Happy 5th Anniversary to Me!!!

This week….5 years ago….I moved into Southern Barton Heights!!!  WOW!  What a wild ride it has been.  If you had asked me 5 ½  years ago where I would be living…this would be the LAST place I would have said.  Actually…I didn’t even know that this part of Northside even existed.  When I first started looking for a new home, I drove through SBH quite by accident….following 2^nd Street until it turned to the left and dropped me off at 1^st Street.  I was simply just trying to get to the other side of I-95….where you see those houses up on the hill to the right as you come from 64 to 95N.  So…I naively drove through Gilpin Court/Jackson Ward and across the 1^st Street bridge and into SBH.  I remember thinking….this would be a great neighborhood…if only it was located somewhere else.  I fell in love with the architecture and the community feeling of it.  But, as I drove through, I just knew it was not for me….and kept looking elsewhere.  Then, I came back…entering Battery Park by way of Overbrook…and seriously considered some houses adjacent to the park.  Friends…both white and black/African-American told me I couldn’t move there….as a single white woman…that I would be a target.  So, I stopped looking in Northside.

Then, I continued to look in other parts of Richmond…and placing contracts on houses…and getting totally shot down!  Remember, this was the height of the housing boom.  Somehow, I ended up back in the SBH area looking for a home.  You can read more of that story in the following posts…  In the beginning…, Daring God and  Our House…..

Something (or should I say…Someone!!!) kept bringing me back to this area….and that was God.  I had NO idea why!!!  Nor did I ask, surprisingly enough.  Walking in blind faith…or stupidity, not sure which I was doing at the time!  Now that 5 years have gone by…I can see why the Lord wanted me here….for serving others….and changing ME! I am not the same person I was 5 years ago.  Only God could have made the changes in me.  There have been times that I have tried doing this on my own…in my own strength and power.  But I have learned that I am not capable of that and sustain it for the long-term.  When I let the Holy Spirit guide me, and allow God to show off….(to use Christianese for a minute…I must decrease, He must increase…..)that is when the real stuff happens!  That is when the impossible happens.  I can name sooo many times when God filled me with His Power…the Holy Spirit…to do His work.  I am so much more dependent on God than I was 5+ years ago!

This week, I’ve been reading this book called Radical by David Platt….and it has really been challenging me.  Some people would ask….why are YOU reading a book called Radical?  You could write it.  What you have done is radical!!!”  Yes…moving to Southern Barton Heights may be called radical…but not nearly radical enough….is what I am realizing.  Platt writes on page 68…

In the Gospels we see how Jesus ended his time on earth by commanding his followers to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.  The letters are filled with the same emphasis as Paul, Peter, James and John led the church through persecution and suffering to spread the glory of God to the nations.

So…that same commandment is for us….today.  So…what we do here in SBH is really not all that radical to Jesus…this is what he expects of us. Luke 10:1 talks about how while on earth Jesus sent people off in pairs to villages to prepare for him to come…as they didn’t have cell phones, internet, etc to announce it.  In 2007, I prayed for the other ½ of my pair….to prepare SBH for Jesus to come!  And that’s when I met Louis 2½ years ago.  I truly feel like the Lord has sent us here…to prepare the way for Jesus to come.  His presence is already here.  You can see it…feel it…in so many ways.  The revival that will take place will not be because of anything that WE did….but what the LORD did.

Platt also writes on page 46….

The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power.  In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him.

and a friend recently reminded of this word from Francis Chan‘s book, Forgotten God.

God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through. ~Francis Chan, Forgotten God

In addition, nowhere in the Bible does it say that it will be easy and glamorous. No one said that it would be a piece of cake.  In fact…Jesus DOES say that we will be persecuted for HIS name sake….that people hated on Him before they hated on us.  The Bible also says that we should find pure JOY in suffering.  That joy part…I am still a work in progress there!  I have a ways to go!

Later, I will share with you some of the suffering, persecution, or discomfort that we have encountered since beginning this work.  Not to point us, but to point to how faithful the Lord has been through it.  Please pray for wisdom and strength as we continue to be the Light on the City Hill.