There’s an entire level of things I’ve been dealing with that I’ve only shared with a few people. I’ve alluded to some of it in earlier medical journal posts, but what I’m about to share goes beyond the medical side. I’ve had this written for months, but didn’t feel the time was right. This past Sunday, I went down to the altar and shared with our Texas church a calling God has placed on my life. So it feels like the right time to share it here now.
This one’s long—much longer than my usual posts—because there’s a lot to cover to get you up to speed. To make it easier to follow, I’ve broken it into sections. Honestly, this will probably end up as a chapter in the memoir of our marriage that so many of you have been encouraging me to write.
I’m going to lay out how God has used everything we’ve walked through to bring us to a place of full surrender and prepare us for something more. Buckle up—this is about how our future is about to change drastically.
Initial Calling: Called but Not Sent
Over the years, I have struggled with a call to full-time ministry. I’ve had it out with God more times than I can count. Too many doors were shut, and I even let the devil shut a few. Nothing has transpired of the calling I have felt. Yes, I led students for years and have served wherever else I was needed. Still, the call God put on me felt unfulfilled. I’ve been in limbo, a called but not sent phase. Some of that was my own doing; some I let the devil have. Most of it, God seemed to be holding me back.
Not long after Amanda became sick, I had an opening to serve in youth ministry for a while. I felt called to ministry, but the call wasn’t clear. The more serious Amanda’s health issues became, the less likely I felt I could leave the health insurance of the railroad. So much more got in the way of things, from Amanda’s health to my own ambitions and personal backsliding. It felt like the devil was sabotaging me, but to be completely honest, some of it was self-inflicted as a headstrong twenty-something young man. I had a lot yet to learn, and God had a lot to work on in me.
Called Amid Chaos
Fast forward to not long after our current pastor, who would become a close friend and confidant, YJ, arrived. I came out of a wild time in my life. I was railroading full-time, working at a large 80,000-acre hunting ranch as the hay farm manager and their personal chef, along with running the tavern and booking bands for the family restaurant. Amid all this, the Lord began to place a specific call on my life. He was calling me to lead youth ministry again.
I fought with God back and forth on this, acting as if the call was for someone else and had accidentally landed on me! I was too busy; how could I take on that? I let the feeling ride for a while, not saying anything to Amanda. When I finally brought it to her, she felt the same way. With an undeniable call and confirmation via Amanda, the answer could only have been yes.
I threw everything I had at the ministry. Five-year goals I’d set with the same ministry years before were met in five months. The Lord’s hands were on that ministry, and the growth could only have been explained by Him. I began to feel the call to full-time ministry again. At the same time, Amanda’s health worsened.
I had looked at seminary before, but with only an associate’s degree, the jump to a masters level seminary degree would take a lot. Revisiting that, I felt defeated again, but still served. YJ began training me in preaching, but as the student ministry exploded, I had limited time for training. To boot, I still had two other jobs, both pretty much full-time, and I was putting in the volunteer time of a full-time youth pastor. I had no flexible downtime, and when I did, I slept. My candle was burning at both ends and in the middle!
When Obedience Got Expensive
I had already left my restaurant obligations before I even took the ministry position; I felt I needed to distance myself from the tavern’s alcohol-related side as I led students. As time went on, I felt the call to ministry was strong enough to leave the ranch and free up more time for ministry. This ended up putting quite a strain on us financially. In the midst of this, we’d bought a house that I began to remodel, as well. I got hurt and was off work for a while, then Amanda began having heart valve issues. The loss of income from all the time I was off doing ministry, Amanda’s health, and the added loss from leaving the ranch devastated us financially. That is when I had to back off the ministry to care for Amanda and work enough to keep us afloat.
It just felt as though the devil was hurling darts at us all through this time; ones we couldn’t get out of the way of. It led me to where I felt called, yet not sent, again. I had to come to terms with that. That is where I began a hard season during which I felt my ministry at the time was to support Amanda’s ministry. As a man, as someone who felt called by God for more, that was a tough pill to swallow.
Hiding Behind “Her Ministry”
I rode that season all the way through Amanda’s first transplant and the second. After the first transplant, we felt like we needed to make up lost time. With three open chest procedures and countless other surgeries and procedures in a matter of a few years, not to mention the other 10 years of health trials, we felt we needed to live a little. Then I really focused on us just living life and traveling as much as possible. All the while, I was hiding behind the “My ministry is supporting Amanda’s ministry.” I felt that was all it was for me. I had settled into that rhythm until recently.
