In the last few weeks and months God has spoken very clearly to my husband about moving to Aberdeen. With much wisdom and sensitivity he has been considering it (reluctantly at first!) and weighing up the options.This has been accompanied by the opening up of almost unbelievable opportunities for us in Aberdeen in terms of financial provision, academic opportunities for Aaron, housing, church connections, and just about everything else! Although there is lots to be finalised, it has become obvious that God wants us to be there, and we will be leaving in less than 2 months ready for the start of the academic year. By then our baby will be born, and I will be leaving Chester as a full-time mum. In all of this, from my perspective, God has been noticably quiet. I have heard no voice from heaven announcing that we should move to Aberdeen, only an overwhelming sense of peace, yet I am very thankful for this opportunity to follow Aaron's leadership. Although it is challenging not to be in control of my location, it gives me great joy to trust Aaron because I know he is trusting God and being obedient to God's calling for us as a family.
It seems like God's provision for me that at the Newfrontiers Leadership International Conference this year, Wendy Virgo led an excellent series of seminars on the home called Home Truths, particularly in regards to those who are relocating to plant churches (I would highly recommend checking these out,download for free at www.newfrontierstogether.org). The range of practical wisdom and insight given by women who have been repeatedly uprooted to be involved in churches all around the world provided me with such inspiration, and got me thinking about the concept of home.
There is something profound and vital about establishing a home. As human beings we need a place where we belong, and we often have a natural urge to create this (pregnant women in particular are famous for their 'nesting instinct'!). As you will know by now I often go to the book of Proverbs on practical matters, and there we find in Chapter 31 a wife who is putting a lot of time and energy into her home, to the joy and satisfaction of her husband and children. It also says in Proverbs 14:1: "The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down". This saying could be applied to many different situations, but in a literal sense it is saying that it is good to devote ourselves to building a home (including all the different aspects of a home, such as decor and comfort, prayer and worship, kindness and hospitality).
We know that homes have a very useful place in church life and in sharing our faith. In the book of Acts a wealthy woman called Lydia becomes a Christian and the author writes: "And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay" (Acts 16:15). So Paul and the group he was travelling with are welcomed into her home. There are many other mentions in the New Testament of homes being used for God's purposes, for example, in Colossians 4:15 Paul sends greetings to a woman called Nympha and the church that was meeting in her house. It is a wonderful thing to establish a home that can be used to welcome others, and where people can meet together. But our physical home is not the end of the story, and we must not live and work for the purpose of getting our house looking like something from an interior design magazine. I long for that kind of house sometimes, but to make that our goal is to seriously miss the point!
Jesus says lots about our home and our priorities, some of which might sound a bit harsh. He wants people to be willing to give up everything to follow him, and sometimes this means being physically uprooted from our place of comfort. Luke records Jesus having a conversation with someone who says "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home" (Luke 9:61), and Jesus replies "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). Jesus didn't have a physical home when he lived in the world, he travelled around, and we must always be willing to pack up and go when He says 'Go'. Just after I became a Christian someone had a prophecy for my life from John 3:8: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit". This came with a sense of needing to be ready to be moved around as God directed, even if it didn't make any sense to other people or even much sense to me! The Aberdeen situation is just one example of this.
Finally, I must mention 2 Corinthians 5 in relation to our long-term perspective. Paul writes: "For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (2 Cor 5:1-2). Here he is talking about the body as a temporary home, and heaven as our eternal home. This reality shapes everything about the way we think about homes in the world. We are never going to be finally at home here, no matter how nice we make our house, because we are travelling towards a far better home. We can be available to live anywhere because it is all part of the journey, and I am excited to be on this journey with God, there is no better place to be :) Love,x
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