{"id":3638,"date":"2013-06-14T02:21:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T02:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3638"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","slug":"house-for-sale-lesson-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3638","title":{"rendered":"House for Sale – Lesson #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[I’ve been working on this\u00a0topic for a couple of days off and on and finally came to the realization that it will be much too long for a single post, so I need to break it up.\u00a0 The danger for me always is: will I come back to it and finish my thoughts?\u00a0 I believe I will – because God has taught me so much through this whole process.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

Once again our house is empty and “up for grabs” – ready to sell or\u00a0rent … or rent to own.Over two years have passed since we first put our house on the market.\u00a0 Early in 2011, after deciding that God was calling us to Haiti, we spent several months\u00a0fixing up the place.\u00a0 We\u00a0even dealt with all those inconveniences that we had lived with for years but\u00a0that we figured might be off putting\u00a0to a prospective buyer – a\u00a0missing outlet plate here, a \u00a0scuffed wall there, a sticky closet door here.\u00a0 Overall, the house was in darn good shape; we had put a lot of sweat equity into it over the five years we had been living there.\u00a0 Every wall had been painted, every light fixture updated, and every square foot of wood flooring sanded and refinished.\u00a0 Likewise, on the outside: the dingy gray was gone and replaced with a beautiful “Ocean Foam” … or something.\u00a0 Even the kids’ play structure in the backyard had gotten a face lift.By March of 2011, we were ready to put the house on the market: for sale by owner.\u00a0 We scheduled an Open House on either end of our spring break week and advertised it in the local paper.\u00a0 By that point, though, the bottom had dropped out of the housing market, drying up every last bit of our sweat equity – and then some!Still, we reasoned, God wanted us to go to the mission field, so He would sell our house.\u00a0 When the Sunday of our first Open House arrived, we put the finishing touches in place, sent our four kids off to play with friends for the afternoon and eagerly awaited our first visitors.\u00a0 Sitting on the couch in the living room beside the picture window at the front of the house would afford us a perfect view of approaching strangers, giving us plenty of time to jump up, rush to the front door, greet them and show them around the house.That couch was where I fell asleep … and enjoyed a nap completely uninterrupted by the doorbell.\u00a0 Our second Open House a week later brought in one solitary couple –\u00a0those two\u00a0wandered through the house for 3 minutes and then disappeared without so much as a smile.Melissa and I were crushed.\u00a0 It wasn’t just that crowds of potential buyers hadn’t shown up … Where was God?\u00a0 Why didn’t HE show up? Was this a sign?\u00a0 How was I going to have a neat and tidy miraculous house sale story to share with others if God wasn’t going to cooperate:\u00a0\u00a0 “We put the ‘Open House’ sign up and fifteen minutes later a couple walked in and offered cash – $10,000 over our asking price!\u00a0 We serve a mighty God!”\u00a0<\/em>This was the first of several gut-level lessons God would teach us through this house. (I’m talking about “gut knowledge” beyond just “head knowledge” here!)Lesson #1: Just because\u00a0I believe I am\u00a0following God’s will, doesn’t mean the path is going to be easy and paved with miracles.\u00a0 Now this might strike you as obvious … and it IS obvious and I already knew this in my head, but my gut was holding onto the belief that because God was calling us to work in Haiti, He was bound to\u00a0expedite our transition.\u00a0 I say it is\u00a0obvious that being in the center of God’s will does not equal smooth sailing because anybody\u00a0can open the Bible to just about any random passage and find proof right there in God’s word.\u00a0Case in point: Take a good look at the Apostle Paul’s experience once he got launched\u00a0onto the mission field.\u00a0 His missionary life was filled with tales of prison time, a couple of attempted murders, beatings and shipwrecks.\u00a0\u00a0But even though we “know” that neither success nor failure is directly correlated\u00a0with the quality of our relationship with God, how quick we are still to\u00a0judge others and to\u00a0evaluate our own standing with the Lord based on the positive or negative circumstances of our lives.\u00a0\u00a0We forget that even what others might mean for evil, God can use for our good – even though it still looks very much like “bad” right now.\u00a0 And we forget that the man who has to build more barns to store all his harvest may die tomorrow and lose it all\u00a0… and face judgment before God’s throne.\u00a0 Truth is, at least part of me wanted that miraculous house sale to prove to myself and others that God really was calling us to Haiti.\u00a0 The last chapter of Acts is so instructional regarding this in-grained attitude we carry with us regarding hardship as being equivalent to God’s disapproval and blessings being God’s thumbs up:\u00a0 The Apostle Paul and many others are caught in a storm at sea and their ship breaks apart just off the coast of Malta.\u00a0 All the victims survive and are cared for by the natives.\u00a0 Paul goes to help build a fire as they are drying off and a snake latches onto his arm.\u00a0 Acts 28:4 records the reaction of the islanders: When the natives [fn] saw the creature hanging from his hand, they began saying to one another, “Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, and though he has been saved from the sea, justice [fn]<\/span> has not allowed him to live.”\u00a0 BUT when Paul fails to keel over and die in the coming minutes, the people “changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.”<\/span>\u00a0They were wrong on both counts!\u00a0 The only thing the incident truly proved was that God was sovereign over all circumstances and His will was taking precedent – even over snake venom.\u00a0 So\u00a0back to our real estate situation:\u00a0the house is again up for sale and I am now more inclined to pray “Thy will be done” than to request a quick and easy sale.\u00a0 I can honestly say I am more interested in a resolution that brings glory to God than one that just simplifies\u00a0our life and finances.\u00a0 If they happen to be one in the same, then yahoo!\u00a0 Maybe in my next post I can tell you a bit about how God has put the house to good use over the last two years – in ways that would not have been possible if our Open Houses had been “successful”.\u00a0Prayer Request: Even as I finished writing this post tonight, I received a call from a stranger requesting a showing of the house tomorrow morning at 10.\u00a0 Currently though,\u00a0first dibs on the house\u00a0belong to a new friend\/sister in Christ who used to live in that neighborhood and would like to return.\u00a0 She is working on figuring out finances with the bank.\u00a0 I simply ask you to pray with us that God’s will be done.\u00a0 Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[I’ve been working on this\u00a0topic for a couple of days off and on and finally came to the realization that it will be much too long for a single post, so I need to break it up.\u00a0 The danger for me always is: will I come back to it and finish my thoughts?\u00a0 I believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3640,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions\/3640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}