The wifes walk :)
So I wanted to share whats been going on from the wifes perspectve because t seems like most ministries are done by men and sometimes its nice to hear the other side 🙂
So, a little background on me. I am a very logical, think things through, engineer. I have always had a plan for everything. I set goals and went after them. I enjoy organizing events and being IN CONTROL. I like to be in the “know” with whats going on and for some reason I always like to share MY ideas and opinions even if they weren’t asked for…(something God is still working on me with). Maybe some of you can relate, maybe not 🙂
Ever since Joe and I married back in 2003, I have been in control of our finances. When Joe started his own business, I still handled that side of it. Why? Because it was my way of holding some control over the business and making sure we had money to live on (I am just being honest with you all). If money was tight, I would nag Joe. Ask when the next job was, if we didnt’ have anything, I would hint around that He needed to be out selling. But Joe always said God is our provider. My response is, yes he is, BUT YOU need to get the word out there about your business. So in other words, I was looking to Joe and NOT God. The arguments, stress, frustrations, were all because I couldn’t rest in knowing the Father God as my provider and would take care of us.
Over the years, I started seeing how God really would come through for us in a pinch. God began to grow my faith. I would see it happen, praise the father, then go right back to worrying. I was happy when money was in the bank and a mess when it wasn’t.
But we began ministering on the streets together. We would go out and just ask people if we could pray with them. We would sometimes get clues of who we were looking for and we would find them and pray. We started seeing how many ideas we had from reading the scripture, when put into practice, gave us a different result and when we got back into the Word, God would show us how it aligned with His Word but had been hidden from us. But in the end, it was all about Love. Showing people His love for them and that He does care about each of us.
The business did very well last year. But our biggest joy and fulfillment came from ministering and talking to people everywhere we went. In January of this year, the business STOPPED. No phone calls, no quotes, nothing. Joe would go door to door at businesses and no responses. For the first time in 9 years, absolutely nothing. I would get upset with Joe and with God. My faith would waiver, is this real? But as I looked within, I could see that all my frustration revealed a very large amount of doubt toward God. I could say all the right things, but when the pressure was on, my peace and rest was too. You see God is a jealous God and truly wants us to be completely reliant on Him alone. When our peace is gone, we need to look within and ask Why? This will reveal the condition of our heart.
So after a couple months of asking God what to do and still no calls, (however, our bills continued to get paid, somehow) Joe says to me, we put all this effort into our business. We toil,we spend day and night working for the world, chasing finances to live the american dream. Then, IF we have time after dinner and bed,we go and do Gods work. Sure we minister sometimes on the job, but who are we serving? God tells us we can’t have two masters. We can’t serve God and Mammon. So, I think we just need to start ministering full time and trust God to provide. I see it all through scripture. Instead of working for ourselves,let just work for God. Joe tells me He thinks its time for us to get our “ice cream truck”.
I had been seeking God and my heart really wanted to do this, but my mind and logic of this was screaming in my head that this was crazy. I began to really pray more and seek the scriptures because I truly believe in the unity and power between a husband and a wife. I also agree in a woman supporting her husband, but I also believe there is a unity of the Spirit. So if this is what God was calling us to, then my spirit needed to have rest and peace with this decision because Joe and I are one and are meant to minister as one. But I still had trust issues.
I remember one night laying in bed and I asked God to speak to me and give me something so I would know this is the right decision. I rolled over and right before I fell asleep I heard God speak to my heart and say “NO, I won’t give you anything” He asked me if I believed Joe was seeking Him. I did. God told me He wanted me to trust Joe. So he wasn’t going to give me a sign or tell me anything, because he wanted me to learn submission to Joe and to trust him. This honestly took me a little time to digest. This meant I wasn’t going to be in-control. That I wasn’t going to be in “the know”. I had to trust.
