TRUSTING GOD IN ALL THINGS LARGE AND SMALL
It is common to feel that most of our issues and problems are too small for God to be concerned about, but God tells us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head and He is concerned when a sparrow dies, so there is no part of our life too small or insignificant for God to care and be involved—if we let Him! Those who put every aspect of their lives in God’s hands often experience not just a simple answer to their prayers, but the extravagant work of a Father who loves to amaze His children with His love for them. As I grew in my faith as a Christian, I gradually learned to turn to God and trust Him in all situations large and small, and this includes our many moves.
#1 – DALLAS. TX
“Why Can’t We Have a House Like That?”
As a result of another wonderful present from God (see What Is God Up To?), we were moving from Tucson, Arizona, to Dallas, Texas. I had gone ahead to Dallas to start my new job and look for a place for us to live, while my wife got ready for the move back in Tucson. I found one house in Dallas I thought we could qualify for, but I wasn’t excited about it because the small backyard sloped fairly steeply to rear, so any balls our kids were playing with would quickly end up against the fence.
Encouraged to Lie
I started the purchase process, and soon discovered we didn’t have quite enough income to qualify because our house in Tucson had not sold yet. The mortgage agent asked me things like:
“Can’t you get a letter that says the house in Tucson has been rented?”
“Can’t you get a letter that says the bonus you received at your new job is an annual bonus?”
Basically, he was telling me to lie so I could qualify for the mortgage. I had recently learned about how all Christians are priests, prophets and kings, and how important it was to follow the “King’s Way”—the way of truth and integrity. I was uncomfortable with what the mortgage agent had asked me to do, and a couple of days later at work it hit me that this was not the King’s Way! I even remember exactly where I was, standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator.
The King’s Way
With tears in my eyes, I called the mortgage agent and told him that the house was not rented and the bonus was not annual, knowing that meant we would not qualify for that or any other house, and would have to rent an apartment until we sold the house in Tucson and saved enough money to buy a house in Dallas. Since we had nine children, this was going to be quite a challenge. I finally found a small apartment not too far from work. To fit everyone in, we had kids sleeping in the master bedroom, and more kids sleeping in the master bedroom closet. My wife and I slept in the second bedroom. It was quite a challenge cooking for our large family in the tiny kitchen, but we made it work.
Ask And You Shall Receive
One of my friends at work had a nice house for his family. It was nothing fancy—just a two-story rectangular home, but it had plenty of bedrooms, a large kitchen and living room, and a nice yard. I remember asking God if we could have a house like that. Six months later we had sold our house in Tucson and saved enough money for a down payment, so we started to look for a house and God answered my prayer—literally! We ended up in the same two-story model that my friend lived in, except we had a huge yard.
#2 – PAYSON, AZ
About eight years later we moved back to Mesa, Arizona, and bought a nice two-story home with plenty of room for our family. After another eight years, our youngest daughter moved out, making us officially empty-nesters. My wife thought we should look for a smaller house, maybe even something in an adult retirement community. I was really busy with my business and didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking around but not buying anything, so I agreed to look, with the condition that if we found something we liked, we would buy it. We looked at a few places in the Mesa area, but didn’t find anything we liked.
I had trained most of the employees at Pacific Scientific in south Chandler, and had stayed in touch with the president of the company after he retired to Payson, Arizona. He invited us to visit him in Payson, which is about an hour and a half drive northeast of Mesa. One Saturday we headed up to Payson, and immediately fell in love with the quaint western town, the beautiful ponderosa pine trees, the views of the Mogollon Rim, and the cooler weather at 5,280 feet elevation.
He had arranged for a realtor to show us a few houses. We were intending to downsize from our 3.500 square foot house in Mesa, and when the realtor showed us a small A-frame house tucked in a quiet neighborhood full of pine trees, we fell in love with it. In reality, it was not at all appropriate for us, particularly as I needed an office for my business. Our idea to put the office in the garage would not have worked.
The realtor could tell that was not a good house for us, and said if we could wait until the next day, and “go a little higher” on the price, there was a house he wanted to show us. We spent the night with our friends, and as the sun rose the next morning, I jogged over to the house the realtor was talking about. I knew the owners were our of town, so I walked around to the back of the house on the deck and was greeted with the most stupendous view imaginable. To the north, the Mogollon Rim rose 2,000 feet from the forest floor; to the east, Diamond Point lay under the rising sun; and to the southeast the boulders of the Granite Dells nestled among the pine trees. As I stood there admiring the amazing view, a javelina family went by, with the young javelinas playing in the dirt.
