WHERE TO NOW?

WHERE TO NOW?
By Keith Giles

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20


This is the journey.

In the last few months I have felt, more and more, the hand of God upon my life. It is heavy. It is hard. It is not an easy thing.

God is imposing His will upon my life. All I can do is sit back and say, “Yes, Lord.”

Of course, this is exactly what I’ve prayed for. Night and day I have come before Him to ask that He would allow His Kingdom to come and His will to be done in my life…no matter what.

My wife and I have been through these times of transition before. Several years ago I was laid off from a job I loved, only to wander in the wilderness for over a year and a half without fulltime employment.

During this time I learned what it means to depend on Him for daily bread. Literally there were days when we had used the last of the eggs, paper towels and milk, only to have someone show up at our doorstep unexpectedly with eggs, milk and paper towels in a gift basket.

There was the day when we needed over a thousand dollars to cover rent, registration on our car, a smog check and our monthly medical insurance payment. I was in the car on the way to my temp job praying for God’s provision for us since our bank account was empty and we had used our Discover card to pay for groceries only days before.

By lunchtime I had a check in my hand for exactly the amount necessary to cover all of these bills, from people who had no idea what our exact needs were at the time.

God is good.

We’ve also been through a season where we had to move and had no idea where we’d end up, only to have God provide miraculously a house for us only a few blocks away with a giant backyard, an avocado tree, and plenty of room to host a small group for our new church. He even gave us a dream a month earlier to show us how He would provide this house for us, and then He did it…at the last minute.

I think now our family knows in a deeper sense that God will take care of us. We have seen His hand closing doors in our life and in our ministry over these last few months. We’ve started packing up our belongings, still with no clue where we’re moving to next, or even when.

We’ve said goodbye already to people we dearly love who’ve moved away from us.

We’ve prayed, for the last time, over people who God has allowed us to minister to for nearly three years with tears in our eyes.

We don’t really understand exactly all of what and why God is doing this. But we do know a lot.

We do know that God is good. We know He loves us. We know that it is His hand closing these doors. We know that He will open new doors for us soon. We know that we are called to be His ambassadors. We know that our family has a calling from God. We know that He has given us a ministry and that He has revealed to us what we are to do next….which is to simply trust Him.

We also know that God seems to like the last minute. He’s never late, but He’s rarely on our time table.

I was thinking just the other day that it’s seasons such as this that build our faith. These are the times we look back on and see the hand of God upon us. It’s these times we will be drawn back to re-live over and over again in the form of testimony and praise.

Why would we not want God to bring us through times such as this?

This is the life.

This is the journey.

“Giddy-up!”