Spiritual Lessons Gained When Relocating

Barbara and I have lived in our current home (it’s still our current home for less than two weeks) for nineteen years. We were beginning to think, perhaps that we would live the rest of our lives up there on the hilltop ten acres near Kellyville, Oklahoma. We have a master bedroom on the bottom floor so we figured we were good to go for the rest of our lives. Now we may have decided to move to a smaller home with less yard and acreage to take care of. We might have done that, but it didn't seem that we were in any big hurry, and then I received a call from Mr. Victor Kubik. The rest is history, as you know. Things began to change very quickly then. Actually we got a phone call in late December and I knew he was contemplating the move and asked me basically if I would consider doing it. It wasn't a done deal at all, but something he was obviously thinking seriously about, so Barb and I got scared and we started cleaning up our house. After nineteen years of neglect, it was time for us to kick it into high gear.

What spiritual lessons might a person learn from having to move to another part of the country? Texas is another part of the country. I have, I think eight different lessons that I'd like to share with you that Barb and I have discussed, talked about over the last several weeks.

1) WE LEARNED THAT WE SHOULD SIMPLIFY AND DE-CLUTTER OUR LIVES AND STAY A BIT MORE FOCUSED ON DOING THINGS DECENTLY AND IN ORDER.

Have you ever thought you should do things more decently and in order rather than just letting things happen in your life? Sometimes we just do that because we get so busy with everything that goes on in life. It's very easy to take that approach. Let's read a bit about what Christ says in this regard. Let's go to Matthew, the parable chapter and we're breaking into the parable of the sower.

Matt 13:22 "Now he who received the seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful." It is easy to become unfruitful if we're not careful, if we allow things to choke out the more important things in life.

1 Cor. 14:40 "Let all things be done decently and in order." This is a principle we should certainly take to heart.

A daunting task was put before us. Not only were we at this home for nineteen years, but we basically had thirty-five years of accumulation because we always had to move quickly it seems and always into a bigger place so we didn't have to pitch everything and get rid of a lot of stuff. We figured we'd have to downsize a bit since we're going to the Dallas area and things are more expensive there. Now we needed to downsize and there was a monumental task staring us in the face. The things we knew about were mostly hidden; it's the kind of junk you stick in your attic thinking 'well I might need that someday', and you never do, but it's there 'just in case'. It was mostly hidden, most people wouldn't have even noticed that we had that much clutter around, but we have big attics. We have lots of room for 'stuff' so we had the attics pretty much filled.

HOW MUCH SPIRITUAL JUNK IS CLUTTERING UP YOUR MINDS AND YOUR HEARTS? That's the spiritual lesson that we need to learn. How much is stuck away in the attic of our minds, competing for space and nagging at us? There were times when we knew we should get in there and clean that attic out. There was just never an opportune time, I guess. Actually, we did clean it out some. In nineteen years we did sort through some of it from time to time, but then we accumulated more and added more… you know how that goes. Is there any "junk" that you have in your life, from a spiritual standpoint that is building up in your life; no one sees it except you, no one else is aware of it (of course God is aware of these issues that tend to drag us down), but other people may not notice? What 'little' sins are you ignoring and storing away that need to be trashed now so you can have a freer and more liberating life. I know there are things I wish I had overcome that I haven't totally overcome; I'm still struggling with some issues. None of us are perfect yet, are we? I guess we would be perfect if we overcame everything; we're not there yet. We had a feeling of a great weight that was lifted off when a lot of the junk was gone. I think the trash collector was about to drop us because every week I'm sure he drove up and looked at this massive amount of stuff, bags and bags of stuff that were being thrown away. We don't live anywhere that you could have a garage sale, so, rather than try to get a nickel or a dime or fifty cents or a dollar, we basically just tossed it. It wasn't worth much anyway. We had a lot of stuff that we had out by the road every Monday morning. The trash collector stuck with us, he didn't 'dump' us, and so we're glad of that… That would have been bad. It has felt good getting rid of that stuff, once the house was streamlined. When you sell a house, you're supposed to stage the house. You're supposed to take two-thirds of your clothes out of each closet, get rid of ninety percent of your shoes. You're supposed to do all the things you don't typically do. You have all these shoes you wear once a year (it's you women I'm talking to now) (Barbara's not quite as bad as some women), but it feels good getting rid of all that stuff. If seems like things just went better; I just had a freer mind, not so many things crammed in here and crammed in there. We're not really 'crammers', Barbara is a good housekeeper and if you came to our home, you'd think 'nice house', it's kept up well, but when you have to get rid of two-thirds of the stuff, then you realize how much extra stuff you really have. A lot of that two-thirds, we boxed up and are moving with us, I suppose, so we'll have more stuff when we get there and get unpacked.