Well, I have been. This journey so far this year has been just that. Learning to truly trust and find a place of peace and rest in the Father. A few weeks later, Joe and I truly felt a desire to start selling/giving things away. So we started with some of the bigger things we didn’t use much. As they sold, I began to question again.God,what are we doing? Is this really what you want? What happens if it all sells and we have nothing? As I read the bible, just knew in my heart this was the right thing. But how are we going to afford an RV and pay off debt? TRUST! So we continued to walk in obedience selling things. I became at total peace and rest knowing God was handling it. That there wasn’t anything I could do to make any of this dream happen, but if it was what He wanted, t would happen. A week later, we were given the truck and camper (you can read about those if you haven’t already on the other posts). So now, I just walk, day by day. My ideas and plans have been laid down and I can say that I have found a peace and rest. The home is on the market and God will sell it when its time. All I know is that by this house not selling yet, we have met some incredible people. We have shared Jesus with many and God has kindled a new desire for a relationship with Him in the hearts of some. So the ministry has started and we haven’t left our driveway 🙂
The Time is Now! (Ice Cream Dream Continued)
A couple of years ago my family and I started ministering in the streets and learning to listen to God for direction. Every Tuesday we would gather together with others that had a hunger to set people free, we all grew together learning to walk as Jesus walked, it was an awesome time with many amazing testimonies which I may share later. Reading the Bible and learning is good but when we start doing His word and walking with Him is when we really get to know who God is. During this time we started thinking about going mobile, living out of a camper showing His love and teaching others to do the same. Starting love fires and then moving on to the next place to start another.
At that point that’s when God revealed to us that the mobile ministry was His plan from the beginning. After all it was an ice cream truck not an ice cream store (see the dream here).
Fifteen years have past since I had my Ice Cream Dream. I often wondered if I had missed it, was there somewhere along the way that I had messed up my calling and gotten off track? I had tried several times to make it happen on my own and everytime was good but nothing like the dream I had. Over the past year I would ask God many times if I had missed it, if somehow I had made a wrong choice and missed my call. I write this to encourage you, God does have a destiny for you, you have a calling and you know it in your heart. Maybe He’s already revealed it and you are in waiting or maybe you just feel it in your gut. The good news is you haven’t missed it, rest in Him.
You haven’t missed it. You can’t!
A
s I began to seek God on this subject He lead me to two stories in the Bible. The first is the story where Jesus tells the disciples to get in the boat (Mark 4 and Luke 8) because “we’re going to the other side”. Mid way across the lake a great storm comes upon the boat and their boat started taking on water, the disciples came to Jesus and said “do you not care that we’re going to die?” the disciples didn’t realize that they had a destiny, God, who can not lie, had spoken over them that they were going to the other side. Nothing could stop it from happening, they could have gotten out of the boat and swam in the midst of that mess. If they knew who had spoken this destiny over them they would have been just as rested as Jesus was.
The next story He lead me to was the story of Jonah, where God had told him that he was going to the city of Nineveh. Jonah had a calling on his life and though he didn’t want to fulfill it, it was inevitable, he had a destiny. However, Jonah’s rebelion lead him in the opposite direction onto a boat that was thrown and tossed by the storms to the point that the rest of the passengers decided to throw him overboard expecting him to drown. Jonah had a destiny that had to be fulfilled and so God sent the fish to carry him to his destination where Jonah would finally yeild to his calling.
As crazy as it may sound to some people, due to what God was telling us and a few other “signs” we decided it was time to get rid of everything we own and advance to the next stage of our lives in a camper on the road. Nothing in the worldly sense would say go, we had a large chunk of debt and a few other things that would appear to be setbacks. God has shown us that we are not to depend upon money as our provider, He will take care of us. My wife said at one point this would be much easier if we had a camper setting out front, though we didn’t know how, we knew that He would handle it.
