Moving With God (again!)

Toni sent out a note to family earlier this week in the hope that several family members can help us move. If anyone reading this blog would like to come alongside and help us with this move, we'd love to see you.

Our official moving day (for the furniture) is Saturday, October 1, but there will be boxes and bins that we'll move on other days before that. We'll also be ripping up carpet, installing an egress window and doing a bunch of other things beginning when we get possession of 1479 Millwood in Roseville on September 15. We're hoping to get the lower level ready for renters by sometime in October. There is a lot to do!

This will be our 10th or 11th move since we were married in 1986. The plan is to stay at the new place in Roseville until we can't live on our own. I'm planning on living to and beyond 100 years old so it will hopefully be a very long time until the Lord calls us to move again.

Yes, the Lord. God is involved with this move. He's guiding it. He's being its superintendent. I have a sense for how He's doing that, and I can remember some moments and times of decision that He has led.

I say this with some boldness, even though I can't prove it--not to you--not even to myself. 

Back in early August I read something written by Oswald Chambers relating to conversation Jesus is had with his hand-picked inner circle of followers not too long before Jesus' death and resurrection. He said "Everything that is written by the prophets" about him was going about to come true.

"He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again" (Luke 18:32-33).

The part O.C. focuses on is the following verse

"The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about."

Just as the disciples could not understand just what Jesus was saying in that case, so it's true that we cannot fully grasp the purposes of God for our lives. O.C. doesn't conclude, as others might, that this inability to comprehend just why and how God is leading us means we should give up on knowing God's purpose. Instead, O.C. sees a spiritual principle in this. He writes:

The call of God can never be understood absolutely or explained externally; it is a call that can only be perceived and understood internally by our true inner-nature. The call of God is like the call of the sea—no one hears it except the person who has the nature of the sea in him.

O.C. is speaking here about the work of the Holy Spirit. God works in our minds and in the circumstances of our lives, leading us, guiding us, giving us direction. Though there will always be a certain mystery and fallibility to hearing and understanding God's "voice," we can know enough to make decisions that honor and obey what he says.

I have seen God's hand leading me (and us) to make this move. I can describe many of the signs that have pointed to this conclusion. In the end, though, I won't be able to share all of it -- not on this blog and not even in person if we sat down to talk awhile. I would love to talk with you more about it, though, because I believe that as we share what God is doing in our lives, we can become more open to God's leading each time He calls.

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