HOW WELL DO YOU PRIORITIZE SPIRITUALLY? Are we really seeking FIRST God's Kingdom and his righteousness or have we allowed things to become cluttered in our lives? That's a good question to ask from time to time. I know my garage was really full of junk, stuff… in fact I still have stuff in there I need to go through this week and get rid of. The spiritual is more important than the physical things that weigh us down. We talked a lot about that in the series of sermons that I gave on "The Biggest Loser", trying to lose that sin that so easily besets us and pulls us down. All sermons kind of go together to some degree. They say a minister only has two or three sermons; he just recycles them in a different way every time he speaks.

We all know that we should have a time to pray a time to read and study our Bibles each day, but how often do we neglect to do that? Are you really good at that; do you have that 'set in stone' that you pray at a certain time or at least you pray every day? And that you study your Bible; do you do that faithfully, or is it kind of haphazard, hit and miss? Are you sometimes really good at it and you go for a couple of weeks that way and then you get sidetracked and the next thing you know, you haven't studied your Bible in a week? Life gets hectic. Life is hectic. There's a lot going on in our lives and if we don't prioritize these things and do them decently and in order, they don't get done. DO WE LET LESS IMPORTANT THINGS CROWD OUT OUR PRAYER TIME AND OUR STUDY TIME? Have you ordered your prayer life; have you faithfully set aside that time to study your Bible? Does it happen like clockwork without fail? Is that how regimented you are when it comes to your Bible study and fasting? Do you fast regularly or has it been months? Can you even remember the last time you fasted? Ah! Yeah! On the Day of Atonement. That's when it was. I have come to appreciate the more streamlined approach, so I'm planning to take that with me to Texas. So, that's the first lesson: to stop cluttering up our lives, streamline things, stay more focused on doing everything decently and in order.

2) DON'T NEGLECT MAINTENANCE

Don't neglect to maintain things. Stay focused on maintaining your spiritual life. From a physical perspective, Barb and I decided that we were going to look for a place out in the country. We wanted a place where our kids could roam. I grew up on a farm and Barb lived on the edge of town near a farm, so we wanted a little more area to roam and just enjoy nature, so we got ten acres and we got a big house and it was cheaper because it was further out, so we could afford it. But, it was a lot to take care of: ten acres, three or four churches to pastor, a huge yard to mow, a big house to take care of. It was hard to keep it maintained. Frankly, I did not keep it maintained as well as I should have or could have had I been better focused. But, you know, I didn't put as high a priority on it until I had to sell it. Then you’ve got to get it looking great! If you want to get a decent price for it, it has to look good. You can't have wood rot, you can't have paint flaking off; you can't get away with that sort of thing if you want to sell your house at a decent price. We had to do a crash course in getting our house ready to sell. We had to have it painted inside and we had some cracks that needed to be fixed, so we had a mud expert come in to do that because it would have looked worse if I had tried to do it. We had to cram all this stuff in in the last few months and I kind of wish I had just kept up with things better. Part of it was money, when you don't have a lot of extra money, you don't paint as often as you'd like. The outside hadn't been painted in nineteen years… thankfully it all came together well. In fact, I ended up having to be a part of the paint crew. We had someone else to paint it, but then he got scared because he was up on a thirty-foot ladder and it was windy and he was afraid he was going to kill himself. So, he walked off the job on the first day. We had to get our own crew together. I got a neighbor and then one church member and then we got a self-proclaimed prophet that came to help us, too. I won't go into that in any greater detail. We had a crew and actually it turned out really well. It certainly was God blessing us, because otherwise it could have been a disaster. It turned out looking really great and we were able to sell the house for what we were asking. That worked out really well; I give God the credit for that because I don't think we necessarily deserved it, but we were certainly grateful for it. THE POINT I'M TRYING TO MAKE IS : DON'T NEGLECT MAINTENANCE IN YOUR SPIRITUAL LIFE. We need to maintain ourselves spiritually, that's why habits are important. That's why daily prayer and daily Bible study and regular fasting is healthy spiritually. It's important to get those habits developed. I've heard it takes twenty-one days to develop a habit that sticks. You have to do it for twenty-one days straight and then it might stick. There's no guarantee. I think I've done things for twenty-one days and stopped on the twenty-second day. Don't neglect maintenance either physical or spiritual. If your house is falling down around you, I recommend you put a little more time and effort into doing some things around the house. I realized that I really could find time if I needed to. Of course, then other things were neglected. I guess it's better to just get a house that you can take care of; don't get something too big, too much land; too much yard. Try to have a proper balance in your life.