There was a message at our Nashville church where the interim pastor said, “Sometimes we build our lives around managing our brokenness rather than focusing on our healing.” That hit me right in the feels. Case in point: “My ministry is supporting Amanda’s ministry” was a wall I’d built up from the call of God that I failed to fulfill. I never healed from the brokenness I felt because of that failure; I just built a wall to shelter me from it. I hid in my work, but mostly in the travel planning and the trips we were taking. A call to something else is where I focused, not something bad per se, but not a call from God.
Refined in the Fire
The trial that began with the rejection and continued through the second heart transplant and the kidney transplant has been by far the hardest season of my life. From the start, because the rejection was due to someone, I struggled greatly with it. We never had anyone to be mad at, to point at and say, “You caused this”-not even a doctor. So, as a man, a husband, and a protector, I wanted to address the cause physically. The Lord was the only one to calm the rage I had in me. We came out of that, not fully processing it yet, and then into this season. From celebrating an amazing 4th heartiversary in South Dakota, where we got the call Amanda was in rejection, straight to the hospital. That was only the beginning of this roller coaster we’re still on.
God had already laid the groundwork, positioning everything in our lives so we could endure what was to come. The month in the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) at Vanderbilt was the hardest thirty days of my life. We’d been through a lot in our health adventures over the years, but nothing compared to that touch-and-go stretch after the heart transplant—so many ups and downs, most of which I carried alone while Amanda was incoherent. And that was only the CVICU stay, before all the complications that followed, right up through the kidney transplant a year later.
A Prophetic Word in the Valley
Toward the end of the second heart transplant stay in the rehab hospital, I was really struggling with God. I was having a hard time understanding why we were in Tennessee—a thousand miles away from everything we knew, all our friends, and our family. I wrestled with it constantly but never spoke a word of it to Amanda. In that season, God began to lay specific Scripture on my heart.
Not long after, one of my former youth ministry students was in Nashville for a church conference with his family. His mother came into that hospital room with a word from the Lord. She prophesied over us, and it was as if God was answering all the questions I’d been struggling with, backed by the same Scripture He had already laid on my heart. I had never experienced anything like that. There was no doubt in my mind it was a word from the Lord. One of the things she said was that God needed me specifically to walk through what we did, especially those hard CVICU days, so I would be prepared for what was to come. I didn’t understand the full weight of that until months later.
WrestleMania
As I wrestled with all of this silently, God didn’t leave me there. When I returned to Nashville back in December after working for a few weeks, God really got a hold of me. He began speaking and put a calling on me like I’d never experienced before. I was in the Word heavily, and every time I opened it, I sensed the same theme: a call not only to ministry but to be trained up. This wasn’t limited to the Bible—whether my personal Bible study or separate daily reading—but also in books and sermons. Every medium backed up by Scripture. I felt it was like an all-out assault on me, unlike anything before.
Still, I hesitated because I sensed God leading me to leave the railroad for ministry. In my mind, the timing couldn’t have been worse. We were living away from home in an apartment we could barely afford, and Amanda’s life depended on the insurance my job provided. On top of that, we were teetering on needing a kidney transplant. I dug in my heels and fought God over it for months, all while keeping it completely to myself. I didn’t say a word to Amanda as I went round after round with Him.
I thought, How could He put this call on me in the midst of the turmoil we were experiencing? We hadn’t even gotten our heads above water after the heart transplant. Amanda had never been okay with me leaving the railroad before—so how could I tell her what I felt God was calling me to do? So I didn’t. Not one word to her as I wrestled with God about it for months!
Called to Be Trained
This calling wasn’t just to go into ministry, but to be trained up—not only in how to preach, but also on a theologically deeper level. I see those as two separate things. As I explained, seminary hadn’t worked out before. Years ago, I had a short list of schools where I’d talked with admissions and sent my transcripts. After such a strong push from God, I went back and dug up those old bookmarks. I revisited school websites and looked at some new seminaries, too.
I came across a diploma program that caught my eye at one of the large Southern Baptist seminaries. It’s a graduate-level degree with the same classes as a Master of Divinity (M.Div.)—84 hours, minus a Greek and Hebrew class—and it doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree to enter. There’s also a pathway to transfer into a master’s degree, including the M.Div. program. I took this as a huge sign and an open door.
