quality dining room set, and now she is able to take her grandmother's china out of storage and place it within reach for special occasions (something she never thought would happen).

We absolutely love our new home.  God was so merciful to allow the loan to be approved, and grace was added in that we were able to use the money intended for a down payment for moving expenses and some additional furnishings.  To Him be all the glory.

Again, my purpose here is not to brag, or to draw any attention to ourselves.  What I want to share here is how God blessed us abundantly over and above what we could even ask or think. 

If God is this gracious in this temporal world, think about how grand Heaven must be.  The passage from Psalm 145 that I quoted above was written before God sent His Son to die for our sins, be buried for our transgressions, and then be raised again on the third day.  That's why Paul could write in Ephesians 2:4-10

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, make us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Should we encourage people to trust Christ for material gain?  Of course not.  But we can trust the Father to meet all of our needs.  While Satan can seemingly supply all of man's sinful desires, they are left empty and hopeless in the end.  Not so the Christian.  We may suffer, but Christ is our resurrection, our hope of eternal life.  We may be blessed, knowing that God is able to give abundantly more than we can ask or think.  That is certainly our case in this season.  I am encouraged by God's grace to do good works for Him, to be a blessing to others in Jesus' Name.  I don't aspire to good works in order to be blessed, or to gain favor with God.  I am encouraged to do good works because of all that He has done for me, and will continue to do for me, undeservedly, throughout eternity.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!