Have we become deadened to our own sins of neglect? Sometimes we sin out of neglect; we omit to do certain things that we know we should do. Has spiritual neglect become a part of our lives that we don't notice, but then we finally wake up and realize that we have neglected our prayer, our Bible Study and our fasting? Paul talks about redeeming our time, using our time effectively; again maintaining things along the way and not neglecting things.

Eph. 5:14-17 "Therefore He says: 'Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.'" Verse 15 "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise," Verse 16 "redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Verse 17 "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is."

God wants us to apply ourselves in a spiritual way. He wants us to redeem the time, to use our time effectively and wisely. Little things do make a big difference, too when it comes to maintenance. For years I wanted to do something about some of the woodwork in our home, but I really didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure what to use on it, but we found this great stain and we stained just about every piece of woodwork in our house and that really made a big difference. It looked great! For years I put up with substandard woodwork, when I could have had it looking great if I would have investigated it earlier and found that there is a product on the market that really would make it look much nicer. We did the same things with our cupboards. Our cupboards were older; we found this stain that in our case worked really well. It covered up things that we had put up with for years that we wouldn't have had to. You might consider what you're putting up with in your home both physically and spiritually. We can 'get by' with a lot of things. I'm good at 'getting by'; you're probably good at 'getting by', but do you want to just get by or do you want to excel? It's better to excel. Don't just get by. So, point two is: DON'T NEGLECT MAINTENANCE. STAY FOCUSED ON MAINTAINING YOUR SPIRITUAL LIVES THROUGH MEDITATION, THROUGH PRAYER, THROUGH FASTING, THROUGH STUDYING THE WORD OF GOD.

3) THINGS AREN'T AS CLEAN AS WE OFTENTIMES THINK THEY ARE EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE A GOOD HOUSEKEEPER AROUND.

From a spiritual standpoint, we need to stay focused on cleansing our lives spiritually. A lot of these points go together. The less spiritually cluttered our lives are, the better regular spiritual maintenance, the easier it is to keep our 'spirit' house clean and orderly. We are the temple of God, where God lives, where His Spirit dwells, where Christ lives.

1 Cor.3:16-17 "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Verse 17 "If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are."

We don't want to defile the temple; again we're not perfect, but that's where repentance comes in. Once we've repented and God has granted forgiveness, then that temple is cleansed again. In that sense, we're holy at that point… once all our sins are forgiven. When we go and ask God to forgive us our sins and He cleanses us, then that temple is clean again.

