Stepping Onto Water In Spite Of A Storm

Our New Chapter Begins

As I am writing this, it has been three weeks since stepping into the new chapter of our walk with Christ. I will start by adding, that it certainly has not been an easy yoke or burden to carry. However, upon reflection we can see that the struggles we faced were all due to a lack of faith in Jesus; our Lord and King. As we can learn from Peter, it is when we take our eyes off Jesus and focus on the storm around us that we start to sink. I pray that by sharing our testimony it helps encourage you in your faith journey and specifically having the strength to handover the daily battles into His hands. Now, let me go back to the beginning.

As some of you may know me and my wife Danielle had a vision from God in June 2020 of a place where children with autism and developmental delays could come to receive therapy and be shown the love that we all deserve. It would be done as a not for profit, with the focus being on delivering at least 30% of the therapy for free. Alongside the building would be a house of prayer and discipleship house. A location where people could come to praise and worship God, but most importantly a place where the Kingdom of God would be demonstrated. A place where the Holiness of God would be tangible, a place where the ways of the world do not enter. We ran after this vision hard and fast, we got confirmation from other brothers and sisters across several different groups and regions. Everyone said this was from the Lord and it would happen. Sadly when December 2020 came, we felt we had failed and we had been “played by the devil”. We had gone all in on something we thought was God and lost a lot in the process. So, we entered a season of consecration for two months, where we cast everything aside and reset our eyes on the most important one; Jesus. Our Messiah, our Saviour, our Lord. During this time of reset the Lord brought us back to the boat and said “will you walk out onto the sea again?” This time we really had nothing left but Him. So we re-opened our home back up and listened to the one word of advice we got from Bob Goff – “When I started my first school, we started with a room in a house. My word to you is start with what you have. Humble beginnings”.

So we dropped the idea of looking for and asking for HUGE donations to set this up for free and said, “Lord, your way, not ours. We offer everything we have, we know it is little, but accept our home to make it Your place for children to come and be healed”. From this prayer and dedication we saw a small but dedicated community of people start to grow within the house. After months of searching for therapists, we received applications from two ladies who were exactly who God had told us to hire. Out of nowhere we began receiving enquires to help people’s children with therapy. We started to see God move. In fact within 2 months we came to the stark realisation that the space we had given to God, we had outgrown. We could no longer fit in all of the people for Friday teachings, our therapy room was fully booked and the house was at breaking point from managing the load on it. We could no longer stay in the boat we were in. After much prayer and receiving dreams from God, we made the decision to look up, into the storm where we saw Jesus. He wanted us to walk back out into the storm, into the unknown, into the dark and raging waters. We had built a happy home, the place where we got married. We had a nice routine, we knew our neighbours and had nice talks on our dog walks. Life was cosy. But so is sitting in a boat. When you make the decision to walk with Christ the outcome is not meant to be cosy, it is why you are called to pick up your cross daily and deny yourself (Matthew 16:24). The Lord will challenge you into uncomfortable territory where you will learn to put all of your faith in Him and not in the ways of the world (John 14).

Having made our decision it was time to move we started looking for where to move to. We had a tight budget and a lot to build in the vision we had been given. We learnt a lesson again, wait on the Lord. We had started to proceed in our villa search before God wanted us to. In frustration we could not find a villa that matched what we saw from God, or one which was in our price range. If someone was to ask me, were we prayerful when we started looking, my honest answer would be ‘no’. I just felt that I needed to find where the villa was going to be because we had a lot to organise. After a lot of stressing and getting to the bottom of many barrels, we finally gave up and said, “God we have had enough, we give this battle to You. You know where You want this place to be, so go forth and show us the way”. True to Gods nature, once we surrendered to Him, within 2 days a villa came up. To quote the estate agent, “How did you find this villa? We do not even advertise it”. After viewing the villa it was everything God showed us and it was exactly what we needed. So we spoke to the landlords agent where he further affirmed Gods hand at play when he said “Interesting timing, today we just decided to let this villa go up for rent. We have kept it empty for 3 years because the owner was not sure what to do with it, whether to give to one of the his kids or rent it again”. The best part, it was only fractionally more expensive than the place we were currently living! Without much increase in rent we had almost tripled the space we could do Gods work from!

Upon reflection we had really been like the Israelite people who tried to move into the promised land without God going before them (Deuteronomy 1:41-46). We had not consulted the Lord from the position of truth in our hearts and for the month prior we had been plummeted and assaulted by stress, anxiety and poor sleep! How foolish we had been to not consult with our Lord from the truth in our heart. It is one allusion as to worshiping in Spirit and in truth. We must be willing to spend that time analysing and getting to the root of the truth in our heart as to why we are doing things. Because in the end of the day, God knows our hearts and it is from this that He will look at us. So we should spend that time, praying and letting the Holy Spirit dig out the truth of our heart motives. It is never easy or nice, BUT, I can guarantee when you let the brutal honesty happen, your world and life around you will change and you will start to see the full gospel message walked out in your life. It was a lesson for us, which was hit home, always consult with the Lord before moving, otherwise it becomes extremely tiresome and difficult.

