Chapter 6: The Promised Land (Part 4)

As you'll probably appreciate by now, our journey of buying a house has been one of jarring highs and and lows. From our initial excitement of receiving a deposit as a wedding gift to our embarrassment at having to use this money to pay for our living costs for six months; from our excitement again at the thought of being able to buy when our inheritance came through to our confusion as God told us to quit our jobs; and from our excitement of thinking we actually could buy the perfect house to the despair of realising our first mortgage broker was utterly misguided, it has been a rollercoaster of a ride. The last part of our story ended with a traffic light we thought was green suddenly turning red - thankfully however, as well as being the God of spanners, God is also the God of traffic lights - as were about to find out.

Faith vs Sight

Though we didn't understand everything that was going on, we remained certain that we had found our house and would be buying it this year - it felt to us completely implausible that everything we'd been going through was just coincidence. Melissa in particular had felt so strongly through the final months of 2025 that our house hunt would begin suddenly in January, so why would God have opened this door to us at the exact time we had been expecting it if we weren't to go through it?

We had also received a number of signs confirming to us that this house was the right one. In between our two viewings I felt God saying He had a surprise for us regarding the house. That night Melissa had a dream about the house, and woke up sensing we needed to look in the loft next time we viewed the house. We did, and were amazed to realise it was big, already boarded over and could easily become a master bedroom in years to come. I also had a slightly surreal moment where I went prayer-walking past the house one day, feeling led by the Spirit to declare, "Get out of my house!" (not so much an eviction notice to the current owner, but a statement to the heavenly principalities), and without warning a stream of old ladies started leaving the front door. Add to this the fact that the house matched a picture Melissa had had of our future house months previously, everything was pointing towards the fact that we were on the right trail. Everything, that is, except for our inability to buy it.

Into The Wilderness

We had one last option at this point - a local mortgage broker we had been put in touch with a day before by a friend. We contacted him, this time armed with a few more ideas, including potentially doing a family-backed mortgage. After explaining to me why our original broker's proposed method of getting us a mortgage was nonsense, he promised to have a think and see what he could do, but he warned me that he wasn't at all confident of finding anything. We left it with him and continued to do the only thing we could do - pray.

What followed was nearly four weeks of agonising, energy-sapping waiting. Things were also not helped by the fact that our new mortgage broker was suddenly in and out of the office for two weeks on compassionate leave. Every update we did receive was not positive. Mercifully, we were not being hassled by our estate agent, but we knew that this place of limbo couldn't last forever.

We kept on praying, and though we still believed God was in this, it was becoming harder and harder to remain in a place of peace. Every week we were looking for spiritually significant dates and numbers that would indicate something was going to shift. Every Sunday we declared that the following day was 'Miracle Mortgage Monday', until after the fourth or fifth one we began to lose interest. We were at the end of ourselves and time was running out.

The Final Valley

It finally got to the week of the 2nd of March - now forty days since we had bid on the house. We were both emotionally exhausted, and to me the thought of giving up was a very welcome one. Though Melissa was still certain this was our house, she too began to resign herself to the thought of backing out. We had an email from our estate agent on Tuesday, asking us for an update, and we replied the following day saying we'd call him on Friday afternoon. We weren't sure what we'd say to him, but knew it wasn't fair to keep him and our seller waiting like this without them at least knowing what was going on.

That week our mortgage broker had been frantically pursuing one final avenue, and phoned us on Thursday evening to let us know he had a couple of lenders willing to work with us, but he'd need to confirm a few things tomorrow. Could this be the breakthrough we had been praying for? We prayed again, asking God that if He was in this, everything about the mortgage would be just right.

The next morning we found out a bit more about this potential avenue. It was a genuine possibility, but the trouble was it involved taking a huge financial hit, and felt so complicated, convoluted and inconvenient we struggled to see how God could be in it. We took the kids to the park that morning, talking it over, and the more we talked, the more crestfallen and dejected we became. We both agreed that this method just wasn't going to work, and so all we could do was once again lay things down before God, trusting that if He wanted to give us this house, He would do it, and trusting that if we didn't get the house He would be in that too.

As we left the park, a chink of light suddenly appeared. An email came from our broker, suggesting he had found a lender who may be able to help us the way we'd originally been hoping. We emailed back with the extra details he'd asked for, and once again resumed the powerless waiting position we had been in for the last six weeks - all the while knowing that in just a few short hours we could be losing the house.

The Impossible Mortgage

A miracle happened after lunch. I had been seeing a friend, and got back to the car to find a series of emails in my inbox from our mortgage broker asking for even more information to pass on to this new lender. Driving back home, fully aware that I still needed to call our estate agent, I suddenly had a call from our broker. He'd found us a mortgage! The lender he had mentioned was happy to go ahead, and, incredibly, everything about this mortgage was just right. Melissa and I were incredulous - we had finally found our miracle mortgage, forty-two days after bidding on the house. We phoned the estate agent, relieved and still in a state of disbelief that we were able to give him a positive update, and by the start of the following week our mortgage application was underway and we were at long last able to begin the legal searches on the property. Though the mortgage was not officially signed off, it was all but confirmed, and so all we had to do now was wait. God had worked a miracle when we were least expecting it.

God Knows Our Number

The number 62 has been a significant number for us since we got married. Isaiah 62 was the chapter our first album Songs of the Watchmen was inspired by, and the chapter that God impressed upon both of us when travelling in Israel and America; it was also the number of the house we stayed in when we first arrived back in Reading; it's the number on our car registration plate; and, as we realised later, it also happens to be the number of the house opposite the one we're buying, that we will see every time we leave the house. So it felt fitting, and another kiss from our caring Father in heaven, that on the 62nd day of our mortgage hunt our official mortgage offer came through.

The story concludes here.