As I said, Barb is a good housekeeper, but when we moved into that house nineteen years ago, it was actually a filthy house. We almost didn't buy it because it was filthy… that's another reason we got a good price, because it wasn't well maintained. In the kitchen they had a carpet and it didn't look like they cleaned it very often. It was nasty; that was probably the first thing we tore out was that kitchen carpet. Then, the other big carpet was tick infested, if you can believe that, it was infested by ticks. They had a dumb dog, I don't know how dumb the dog was, but they had this dog that was in and out of the house, bringing ticks in and out. We tore out every bit of the carpet downstairs and we got rid of it. Then we found out the house was mouse infested. I trapped over two hundred mice that first winter; it was unbelievable. I couldn't believe it; I was setting traps every night, checking traps, throwing them down to the cats. The cats loved it; they had seven or eight mice every morning for breakfast. I mean, it was crazy; the house was really rundown and neglected. I also found out about chiggers; I hadn't even known there was such a thing as a chigger until I was out cleaning along the fence line. That had never been cleaned, it had grown up with brush, weeds everywhere and I ended up getting these bumps on my legs. I was itching like crazy and I had no idea what it was until someone said, 'Oh, you've got chiggers'. That's right, if you don't keep your place mowed and taken care of, you end up with chiggers. Things aren't always as clean and as well maintained as you might think. Barb is a good housekeeper. One thing I remember she said about buying the house. She said she didn't think she'd ever want to buy a house from anyone who did not keep the Days of Unleavened Bread because at least they have to clean it once a year to get the leaven out.

She kept the house neat and clean for the last nineteen years, but dirt accumulates and when you put a house on the market you notice things you wouldn't normally notice. You put up with things, but when you put it on the market, you have to make it immaculate. It reminds us not only how much work it is to get our spiritual house immaculate but to keep it that way. It isn't easy to stay clean and pure, is it? If we're ever clean and pure, it isn't easy to stay that way.

1 Cor.6:15-20 "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Verse 16 "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For "the two," He says, "shall become one flesh."" Verse 17 "But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him." Verse 18 "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body." Verse 19 "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?" Verse 20 "For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

You are the temple of God; God is not now dwelling in a physical temple, but He is dwelling in you. He is dwelling in all of us who have his Spirit. God has given us a down payment or earnest of his Spirit.

We're all quite familiar with Christ cleansing the temple. Did you know that Christ cleansed the temple twice during his ministry? Apparently He cleansed the temple around Passover time the very first year of his ministry and He cleansed the temple again right before Passover in the last year of his ministry, right before his death. Christ cleansed the temple twice, so we need to consider that we need to clean our house on a regular basis. Christ cleansed the physical temple and we need to be cleaning our spiritual house. We know that in Jeremiah it says that the heart is deceitful above all things and it's desperately wicked. We have something to battle against; we have this deceitful heart and mind.

Jer. 17:5-9 "Thus says the Lord:
"Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord."
Verse 6 "For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited."
Verse 7 "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is in the Eternal."
Verse 8 "For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit."
Verse 9 "The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?"
Verse 10 "I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings."

Again, the heart is deceitful above all things. We battle against our own human hearts and we also battle against Satan the devil, who is the prince of the power of the air and who stirs up our hearts and minds. Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." This is part of the Sermon on the Mount, part of the Beatitudes. No one has seen God the Father at any time, but all who develop pure hearts will spend eternity with God the Father and Christ as well. Blessed are the pure in heart, so we need to cleanse our hearts, cleanse our minds. David wrote a Psalm of repentance in Psalm 51 after he had sinned with Bathsheba and against Uriah the Hittite. In the Psalm he says “cleanse my heart, purify my heart and mind,” …that's what we all need to be doing. That's lesson number three: things aren't always as clean as we think they are. We can do better; we can cleanse ourselves better.

This next lesson may seem a little out of place, but it's a lesson we learned as we prepared to move.

