Message from Pastor Pete  

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
   and lean not on your own understanding;
 ⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
   and he will make your paths straight.

(Proverbs 3:5-6)

Immediately the boy's father exclaimed (to Jesus), "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

(Mark 9:24)

Trust in the Lord.  It sounds so straightforward...so simple.  We can place our lives in God's hands and trust that God will care for us.  Deep in my heart, I know that this is certainly true...so why did I have so much anxiety last week?

As many of you know, we at Peace Lutheran Church are all set to build our first building this summer.  We officially break ground during our worship service this coming Sunday!  All the pieces are in place: the building permit, the builders, the sub-contractors, the zoning.  At the beginning of last week everything was in place; everything, that is, except the loan!  Through some preliminary conversations with the Mission Investment Fund (the folks we get a loan through) we'd been given the impression that this would be as simple as sending in an application and receiving approval.  Apparently the person in charge of underwriting the loan didn't receive that memo!  Last Wednesday I took part in a conference call that made my stomach hurt.  They didn't know if they could process the loan.  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

We'd applied for a $500,000 loan with the understanding that the pledges towards our building project more than covered the monthly payments on a mortgage.   The rule of thumb that the underwriter worked from stated that we could only count 75% of the pledges.  We'd also been told it would be amortized over 20 years, but, as a Mission Congregation receiving a special rate, the loan would be amortized over 15 years.  Put those two things together and we no longer had the ability to make monthly payments.  Our loan was being referred to a committee to review our 'special situation.'   There was a real possibility that we'd have a ground breaking celebration...with no loan in place!  Was it possible that the whole project would get scuttled?  After celebrating the coming building project, would we have to stop and say, "Oops, sorry!"  Can you imagine the impact that would have on this congregation?  Needless to say, I had a couple sleepless nights.  This is why we asked for your prayers!  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

The good news was that the bids on the project had come in much lower than we'd anticipated.  While we originally thought we needed a $500,000 loan, the reality is that we only needed $420,000 to do all that we wanted to do.  We sent the revised numbers to the Mission Investment Fund and received approval the next day.  Trust in the LORD with all your heart.

Why was it so hard to trust?  Through this process we've constantly talked about God leading us forward.  We've prayed over and over that God would guide the building process.  Would God lead us that far down the road, only to pull the rug from under us?  I should have slept like a baby last week, knowing that God led us in God's paths.  I didn't.  I allowed the anxieties of this world overcome my simple trust in the God who provides.  God remained faithful.

I join the father speaking to Jesus in Mark chapter 9, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"  May God continue to teach me to trust.

God's blessings on your day,
Pastor Pete