When a Book Reads Your Mail
I had started a new book, Why Not You? by Ed Newton. I knew of him and had sat under his preaching at many youth events years ago. He had since taken the position of senior pastor at a prominent San Antonio megachurch. I had preordered the book months before to get it right when it was released. The tagline of the book was ‘Believing what God believes about you.’ I didn’t get it for that; I knew what my purpose and ministry was: Supporting Amanda’s ministry. Like my bible reading and personal Bible studies, this book hit hard, and right from the introduction. I hadn’t dog-eared, underlined, and taken so many notes in a book before as I did in this one.
The timing alone on what the book covers and when it arrived was unreal. The scriptures I had landed on that God spoke so seriously to me, the sermons, all teed the book up so well. It could have only been of God. I shed some tears on the pages of this book. I had never read anything that touched me so personally; it was like every other page was written to me for the exact moment I was facing, from the struggle and fighting with God, to the call, and seeing our setback set us up for what was to come.
“Do it Again” Faith
What we’ve been through has deepened our faith. I use the phrase, ‘Do it again,’ a lot. I don’t know how I could have made it through without looking back to see what He’s already done and knowing, with all that I am, that He’ll do it again. God has carried us through so much and provided for us every step of the way. I could write a book about the times we were at the end, and God just showed up.
In this trial alone, He has provided every step of the way. We run out of money, and bam, someone just felt led to provide. Not once, not one person, but so many times, not only in material things either. When I was searching for a church, God didn’t provide one right away. What He provided was an opportunity for me to minister to others at a bar top in a burger joint! When I was at an end, spiritually spent and all given out and in need of replenishment, He lined up the perfect church for us, where we gained an entire new faith family, many new friends, and another army of prayer warriors.
It finally hit me: if He can provide all of that and I trust Him to do so, why couldn’t I trust him with what he was calling me to? What was holding me back from stepping out in faith on my calling? Did I really trust Him if I wouldn’t? I felt called out and put on the spot.
When Surrender Was All I Had Left
I need to preface what comes next. Amanda and I have been through a lot medically, yet I had never come so close to losing her as I did in the CVICU after the second heart transplant. That happened more than once, too. The first time was rough and the worst night of my life, to say the least. At 4 am, I was asleep on a pull-out bed that was a foot too short for me when the door burst open. Within 30 seconds, there were probably 6-8 doctors and nurses around Amanda. The doctor was screaming orders, nurses panicking, paddles on her, ready to shock. It was touch-and-go for a while. It was like an intense scene from Grey’s Anatomy.
I’d given counseling before to someone who had a sick loved one. It was touch-and-go with them. It seemed grim, and like they were going to lose their loved one. When it is that bad, and you are holding on to your loved one so tight, sometimes the best thing you can do is surrender them to God. Counseling someone on that, even with what we’d gone through, is hard. The toughest part was counseling myself with that advice; I knew where we were and what I had to do. I had to surrender Amanda to God completely, no matter the outcome.
That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Surrendering What I Feared Losing Most
I was in Newton’s book a couple of chapters and came across a quote from pastor Craig Groeschel that says, “What you worry about the most reveals where you trust God the least.” That gutted me. What I was worried about was easy for me: insurance. I had surrendered Amanda, so the hurt of that wasn’t what worried me the most. The loss of insurance—and something happening and losing her that way—scared me to death. My railroad insurance is second to none. Millions upon millions have been paid out; the second transplant alone was 3.3 million and didn’t cost us anything. Insurance was what had always held me back from complete surrender to God’s call on my life. I had told God many times I’d go if He called, but with one stipulation: I needed top-tier insurance.
At that moment, in the early hours of the morning in our Nashville apartment, I got right with God. I realized that if the Lord was calling me, He had already met the need for what I feared the most and had plans A, B, and C already lined up. He’d already gotten us through so much; I knew He could get us through and provide for my biggest fear. For the first time, I fully surrendered to God’s call: a no-stipulations, no-strings-attached surrender. A here am I, Lord; send me, moment.
Tentmaking, a Ram in the Thicket
For my daily bible study, I usually read till God presses on me, then finish the chapter, go back, and do my study on where I landed. Most often, I get a word every chapter and rarely go more than a chapter or two. The very next day after my surrender, I was wrecked in my daily bible study. I was in Acts; it’s chock-full, and I had nothing pressed on me in over five chapters. Then I landed on Paul in Acts 20, where he speaks of how he labored, tentmaking to support himself and those with him in his ministry. He did this neither to burden the churches nor to hinder the gospel. This wasn’t labor squeezed around his ministry work; it was integral to his kingdom work in Ephesus.