4) GOSSIP HURTS EVERYONE

Stay focused on using your tongue profitably. The reason we say that is because something happened during the course of trying to sell our home. One of our neighbors got involved. This was actually a second showing. The people liked it enough they came back for a second showing; in fact they were planning on putting a contract on the house. This was after three weeks of basically no real interest. You don't know how long it's going to take for a house to sell, so we were pretty excited about a second showing and that these people were very interested. While we were gone for them to see the house (you have to leave the house), the guy went over to the neighbor and was talking to the neighbor and the person looking to buy the home had several dogs. I don't know exactly what transpired there but the neighbor told him something that soured him against buying the house. It had to do with another neighbor who had supposedly poisoned a dog, which there was never any proof that he had poisoned the dog. I guess he had tried to poison a coyote and the dog got in it and was killed. That story, gossip, rumor, whatever you want to call it… I don't know how much of it was true or wasn't true, that pretty much nixed the deal. Had he not brought this up… you don't have to tell everything you know… I don't know if he just didn't really want those people there since they had a lot of dogs. I'm not too sure he was interested in having them as a neighbor that close. That was kind of disappointing when we heard about that; our real estate agent said, "They were going to make an offer until they talked to your neighbor." They withdrew the offer based on what was said.

Certainly from a spiritual standpoint, gossip can hurt those we love more than the person that we're gossiping about oftentimes. Some verses in regard to gossip are Proverbs 18:8 and Proverbs 26:2; there's a double emphasis here.

Prov. 18:8 "The words of a talebearer (or gossip) are like tasty trifles,

And they go down into the inmost body." (They have a big impact.)

Prov. 26:20 "Where there is no wood, the fire goes out;

And where there is no talebearer, strife ceases."

If there's someone who likes to tell stories and keep a story going and sometimes add things to the story to make it more interesting, eventually it ends up hurting someone.

James 3:5-9 "Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles!" Verse 6"And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell." Verse 7 "For every kind of beast and bird, or reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind." Verse 8 "But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison." IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY AND HOW YOU SAY IT. Verse 9 "With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God." The point is that we aren't supposed to be cursing anyone or telling stories or tales against anyone that could be hurtful. We need to use our tongues more profitably. So that's principle number four. By the way, we patched things up with the neighbor. I wasn't real happy in the beginning and we did have a few words, but we were able to patch things up and we got two offers about two days later. Thankfully, we had other people interested in the house. Maybe he'll get a better neighbor. Maybe it all turned out for the best.

5) WHEN THE PRESSURE IS ON, DON'T PRESSURE EACH OTHER.

It's pretty stressful moving and especially when you have to cram a lot of work into a short period of time. It's easy to feel stressed out, it's easy to feel the pressure. We need to stay focused on our conversion during times like that, especially with those we love. That's when you're more likely to 'go off' when you're in the same house with someone. The 'to do' list gets very, very long and pressure mounts when you're having to move. Money seems like it's flying out the window; it doesn't seem like it… it is flying out the window very quickly. There are so many unknowns. We don't know 'are we going to put $20,000 into the house and not get it back?' We don't know if it's going to sell for what we want it to sell for, but we also know that if we don't do certain things, then it's not likely to sell for nearly as much. There are a lot of unknowns so the tendency sometimes is to snap, to snap and take it out on those you should be supporting at the time. When we heard we were moving, Barb and I immediately saw the potential to not be as nice to each other as we should be. We did discuss it in advance and we knew that we needed to be aware that although we needed to do our best to be kind, that we most likely would say some things from time to time that could be somewhat hurtful, so we needed to be patient and forgiving with one another. That has really worked out very well.. we haven't had any real issues, just some small little things. I think realizing that it was going to be a very stressful time and that we would need to work together, made it work out well. I'm amazed at how well it has worked out. We haven't closed yet, but as long as the closing goes and everything happens the way it's supposed to… I am very, very thankful and grateful it has gone as well as it has. We also realized that it was important to have a sense of humor in the whole thing. When you're moving the stress tends to mount, so it's a good idea to have a sense of humor about things.

