dimanche 9 septembre 2012

We're Moving!

Well, we hadn't planned on this. Two years after moving into and entirely renovating a beautiful, 150-year-old fixer-upper, we're moving out.

In July I got a call from Philip Moore, a pastor with Acts 29, a church planting network that has recently put down roots in Western Europe. He invited me to come do a 2-year church planting internship with him and his church in a little city called Lagny-sur-Marne, about twenty-five minutes east of Paris. The call was completely unexpected. Of course, given the difficult circumstances we've been through this year, I appreciated the call but never thought we'd say yes.

Then, over the summer, as Loanne and I both thought and prayed about it and went over as much material as we could find concerning exactly what we would be doing, we were surprised to see doors opening in Lagny and doors closing in Vernon, where we are currently living. God never gave us an overwhelming sign from heaven, but He definitely seemed to be orchestrating events in our lives to push us in that direction.

After a lot of prayer, visiting the church in Lagny mid-August and spending the day with some of its members (with whom we felt instantly at home), and enjoying a visit in Vernon from Philip and his family, during which we talked about some of the issues we were struggling with, we decided last week to go for it.

So we're doing it. It's scary, it's completely unknown, but God is good (Jeremiah 29.11). We hope, Lord willing, to be moved in and settled before we come to Florida for Thanksgiving.

Side-note: I said that God didn't give us a sign that this was what we should do; that wasn't precisely true.

We're not big on "laying out fleeces", as David Wilkerson famously said; we prayed for wisdom (James 1.5), asked God to direct our steps (Proverbs 3.5-6), and trusted Him to do it. But when I first got the call from Philip in July, Loanne jokingly said that she'd pray for God to give her a sign: that Jack would sleep through the night.

Two weeks ago, Jack started sleeping through the night.

That was, of course, not the decisive factor in our moving, but it was weird.


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