Diving into that passage where God pressed on me, I came up with 2000 words in my bible study that day! I got the overwhelming feeling that God was telling me I might not need to give up the railroad and its insurance. Maybe not for a while, maybe never. Paul worked and had a huge full-time ministry; why did I need to leave? I had the sense that God needed me to be fully willing to sacrifice my job and quit, be committed and sold out. Yet, He might not need me to act on it, and I might just keep what I was willing to give up anyway. A ram caught in the thicket moment. Like God was throwing me a bone. A call to obedience and stepping out on true faith, to totally surrendering it all to Him, followed by reassurance that He’ll take care of us. Only the Word of God can do all of that.
Of course, in the reading up to that looping back, I come across Aquila and Priscilla in chapter 18. A powerhouse of a couple who labored alongside Paul and had a ministry of their own, and were an integral part of Paul’s ministry. Later, they accompanied him to Ephesus for his church-planting ministry. This was reassurance for Amanda and I, co-laboring in the ministry together. I believe we already complement each other well in our Kingdom work.
Obedience Without Understanding
So, I have a calling for ministry, a call to be educated, a call to be trained up to preach, but only individually. I wanted it in a package tied up with a bow! What would I do, how would all this work together? I’m a planner, so I needed a plan or enough pieces to make a plan. God didn’t give me that, though. Would the calling lead to a pastorate position, evangelism, organizing and leading a Christian camp, a ministry focused on trials, some form of counseling, or a combination of these? I could go on and on. I was positive of the calling, but unsure of the specifics. My mind was set to follow what God was prompting, though I didn’t know all the details.
Obedience without understanding is where I was. There are so many examples of that in the Bible. When I was struggling with that very thing, I landed on Abram when he was leaving his homeland for Canaan. Go from all you know to the land I will show you, God said. No plan, no understanding, just obedience. This wasn’t a calculated decision; nothing was weighed out. He just trusted in God and went, it says. To do this, he had to abandon everything he knew, including the security it provided for him and his family. Trusting God would honor His commitment. Obedience without understanding; I just kept going back to that.
From Calling to Training
God told me to go, so I was going to go without knowing the destination, no matter how much that hurt my planning‑oriented brain! First step: be trained to preach. I wanted YJ to do this; I wanted to be ordained under his ministry. I hadn’t talked to him about this; I hadn’t talked to anyone, not even Amanda. The talk with YJ needed to be in person, so I’d wait till we were back in Texas. I wasn’t worried; he knew all that had come my way in my ministry calling. He’d shared the burden of my calling and all our health issues colliding. Our struggle was very familiar to him. I knew him well enough to know I didn’t need to go through an admission process to get him to train me in sermon presentation!
Seminary was different, with a lengthy admission process and vetting. I still needed to choose where I’d go. I had my top pick, and everything seemed to point to that. I wanted to be sure I had picked the right one, so I kept researching other schools. Eventually, needing to flesh things out, I got with the interim pastor of our Nashville church to do just that. I needed someone to help me unload and unpack all that God had spoken to me, more than I needed counseling. I just needed an ear of a solid brother in Christ. He was a good one to talk to; he attended seminary later in life. We were the same age, and he had gotten his degree only a few years back.
From Fear to Full Disclosure
Amanda and I would head back to Texas soon after that. I still hadn’t talked to her about any of this yet. I planned to unpack everything as we drove back while she was trapped in the car and I had a captive audience with no escape. I chickened out and didn’t do it. To be honest, I was scared to tell her. I wrestled with God pretty hard about His timing on all of this. We were still not sure if Amanda would really need a kidney transplant, or what the future health-wise would look like. To boot, when we returned from Texas back to Tennessee, she’d started living there on her own while I went back and forth for work. The timing couldn’t have been worse, I thought.
I finally laid it all out. I poured out everything God had laid on my heart to her—nonstop, laying it all out. The call to leave the railroad, my unequivocal surrender to do so if God called, the feeling and word I received after that I may not need to leave, the call to be trained up, the call to go to seminary, and how I had no clue what we’d do or how I could provide insurance, and we’d have to trust God for all of that fully. It was a lot to take in without our current situation, but in the midst of where we were, it was intense.