That reminds me of another moving story that I'll share with you. This happened back when I was first hired into the ministry, back in 1989 and we were in Hudsonville, Michigan. We had just bought a house ten months before, the first house we had ever purchased and I got a call from the home office or 'headquarters' at the time and they wanted us to go full time into the ministry, so it was also very stressful. We were tired and right before we were leaving, the day before. There was a car top carrier that I had loaded down with sleeping bags and blankets and in the rush; I had forgotten to clasp it. I did not lock it down. So, I'm out, I think putting stuff in the garbage and I stepped on a rake and whacked myself in the head, my glassed fell into the trash and I had a hard time finding the glasses. Then I look down the road and Barb is driving down the road and stuff is flying out of the car top carrier; something flies out one way and something flies out the other way. I'm watching all of this transpire and develop in front of me. Some guy drives behind Barb and wraps up a blanket on his drive train, so he ends up having to stop his vehicle. It didn't hurt his car that much I guess, but it got really hot and it melted. It probably caused him more grief than we realized. He never said anything about it. He left. He was a nice guy. I went by him and said, "I've got to go catch my wife." She's still running down the road with stuff flying out. It is a stressful time when you're moving. Barb could have blamed me for not properly taking care of that clasp, for not locking it down, of course I could have gotten on Barb for not noticing it sooner and just driving down the road for miles, but of course we didn't do that… maybe it did happen a little bit. The whole situation was hilarious; we laugh about it today and we enjoy telling that story because it does obviously elicit a few smiles and laughs. Instead of it being a big source of stress between us, it actually became something to laugh about.

Researchers from the University of Utah found that there's a price to pay when couples don't get along. If you don't handle stress well and you don't get along, there's a price to pay for that. One hundred and fifty husbands and wives were video taped discussing sensitive issues… how money is managed or doing household chores… that type of thing, and this was the finding: Women who buried anger rather than speaking out were more likely to succumb to heart disease than wives who were vocal. (So my wife's never going to have to worry about heart disease, she's pretty vocal.) When women became domineering and controlling rather than seeking a consensus, damage was done to husbands' coronary health. So I'm never going to have to have heart problems either because Barb's not domineering or controlling. We do get along quite well. Researcher Timothy Smith understood that there will be disagreements in marriage, but how you handle yourself in resolving disagreements is important. Can you do it in a way that gets your concerns addressed, but without doing damage at the same time? That's what we need to ask ourselves. Can we have these discussions and get our point across without causing further damage? The point is to improve relations, right? WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BRING UP ANYTHING UNLESS IT WAS TO IMPROVE THINGS? IF IT'S GOING TO MAKE THINGS WORSE, MAYBE IT WOULD BE BETTER TO JUST KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND WAIT UNTIL THE PERSON WAS MORE RECEPTIVE. You have to pick your battles carefully in marriage or at any time in our lives.

A British research project yielded remarkably similar results. After a twelve year study of British Civil servants, most of whom were married, English researchers concluded that those with hostile intimate relationships were 34% more likely to experience chest pains, to experience heart attacks, and other heart trouble. Even after contributing factors such as obesity, smoking and drinking were eliminated from the equation; those in troubled relationships were still at 23% greater risk for a heart attack. Stress really does affect the heart. "If you have good people around, it's good for your health," said lead researcher Roberto De Vogli, "If you have bad people around you, it is much worse for your health." IT IS IMPORTANT WHO YOU DECIDE TO MARRY. If you married a bad person, you made a huge mistake, obviously and that's going to cause a lot of issues over the years. So, it's important whom we select as a mate; you young people make sure you select someone who is going to be good for you and not bad for you, and you be sure that you are good for the other person. So, lesson five is: When the pressure is on, don't pressure each other.

Eph. 4:31-32 "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice." Verse 32 "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." It is important to get rid of the bitterness, and the wrath and the anger, and the evil speaking, and treat each other with love and respect.

6) SOME JOBS CAN'T BE DONE ALONE, SO HUMBLE YOURSELF AND ACCEPT HELP WHEN OFFERED.

