Larissa's Story
When Mitch and I got married, we had a dream to buy a house, our own home, but I guess we've always held money pretty loosely.
When God has asked us to take a faith step with our finances, we have made a decision in our marriage to view that as an opportunity to trust Him more, and as an invitation to a greater level of relationship with God. Every time God asked us to be obedient with our finances, in the natural it looked like it was taking us further and further away from our dream of owning a home.
Fast forward to about three years ago when I was sitting in a conference just worshiping, and I immediately felt like God dropped this word in my spirit. He said, "I've got a home for you, I've got a home for your family."
We had just had our first son, Oakley, at the time. We were nowhere near being able to buy a home. We had no savings, we were essentially on a single income and God was like, "No, no, I've got this home for you." So we thought, cool, all right. That's where this whole process started. We decided that we would partner with God, and actually just give Him something to work with.
So we started talking to a few people about getting a mortgage, and got a lot of no's. Everywhere we went it was just no, no, no. "You're not ready," "You haven't got enough money," "You need to earn more," "You need to save more."
I was at the same conference a year later and in worship again God drops that same promise into my heart. He says, "I've got a home for you. I've actually got the perfect home waiting for you, but I can't bless you because you feel unworthy and you won't accept my blessings." I know something just unlocked in my spirit. I started bawling my eyes out and realised that sitting under the surface were a whole lot of feelings of unworthiness. I thought, "We've made a lot of mistakes. We're not the best stewards. God, why would you bless us with a house?" I had to surrender that to God.
By a miracle, we got approved for a mortgage and then we came across this house that had been sitting empty for about a year. It had everything that we wanted. It had space outside, three bedrooms. It had room for us to add our own style to it.
From the time that our offer got accepted to it going unconditional, we worked out we had about $10,000 worth of miracles just in those two to three weeks alone. Every time we had a need come up in that process, within a couple of days God had a way to fill it or send someone to fill it for us.
He went before us and everything that popped up, that we had no idea was part of the process of buying a house, God had already found a way to fill those needs.
I remember just sitting there on the edge of our bed the day we moved in and I looked at the size of the room, and I looked at the view outside my window, and I just sat there and bawled my eyes out. Because I was like, "Oh man, God is so good." We could have hustled and hustled and hustled and still not managed to purchase a house that allowed us to live the life that we live.
I think I had to yield a lot of my feelings of unworthiness and yield my fear that people would look at me and think, "Man, she's not worthy." Or that they would see all the things that God was blessing me with and say, "How or why does she get that and not me?" God actually had to flip that on its head and say, "No I want to use you as a display of my glory. It's nothing to do with you, it's actually all to display my glory and my goodness."
We had the exciting opportunity to say yes to that. His blessings have nothing to do with our worthiness and everything to do with His goodness. His character is to bless His kids and bless His kids abundantly and joyfully.
There's no limit on His blessings. He doesn't have a quota for each of us depending on how faithful we've been, He just loves to bless His kids.