When you have to work with secular projects and secular people, you must have a very solid spiritual focus otherwise you can be drawn off by their thinking and you can be overwhelmed and burdened by their way of going about these projects.
I like to set my focus on that which I believe God has shown me and keep it before me until the project is ended.
Example:
This concerns the house in Lubbock, Texas, where I lived before moving to Colorado. The ministry owns this house and the house has been put up for-sale.
We wanted to change realtors. Pam Padgett (our church group) and I had no thought of how to go about this. (We live in Colorado and the house is 450-miles away in Texas.) Of course, we prayed, but still had no thought of how to make this change. We just sat there without speaking.
Before long, the phone rang. It was Tom, in Texas, who built that house. He said he wanted to help us find a new realtor. He talked with another builder of high-end properties in Lubbock, Texas, and as a result he thought he had found a realtor. He wanted to first meet with that realtor at the property to see if the realtor really liked the house.
We were delighted.
This gave me such faith in God, for I felt this was God's way for us to decide on a new realtor and I saw the following scripture coming to pass in that which had just happened.
Philippians 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
After prayer, if you don't know what to do, don't do anything!
As you see, the plan was not given by God to either Pam or myself. God involved Tom, our contractor who built the house 19-years ago. Tom has been given an heart toward the project. We did not ask Tom to help us. We did tell him we wanted to change realtors and as soon as he saw our email, he called us, wanting to help. (There is no money involved for Tom. He just has an heart toward us and the house.)
We should, by this, see God working in this to help us though we did not know what to do.
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Before we signed a realty contract, the prospective new realtor mentioned the idea of "staging" the main area of the house.
A professional would come in and set up furniture and hang pictures.
I did not have peace about this.
- I doubted that the furniture level and pictures would be the level in quality of the teakwood parquet flooring in that area, for the flooring is very elegant.
- The hanging of pictures would later require repair to the walls.
- I felt the buyer of the house would be a creative person and could visualize the use of the open space.
- I felt the price of staging would be an unnecessary expense to us and would probably be exorbitant. (It turned out to be approximately $10,000 for 6 months ... We declined!)
The realtor was willing to work with us even without "staging" so we signed with this company.
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A few days ago, God gave Pam a scripture pertaining to this house and the selling of this house.
Isaiah 46:9-11 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like ME,
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, MY counsel shall stand, and I will do all MY pleasure:
(God had even told me I would never see this house again ... To me, this clearly shows us it is the will of God for this house to sell. God will do it!)
Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.
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We cannot afford to allow ourselves to be pulled off track by human ideas which won't work. We have been given by God that which will work!
We must keep our mind on these scriptures which have been given to us by God by The Holy Spirit.
We set our focus on that which God has shown us and refused to be pulled off the highway set before us by God.
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Whatever you are dealing with in this life, you must set your focus this way, upon that which you believe God has said to you and keep your mind on that, refusing to dwell on contrary ideas.
We measure the wisdom from God as follows:
James 3:17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
By declining the "staging" plan, we have kept the plan in the wisdom of God: easy to be intreated
The new realtor has dealt with us in a straightforward way which is "without hypocrisy."
(In making this change, we considered another realtor but hypocrisy surfaced concerning pricing the house and we could not go along with that so we set that realtor aside and did not sign a contract with him.)
(In making this change, we considered another realtor but hypocrisy surfaced concerning pricing the house and we could not go along with that so we set that realtor aside and did not sign a contract with him.)
In such situations, you can think, "But if we don't sign with him, what will we do? We have no one else!"
But you cannot go against the wisdom that is from God. If you go against these principles, you will destroy yourself. Even if you seem to lose all, you must hold fast to the principles of God.
As you see, when we made the decision not to sign with the other realtor, God had HIS way of getting us to a realtor.
Sometimes these things are tests.
Sometimes these things are tests.
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