And...
Learning To Walk In Grace While Trusting
God
The critical issue when dealing with offenses as a pastor’s
wife is in reality a trust and faith issue.
When offended, it brings you to a crisis of belief. Are you going to accept God’s grace or reject
it? Is He Lord of all situations or
not? As a pastor’s wife, one of the
strongest offenses that can come is when you are rejected by a church and find
your husband out of a job. It was May
when the church told us that they wanted us to leave by the fall. How devastating that was, which made it a
very hard summer. We immediately put our
house up for sale. We felt we had to, to
get it sold, but I know deep down it was kind of our way of getting back. Kind of like, “we will show you by putting a
sign out in front and letting the church people know that something was going
on.” I guess also, it was kind of my way
of making it not hurt so bad by getting back at them. Something we had to get forgiveness for. The summer went on, it was a hard summer for
my husband (Associate Pastor) especially, because he had to go in daily and act
as though nothing was going on, and constantly feeling attacked by the Senior
Pastor and the personnel committee and the constant rumors that went
around. No one really knew the
truth. It also made it very hard to go
to church and worship during that summer.
People became cold toward us, and acted like we weren’t there. People who use to strongly support my
husband’s ministry, no longer would even talk to us. Thankfully, we made it through the
summer. When the end of summer came, we
still had no idea what to do or when we would be asked to leave, but we did
know we had to be out of our house by Labor Day weekend. The week that we had to be out of our house
was another hard week. We knew we had to
be out by the weekend, but we couldn’t find any place to go. All the doors seemed to close on the few
places that were available to rent. It
was now Friday and we still had not found a place to go. I cried many a tear. I guess in a way I was mad at God. I kept crying out to my Heavenly Father, “why
don’t you show us a place to live. Don’t
you understand God; we are down to the line.
We only have three days before we have to be completely out of our
house. We have no place to go, we need a
place NOW.” That afternoon, a good
friend of mine told me about a house next to people we already knew, and that
the sign went up just that morning. We
immediately went by the house to see if we could get a phone number off the
sign to call. We were told that we would
probably not be able to get an answer back from the realtor till Saturday or
Sunday, because the owner was in the midst of moving himself, from Dallas to Houston and there was no way
of getting hold of him. Praise God, the
realtor called us and said it was alright with the owner if we moved in without
signing a lease, only if we agreed to show the house to sale it for him. The owner wanted a year’s lease, but we
couldn’t promise that. In our minds we
thought we’d only be there a couple of months.
Little did we know this was going to be a time of refining that was
going to last 23 months. This raised the
ultimate question… were we truly called and if we were truly called, the only
thing you could do is wait on God and trust Him. We then moved in on Sunday and Monday. Boy, how the Lord works, I then realized why
He didn’t show us a place to live sooner, because it was the one that went on
the rental market that day. The Lord didn’t
show us any sooner, because the house wasn’t empty yet. I should have just rested in the Lord 100%,
but I still felt I needed to worry. Amazing,
little did we know that the house we moved into that weekend never sold as long
as we were there, and the owner said we were such good renters for the first
year that he decided that he was going to lower our rent. Praise God!
We were also able to stay in the school where the boys had already been
attending and they would even be able to walk to school with their
friends. It was wonderful! Things began to settle down until about
October when they called my husband in and said they wanted him to leave
NOW. We were now no longer employed and had
no church home. The personnel committee
and the senior pastor told us that if we’d just leave they’d pay us three months
severance pay, but if we stayed, they would drag us through the mud, and we’d
never get a cent. We decided the Lord
couldn’t be glorified if we stayed and were drug through the mud, so we
left. We felt that it was more important
for the Lord to handle the situation, and that we would just trust the Lord to
take care of us. After that, we did
finally find a church home where we could worship during this time in our lives
while waiting on the Lord to open a new door for us to serve. The first week my husband was home, was
pretty hard. A lot of rejection was
felt. No one from our former church ever
called or came by or checked on us for months.
The pain of not being wanted and not having a position of service was
very hard. The next few weeks got a
little easier. We had our good days and
our bad. There were days I even
wondered, why bother to get up and get dressed, there was really nothing to do
but sit around the house. After a couple
of weeks of this, my husband decided that he would take advantage of all of the
extra time he had on his hands. He began
to listen to tapes of John McArthur and other pastor’s who he had great respect
for. He really got into some deep study
and his and my prayer life got much stronger and closer to the Lord. He had more time for the boys and they loved having
him being at home so much, and I also loved having him at home a lot more,
too. It was now getting into the holiday
season. Thanksgiving and Christmas came
and went, and January was coming quickly and the severance pay was about to run
out. My husband knew he had to start
looking for some kind of temporary work that would help pay the bills until the
Lord opened a door for ministry again.
Several months came and went once again and no door opened for temporary
work, but my husband’s faith stood strong in the Lord, he was never worried
about money and bills. We really grew
stronger in our spiritual growth and in our marriage. We had to resort to living off of the $5,000
we had made off of the sale of our house.
Up and down days still came and went.
We never doubted that God was in control, (well at least my husband
didn’t, maybe me, not so much). March
came and my husband was still looking for temporary work. The Lord continued to take care of us and
meet our needs. Some days that really seemed the hardest, we would just ask the
Lord to give us a special hug that day, and He always came through. A note would come in the mail, or money, or a
phone call. Something to let us know he
hadn’t forgotten us. April came and my
husband got a call from a friend and asked him if he would like to come and
work with him in his lawn service. So he
went to work for $7 an hour working anywhere from 8-12 hour days, 5 days a
week. Fortunately the boys had baseball
to keep them occupied. It made for long
hard days for my husband, but we knew the Lord had opened this door, and we
were thankful for the provision he provided us.
Our church where we were worshipping during this time, also continued to
send groceries, or provide money gifts.
The main thing I think that we learned through this ordeal was that God
wanted us to continue to trust him and He would take care of us and to learn to
wait on Him. Just be still and know that
He is God. To finish off this part of
the saga in our lives, the Lord did open a door for my husband to continue to
minister in the local church, and I continued to learn how to trust God and know
that as long as we are in His will, He will never leave us or forsake us. It
would have been easy to become bitter during this time, but the ones who would
have been hurt/damaged the most would have been our family (Hebrews
12:15). When offended trust God, walk in
grace, and let Him write the final chapter.
*
Sandi Smith has been married to Terry Smith for 35 years. They have been in the ministry for over 34 years. Terry has served in various roles as an Associate Pastor, but is currently serving as Senior Pastor at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Fairfax, VA. They have two adult sons, Scott who is married to Mary Jo (Hubbard), and Jeremy, who is married to Christina (Miller). Scott is pastor of a new church plant - Well Spring Church of Joplin, Missouri. Jeremy and Christina are missionaries in Southeast Asia. They have three grandchildren, Grayson (born 2007), Mollie Kate (born 2012), and Adelyn Grace (2013).
No comments:
Post a Comment