I had already been wrestling with God a ton about it. Especially His impeccable timing, perfect in God’s eyes, I know, but completely crap timing in my human eyes!
Counting the Cost of Coverage
Amanda had never really been sold on me leaving the insurance. We’d talked about options; she was for the ministry, but the insurance aspect scared her, me as well. The deck was stacked against me with her previous thoughts on this. Her life was in the balance.
Even with my great railroad job, I don’t think we could afford the transplant medications without insurance, much less any surgery she may need in the future. I know ministry positions can offer insurance, but how could we afford the higher deductibles and coinsurance on a much lower salary? What if there was an interim period between roles? Turnover in ministry positions is high.
I didn’t even know what we’d be doing, but I’d still thought of all that she’d be thinking, because it had all run through my mind. I already duked it out with God about them all.
Putting It All on the Line
I laid it all out: an unsure future, destination TBA, not even sure how we’d get there, really no way to answer any questions, but say all I know is God is calling, and I have to step out in faith, and I’m asking you to go with me. We’d been through so much since we last had this discussion. I didn’t know how Amanda would feel.
God had gotten us through so much; the fire had refined us and deepened our faith; how could we not trust Him with this? Yet, post double heart transplant, not even over that trial or even on the downhill side, health apprehension would be higher, and insurance meant all the more. I could see it going either way.
Answering the Call as One
After spilling my guts to Amanda with everything on the table, it didn’t take me long to ask, “What do you think?” She agreed. The next question was about leaving the railroad. I asked how she felt about me leaving the railroad and the insurance her life depended on—the insurance we’d needed so badly and treated like a security blanket. In the past, she’d never agreed to this, but now she did.
She was ready to step out on faith and go, even though the destination was unknown. Ready to obey the call on us without fully understanding it, and without wrestling with God about it the way I did. I’d been having it out with God for a couple of months by this point; I’d fought Him enough for both of us!
We have gone through such seasons of building our faith to get to the point we are at now. Looking at it that way, we are both so much more tried by fire and refined than we were before. Looking back, you can see many things that prepared us for this call. Each trial, all culminating to a point where we’d have so much faith in God. Now, we only had one way to answer with what we’d been through: here we are; send us.
Fine-Tuning the Call
Fast-forward a few months, and I still feel the same. The same conviction, just as strong, likely even more, with God still speaking volumes to me through His word and my daily bible studies. However, it was more fine-tuned and not like He was hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer so much as at first. I’m pretty hard-headed and sometimes need a sledgehammer to relent!
I was ready to follow without understanding, but I still felt I needed guidance. When I was looking at the M.Div., I needed to decide which graduate certificates I wanted to get and which concentrations to pursue. And, honestly, I really wanted to plan, too. I was praying relentlessly for guidance on what God would have us do, a general idea and direction. Like Abram, we had already set out on our journey, fixing our sights on my pursuing schooling.
Good Fits, No Green Light
I still needed God to show me what land He wanted us to go to, so to speak. I had a few top ideas, none that I felt God had specially shown me, but things I just felt we’d be good at. Running a Christian camp is something I’ve always thought I’d excel at with my resume.
I have experience in buildings and grounds, given my background in ranch management and house remodeling. I have a background in food service with my culinary experience. I have experience planning youth events and similar activities. I know all about sound, audiovisual, and stage equipment. I feel I am well suited for something like that; it would be right up my alley. It is something I would love doing and have thought about for years. I didn’t feel called to that, though.
Next, YJ has a freedom ministry that is focused on inner healing and spiritual freedom. I have always thought that Amanda and I would be prime to take it over when he was ready to pass the torch. We could even work alongside him, with him training us up in that. There is a heavy counseling aspect to that. Amanda served in freedom conferences YJ has put on and has also sat in on many freedom sessions with him. She’s shown interest in the counseling aspect of that ministry. If she were to go back to school, she said it would be for counseling. She is a product of that ministry too; YJ helped her tremendously with some things. The freedom ministry is powerful and needs to continue beyond YJ.
An Unabandoned Heart Ministry
Then there was the idea of an evangelism ministry rooted in our trials. It was the one we had the most experience in, the one which God had already written the sermons on our hearts. I had always thought Amanda could easily book speaking events. I never saw myself as an integral part of that, though—more of handling the legwork. What if I were to preach, though, using our story for illustration, mixing in Amanda’s testimony, and tying it up with a nice gospel bow? I thought that could be powerful. Together rather than separately, we could build a better platform and gain access to more places to share our story and the gospel.