Later that morning we toured the house with the realtor. From the street it looked like a normal Payson home, but that was deceptive. It was built on a slope with a walkout basement in back, and it had three floors with a total of 5,000 square feet! On the one hand, we loved this house and I felt like God wanted us to live there. At the same time, I was reminding God that we had planned to downsize, and asking Him why on earth he would want us to buy such a large house.
The Rest of the Story
We moved in shortly before Christmas, and quickly began to discover the plans God had for us. The family two houses down the street was moving to Utah, but they had a problem. Ashley, their oldest daughter, was really smart, and was due to graduate from high school a year early. If she went to Utah, she would not be able to do that, and would have to repeat all the senior courses she had already completed. We met with the parents over their packing boxes, and the next day met Ashley at the Italian restaurant on her last day serving as hostess. A couple of days later they left for Utah, and then after Christmas Ashley’s mother brought her back and she moved in with us so she could complete her last semester and graduate as planned.
After Ashley left, a young teacher in a Bible Study group that met at our house needed a place to live, so he moved in with us, and he and his fiancé were later married in our living room. After he left, my mother, who lived in a retirement community outside Philadelphia, let us know she needed to move out of her home into the assisted living portion of the facility, but couldn’t find anything with a nice view. I told her we had one of the best views imaginable, so she moved in with us. We gave her our newly remodeled master bedroom we had not even slept in yet, while we moved into the basement.
I should have known that when God led us to that large home, He had a wonderful plan up His celestial sleeve that enabled us to help other people in need of a place to live.
#3 – TUCSON
Things eventually got pretty difficult in Payson. My wife was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer, and had to move to a small apartment in Mesa so she could receive weekly chemotherapy treatments. My mother’s Parkinson’s disease was getting worse, and I was traveling almost every week for my business, which meant I had to hire aids to help her. It gradually became obvious that my mother was going to need assisted living, so I started looking at what was available.
Payson had only two facilities, neither of which was appropriate for my mother, so I expanded my search to the greater Phoenix area. Over and over I visited facilities with a very impressive lobby, but then walked down dark, depressing hallways to look at small rooms with little cube refrigerators on the floor for elderly people who couldn’t bend over. After visiting close to twenty facilities, I was sharing my frustration with our daughter-in-law in Tucson, and she suggested that we see what was available in their area.
At the first facility we visited, I couldn’t even find the lobby. Then I realized all they had was an opening at one side of a large and very comfortable living room area. When we started our tour, we were led down wide, well-lit hallways with art work covering the walls. The rooms were actually suites, with a small living room, kitchen (with a regular small fridge), den, bedroom and bathroom, plus a small guest bathroom. On top of all that, it was the least expensive place we had visited, and they told us that for the next three days they were offering a reduced price that would save us $300 per month.
There was no question that was the place for my mother, and we moved her in over Thanksgiving a few weeks later. Every time we talked with my mother, she would thank us for finding her such a wonderful home to spend her last days. We wanted to be close to her so we could visit regularly and keep an eye on how she was doing, so we started to look for a house in Tucson, but couldn’t find anything even close to suitable. Finally, we were shown a house we really liked, but there was lots of traffic noise twice a day during rush hour, the yard didn’t have a wall for our little dog, and someone could build a house on a small lot right behind this house.
My wife found another house she liked on the internet, and sent the link to our realtor. He called back and told us it was identical to the house we had liked, constructed by the same builder, except it was on a large lot in a very quiet area. It was almost like God said, “OK, now I see what you want—here it is!”, but of course He knew all along. As an added bonus, the Tucson Mountains were to the west of us, with lots of animals and saguaros, but hardly any people. I loved exploring this amazing area, praising God and thanking Him for the wonderful gifts He gives us.
#4 – NORTH SCOTTSDALE
My mother continued to enjoy her assisted living home, and we often joined her for dinner in the dining room, which allowed us to meet some of her interesting neighbors. Three years later she experienced a very peaceful death surrounded by family. The majority of our children lived in the Phoenix area, and my wife was frequently driving two hours each way to visit and help with our grandkids, so she asked if we could move back to Phoenix.
I prayed about it and got the go-ahead from God, so we started looking at houses in or near North Scottsdale, which would be a central location for visiting our children. Once again, we looked at a lot of houses, but couldn’t find anything appropriate for us. We were wasting so much time looking at houses we would never buy that we started “speed dating”—taking a quick look at a house, and if it didn’t immediately appeal to us, we moved on without doing a full tour.