It is good to focus on humility at times like this. Frankly, I had a monumental task ahead of me. I mean I had a HUGE task ahead of me; Barb did too. The churches in Tulsa and Oklahoma City because they were closer by, came to our aid. It was their idea. They wanted to have some work parties, so I guess we weren't too proud to let them help us. They came and without their help, I don't know that the house would be sold today. I don't know that the house would even be on the market today, because there was a lot to be done. We had fifteen or twenty people over… different people would come at different times. Every Sunday for about a month… three or four Sundays, we had a work party. People would come and it really made a big difference. We had a shed that was so dilapidated that I decided it was best to burn it down instead of trying to resurrect it; it really wasn't worth it. We had to do that… that wasn't really too hard, lighting a match. It was more than that though. You had to kind of get it together, and knock it down and burn it up. Then we had an old swimming pool that was great for many years, but then it developed a rust hole and it was no longer functional and we had a huge deck around it. We had to tear that down and burn that. We just had lots of projects; lots of weed-eating; lots of things that needed to be done and quite a few people volunteered to help and of course we had food… it was fun. I like work parties; I enjoy them. I always loved it when we had work parties back in Michigan. We would cut wood for some of the widows or widowers, older people who couldn't cut wood. Up in Michigan, it's nice to have some wood in the wintertime.. it gets cold up there. We would cut a whole winter's supply in one day. We'd have like twenty people out in the woods and we were 'getting after it'. That was a lot of fun and when you need help, you should be willing to accept it. In nineteen years we'd never had a work party, but now was the time to have a work party. Now was the time that it was crunch time… of course we could have stayed longer, maybe if we had drug it out more and more. But, they came to our aid and I know if you guys had been closer, you would have been there, too. I realize that. In the proximity, most of it was Tulsa. We had a few Oklahoma City brethren come a couple times… but they're both closer than you guys, so I didn't even tell you about this. I don't think you probably even knew we were having the work parties. Some jobs are difficult to get done without help and so I was very, very grateful for the help that we got.

Galatians 6 talks about bearing one another's burdens, the importance of bearing one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. You know, Christ living in us… Christ is love. That's what real love is, bearing one another's burdens. They could tell we had a burden; Barb and I had a lot of work to get done in a short period of time, so it was really nice to get the help that we received. 1 Corinthians 12 talks about how every person has a role to play in the Church. We all have an important role. No matter who you are, you play an important role in God's Church. If you're older and you can't do a lot physically, you can still pray and God hears your prayers and that's important. We all need to work together in the Church so we can preach the gospel and so we can take care of each other. It's really important that we're all 'good Samaritans'. By the way, who is your neighbor? Your neighbor is anybody that needs your help, basically. In the parable the 'good Samaritan' helped a person that needed help and it wasn't because he was related or had any affinity toward that person… it's just that the guy was beaten and left along the road and so he helped him and was a good neighbor, a Good Samaritan. Samaritans were hated by the people that he helped and vice versa. It just shows that we should bear one another's burdens and pitch in and help each other. I know you've all been a good example of doing that here in this area.

7) WHEN YOU'VE DONE ALL YOU CAN DO, TRUST GOD TO DO THE REST.

Focus on God's love, his mercy and his blessings.

Prov. 3:5-8

Verse 5 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;"
Verse 6 "In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths."
Verse 7 "Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the Lord and depart from evil."
Verse 8 "It will be health to your flesh,
And strength to your bones."

