If God is your father, that means He is your provider. That’s gonna look a little different for each person, but it will always involve an exciting adventure with Him.
Here’s what that looks like in my life.
I live in an old house.
That means things fall apart, and you need money and skill to fix them. I have neither.
So I came up with this idea. Why not tear this house down, build a bigger, better house, rent most of it out, live in some of it, and let my tenants pay for the cost of all that?
Great idea, but you can’t exactly go up to a construction company and say, “Build me a castle, and I hope to pay you some day.” You need money up front.
I was explaining all this to God and a couple friends. Then my friend Brett said to me, “Just do it. Other people have money.” And God seemed to say, “Stop dreaming and start doing.”
Okay. I met with an architect. I thought he would tell me I was crazy, but he didn’t. We met with a builder. Then we found a real estate investment consultant. And we found a couple of investors. Then, instead of tearing down my house, we decided to buy this million dollar property, tear it down, and build a $30 million property in its place.
Keep in mind, I have no money. None at all.
We bought the property. The redevelopment plan didn’t go through, so we sold it for a modest profit to another developer. I walked away with cash in my pocket. Not millions. Not peanuts. But a tidy sum. Not enough to restore our old house or buy a new one. But enough to help.
We were afraid to sell our house because we thought with our income we’d never get a mortgage on a new one. But then the decision was made for us. Our homeowner’s insurance company stopped insuring homes, so we needed to find a new insurance company. No one would touch our home. The roof was too old, they said.
Replacing a steep roof on an old Victorian two-story house with a hundred years of roofing layers on it; let’s just say that’s not cheap. No way could we afford it. (This was before we sold the investment property.) So we had to sell.
Then Kim came up with this great idea: Let’s sell our home, and see if we can rent it back from the new owner for a while so we can look for something else.
We sold the house, and made a little bit of money on that.
Not enough to buy a new home outright, but maybe we could buy some land out in the middle of nowhere and put a trailer on it, and live in that until we got enough money to build something.
So we found land we loved. Five acres. Wooded. Beautiful. Secluded. Cheap. Almost bought it, but the deal fell through.
Somewhere in there, we met with a lender. “Hey,” he said. “Your credit is good. We can loan you something.” Not a mint, but something.
So we started our search. Land with a little cottage on it that could add on to or build new on later.
After several months of searching, we found a two-bedroom two-bath house a half hour north of Deforest on 1.6 acres of land. The house was built in 2016. Everything is new. We made an offer; it got accepted, and Lord-willing, we close on March 29.
For us, what God provided is perfect for this season in our lives.
God is your provider. Whatever that adventure looks like for you, enjoy it with Him!
A note about the image: This Flickr image was supplied as a Creative Commons image by pellethepoet. The original image, Bird Nurseries was by Mary Baker (1936) and was published by Jewson, London as a postcard. According to pellethepoet, “The silhouette artist Mary Baker (1897-?) was the sister of children’s book author Margaret Baker (1890-?). They collaborated on many books published from the 1920s to the 1940s.” Based on this information, I believe the original illustration is probably in the public domain, but I could be mistaken.
