Visions

If you’re keeping up with my blogs you’ll know that Lynn has accepted her Dream Job and started this week. In the course of a month (she got the request to submit her resume and interview in early May) Lynn has a new job on the Oregon Coast, has started that job, we staged our house for sale, put our house on the market, accepted an offer on the house and are now house hunting on the Coast. And all through this new adventure of life God has led us and directed every aspect and nuance of our path. There are more details (proof, if you will) of this gracious and generous orchestration by our sovereign Father but that’s for another blog.

As background, my “church” history is in the non-instrumental, conservative Church of Christ and then the instrumental Christian Church. The Theologies of these two groups was very similar except for the use of instruments. MY understanding of the particular Theology – emphasis on my understanding to be fair to those dedicated Christians in those groups who may not have drawn the same conclusions or beliefs – is that God no longer speaks directly to His children (only through the Bible), the Gifts of the Holy Spirit no longer apply to Christians today and Holy Spirit Himself, was relegated to the far back of the Holy Trinity. These assertions are no longer mine. In the last four years God has blown to smithereens the box I always kept Him in. He is so much bigger than I ever had the courage to acknowledge. He’s given me courage to truly seek Him. He’s constantly showing me how much bigger He is. Grace Chapel has helped in that and I will be forever grateful to God and His children at Grace.

With that church background imagine my surprise when God gave me a vision. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t even call it a vision. My ‘history’ tugged at me to return to religion instead of relationship. Lynn believed it and as I shared it with friends, mostly but not limited to, Grace, I was assured more and more that, yes, Greg Bruce, you heard from God: Lying in bed with Lynn, we’d just finished our devotional and she was praying. In a split second, God showed me our new house on the coast. I knew in less than a heartbeat the entire story. It wasn’t like I lay there for 5 or 10 minutes and filled in details that I wanted. It was instantaneous. I knew the house is exactly what we want, beautiful, comfortable and inviting but not ostentatious, an ocean view and probably the most important thing a private entrance to the downstairs where we can safely & privately continue to hold our Pure Desire groups and grow our ministry to men, women, marriages and families struggling with sexual addiction.

Last Saturday we spent 4 hours looking at houses that weren’t it. Since this “vision stuff” is new to me Satan took the opportunity to cast doubt and lies. “You’re not doing it right. You didn’t have a vision. Why would God speak to you? He’s not trustworthy.” And the biggest one: “Things are SO good right now with Lynn and me, her new career, selling and moving, when are the wheels going to fall off? I ‘always’ manage to make the wheels fall off.” Oh, my Father, forgive my doubt and help my unbelief.

This has opened Lynn’s and my communication patterns more than they already have been. We share our fears and our doubts and seek forgiveness from a loving, understanding Father and we step out. OUR job, our responsibility, our part of all this is to step. God’s job is outcome, fruit, destination. So we step. We embrace the excitement of it all. I no longer need to know where we’re going. As long as I am going with my Father, My King Jesus, the incredibly powerful Holy Spirit and Lynn I don’t need to know the destination. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. OUR HEAVENLY FATHER will never lead us somewhere He isn’t. And if He is there, then we are safe and we will be there also.

Thank you, Dear Father.

Freedom is a gift from God. It is also His Promise; and He ALWAYS keeps His Promises.