We were ready to go, but God said, stay. What else can you say but, okay.

Okay, God, now what? This path we’ve been on has been a journey

• 6 years of my husband working full time and getting a Bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministry
• 1-2 year of intense searching for a pastoral job, while continuing his full time work
• 1 year of resting in Him
• Searching again, while doing seminary 1 class at a time.
• Being top 3 for three different positions and God says stay.

We assessed the positions that he hadn’t got. All the people that did get the jobs either had more experience or a Masters in Divinity. He was trying to get experience, by getting a job, but it wasn’t happening. He was trying to get his M. Div. by taking his seminary courses, but taking one class at a time would take 10 years. 10 years! We were not getting any younger.

Again we prayed and sought counsel.

We felt that the obvious next step was getting seminary done, but not taking 10 years to do it. Getting it all done at once.

Well my husband is my superman, but he cannot do it all. There is no way he could work full time and go to seminary full time. But we knew God wanted us pursuing this and had no doubt that He could figure out those details for us.

There were a couple schools we were looking at. The first one was the one my husband was currently attending. We agreed with their theology and he had already started there so it would be easy to continue. The “cons” were that it was quite far away, so we would have a lot to figure out, and the cost was very high. With him not working full time and having a low paying job when done, it would be very difficult to ever get ahead of that amount of debt.

The second seminary choice was local. It was actually at the church we attended, which is also the church my husband had been working at the last 7 years. We had had people suggest going there occasionally through the past few years, but we just never saw it as an option. We didn’t see how it could work with my husband being the breadwinner for the family. This program was only available full load, no taking one class at a time.

Now that we felt God leading us to take on a full load, it was an option we were considering. God kept placing random people in my husbands path, suggesting he attend our local seminary. The other benefits besides it being local for us were we already had been in this vicinity for 7 years, so we had some “roots”, it was very affordable, and we wouldn’t have to move too far.

It was pretty plain to us that after years of saying we couldn’t attend the seminary, that was right in front of us for several years, that this was our next path to go down.  Now was the right time for us to go down that path of staying right where He put us.

Next week I’ll share the how God moves us further.