The Miracle God Did In Our Lives

There are so many verses that say God will give us whatever we ask of him. However, we forget that in most instances these verses are in the context of praying according to God’s will. I have prayers I’ve been praying for over ten years that are still unanswered, but just recently God answered our prayers in such an incredible way and I must share with others the miracle God did in our lives.

The Set-Up

First of all, I need to forwarn you, I am far from perfect. I can tell you countless stories where I don’t follow God. However, in this instance, we did follow God, though our faith definitely did waver.

I only share this story because I want you to know that God does answer prayers. Sure we don’t always see the answer, and many times the answer isn’t what we want, but he certainly does answer.

I also share this story because I want to share how you can set yourself up for God to answer your prayers because—praise God—I actually did what he wanted in this instance.

Here’s the story.

Hope Shattered

My wife and I were planning to move to Windsor, CO after we got married. Windsor is a pretty small place, so we made the trek out here two months in advance to check-out apartments.

There weren’t many options, unfortunately, and all the options in our price range were pretty crumby. That’s when we stumbled across a for-sale sign on a townhouse. We talked and decided that unless it was offered for less than 220 thousand we wouldn’t even consider it.

I checked and the price was much lower than 220 thousand. I spent the whole next day (my birthday) rushing through to get things in order to put an offer on the house. We abandoned nearly all of our previous birthday plans.

After more than ten hours of work, and right as we were about to put in our offer, we discovered the seller accepted another offer.

We felt deflated and confused. Why would God put this right in front of us and fill us with so much peace and excitement for this property only to slam the door in our faces?

However, deep in our souls, we knew this was just the beginning. God was doing something we didn’t yet understand.

The First Trial of Faithfulness

We ended up finding another townhouse in the same complex available for rent for a decent price. We settled on a plan with the landlord to move in a month and a half later. The guy was very kind to us and decided to hold the property for us without asking us to pay rent for the month we wouldn’t be living there.

Now, this is very uncommon. No other landlord or complex offered this.

During this time, our hearts continued to weigh heavy with the loss of buying the townhouse. We quickly realized that we wanted to buy a house instead of renting. However, we couldn’t find anything was within our price range.

The landlord communicated that he was willing to hold the house for us because it was worth waiting for tenants that would live there for a while and treat the property well.

God convicted me that I wasn’t being honest with our landlord.

I had to communicate with him that we were hoping to buy and would probably only live in his property for 3-5 months. I didn’t want to tell him this because I was afraid he might not hold the property for us, or ask that we pay for the month we wouldn’t be living there.

Still, God laid this on my heart so I had to tell him.

Fortunately, he didn’t mind this news for some reason.

The Second Trial of Faithfulness

All went according to plan and we moved in on the date we told our landlord just after we got married. We loved the property, and immediately saw the incredible opportunity this complex offered to share the gospel.

We ran into our neighbors far more often than I’ve ever experienced living in a regular stand-alone house. This is because we had a community dumpster and mailbox location. Without garages, we also got the chance to talk to people as they came home or left. Additionally, our neighbor’s kids started coming over to our house nearly every day.

As we weighed this dream of buying a house, we felt convicted. Were we putting our desire to own above our desire to share the gospel? Yes, it was smart to buy a house and pay a mortgage rather than rent, but wouldn’t God rather we take the hit financially to open up more ministry opportunities?

It didn’t make sense financially, but we decided to trust God. He knew the future, not us. We could trust him to provide for us in the future if we followed him. So, we decided to keep renting. As we made this decision, we turned to God and prayed: “Father, you know we want to buy a house. You know our reasons for this desire are noble. We are willing to give this all up so we can reach the people you love. But we come to you and ask the impossible. Please open up the opportunity to buy this townhouse from our landlord.”

The Miracle

We prayed that prayer with very little faith, but it seemed the right thing to pray. A week later our landlord approached us and said, “I know you are looking to buy a house, do you think you guys would be willing to buy this townhouse from me?”

My wife and I were shocked!

Now this conversation would’ve never happened if I hadn’t been faithful to follow God’s conviction and tell him we were looking to buy a house!

Set a closer relationship with God as the fundamental purpose and goal of taking steps of faith and you will never be disappointed.

But the story doesn’t end here.

