Preacher’s Wife Teaching Life

After I quit my full-time teaching job a couple years ago, I knew, financially, that I would need another job to help pay bills. I looked and applied for a couple months with no luck. We prayed about whether I should keep searching or not and we felt like God was saying not to. He wanted me to be with my husband full-time in the ministry. That was unfathomable to me because I have a degree, a skill set, and a desire to work but God wanted me to step out of my comfortable box and live a life dependent on Him. I’m not going to say it was all butterflies and flowers - there were months I felt tempted to get a job and pay for things we couldn’t afford, but God said not to and he repeatedly provided for our every need. Three years later, I was living a dependent life on God and not looking for a job when one fell into my path that seemed too good to be true. I didn’t want to assume this opportunity was for me and force my way into a job (plus, I was kind of enjoying not “working”), so we p...

Almost every day I look back at my “on this day” page in Facebook. It’s fun to see what we were going through or how my life has developed since I got a Facebook account when it FIRST started in college. While some memories are fun to reminisce on (like when I bought my first car), most of the things I posted as my younger self are a bit painful to read. My old self was full of anxiety and negativity; I don’t know how anyone stood to be around me. Around 2011-2012, I started asking God to transform my attitude and I can clearly see the change begin in my Facebook posts. I love to look at my posts from 2007-2011 and compare them to the posts I’ve made from 2011-the present. Pastor Doug White came to speak this Sunday at our church and said he had one word for us: Metamorphosis. He spoke on the transformation that comes from the power of God working in our hearts. When we ask and open our hearts, he changes us from what we are to what we are meant to become.  *TRANSFORMATION C...

Giving can be such a touchy subject when brought up at church. It's usually followed up by a tablespoon of guilt and a dash of shame. My hope is that in this post, you feel no guilt or shame but hope and gratitude and motivation. God has blessed you in more ways than you can count and I hope that this post is a reminder of those blessings. I have countless stories about how God has provided for us and more stories about him providing for other people around us. His provision is literally everywhere and sometimes we don't even see it. His love for us is so immense that our humanly brains can't even comprehend it. One way he shows his love is in his provision. Provision comes in many forms: jobs, houses, cars, food, family, time, money, resources, wisdom, creativity, etc. Like in any relationship we are familiar with, when something is received, usually you like to give back. It's a natural response that stems from a feeling that swells up inside our hearts called grati...

My dad and I have been working together for a long time, illustrating his sermons with words and pictures in a way that others may understand. I remember being a little girl and helping my dad at this new found contraption called a computer by using words, shapes, and clip art to articulate what God was telling him. I think its kind of funny that as an adult, I sort of do the same thing for my husband in the form of a blog. He hears from God, I listen through a God filter and try to write, in more simple terms, what his sermon means in the form of a blog post. I add pictures to my posts, not to make my posts more appealing (although it helps), but to help the reader's brain connect what the meaning behind the words is. It might be part of my DNA...it might be a learned habit. We've learned from science that DNA stores biological information and is passed from adults to their offspring. Basically, the average person knows that DNA comes from our parents and it's what makes...

This week we covered Joshua 24 . Basically, Joshua reflects on all that's happened and tells the people to remember God. ( Joshua:14, 15 ) This post is a quick and dry summary of allllll my previous posts (which are linked into the points listed below): 1) God established a leader in Joshua; Moses was a powerful leader and his he passed his mantle to Joshua, like a spiritual inheritance. ---> His first responsibility was to come under authority. ------> Each leader has a leader to come under. Even the highest power on Earth has to submit to someone, namely God. Coming under authority by submitting to their guidance is of utmost importance to your well being. 2) A partnership with the Lord is established. ---> God does his part first and then humans need to do their part. For example, God sent a hail storm in Joshua 10 and the people still had to fight the battle with those remaining. ---> God has an opinion about his dominion and we could do well t...

This is just an observation/ revelation thats developed over the last couple months. It might be specific to your call in life so take what you want and forget what you don't want.  The more you provide for yourself, the less Jesus has to. Not that you shouldn't provide for yourself, but if there's more of you, there's less of him. For example, I used to hear stories all the time about how people were given new cars or houses or large sums of money. I never understood why Jesus didn't do this for me. I'll tell you why: I didn't need it.  It was when we had nowhere to go and no money to have a home, he provided every resource we needed to not only have a roof over our heads but a beautiful home. A home that's paid off and customized to our needs.  Work hard and do your best to obey his commands but also don't be afraid to live radically in his name if that's his call for you. 

My goodness so much has happened in the last 5-6 months. In the past 6 months, we've been gracefully asked to move from our homes for renovations two times. We've seen the grace of God through people with giving hearts and have had a time of restoration that we really needed. We moved to a very nice house right outside our home town with no chance of affordable internet and we chose to save money and not have cable. Doing this made us feel disconnected from our world in many ways but also provided a time for my husband and I to grow in our relationship together and with God. Through prayer, we discovered wounds we never knew we had and through healing, we've grown and matured in our walk with Him. Our time in that house is up so we moved our stuff into storage and are staying with my husband's mom and step dad for the next couple weeks until our future home is ready. If you are a friend of ours, you've seen we've been building a "cabin" on our land. ...

When Jarrod and I FIRST started dating he said he liked it when I asked for his help with some things (like reaching the top shelf) because it meant I couldn't do some things without him. Which worked out nicely for me because I'm the baby of the family and I love to be helped :)  This is similar to how God feels for us. What would we need him for if our lives were perfect...without challenges. We are pushed outside our "boxes" so often on a daily basis and need Him to help us through it. If we weren't uncomfortable every now and then, we probably wouldn't give much credit to His glory.  I haven't shared the information I'm about to give you with many people (except close friends) because I'm a little embarrassed about it...given our current financial situation. On Wednesday, we signed papers to own 40 acres out in the country...WHAT?! You say. Yeah...me too. We don't have regular income and the somewhat regular income we have comes from Jar...

One night when I was waiting for Jarrod to get home, I was searching on Amazon for a free book to download and couldn't find anything that suited my fancy. I realized that instead of wasting my time on yet another fictional novel that I should spend more of my free time with my Father. I went to our room and dusted off my "real" Bible (there's just something more reverent about turning the pages of a Bible than looking at an electronic screen for me) and turned straight to Proverbs - my favorite book. Every time I read a couple chapters of Proverbs, I feel a lot more connected to Him. Even though I've read Proverbs probably a hundred times, it feels brand new and genius every time. I ran across Proverbs 11:4 and it dawned on me the true meaning of it. (When Jarrod came home and I was discussing this with him, he lovingly laughed at me saying, "you realize it didn't "dawn" on you, right? God has revealed new wisdom to you." ....So tru...

My mom, Kathie wrote this and I wanted to share it with you: When a man steps forward with a word from The Lord, we better pay attention.  That happened to me yesterday. Have you ever had a vision or dream of something that you would like to see happen?  I did, when I married David.  I really felt that God would take us to a place where there were beaches to pastor a church.  I learned early on that my vision was not the one that God had for us. We came to Dallas, Texas for seminary training, we thought we were going back to Pennsylvania in four years. That didn't happen. A little church in Stephenville, Texas needed a pastor.  There went the beach ministry, BUT God's vision for us was greater than ours. Looking back over the last 25 years, we can see His hand in the whole roller coaster ride.  That ride was both scary and exciting. The way we used to define our ministry was something like, who will come along side of us, believe in us, and suppor...