A f
ew weeks later I was at a good client/friend of mine, C.J.’s house working on his surveillance system, which was our family business. I was telling C.J. about how I was no longer going to be handling the business but if he had any problems he could always give me a call and I would try to help as much as I could over the phone. He asked why and I began to tell him that my family and I were going into fulltime ministry, we were selling everything and buying a truck and camper. I finished up my work as he was asking me more questions about the ministry. I had to come back a few days later because his system ended up needing some replacement parts, as I was installing he asked a few more questions about the ministry and told me about his heart for the youth then to my suprise he told me that he was giving us his truck and camper to live in!
He took me out to give me the tour and I was in shock. It is beyond anything we ever could have imagined but here’s the most amazing part. C.J. and his wife own a business that builds tour buses for major celebrities and musicians, the camper and truck he gave us was listed on his website as the movie trailer, it was used for actors and workers to rent and is named MOVIE 1.
Just like the dream God gave me fifteen years ago…
Just like the dream had us in a brilliant white ice cream truck with a movie place in the back handing out God’s treat free of charge in a way that people were hungry for it. Now we have a brilliant white truck with a movie place in the back and the next step is to get on the road and start handing it out! Ha! God is amazing!
Currently we are down to the last few steps of emptying the house with a For Sale by Owner sign out front just waiting for Him to lead us to the next step. Through it all He has taught us to rest in Him and enjoy His grace, it is sufficient for every need, ours and yours, the treat that is free of charge.
Now go! Be the funnel!
The Ice Cream Dream
I suppose I should start by telling you my dream I had about fifteen years ago…
I dreamed that my dad gave me an ice cream truck, it was falling apart, old, rusty, and the tires were dry rotted and flat. The truck was parked right outside of a big old barn and I was so excited that it was now mine. I started putting my effort into fixing it up and when I was done it was a brilliant white, and looked like brand new.
I then put on the “back in the day” ice cream man attire, white slacks, white button down, and the white ice cream man hat. I drove it out to the street and immediately people started swarming to get the treats we were offering, and the treats we were offering were completely free. There were people as far as I could see crammed between the houses excited to get the treats that we were offering and I was handing them out effortlessly with a big grin on my face.
After all this I thought maybe the food I had eaten the night before had kicked in because the next thing that happened was a door located on the back of the ice cream truck and I was letting people in, inside was a big movie theater. I had always thought that was me taking over the dream, I recently found out otherwise as I’ll explain in a later post.
When I woke from my sleep, the first person I told was my mother. I said “God’s going to give me an ice cream truck!” then I explained my dream. She said you need to ask God for the interpretation, so I did, and He gave it to me. My dad had a ministry when I was younger, it was a coffee house, and the ministry had been laying dormant for a while. Now it was being given to me and God was going to use it!
The following Sunday I went to my usual church service, a small country church in Georgetown. Every Sunday the pastor would ask if anyone needed prayer and I would always go up front to ask for a closer relationship with God. However, this particular Sunday someone had a vision and spoke over me that they saw me in ministry through which God was going to use me and it was going to be wonderful!
After service I told them about the dream I had had and the pastor said “I don’t know if it’s me or God but they are having a youth rally in Florence Saturday and I feel like you should go” so I told him I would. Saturday finally rolls around and I was not at all wanting to go but due to my commitment, I went. I sat all the way in the back of the church and shortly into the service I felt a strange sensation in my spirit, it was in my stomach and I prayed “Lord, I feel this strange feeling in my stomach, it’s like a turning, like a hunger, like a churning, what is it?” and right after the words left my lips the pastor up front said “There’s someone here that has a strange feeling in there stomach, like a turning, like a hunger, like a churning, come up here God wants to bless you” of course I knew that was me so without hesitation I went to the front and the pastor walked over to me, raised his hand to place it on my head to pray, but then stopped and backed up, he then had the youth crowd around me and had them to all pray. It was very encouraging and another sign of what God had planned for me.
In my spirit I knew it wasn’t time, though I tried to make it happen on my own. I became a youth leader and though it was good, it wasn’t effortless, it lacked the freedom I felt in the dream, it wasn’t time…
Erin
GodsFunnel
Joe
godsfunnel.wordpress.com 