One day I was looking at Google maps on my computer to see if there was anywhere else we could look, and I noticed an area in far north Scottsdale called Boulder Heights. A little research showed that the elevation there was 1,400 feet higher than Phoenix, which meant it would be considerably cooler. I put my finger lightly on the computer screen right over the “B” in Boulder Heights, and said to God, “If I had my druthers, that is where I would like to live.”
A short time later, my wife found a home under construction that looked interesting. I looked up the location, and it was literally right under the “B” in Boulder Heights on Google Maps! We moved in as soon as it was completed.
#5 – NORTH PHOENIX CONDO
We were thinking our home in North Scottsdale would be our “forever home”, or that we would live there for at least ten years or so, at which point we might move into a condo closer to town. My wife continued to look at condos and talk about possibly downsizing, but I was always firm that we should wait a few more years. However, after we had lived there four years, I got a clear sense from God that the time had come to move into a condo. We started looking, and as usual didn’t find anything we liked right away. Most of the condo complexes were made up of large rectangular buildings that looked more like an apartment complex—and some of them were converted apartment buildings. I also really wanted to have stairs to help stay in shape now that we were in our late 60’s, and all the condos we saw were on one floor.
When our realtor wanted to show us something in an area called Desert Ridge, I was not hopeful, because there always seemed to be a lot of traffic congestion in that area. However, the condo complex was located in a quiet neighborhood a mile west of the congestion. The complex was still under construction, and had a very unique design, almost like a European village. As we were being shown units that would be available in our time frame, we discovered that one of the salesmen had put a deposit down on what he considered the best unit in the complex, but his plans had changed, so that unit had just become available. It was a three-story home, with the garage and laundry room on the ground floor, the main living area on the second floor, and a loft with a full bath on the third floor. Best of all, it had a nice view to the north away from the complex, with lots of beautiful trees.
This unit was perfect for us, with everything we needed (including two flights of stairs!), but no wasted space. With nobody living above or below us, it was very quiet, and after we moved in, I discovered a unique tree-lined walking path along a wash only a five-minute walk from our home. It is such a blessing to be able to see so many rabbits and quail, and even the occasional coyote or bobcat, while walking in a metropolitan area. Once again, God had given us “the desires of our hearts”.
It is common to feel that most of our issues and problems are too small for God to be concerned about, but God tells us that He even knows how many hairs we have on our head and He is concerned when a sparrow dies, so there is no part of our life too small or insignificant for God to care and be involved—if we let Him! Those who put every aspect of their lives in God’s hands often experience not just a simple answer to their prayers, but the extravagant work of a Father who loves to amaze His children with His love for them. As I grew in my faith as a Christian, I gradually learned to turn to God and trust Him in all situations large and small, and this includes our many moves.
#1 – DALLAS. TX
“Why Can’t We Have a House Like That?”
As a result of another wonderful present from God (see What Is God Up To?), we were moving from Tucson, Arizona, to Dallas, Texas. I had gone ahead to Dallas to start my new job and look for a place for us to live, while my wife got ready for the move back in Tucson. I found one house in Dallas I thought we could qualify for, but I wasn’t excited about it because the small backyard sloped fairly steeply to rear, so any balls our kids were playing with would quickly end up against the fence.
Encouraged to Lie
I started the purchase process, and soon discovered we didn’t have quite enough income to qualify because our house in Tucson had not sold yet. The mortgage agent asked me things like:
“Can’t you get a letter that says the house in Tucson has been rented?”
“Can’t you get a letter that says the bonus you received at your new job is an annual bonus?”
Basically, he was telling me to lie so I could qualify for the mortgage. I had recently learned about how all Christians are priests, prophets and kings, and how important it was to follow the “King’s Way”—the way of truth and integrity. I was uncomfortable with what the mortgage agent had asked me to do, and a couple of days later at work it hit me that this was not the King’s Way! I even remember exactly where I was, standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator.
The King’s Way
With tears in my eyes, I called the mortgage agent and told him that the house was not rented and the bonus was not annual, knowing that meant we would not qualify for that or any other house, and would have to rent an apartment until we sold the house in Tucson and saved enough money to buy a house in Dallas. Since we had nine children, this was going to be quite a challenge. I finally found a small apartment not too far from work. To fit everyone in, we had kids sleeping in the master bedroom, and more kids sleeping in the master bedroom closet. My wife and I slept in the second bedroom. It was quite a challenge cooking for our large family in the tiny kitchen, but we made it work.