I had a great tentmaking job with the railroad, with a schedule that could be flexible when I needed it. We could do something like that without needing an honorarium or relying on the ministry for insurance. My railroad job could supply all our ministry needs. Paul made his ministry work like that; why couldn’t we? It all sounded great, something we could knock out of the park, but I didn’t see God confirming that—or any of the other ideas I’d had.
Ask, and you will receive; my daily bible study would reveal my answer. As I had been praying for guidance and a narrowing of options, God would start fine-tuning the call. My daily Bible studies were trial-based and rich. One after another, and not just words for me. I was getting sermon material. Multiple 1,500-plus-word bible studies; I was just typing away what I was being filled with. I would begin tagging them under the category “Unabandoned Heart”. With my preaching experience, I could easily turn these into sermons. Training from YJ coupled with some seminary schooling could turn these into amazing messages.
Stepping Toward Seminary
Now I was able to decide where to focus my degree and how to tackle it. How to pay for it all, another story, but I wasn’t worried. God was most certainly guiding me to it, so He’d provide and get me through it. The railroad would cover some via tuition reimbursement, not a lot but enough to pay for a few classes a year, at least.
We’d have to work on life balance and tighten up on travel and StarBs to pay for the rest. I haven’t been brave enough to mention to Amanda a StarBs restriction to help pay for seminary. She may need to hear that from the Lord! I planned to wait until the kidney transplant, then start seminary once we transition back home. I would take online classes along with modular classes that combine online format with a few days of on-campus instruction each semester.
Then Amanda got the kidney transplant; while we were in the hospital, I was looking at the online schedule. I could start the second fall semester, which starts in October, this year. I began thinking that the first fall semester, starting in August, could be doable. I was getting ahead of myself, though; I still needed to be accepted! After a detailed application process—including a spiritual autobiography, transcript submission, and church approval—I was finally accepted into the program.
Fast forward a bit from when I wrote this months ago: I am now an official student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. We visited the campus a month ago, and before I left, I was signed up for my first two classes. Whether I was ready or not, the academic advisor signed me up! I still hadn’t officially made up my mind about starting the first fall semester. I just rolled with it, and as of August 3rd, I began classes in the Diploma program. I fully intend to transfer to the M.Div. program after completing the required 24 hours with a 3.0 GPA. I’ve already aced my first quizzes, have a stack of theological books I’m working through, and I’m writing my first paper. It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time.
What “More” Looks Like Now
This has been a lot to have this calling laid on me when it was, but there is purpose in it all. I’ve never wrestled with God as much as I have in the last 8 months. When I relented, I felt a sense of peace about my decision and total surrender to the Lord’s will. Once I finally talked with Amanda and she was on board, that was confirmation and relief, as well. Then I asked God to reveal what we are to do, and He so clearly helped define it. I felt completely sure of the direction we are heading—not scared or worried, no matter which way God will lead. Total peace about it, no confusion or anxiety; I know that’s of God.
Where do we go from here? What does fully surrendered obedience look like for us in the near future and beyond? Well, Lord willing, while I train both in the local church and in seminary, we’ll begin developing a trials-based evangelism ministry in which we preach, teach, and counsel out of the suffering God has carried us through. There is still a lot of fleshing out to do, and I’m sure God will clarify more as time goes on.
As that develops, we’ll go wherever God opens doors, and I’ll preach “Unabandoned Heart” messages woven with Amanda’s testimony, both of us counseling as needed. Once we’re clear of the financial strain of seminary, we’ll use my railroad job as our tentmaking to fund the ministry so as not to burden any church or ministry we’re able to visit. Of course, we’ll be ready for course correction as He leads, and if I’ve crossed the calling wires and the Lord needs to redirect us, He knows how to get my attention!
Letting Go of Your “Insurance”
There are a few things from this story I could turn into Unabandoned Heart sermons all by themselves. From my own calling, I’d say that trusting God with the thing you fear losing most isn’t always easy, but it is always rewarding. The more faithful we’ve been to God through our trials, the more He has provided. Though we’ve only just begun this new journey, God has already blessed it.
What “insurance” are you clinging to instead of fully surrendering to God? Take it from me: it’s a huge blessing when you finally let it go, because whatever your worry is, God has something so much bigger and better lined up for you.
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