There will be a blessing when you do that, so trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not to your own understanding and trust that God will take care of you and He will direct your steps. Some things are frankly outside our control. For one thing, we had little control over the road that we live on. (I don't think any of you have been to our home, we live a long way off… about one hundred and twenty or thirty miles from here.) Anyway, we lived on a bad road and it had potholes and gravel and when we'd have a bad rain, it would wash it out… not a very good road. We knew that some people wouldn't be interested in buying our house because of the road… it really is a bad road. It's about seven tenths of a mile off Route 66. Now, we lived there for nineteen years and I can only remember having one flat tire and I can't even say that it was the road that caused that. I think I maybe changed shocks on one car, so it wasn't that bad unless you drove like a madman… which I did at times. But, you know I found the faster you drove, the less you'd feel the bumps, so maybe that was a good thing to drive faster up that road. We knew there wasn't much we could do about that, but we knew only one person needed to buy the house. We didn't have to sell the house to everybody that came looking; we just needed one buyer. Obviously, we prayed about it; prayed that God would send the right person who was interested in the house, who had the money, didn't mind the road and it looks like we got the person. It worked out. We could have put a lot of money into the road, a couple thousand putting gravel on the road, but we wouldn't have gotten it back. We, and the neighbors, would pitch in to help each other from time to time, but I don't know if they'd have helped with the road… I never even approached them. The house sold, and we were happy about that. Once you've done all that you can do and prayed about it, you just put it in God's hands and hopefully it works out and it works out well; we're grateful that it has in our case. As far as in Dallas, we don't know where we're going to end up yet. We're going to rent a house for a while and check things out and look around the area and decide whether or not… We looked at an acre of ground that backs up into a wood, and behind the woods is an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir. It's a pretty good size, nice lake… so that's appealing. No one would build behind us because it's Army Corps of Engineer land and it's unlikely that it would sell. The other people around us have an acre, too. We may end up deciding to build if we can get all the financing together and work everything out. One quarter of the house is supposedly in a flood zone, which presents a little bit of a problem, depending on the insurance and how much we can get insurance for. I don't know that it would ever flood. It's not a real likelihood that it would flood, but I think it is in a flood zone so we have to check that out more thoroughly. We don't know how all that is going to work out but we have to trust God that it will work out and not worry about it.

8) LEARN TO REALLY APPRECIATE THE BLESSINGS GOD HAS GIVEN YOU.

Like right now! You know, it's interesting… we really liked living up there where we did and we liked the quietness, the solitude. We liked being up on top of the hill; the views driving back down were always really nice, but I think we appreciate them more now than we probably did before. Now that we're leaving we realize, 'You know, that really was nice.' Our master bedroom is big and places we've looked at, we haven't found any master bedrooms as nice as the one we've been living in for the last nineteen years. And there are other things. My office overlooked the pasture field and the trees and the woods and the pond a little further down, so I had a nice view from my office right in front of the window. You just appreciate things more when you know you're not going to have them much longer, so I would encourage all of you to appreciate what you have now and be grateful for whatever it is. God blesses us in various ways and really we have felt very blessed where we've been living for the last nineteen years. It's really been a haven for us, a real blessing… but I think in some ways we appreciate it even more now. You probably remember the song "You Don't Know What You've got ‘til it's gone, They've Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot". I would admonish everyone to appreciate all the blessings that God gives you, be grateful for them. Barb and I are moving on. That's what we're doing and I hope to keep in mind the lessons that we have learned from moving this time. For some reason these lessons seem more real this time, maybe it's because we've been here for so long. Before we moved every five or six years or something like that. This is the longest we've been in one place together.

In conclusion let me go through these eight points:

1) SIMPLIFY AND DE-CLUTTER YOUR LIFE AND STAY FOCUSED ON DOING EVERYTHING DECENTLY AND IN ORDER.

2) DON'T NEGLECT MAINTENANCE; STAY FOCUSED ON MAINTAINING YOUR SPIRITUAL LIVES.

3) THINGS AREN'T AS CLEAN AS WE THINK THEY ARE OFTENTIMES, SO STAY FOCUSED ON CLEANSING YOUR LIVES SPIRITUALLY.

4) REMEMBER THAT GOSSIP HURTS EVERYONE, STAY FOCUSED ON USING YOUR TONGUE PROFITABLY.

5) WHEN THE PRESSURE IS ON, DON'T PRESSURE EACH OTHER; STAY FOCUSED ON YOUR CONVERSION.

6) SOME JOBS CAN'T BE DONE ALONE, SO HUMBLE YOURSELVES AND ACCEPT HELP WHEN OFFERED.

7) WHEN YOU'VE DONE ALL THAT YOU CAN DO, TRUST GOD TO DO THE REST.

8) LEARN TO REALLY APPRECIATE THE BLESSINGS THAT GOD HAS GIVEN YOU.

These are lessons that will hopefully help you in the years ahead and maybe next time you have to move, you'll remember some of these lessons. Hopefully in the meantime, they will help you in your spiritual life.