When Jesus takes you somewhere, like a real Gentleman, He opens the doors.

I posted on FB, "When God tells you to go somewhere..." but actually, the statement should have been, "When God takes you somewhere..." because when God tells you to go, He goes with you! It's a Divine date between you and He and He's with you all the way, holding your hand, opening the doors and paying for your bill.

Yes, I have been on "missions" before where I thought that it was Divinely led-and may have ended up feeling "stood up" because I had initiated it myself and He wasn't in it AT ALL. But never before have I known like I know now, that He is the one who initiated this "date" and that He is going to be the Gentleman that He is and is going to do all these things-not just for me, but for my whole family.

So, just our date so far and what it has looked like. I talked about the 5am wake up call. This was the "initiation" - the asking of the date. He asked us all to GO OUT (out of our country, out of our comfort zone and out of our family home) - through my husband - and we respond like an excited teenage girl, being asked out by the best looking guy in school, and excitedly give a big "YES" reply!

The next thing God does (again, so gentleman-like) is let our dad (well Asaua's dad, that is) know that He is going to take us out. He does this through a dream that Asaua's dad has the night before Asaua warns him that he has some news. I love it when I hear of men who ask their girlfriends father's for their daughters hand in marriage. It's so romantic and it gives that sense of security to the father, that his daughter is going to be well looked after. It also makes it easier for the daughter to let her parents know that she will be "leaving" them and "cleaving" to her new husband. In the same way, this dream that Asaua's dad had, made it a whole lot easier for us to tell him that WE are not only going, but that we are taking his grandchildren across the other side of the world.

A true gentleman takes a girl out, giving her no obligation to pay the bill - at all. We too have that promise. He's told us to come with Him and to not worry about paying for us. As soon as we said "yes", we have found out a way that we can be supported in the internship that we are going to do for the first year. We also know that after the first year, the organisation that we are going to work with, are able to support us through funds raised in the States. We never would have known this if we had not said yes - IMMEDIATELY.

Just this past Sunday, Ps David McCracken, talked about Faith at our evening service. He said that beyond "incredible" faith, there is "another level of obedience-living in a realm where we don't have the circumstances to manipulate or rearrange-it's called UNREASONABLE FAITH!
Where we don't have a clue how it's going to happen but we know we have a WORD from GOD."

He said that "God is a CREATOR! He creates everything out of nothing! It's not our faith that creates anything but GOD spoke it, so He created it. (What a sense of relief!) But when we BELIEVE it and OBEY it, it draws it (whatever He has spoken into life) into the realm of our reality." Wow!

So, there we were- on Sunday night, thinking of how we are going to be having this big CLEAN UP and Working Bee at our house this Saturday (today as I write this actually) and how we need to put our house on the Market on Monday. I remember as I lie in bed, how originally. perhaps "heard from God," that we should sell our house for $350k. But last year when we had put our house on the market, I was told - after a failed attempt because I was trying to initiate this date- that we would be lucky to get what we paid for it 5 years ago - $310k. So, I thought, maybe we could settle for $325k, sell it privately and not have to pay anyone commission. (Just writing that word "settle", makes me cringe. Settling for the mediocre, is not the way of the Gentleman who asked us out on this date." My faith needed to be a bit more UNREASONABLE than that.

When you go out on a date with Jesus, He really does give you GRACE. Even without MY unreasonable faith, He still comes through...

Thursday afternoon, we get a phone call from our Real Estate Agent from last year. She wonders if perhaps we were interested in putting our house on the Market again. She has a buyer who are with a Government agency. "They have heaps of money", she says on the answer machine, and are needing to buy four bedroom houses in our area and only have a week to use up their budget. They are wanting to come around on MONDAY and want to settle by the end of JUNE (perfect timing for our departure in August.) Best of all, she says we should put the house on at $349k because they're not looking to undercut people, but want to pay the best price.

So we are just riding now, on this conveyabelt of Love. He says to "learn the unforced rhythms of His Grace" and so that is what He is teaching me- or us. He's overlooked our past mistakes. He's saying, come with me and watch how much I ACTUALLY love you. You look beautiful to me. You are my bride to be, and I am going to show You what I have in store for you - if you just TRUST me.

That's a Real Gentleman.