We had found our promised land, it was everything we had visioned from God. A separate therapy house alongside a prayer house. The next challenge was occupying the promised land. We had learnt our lesson from finding the villa to always being prayerful on the timing to move. So when it came to the time of purchasing all of the new furniture required we always waited on the Lord, He gave us a vision, we prayed for provision and we always found what we needed at a fraction of the price we would normally have had to pay. We could really see God was guiding us and directing us as to how He wanted this villa set up and providing accordingly for us. There were quite a few battles we faced with the landlord in regards to the maintenance works being completed on the villa. God gave us vision for how it could be, but there were literal holes in walls, doors hanging off hinges and AC’s falling through the ceiling. But as always, God wanted more from us than just to see his vision for the villa and enter the battles to get it done. He was pushing us to a place where we needed to also sit in brutal honesty as to why we were wanting to set up our new home this way. What do I mean by this? One thing God challenged me on, was why did we need to have the house set up well? Was the need for perfection so we could have a good place to show off to people? Or was our heart motive truly for Gods glory and to represent Him? It was something I spent time wrestling over and eventually God broke through the truth that there was a part of me that had self pride over the place we were moving too. We found once we had cleared through the poor roots in our hearts that things started to move smoother and we received even more from the landlord in terms or restoration works on the villa than we imagined!

Taking that time to sit with God and let Him highlight the root motives of why we were doing things really yielded the fruit that when we walk with God we just have to hand it over to him. From all of these lessons we were than handed a big step of faith. As part of the original vision we got from God a year ago, we had a belief that my work would fund the therapy for the children we sponsored. This was something we had not seen materialise yet. In part we thought I would be employed abroad on a high salary to fund everything. We thought perhaps sponsorship would come from my professional network. However, the truth was much simpler. God wanted me to go back to coaching. This would be done on a time exchange – aka one hour of training would give one hour of free therapy to an autistic child from a non privileged family. It was a beautiful revelation, however, we had nowhere to train my clients. So we prayed and shortly after God guided. We said good bye to the garage (no easy task when you live in a country that reaches 50+ degrees C in summer) in the new villa and gave it to God to build a training studio in. Not just any studio, but one that represented His kingdom.

So I went to the best overall fitness equipment provider in the region and asked for them to give me a quote for all of the equipment I would need to run a top level PT business. I explained the concept and they graciously offered me a 20% discount to support the cause. But we still didn’t have the money to set this up. After praying, I felt God say to me, “Eloy, if you believe I will provide, put the first 10% in and see what I will do.” My honest answer, was “Come on, we have done so much! We don’t have lives any more, I can’t remember our last date night, our home is not private any more, we don’t have any money left, we have set up this huge house with the best of everything and You still want more!” I will honestly say, it was embarrassing and it was a childish response. But I confirmed with Danielle and she said “no, this can’t be from God, it’s too much”. Well…. God had other plans. That night God kept her awake studying the Bible where He clearly said to her read Malachi 3:10. The next morning she shared with me her encounter and belief that we should in fact pay the first 10%, so we prayed and asked for confirmation amongst people we trusted. To be honest, the people we checked with all said “no, don’t do it”. However, we felt clearly this was from God and I was reminded of Operation Ghana. When you give to God the little you have, we just have to watch Him multiply and fulfil His will. So we paid the first 10% of the invoice for the PT studio equipment. The next day God said to me “stop asking for the remaining money and starting giving Me thanks”. So we did……. 3 days later an unknown person deposited the remaining balance to pay off the invoice directly to the gym equipment retailer. This man came out of nowhere and approached a friend of mine saying, “I hear you want to help autistic children, do not worry it is paid off.” Shortly thereafter we received a picture of a receipt that the cash had been deposited. God will always honour and complete His word, but the key thing, what we believe is His will should always align with His character as shown via the Word of God.

So as we fast forward to the move into the villa, we were faced with, surprise surprise, more trials. Sadly these were ones we failed terribly in. I lost my temper more times than I care to count. We were on a tight deadline for getting the villa to a liveable condition and, well, 12 hours prior to us moving in, the house still was not fit for cockroaches, never mind humans, never mind therapy for autistic children and never mind a worship and prayer service! Alas, through this trial God threw a HUGE spotlight on where we were falling short and we needed further crucifixion of self. We believed it all should have been easy and the fact it wasn’t caused frustrations. We learnt, we need to embrace our situation with joy, no matter the circumstance, because Adonai is with us no matter how the situation looks. It is our role no matter what to represent our King. We have no doubt that in our new chapter we will be faced with new opportunities with which we can represent Jesus. But until then I pray encouragement over you in whatever God is leading you in. Be faithful to Him, to His word and to His ways, then just follow Him and let Him fight your battles.