I’ve mentioned before about having an extension built on our house. It was originally a small, elderly cottage-style semi, had three small bedrooms, a downstairs bathroom, a tiny kitchen (ex scullery) and one living room, which was two small rooms knocked into one. There was also a dilapidated, attached “garden room” which was added decades after the original building. It had a huge garden by comparison to our previous house. We could easily have fitted at least six of our old back gardens into the one here, plus it had trees and hedges, and was very private and not overlooked. There was plenty of room for off-road parking at the front too, as it was a corner plot. Interestingly, there were no street lights in the village either, so at night it got properly dark and you could see the stars!
At the time we moved in, 30 years ago this year, the green space and village setting were like heaven to us! We were moving from a very concreted over, ugly housing estate, on the edge of a huge industrial trading estate. It was never dark at night there, never quiet, there was a lot of vandalism and anti-social behaviour, and people “joy riding” round the roads in stolen cars… Our move here, to a much nicer area, was an absolute miracle.
So, briefly, we were brand new Christians, we attended church in our current area here because it was my cousin’s home church and where we had come to faith, but it was a 30+ minute trip each way, over the hill and into the next county. We didn’t have children then. We longed to move! We had originally moved to where we were as it was only about a mile from my mum’s house but, after she died, there was no reason to stay there.
After much prayer about our unhappy housing situation, we accidentally came across this house (both of us, but separately) in the house buying section of the newspaper which was local to our church area. It was rarely seen in the shops where we lived, but John spotted a copy and bought it! When we discovered we’d both noticed the same house, we were both excited and scared! We knew we couldn’t afford to move, and certainly not to a more expensive area! And yet… the pull to investigate further was very strong. We eventually went to view it, though we felt awful, as though we were stringing the owners along since we had no money! As we sat outside in the car, on a hot, summer Sunday after church (since we were in the area), waiting for the agent to show us round, I said to John, “This is our house isn’t it?!” “Yes,” he said, “I think it is!!” But we had no idea how!
So, straight after viewing, we drove into the main town near our old house, found the ONLY estate agent open on a Sunday afternoon and put our house on the market! It wasn’t ready for sale, we didn’t have any spare money, we had no idea how we would afford the new house… We just knew that we knew that God was in it!
The next day, we put in an offer on the new house, which was accepted. It was £40K more than we hoped to get for our old house AND we had negative equity to pay back. Our estate agent kept telling us there was interest from buyers and arranging viewings for people who never turned up. Let’s face it, we didn’t want to live there, so why would anyone else?!! Eventually, I said to my husband, “Don’t worry about the lack of viewings. On August 4th, we will have lived here seven years, it’s jubilee, our debt will be paid!” In hindsight (I was young and enthusiastic!) I don’t think that was quite right. Jubilee is the 50th year, after the completion of seven sevens, however seven is an important biblical number, marking completion, perfection, so nonetheless I believe the Lord was highlighting the significance of seven years living in that house being completed!
As it happened, on August 4th, I was on a departmental team-building day, clay pigeon shooting out in the middle of nowhere! I had the one “brick phone” that we had for emergencies but never used, as mobile phone calls were so expensive then! Mid afternoon, I got a call. My husband was beside himself! A couple had actually turned up and viewed, and put in an offer for the FULL asking price!! Seven years to the DAY! We’d expected to have to take a much reduced offer due to lack of buyers in the depressed market. I remember literally jumping up and down and praising God in the middle of a field! People probably thought I was mad! Oh, well…!
So, things started moving. It turned out the couple wanting our house were moving away from a much worse area that they were desperate to leave! God bless them!
In the mean time, God was moving the chess pieces round the board…!
My late mother had inherited the entire estate of her best friend of nearly 60 years, who had died the previous year with no living relatives. It included a small bungalow and some savings, several 10s of thousands in all. Remember, this was back in the mid 1990s. My mum, who died just six months after her friend, had a small amount of savings, and her 50% share in the house she had bought with my sister, which was rightly left to her so she didn’t become homeless. Her cash was divided 2/3 to me and 1/3 to my sister, since she was getting the house. My share would have been around £6K. Our negative equity alone was £8K!
There were many complications, since two different solicitors in different parts of the country were now trying to sort all of this out! The bungalow needed to be sold. It was all very stressful! I had no idea how much money would come to me, or when. We were running purely on faith!
Anyhow, one day we were feeling especially frustrated with the slow progress and I said “Lord, did we hear you wrong?” I picked up my bible, but accidentally dropped it. When I picked it up again, it fell open at Jeremiah 32. “Jeremiah buys a field. ” As I read through, I got to verse 14…
Jeremiah 32:14-15 NIV
‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. [15] For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’
As I read on, it said…
Jeremiah 32:26-27 NIV
Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: [27] “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?
“NOPE!” I said, and shut my bible! It still took several weeks to complete on the purchase, but the money came through at just the right time, so we paid our debts and had the deposit for the difference between the house prices, with a bit left over. What was also amazing, was that with the value of my mum’s share in the house and my sister’s one third of the cash versus my two thirds of the cash, our split was almost exactly 50/50! The Lord is so fair, so kind, so trustworthy! He has everything planned to perfection. How great is our God!!!
So, we moved here on a dull, damp November’s day 1995. I cried as I left the old house, I was so relieved to see it all getting smaller in my rear view mirror! I cried even more when we arrived here! It was very dark by the time they finished unloading the lorry. We had no curtains and there was stuff everywhere! We sat amongst a mass of stacked boxes, eating takeaway pizza in a kind of daze. We were exhausted, but we were here in the house the Lord had chosen for us!
We eventually staggered up to bed. I turned the lamp out and nearly fell out of bed! It was SO dark! Not a glimmer of light from anywhere, and I just wasn’t used to it. I was completely disorientated! We slept very well though! The next day, the electricity company came to inspect the electrics… The cooker circuit was immediately condemned as it had never been renewed and was dangerous, with so much current running through old rubber coated wire! The whole house needed rewiring. Thank goodness we had a bit of money left over! It was all done by Christmas (by which time I had also succumbed to chicken pox! That was fun…!) And so we celebrated our first Christmas in the little house that God bought!
The Finished Work 