what's in a name?

The title of our blog “selling everything to buy a field” comes from the scripture about a man finding a treasure in a field. With joy he sells all that he has to go buy the field. To everyone looking on, it seems crazy. But the man knows what he has found. He knows what he will gain. He is not giving up anything. He sells everything with joy to buy it. That story is about the kingdom of God. It is a story about salvation, restoration, joy in the presence of our Creator God. It’s about discovering an all-satisfying Treasure that makes everything else in this world pale in comparison.

It parallels our real life, as we have sold almost everything to follow Him. We began a new journey a little over a year ago. God began to work in our hearts convicting us of our self-centeredness. We were pursuing the American dream. The culture we live in tells us, "You deserve it. Go buy that big screen t.v. or that nice new car. The one you have now looks old. It is not a good reflection of who you are." We bought into it. We were amassing our little pile of stuff. We were catering to our comforts. Meanwhile billions (that's with a "b") are dying without Christ. Our eyes were opened by a book called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream by David Platt. We were living for ourselves and ignoring the needs around us. God began moving in our hearts to stop wasting our lives and seek Him first. It was like God said, "Am I not enough? Do you really have to fill your lives with this stuff when you could have Me?"

<< insert much wrestling with God at this point >>

Kellee and I both came to the place where we said, "God, if you are all I have, that IS enough." God continued to pull and tug on our hearts, and the short version of that is, we started to apply with a prominent Bible translation organization. We were immediately stopped (and by "immediately" I mean, you can't even apply) because we had debt. God put us to the test. Did we mean it when we said He was enough? We began to aggressively payoff debt by selling all that stuff we had piled up. And by "all,' I mean all. Our house sits virtually empty. With God's help we paid off our debts by March of this year and have now completed our part of the application process. Currently, we are waiting to hear about our acceptance as members. I can honestly say we have not missed anything. We met some great people in the process and got to tell them about our real Treasure. The journey has been a joyful one.


Now we're looking toward another field...

Maybe this one???