Ask And You Shall Receive
One of my friends at work had a nice house for his family. It was nothing fancy—just a two-story rectangular home, but it had plenty of bedrooms, a large kitchen and living room, and a nice yard. I remember asking God if we could have a house like that. Six months later we had sold our house in Tucson and saved enough money for a down payment, so we started to look for a house and God answered my prayer—literally! We ended up in the same two-story model that my friend lived in, except we had a huge yard.
#2 – PAYSON, AZ
About eight years later we moved back to Mesa, Arizona, and bought a nice two-story home with plenty of room for our family. After another eight years, our youngest daughter moved out, making us officially empty-nesters. My wife thought we should look for a smaller house, maybe even something in an adult retirement community. I was really busy with my business and didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking around but not buying anything, so I agreed to look, with the condition that if we found something we liked, we would buy it. We looked at a few places in the Mesa area, but didn’t find anything we liked.
I had trained most of the employees at Pacific Scientific in south Chandler, and had stayed in touch with the president of the company after he retired to Payson, Arizona. He invited us to visit him in Payson, which is about an hour and a half drive northeast of Mesa. One Saturday we headed up to Payson, and immediately fell in love with the quaint western town, the beautiful ponderosa pine trees, the views of the Mogollon Rim, and the cooler weather at 5,280 feet elevation.
He had arranged for a realtor to show us a few houses. We were intending to downsize from our 3.500 square foot house in Mesa, and when the realtor showed us a small A-frame house tucked in a quiet neighborhood full of pine trees, we fell in love with it. In reality, it was not at all appropriate for us, particularly as I needed an office for my business. Our idea to put the office in the garage would not have worked.
The realtor could tell that was not a good house for us, and said if we could wait until the next day, and “go a little higher” on the price, there was a house he wanted to show us. We spent the night with our friends, and as the sun rose the next morning, I jogged over to the house the realtor was talking about. I knew the owners were our of town, so I walked around to the back of the house on the deck and was greeted with the most stupendous view imaginable. To the north, the Mogollon Rim rose 2,000 feet from the forest floor; to the east, Diamond Point lay under the rising sun; and to the southeast the boulders of the Granite Dells nestled among the pine trees. As I stood there admiring the amazing view, a javelina family went by, with the young javelinas playing in the dirt.
Later that morning we toured the house with the realtor. From the street it looked like a normal Payson home, but that was deceptive. It was built on a slope with a walkout basement in back, and it had three floors with a total of 5,000 square feet! On the one hand, we loved this house and I felt like God wanted us to live there. At the same time, I was reminding God that we had planned to downsize, and asking Him why on earth he would want us to buy such a large house.
The Rest of the Story
We moved in shortly before Christmas, and quickly began to discover the plans God had for us. The family two houses down the street was moving to Utah, but they had a problem. Ashley, their oldest daughter, was really smart, and was due to graduate from high school a year early. If she went to Utah, she would not be able to do that, and would have to repeat all the senior courses she had already completed. We met with the parents over their packing boxes, and the next day met Ashley at the Italian restaurant on her last day serving as hostess. A couple of days later they left for Utah, and then after Christmas Ashley’s mother brought her back and she moved in with us so she could complete her last semester and graduate as planned.
After Ashley left, a young teacher in a Bible Study group that met at our house needed a place to live, so he moved in with us, and he and his fiancé were later married in our living room. After he left, my mother, who lived in a retirement community outside Philadelphia, let us know she needed to move out of her home into the assisted living portion of the facility, but couldn’t find anything with a nice view. I told her we had one of the best views imaginable, so she moved in with us. We gave her our newly remodeled master bedroom we had not even slept in yet, while we moved into the basement.
I should have known that when God led us to that large home, He had a wonderful plan up His celestial sleeve that enabled us to help other people in need of a place to live.
#3 – TUCSON
Things eventually got pretty difficult in Payson. My wife was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer, and had to move to a small apartment in Mesa so she could receive weekly chemotherapy treatments. My mother’s Parkinson’s disease was getting worse, and I was traveling almost every week for my business, which meant I had to hire aids to help her. It gradually became obvious that my mother was going to need assisted living, so I started looking at what was available.
Payson had only two facilities, neither of which was appropriate for my mother, so I expanded my search to the greater Phoenix area. Over and over I visited facilities with a very impressive lobby, but then walked down dark, depressing hallways to look at small rooms with little cube refrigerators on the floor for elderly people who couldn’t bend over. After visiting close to twenty facilities, I was sharing my frustration with our daughter-in-law in Tucson, and she suggested that we see what was available in their area.
