One year ago I officially began the process of starting a new church. At that time I wrote a blog titled “Ask for Wonder.” In it, I shared how I wasn’t making a New Year’s resolution for 2016. Instead, I was making a New Year’s request. My request was simple. I prayed that God would amaze me this year by what he would do and how he would do it. I asked for wonder. I wanted to be blown away by God. I wanted to be in awe of God.
Looking back on it, that was by far the most dangerous prayer I’ve ever prayed. When I made that request, my wife and I were still living just north of Dayton, Ohio with no intentions of moving out-of-state. My wife was still working as an elementary teacher in a local school system with no intention of leaving her job. We only had one child at the time with no intention of having another anytime soon. Moving back to Fort Wayne, Indiana was nowhere on our radar. Yet, all of those things came to pass.
Now here we are one year later, and I can say without a doubt that God has answered my prayer. All throughout this journey God has continued to give me wonder. Here are my top 10 examples of how God answered my prayer this year…
1. Early on we felt God calling us to change direction when it came to the location of our church plant. We were originally going to plant in the Dayton, Ohio area, but God had other plans. We knew it would require way more faith to move away. The same week we said yes to God about moving, someone offered to buy our house… and it wasn’t even on the market. On top of that, they bought the house for about $10k more than we would have listed it for on our own.
3. A year ago we had a very surface-level relationship with Pine Hills Church. We knew a little bit about them. They knew a little bit about us. We had no clue that God would bring us together to start this new church. Yet here we are now, leading Pine Hills City Church in the south side of Fort Wayne. The kind of relationships we’ve formed with this church in such a small amount of time are only explainable by God.