Stepping out of my comfort zone in faith

The past couple weeks have been full of struggles and fears, trials and fleshly battles with the Spirit, and finally joy and peace in knowing that we are following after God and glorifying Him in our choices. Aaron and I have been working through a lot of decision that we needed to make regarding where we were going to live after getting married. About a month or two ago Aaron brought to my attention something that he felt God was calling us to. And that was that he felt like we were supposed to move in with Tim, Abby and Gracelyn. He didn't really have a reason other than He felt God calling us to this. My initial reaction was NO! I don't want to spend our first year of marriage living with another couple. I want him to myself, I don't want to have to share. However, I told Aaron I would pray about it. So I did and just really struggled with not wanting to give our first year of marriage ALONE away. I knew in my heart I was being selfish, but I struggled with wondering if this was a good selfishness or a bad one. In our culture, it is perceived as unwise to do this. I want to be like everyone else and spend our first year of marriage alone building that foundation on our own. I later realized this was my flesh speaking, actually screaming at me. I was simply being selfish, wanting Aaron all to myself. I was not seeking to glorify God, but to please my flesh. So I started seeking after God more in this and Aaron and I have decided that this is what God is calling us to. We have realized, what better way to honor God with our marriage than giving him the first fruits of marriage instead of hoarding it to ourselves. We want to start off our marriage serving and glorifying God completely instead of just in some ways. We want to make sure that our hands are open and not tightly grasping on to each other saying God you can't have him, he's mine. To give you a better idea of why we feel called to this I am including my journal that I wrote the other day when God finally opened my eyes to how this glorifies Him. Also, know this, we are not doing this because it's fun. It's not fun. It's not fun to share a house with another couple who has a baby during your first year of marriage. Especially knowing that at any point I could get pregnant and we would never have time just the two of us before having children. That's hard! Plus, I don't have to just get use to living with my husband, but I also have to adjust to living with another couple. It will be difficult, but it's worth the sacrifice to know that we are glorifying God in this process. Also know, that as you read this, the reasons I list aren't all of the reasons that we feel this will glorify God. God has been revealing to all of us different ways that this will glorify Him. And He has been showing me more and more every day. It has been such a blessing and it is so exciting to know that I get to serve and glorify our awesome God during my first year of marriage to an amazing guy! I encourage you to read Aaron and Abby's blogs as well to understand some of the other reasons that we are doing this. God is truly working in all four of our lives and I can't wait to see what all He does through this.

Also, please excuse the grammar. This is my journal entry, not an english paper so it won't be grammatically correct. :)

April 1, 2011

Today is the day that I have felt God calling Aaron and I to live with Tim and Abby. My flesh doesn’t want to, I am filled with fear and honestly it’s not saving us that much money. It’s going to be hard, harder than anything we have ever done. Aaron and I had a talk on Wednesday (2 days ago) and we relized that our true desire is to live a radical life for God’s glory. We want to step out in faith trusting that this is what God wants. We also decided we would not go on birth control because we want to be sure that we are trusting God with that and in no way hindering him. We are planning on never going on birth control because if He wants us to have a child on our honeymoon, He will make that happen, and if he wants us to have 15 kids, then He will do that as well. We just want to trust God with that and be thankful for any children that He gives us. So now to talk about the apartment, I have to say I have struggled with this from day one. Aaron has been feeling called to this and I just haven’t been able to see it. I have said that I was willing to do it and my heart would be 100% in it, but I had not been felt called to do that. I have been praying earnestly about it and every time I felt like I was convincing myself this was right, but I hadn’t been called myself. I also look at the money we will be spending and honestly we won’t be saving that much. And I just keep thinking, is it worth it to do this even though we aren’t saving too much money. There is another apartment on Tracy that has an extra bedroom, more space and costs exactly the same. And there are two other apartments that are cheaper. One of them we would be saving at least $100 if not more, plus a smaller deposit fee. So with all that said, this afternoon Aaron and I talked through the other apartments and I really wanted him to say ok lets do those other apartment’s instead of living with Tim and Abby, but that wasn’t the case. So we discussed it again and decided that we would pray more about it today and then tonight write down on a piece of paper which apartment we prefer without discussing it with each other, only God, and then decide from there. I also have to take a moment to say that Aaron was great in making sure that I knew if I didn’t feel called to this we would choose to live on our own. He knew that if I was called it would make this year miserable because I would be doing it for Aaron instead of God. That’s why we decided to do pray about it more and write down on a piece of paper which one we felt called to do. And if I had said the other apartment we would have done that. Anyways.. So after he left I sat down to read my Bible, I knew I needed to do that before I could pray about it so that I could make sure my heart was completely focused on Him. First, I read Matthew 8 and then I felt like God was calling me to go backward and read chapter 7 again. So I read through it and the first thing that caught my attention was verse 7 and 8. “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened” Okay, so God wants me to ask Him, to seek Him in this. I knew that, but now He was telling me that when I seek, He will answer. The next part that caught my attention was verse 13 and 14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only few find it.” This was the biggie. I want to enter through the narrow gate. And in a way, this is a very narrow gate. No one does this, it’s too hard and it’s not what our flesh desires AT ALL! And it also reminded me of a verse that we read last night in Isaiah. Isaiah 49:17 talks about how the Lord is our Redeemer and He directs us in the way we should go and teaches us what is best for us. Verse 18 says, “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” I don’t want to miss out on that, I want to pay attention! And even though in the eyes of a human (in our flesh) this does not seem like the way we should go, God directs us and He knows what’s best for us. And if this is the narrow gate, that’s not normal for people to go through, that God wants us to go through so that He can teach us what is best for us. Then I will go through this gate. The last part that caught my attention was verse 21-23, which talks about how not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven because they have not done the will of God and because of that God will say He does not know them. And I DEFINITELY do NOT want that to be true of me! I want to be sure that I am doing the will of God and I want to know Him as personally as I possibly can and if living with Tim and Abby does that if it draws me and my future husband closer to God and know Him even more personally than I will do that. So as soon as I finished reading this chapter, I immediately went to God in prayer, I prayed through all of these verses saying that I was seeking Him and that I wanted an answer, telling Him that I want to go through the narrow gate and that may not please man, but I want to please Him. And finally saying that I want to be close to Him, I want to do His will. Then I just plain out asked Him, what do you want us to do Lord and I immediately felt like He was saying live with Tim and Abby, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted to know why and that it wasn’t me just trying to convince myself to please Aaron or Abby or Tim. And the answer was, “Living with Tim and Abby only pleases the Spirit, but living in the apartment on Tracy would please the flesh and the Spirit”. That’s what I needed. I needed to know why living with Tim and Abby is better than living on our own and that is the answer. It’s going to be hard and it doesn’t please the flesh, but it pleases the Spirit and the Spirit alone. And that should be our goal. Doing what pleases the Spirit alone. When we become Christians we die to ourselves and this is dying to myself. It’s dying to my wants and my desires and embracing what God wants for me. It’s embracing the Spirit’s desires and following whole-heartedly after them. It’s being radical for God and being a living sacrifice and a living testimony. I have struggled a lot lately with wanting to please the flesh and this is a perfect way for me to in a way “kill” the flesh. I am putting off the old self of selfishness and fear and putting on the new self of patience and humility that is being created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. I desire You, God. I desire to please you and not man and that is why I am stepping out in faith and dying to myself.

I love you Abba!

~ Your Precious Daughter ~