First and foremost I know without a doubt our starting point and ongoing guidance is from His living Word. This is true for our homesteading adventure, and also true for all other major and minor decisions in life. His truth penetrates every corner of our mind and soul to set us free, to cleanse us, to make us more like Him. His word is living and active for our practical living for His glory. He nudges our hearts from our daily reading and weekly sermons and various Bible studies. His consistent leading gives peace and strength to continue the pursuit of God-sufficient (rather than “Self-sufficient”) homesteading.
After our second son was born, we were blessed and challenged with a fixer-upper adventure. In the midst of the chaos, along with God leading His people out of Egypt (we did the Life of Moses study through BSF), God made the heaven-bound vision more clear to us. We started writing to reflect and record 3rd Culture Living as a family. His leading, teaching, rebuking, and corrections are consistent but usually gentle. However, God does give specific callings to specific people at specific times to test and stretch our faith. When we are stretched, we are out of our comfort zone and become needy and helpless. As much as I would rather be in charge, I have learned to embrace my weaknesses as He lovingly exposes it for my good. I know where I am weak, I am strong in Him and His light shines through this broken vessel for His glory!
Over thirteen years ago, the Lord used Abraham’s example to faithfully follow God’s call (Genesis 12:1–9) to an unknown place, to challenge us to leave China, everything familiar there, and come to America. Once again, the same verses caught our attention to continue to follow Him. We have sensed His call to go to an unknown place and need to wait patiently for His will to unfold in His timing. After many twists and turns over a span of almost three years, we are excited, at this point, to see His direction more clearly. Lord willing, we are going to move our family to Missouri soon.
The past few years of intentional seeking, preparations, waiting, and acting has reminded me a lot of the time when we were seeking God’s guidance for our marriage. From a seed of faith to a reality takes time, trials, confirmations and then deeper faith in our good and gracious Father above. He is the one to give and the one to take away. He sanctifies our hearts and motives as our hearts are stirred by all the changes, gains, losses due to His calling. Following Him step by step and allowing Him to be the Lord, we are learning to do what is right in front of us faithfully and joyfully, no matter what the outcome is like. We know our all-knowing, all-loving Father has our best interest in mind, so we have nothing to lose or fear as we follow Him. All is good in His sovereign plans, even when we lost several bidding wars, were informed about one seller being sent to the hospital after we signed, and another faced an unclean title after the final contracts were signed!
We had doubts and asked honest questions. Shouldn’t things go more smoothly as we follow God’s will? The world may teach that. Our security is never promised here and now. Jesus prepared his disciples before his departure from this world that, “…in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) Our trouble is nothing compared to the early Christians in Jesus’ time, but the principles of being prepared for the hard times to come are still true as we continue to pick up our own cross daily to follow Him.
Looking back, we have seen many blessings waiting on Him. Since we didn’t have a buyers agent while looking at many houses, we were kind of acting like our own agent, doing our own house inspections. Each “no” has been instrumental to help us clarify our “yes”es! As we learn and put what we learn into practice, we have a growing interest in real estate investments, something again that would not have crossed our minds if we got the house we wanted early on. The Lord is so gentle and gracious to take us one step at a time as we are treading through new territories as He leads.
He has not called us to go and make disciples alone, though there may be times of temptations to go solo or feel alone. As we continue to seek the Truth, the Truth will be found for His will to be done. At the beginning, I knew no one in our Christian circle with a family economy mindset. The search was hard and slow. A lot of homesteading materials available were provided by earth-centric or new age support groups. Even though their information is pratical, I can’t isolate our homestead pursuit from our philosophies in life. I asked the Lord to lead us to God-fearing homestead leaders as His truth covers all areas in our lives. He is as always faithful, even when we are faithless. I am overwhelmed by His goodness through His abundant provisions of so many wonderful resources. I wish I could name them all but decided to only select a few most impactful ones to our family. I want to record them here for future references and to give thanks for God’s specific provisions. If you can find encouragement for your homestead journey, my joy will surely be multiplied.
The list will be in the next post…
Here are links to all 16 posts in the “Stewardship” journal from Elyse’s Journal written around 3/25/2023. (The link will not work until the post is posted.)
1. Seeking His will to take back the stewardship of the land (Rob’s Introduction)
2. I. “Who”: Rescued from the System
3. II. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Shake-up 1: Work System
4. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Shake-up 2a: Medical System
5. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Shake-up 2b: Birth System
6. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Chain of Spirit-led decisions
7. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Shake-up 3: Education
8. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Aliens and Strangers in the world
9. “Fear the Lord” and “He will instruct”: Freedom
10. Simple, Abundant Living as a family wherever you are
11. Called to the Land
12. III. Land – “Inheritance”
13. Land – “Inheritance” (continued)
14. IV. How (resources)
15. Resources
16. Conclusion
3rd Culture Living 