We have had a lot going on here at the Russell household the last couple weeks. We were inspired by God to offer our house as a place of rest and shelter to friends of ours who are missionaries. Their journey is similar to the journey God had Abraham and Sarah take away from their homeland. God did not give Abram and Sarah an immediate resting place and God has not given our friend’s their resting place as of yet. When we sent an email to them offering them the use of our basement, we honestly did not think they would take us up on the offer. Well, low and behold, it’s exactly the way things happened. They have six boys with a little one on the way, making a family of eight. Our family of five and their family of eight equals 13 people living in our home until God moves their hearts and sets plans in motion for them to go elsewhere.
We agree, thirteen people in one home is a lot of people, but we are more excited than overwhelmed. Our excitement precedes our concerns and don’t think for one minute we are unaware of what we are stepping into, because we do, and if we think about it too long it gets a bit overwhelming. This has begun a saying I am going to say for the rest of my life, “I don’t know, but God does, and God will work it out”. There is so much comfort in that phrase! It is applied to all of life, not just when you are going to have thirteen people in our home. It is applied to deciding which freezer to buy, whether to stay with one car or making the decision to add a second car, to trusting God in the midst of my son’s asthma attacks. There is so much freedom in knowing I am not the one who makes the ultimate decisions, I can freely say, “I don’t know, but God does, and God will work it out”. Being able to wait with great expectation at how God is going to accomplish the impossible in our lives.
“I don’t know, but God does, and God will work it out” is taking my relationship with God to a new level, a deeper level. It requires me to lay down my will, it requires me to get out of God’s way and not play God like I often like to do. I get the mind set of well God is taking to long I’ll just figure it out on my own, which I might add, never goes well! It requires me to give God the leadership in my life for what he thinks I need and what he wants to bless me with.
More often than not I do not have the answers life needs, but I know the one who does and you can be sure I’ll be saying, “I don’t know, but God does, and God will work it out”.