Archive for April, 2011

Mark 6:4-6
4 Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home."5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.

The other day while reading Mark as part of a 21 day reading plan that Newspring Church is doing at the moment, I noticed something that I have not noticed before.  I have known a long time about how Jesus was not taken serious by those from his home town because of them knowing him as a child and it being hard from them to accept that this boy they have known for years could be the Christ.  It was not until reading it through this time that I noticed what verse 5 said. It says that Jesus could not do any miracles there in his home town.
 

It does not say that he would not do miracles,which would be a choice on his part, but it says he could not do miracles there.  This implies that it was not his decision to perform no miracles but that he was hindered from it.  This brings to mind two completely separate lines of thought for me. The first question that comes to my mind is "How could Jesus, who is God, not do something?" In thinking about this further I would have to conclude that it was something that came from his willing choice to "empty himself" of his divine power. He was sent by the Father to earth to be human, and part of that entails not having supernatural powers. What powers he did demonstrate on earth were the result of his intimate relationship with the Father that miracles be done so that the people would believe.
 

The second line of thought that occurs to me is that this is the very reason that people of the "Western World" do not think that miracles happen in this day in time. The reason that miracles of "biblical magnitude" don't happen is that we don't believe they will happen. Our very doubt in miracles stops them from occurring. When Peter jumped out of the boat and began to walk across the water toward Jesus, the only reason he began to sink was that he doubted and became afraid instead of trusting in God to continue on. But this does not stop with astounding miracles, but holds true for any blessings from God and other things we ask for in prayer. It says in James 1:6, "But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." As a child of God I know that I must trust in him with all that I am, so that I will not doubt what he has promised me. I know that with full faith anything is possible.
 

This very Sunday at small group, Carol told us of missionary friends of theirs who have witnessed miracles that we would consider unbelievable, but because the people in foreign countries have nothing else to lose and all they have left is belief that God will heal them, miracles have taken place in the placing of hands and prayer to God. Carol also read to us of how their friend with cancer was given a night to live…the doctors did not even know if he would make it home, and now through the loving, faithful prayer of loved ones, he is feeling remarkably good and the cancer markers have decreased to half of what they were expected to be. In a week or so he has gone from the brink of death to now being given an 80% chance that he will fully recover. That is a miracle from God and a testimony that when people have faith, God will answer abundantly. But that our disbelief and doubt hinders the blessings that God wants so desperately to pour out on us.

Despite my obvious lack of blogging skills, let me post this Part 4 of our House Buying adventure, since most of it has been written for a month…

Well, we got the house! And even though it went so fast, it felt like forever. We had so many things to print, sign, scan, email, and reprint, resign, re-email. Even down to the last few days the underwriters for our FHA loan were extremely nit-picky. Even though I'd already given them everything about our lives, they wanted a screenshot of our bank account showing where I deposited the money from selling stock shares for down payment, because apparently the receipt of counter deposit from the bank teller was not good enough. Also, apparently if you're married woman, you can't give permission for tax transcripts that were from a year before you were married unless you sign it with your maiden name…that just seems pointless to me and a waste of time printing out another copy and having April sign it with her maiden name.

Anyways, despite the monotony of signing all sorts of documents and getting the correct things to the mortgage originator it seemed we were on the home stretch….then the appraisal came in.  Though we were at an agreed sale price of $204,000, already 11,000 less than what the sellers previously bought it for, the appraisal came in way down at $194,000. This was kind of a shock and we really felt that the appraiser did not do the greatest job with it because he used two concrete slab cookie cutter homes as comps to this house which was a custom build.

Nevertheless, there was nothing we could do about it, the appraiser went back and remeasured the house and what not a second time and held firm at his original value of $194,000. Well this seemed like a good and bad thing. It was nerve wracking for April because of the uncertainty of whether the sellers would want to continue working with us or want to back out and try their luck again. But we knew also that it could end up working in our favor, reducing the cost of the house for us even further into the range we really wanted to pay to begin with. So we asked the sellers to accept it at the appraisal cost of $194,000 but that we would reduce the amount of closing costs that we were asking them to pay by $2,000. 

Well, fortunately for us, they knew they were in a bad market for selling their home, but they did not really have a choice since they were relocating because of a job. They accepted the final offer of $194,000 with $2,500 in closing costs. We were definitely excited to hear this. We closed on the house on Friday, February 25th and spent a week hurriedly packing up our town house and slowly moving loads to the new house each night.

The following weekend we had movers grab all the big furniture and left over boxes. With both set of parents coming up to help out, we knocked it out super quick…and it seemed by the end of the first day that we'd already been here a week! Now we have been here almost 4 weeks and we have been loving it. Look for some pictures and our thoughts about the house so far in an upcoming post!

Related articles

• Buying our First House! – Part I (thisorrthat.com)

• Buying our First House! – Part II (thisorrthat.com)

• Buying our First House! – Part III (thisorrthat.com)