When we heard what he wanted to sell it for, all our hope evaporated. In our unique situation, there was no competition to buy the house so we really had no fighting power. Either we pay him rent every month or we buy it from him. Either way, he won. We had nothing to bargain with to talk him down in the price. It felt like he was trying to cheat us out of our money.

So we fasted and prayed. We couldn’t convince him; only God could.

The Second Miracle

After not budging on the price for a week, our Real Estate Agent and I decided our last option was for me to meet up with him. If he didn’t budge on the price after I shared my heart for why we wanted the place, then we’d just have to say now to the offer.

To be honest, I didn’t really believe it would work, but it was our last hope.

I walked away from that meeting amazed. Through that conversation and praying together with him, he decided to drop the price by $7,500. He also included on the contract that he will replace the old front door and windows, and pay for a two-year home warranty to cover the old furnace, AC, and water heater.

Praise God!

On top of this, after we signed this contract, the water heater broke. This meant he had to replace it, and it was just one more freebie for us.

The Third Miracle

Everything seemed great until one week before our closing date. Some new information came out on the townhome complex. As a result our lender and every single other lender were no longer able to offer us a conventional loan with only 5% down. Suddenly we had to come up with 20%, which is a $30,000 difference.

I work in ministry, and my wife had student loans, there’s no way we could offer that sort of money.

So, we prayed and fasted again.

I can’t tell you how many lenders I called to find someone, anyone, who could make this impossible situation happen.

The more I called, the more I realized it would never work.

As this reality settled on me, my soul felt wrong. I was beginning to come to terms with this new reality, but my soul kept telling me, “This isn’t right, God must have something planned.”

I can’t explain this feeling—nor do I feel right in calling it a feeling—but for some reason, I knew God wanted us to buy this house.

It felt wrong to ask for money, and even if someone offered to loan us money, I just didn’t feel right about taking it. However, I figured I might as well reach out to my grandparents.

I knew they were kind and generous, but they offered to give us a loan for the money without charging any interest or setting an end date by which we had to pay them back. When I hung up the phone, a peace settled on me and deep in my soul.

I don’t typically hear God speak, instead, God communicates to me through new and often sudden “understandings”. When I hung up, an understanding deep in my soul comforted me with these words, “This is God’s provision for you. You need to buy this house.”

Though fear still clung to me, we took this step of faith. With my grandparent’s help, we closed on this townhouse on February 16th.

Praise God!

Why I Share This Story

I don’t share this to say, “look at me, see how faithful I am and how much God moves in my life”. I share this story to encourage and help you.

Hopefully, this story helps you see that God has good plans for you. Sometimes they are hard, and often times they won’t end up as you expected, but they are good. From a heavenly perspective, the end result of following God is always far better than your original expectation.

Additionally, before God moves, he will often ask you to be faithful. Just like he asked me to risk giving up renting the townhouse for the sake of being honest and texting our landlord, so God will often ask you to do the scary but noble thing. Follow him in these smaller steps. If you don’t, God might not entrust to you the next step.

Third, seek God’s will first. If my wife and I never set aside our desires for the sake of seeking God’s will and staying in this townhouse, this marvelous story would’ve never happened.

Fourth, value intimacy with God first. I learned through this experience that even if God didn’t open a door to buy this townhouse, this crazy rabbit trail would still be a success. It brought us closer to God. This is the ultimate success. Don’t define material gain, comfort, or happiness as success. Set a closer relationship with God as the fundamental purpose and goal of taking steps of faith and you will never be disappointed.

Fifth, the more you follow God, the better you will be able to recognize his voice and how he’s leading. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t discern his voice right now. Be patient, and slowly after years of following him, your spiritual ears will grow more tuned to his frequency. You won’t hear him all the time, nor will it happen too often, but you will hear him when you need to.

Sixth, God does move. He does work amazing miracles. He is faithful and powerful. We can trust him as we take wild steps of faith.

And this is how we live wilder.

 

 

If you have any thoughts or questions, I’d love to hear them. Please comment here or engage with me on Facebook or Instagram. Additionally, if you’d like to continue being encouraged by blogs like this, please sign up for my email update list here.

Thank you so much for reading. If you enjoyed this miracle, check out the incredible story of How I Met My Wife.

If you have a hard time hearing God’s voice, check out my post How does God Speak to Us?