Change of Plans?

         Ok, so the moving to South Carolina/Georgia thing didn't really work out to be able to go to Bible college.  Through a series of a bunch of failed tries to "make" our way down there, nothing turned out. I personally believe that God allowed us to go all the way down to Hephzibah, GA to look at what we "thought" and were told was going to be a nice place to live only to find out that it was an ENORMOUS "dump" was because He was trying to tell us why we should wait and make sure that something is His will AND timing first before starting off to do it.  Now when I say dump, I mean it was completely trashed with mounds of garbage taller than I am all over the place and to top it all off, the job we were counting on wound up not being available until the beginning of next year anyway, which would have been way too late to start saving for Bible college.
          When my husband and I were getting right with God back in April, he knew that God wanted him to get back into the ministry as a pastor, youth pastor, or some kind of preacher like that in a church somewhere.  The main problem was that my husband felt as if nobody would want to hire him because although he has training in these fields and knows how to do things, hardly anyone will believe that without it all written down on paper (a Bible college degree).  So God told him if that's what he needed to overcome the obstacle of following Him, then that's what he needed to do first.

       Well, right after all the things were messing up with moving for Bible college such as not being able to find a single house to move into or a job to support it, my husband found an opportunity to work down at a church in Arkansas without any Bible college degree necessary. So far, everything is working out in all the areas of job, home, etc that weren't working out before with the move down towards Georgia.  We both know without a shadow of a doubt that this is what God wants us to do to follow Him through His opened doors and because of His closed ones.
       Make sure that you are able to spiritually discern the opening and closing of a door from God and Satan's opposition though.  Just because there are obstacles in your way doesn't always mean that God is closing that door or opportunity in your life, but sometimes it does. You have to keep a close walk with Him, stay in His Word, talk to Him regularly, and stay in church to be able to have the wisdom necessary to discern those things that are God opening and/or closing a door or just Satan trying to trick you into something away from God's will. Always trust and follow God, and He will take you where He wants you to be in the end, and you will find out that His will and way were much better than anything you had ever dreamed of or imagined before anyway.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I've been so busy over the last few weeks that I haven't really had time to sit down at a computer and actually think of a blog post to write at all really.  We're in the process of moving from North Carolina to South Carolina or Georgia depending on where we can actually find a house worth living in at.  And I know some of our family has helped us and have been way more busy than we have, and I'm not trying to complain about that, but needless to say, blogging has not necessarily been on the top of my agenda.
In the process of trying to move all my stuff and figure out where to put it all I have one tip for all of you out there whether you are planning on moving away in the future or plan on staying where you are until you die or Jesus returns because either one is fine with you.  That is this: Don't be a pack rat or try to save everything! Throughout our lives people give us things that are special to us or we acquire more furniture than we need or have way too many dishes that we don't use.  It's just too much of a hassle to try to keep everything and just let it pile up and accumulate around the place and then you wonder where all your living space went or if you are moving you have more than you can handle with trying to go through everything and pack it all up too.
When we moved into the house in Timberlake, NC that we just moved out of, we pretty much had an entire room of our house designated to boxes full of random items that we either didn't know where to put them at or we didn't even know what they were.  Most of that stuff was thrown away because it was trash in the first place, but you should probably come up with a general rule of a "time limit clause" or something like that for majority of the items in your home.  I'm not necessarily talking about sentimental items or stuff that family gave or made you that is special and important, I'm talking about the stuff that sits around our homes that we let do just that - SIT.  We never touch it, use it, move it (unless it's rearranged from one side of the room to another), or even need it for months and months at a time or even over a year.  I'm "preaching" at myself when I say that we all should probably have a 3-6 month rule that if we don't even use it in that time period than it means we don't really need it and it is safe to donate it to a thrift store somewhere or just throw it away.
Following that principle would have saved me and my family a lot of work and lost sleep had I done that or thought of that before now so this is just a suggestion of something you might want to implement in your lives to help you not have so much unwanted, un-needed items just taking up space - never to be used again.