At the first facility we visited, I couldn’t even find the lobby. Then I realized all they had was an opening at one side of a large and very comfortable living room area. When we started our tour, we were led down wide, well-lit hallways with art work covering the walls. The rooms were actually suites, with a small living room, kitchen (with a regular small fridge), den, bedroom and bathroom, plus a small guest bathroom. On top of all that, it was the least expensive place we had visited, and they told us that for the next three days they were offering a reduced price that would save us $300 per month.
There was no question that was the place for my mother, and we moved her in over Thanksgiving a few weeks later. Every time we talked with my mother, she would thank us for finding her such a wonderful home to spend her last days. We wanted to be close to her so we could visit regularly and keep an eye on how she was doing, so we started to look for a house in Tucson, but couldn’t find anything even close to suitable. Finally, we were shown a house we really liked, but there was lots of traffic noise twice a day during rush hour, the yard didn’t have a wall for our little dog, and someone could build a house on a small lot right behind this house.
My wife found another house she liked on the internet, and sent the link to our realtor. He called back and told us it was identical to the house we had liked, constructed by the same builder, except it was on a large lot in a very quiet area. It was almost like God said, “OK, now I see what you want—here it is!”, but of course He knew all along. As an added bonus, the Tucson Mountains were to the west of us, with lots of animals and saguaros, but hardly any people. I loved exploring this amazing area, praising God and thanking Him for the wonderful gifts He gives us.
#4 – NORTH SCOTTSDALE
My mother continued to enjoy her assisted living home, and we often joined her for dinner in the dining room, which allowed us to meet some of her interesting neighbors. Three years later she experienced a very peaceful death surrounded by family. The majority of our children lived in the Phoenix area, and my wife was frequently driving two hours each way to visit and help with our grandkids, so she asked if we could move back to Phoenix.
I prayed about it and got the go-ahead from God, so we started looking at houses in or near North Scottsdale, which would be a central location for visiting our children. Once again, we looked at a lot of houses, but couldn’t find anything appropriate for us. We were wasting so much time looking at houses we would never buy that we started “speed dating”—taking a quick look at a house, and if it didn’t immediately appeal to us, we moved on without doing a full tour.
One day I was looking at Google maps on my computer to see if there was anywhere else we could look, and I noticed an area in far north Scottsdale called Boulder Heights. A little research showed that the elevation there was 1,400 feet higher than Phoenix, which meant it would be considerably cooler. I put my finger lightly on the computer screen right over the “B” in Boulder Heights, and said to God, “If I had my druthers, that is where I would like to live.”
A short time later, my wife found a home under construction that looked interesting. I looked up the location, and it was literally right under the “B” in Boulder Heights on Google Maps! We moved in as soon as it was completed.
#5 – NORTH PHOENIX CONDO
We were thinking our home in North Scottsdale would be our “forever home”, or that we would live there for at least ten years or so, at which point we might move into a condo closer to town. My wife continued to look at condos and talk about possibly downsizing, but I was always firm that we should wait a few more years. However, after we had lived there four years, I got a clear sense from God that the time had come to move into a condo. We started looking, and as usual didn’t find anything we liked right away. Most of the condo complexes were made up of large rectangular buildings that looked more like an apartment complex—and some of them were converted apartment buildings. I also really wanted to have stairs to help stay in shape now that we were in our late 60’s, and all the condos we saw were on one floor.
When our realtor wanted to show us something in an area called Desert Ridge, I was not hopeful, because there always seemed to be a lot of traffic congestion in that area. However, the condo complex was located in a quiet neighborhood a mile west of the congestion. The complex was still under construction, and had a very unique design, almost like a European village. As we were being shown units that would be available in our time frame, we discovered that one of the salesmen had put a deposit down on what he considered the best unit in the complex, but his plans had changed, so that unit had just become available. It was a three-story home, with the garage and laundry room on the ground floor, the main living area on the second floor, and a loft with a full bath on the third floor. Best of all, it had a nice view to the north away from the complex, with lots of beautiful trees.
This unit was perfect for us, with everything we needed (including two flights of stairs!), but no wasted space. With nobody living above or below us, it was very quiet, and after we moved in, I discovered a unique tree-lined walking path along a wash only a five-minute walk from our home. It is such a blessing to be able to see so many rabbits and quail, and even the occasional coyote or bobcat, while walking in a metropolitan area. Once again, God had given us “the desires of our hearts”.