Chapter 6: The Promised Land (Part 2)

In the first part of this latest chapter blogging our various faith journeys over the years, I shared about the promises God made to me after I'd finished university, and particularly His promise to give me a house. I wrote about the miraculous house deposit we received which seemed to confirm God's promise, but how God then immediately led Melissa and I to surrender this deposit back to Him, meaning in the space of a few months our house deposit became our day-to-day income. Thankfully, the story ended with another miracle, where a couple of incredibly over-optimistic house viewings brought about an end to a desperately uncomfortable season of living off our house deposit. We found ourselves ushered into a new season where we once again felt God's assurance that He had not forgotten His promise to us and that He was still committed to giving us a house.

A New Hope

That was back in July 2020. While God not only protected but actually increased our deposit in the months that followed, it was only a year later, when we began working as worship pastors at Greyfriars Church, that we were in a position to even consider buying. However, despite having a proper job, we were sharing one salary, and our supplementary self-employed income from music and teaching was minimal - any hopes of getting a decent mortgage at that point were fanciful at best. We also weren't sure what we were looking for, and having spent the last few years travelling, we still had no real sense of how long we'd be in Reading for.

So, we waited. And waited, like the good Christians we were. A few years went by, and nothing significant had changed. All thoughts of buying houses had been very much pushed to the back of the drawer to gather dust. That is, until April 24, when my Grandad sadly passed away, just a few days before our Army Rising live recording. In the months that followed we learnt that we would be receiving a substantial inheritance from his estate (and incredibly, even Keziah, who was in Melissa's womb and still six months away from being born, would also be receiving a small share). Though we would never have dreamed or wished for circumstances like these, it felt as though God was breathing new life on His promise to give us a house.

From a human point of view (which is rarely a good way to start a sentence), it felt as though everything was pointing towards the fact that we should start house-hunting soon. An inheritance was inbound, we were settled in Reading and in our jobs, we were outgrowing our small flat, and it seemed to us that climbing aboard the property ladder could surely never not be a sensible idea. It felt like we were driving in a car and the sat-nav had just brought us onto a smooth, straight road that stretched for miles into the distance with no end in sight. Unfortunately for us, as we came to realise, we were not going to be on that road for very long.

The God of Spanners

This is where things started getting complicated - a sentence I realise could probably apply to a lot of the adventures I've written about. The first complication we ran into was that when we took time to look at houses online, we realised that a) we still had very little idea what we wanted and b) the kind of things we knew we did want were decidedly out of our price bracket. The second complication, as those of you who are familiar with our story will know, was that God, in His annoyingly inconvenient timing, had decided that this was the right moment to throw the spanner of all spanners into the works and start speaking to us about something else - quitting our jobs.

We spent a lot of time praying in the months that followed, and by the start of 2025 we were in a very uncomfortable place. We were now convinced beyond all doubt that God was calling us to leave Greyfriars after the summer, yet we'd still not received any of the inheritance, which meant that even if we wanted to buy a house before we left we wouldn't be able to. May came, and all we had received was a strong word from the Holy Spirit telling us to hand in our notice that month. Quitting our jobs with no sense of what was next was hard enough, but to do so knowing it meant sacrificing yet another opportunity to buy a house was agonising. However, we felt so strongly that to stay at Greyfriars would be disobedience, so we did the only thing we could do - hand in our notice and trust God to take care of the rest.

A Mother's Declaration

Towards the end of that month, something unexpected and hugely significant occurred. In the midst of our own doubts and fears about buying a house, friends of ours miscarried. As Melissa met with them to chat and pray, she found herself unexpectedly declaring out loud, "By next May you will have your baby, and we will have our house!" Straight away Melissa knew that something had happened - a divine transaction - and so as well as praying for our friends to have a baby, we continued to pray with renewed belief for the house we still felt certain God was giving us.

Amazingly, our friends soon became pregnant again, and as our ministry plans started to take on a bit more shape, we actually became a bit more optimistic about houses. Driven by a deep conviction that we would be buying a house next year, we began looking ahead to September not with dread but with excitement at what it could bring. We figured if we could build up our income quickly enough, through a mixture of support-raising, self-employment and employment, we would still be in a position by January 26 to be able to buy. Suddenly, everything didn't look so bad. But, yet again, that was all about to change.

Panic and Chaos

At the start of July we met with friends at a local village fun day, having spent the morning driving round different areas around Reading trying to get a feel for where we might want (or not want) to live. By this point the majority of our inheritance had found its way into our bank accounts, and we were in full-on 'dreaming' mode. Having spent so long waiting for this moment, and having made so many sacrifices to get here, the thought that we might finally be close to getting a house was beyond exciting. We shared with our friends our plans and our dreams, and all was going well until one of them remarked, "Don't you need three years of income to get a mortgage if you're self-employed?". If words had the ability to physically wound, I think we both would have needed to be rushed to the hospital after hearing that. In one moment all our hopes seemed to vanish, and as we drove home we were confronted with a bitterly hard reality - if we carried on going down this crazy path we felt God had for us, we would not be buying a house for at least three years. We were absolutely crushed.

The week that followed I can only describe as a week of panic and chaos. We became just like Peter, who, upon stepping out of the boat, became far too concerned with the size of the waves all around him and the intensity of the storm he was walking through. We completely lost sight of everything God had been telling us and, without realising it, became utterly consumed with fear that we would not get our long-promised house. We started looking at jobs and other ways we might be able to earn money in order to be able to buy sooner. Melissa had an informal job interview, and we even started to question our decision to quit Greyfriars and pursue this wider worship ministry we had felt God so clearly leading us into. We lost all peace, and in that week very nearly gave up on the path God had laid before us.

Peace Restored

Thankfully we came to our senses. We realised that our lack of peace was not a result of our potential inability to buy a house, but rather of how we had started to doubt God's plans for us. We repented of how we had let the waves around us become bigger than Jesus, and for making an idol of God's promises to us. We realigned to His purposes, recommitted to the path we had said yes to months before, and laid before Him once again our understanding and our now substantially bigger house deposit. We said yes to Him once more, choosing to trust in His ways even if it meant laying down again our dream of buying a house. In an instant the peace we had been walking in for the whole of that year returned to us.

The story continues here.