Sorry for the long post, but this is the full scoop – kind of a chronicle of our thoughts and prayers -about moving to Orlando.

It did not even seem possible:

“God, You want us to live in Orlando?. . . .Florida? You want us to leave behind a wonderful place and a thriving ministry? Leave people and a place we love for a place where we hardly have any friends and a land that just doesn’t seem like home? Move even farther away from an already more-than-a-day trip visit to family and relatives? Move our kids now that we have finally started school?”
“. . .Lord, let’s be serious here, Orlando is definitely a nice place. . .to visit! It’s fine for vacations but I certainly don’t want to LIVE there! It’s too flat, too hot, and they get hit by hurricanes every other month!”
“. . .And, it’s not even the South, Lord! It’ll be like moving to a foreign country! Most people who live there have migrated south from places like Michigan, WisCANson or PITTSburg. They have funnier accents than we do!”
“. . . And, we’ve made good relationships with our neighbors here – several of whom don’t know You or are struggling to know You. Who will be here to talk with them about You if we leave?”

My pleading with God continued. I wrestled with Him over these questions again and again. Yet, the more I wrestled, the more I sensed that in order to “win” the wrestling match I needed to LISTEN to Him more than I needed to clearly articulate my own case to Him. As if He did not already know all of my arguments for staying in Atlanta.
“What, Lord? Oh, You want to remind me of some important things? Yes. . .well, I’ll listen. I need to be reminded, I suppose.”

IMPORTANT THING #1:
It’s all about God, not about us.
Translation: Life in this world is not primarily about what we can do for God (as if He needed anything) but more about Him showing up and being the center of attention. Therefore, everything we do – including where we live and how we serve Him – should be subject to a central focus on Him. Neither home nor nice neighborhood nor thriving ministry nor friends – even close friends and family – should surpass our pursuit of making Christ the absolute, joyful, dominant center of everything. In fact, when He takes His rightful place as the center of our lives, then HE IS our home, our family, our friends, our ministry, and our delightful neighborhood. Our citizenship is indeed IN HIM. (Philippians 3:20)
See more on a related idea from one of our previous posts

IMPORTANT THING #2:
God promises to give us the fulfillment of our deepest desires.

“Delight Yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

Often I think that following the Lord is all about subverting what I really want and desire for something that He wants – which is totally undesirable.
Wrong! . . . .So wrong! My misconceptions are:
A) I give my life to God and He makes me do everything I abhor.
B) He wants us to move to Orlando so we will find less satisfaction in life, not more.
Even as I write these words above I see how diametrically opposed they are to the truth.
Who says that God is all about making me do things that are opposite of what I desire and opposite of what I enjoy?
Why is it that I presume that God is so dull and boring and ANTI-joy? Because of my misconceptions, don’t I fear that He will send me to deep, dark corners of Africa (or Florida) to labor fruitlessly and live in pain?

To get to the point here:
I think these things because that’s EXACTLY how the Evil One wants me to think! These are all lies and have been crafted and “fed” to me very well over time.
What’s the truth, then? Jesus told the woman at the well:
“Everyone who drinks of this water (speaking of the physical well) will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I give him (speaking of the spiritual Water of Life) will never thirst.”
Jesus is all about quenching our thirst – our desires, our longing to be satisfied and fulfilled. He’s all about quenching our quest to be content and full of life – full to the brim with joy and enjoyment of life. Our thirst is quenched completely in a relationship with Him.
Yet the problem is that we often choose to quench our thirst with the physical well – the temporal satisfaction of life; man-made enjoyments, man-made comforts, man-made communities and dwelling places, even man-made ministry.
Sometimes we THINK we are satisfied by all these man-made things but then we realize that we’re missing out on true satisfaction. At the heart of these temporal satisfactions is always me, me, me and more, more, more. The focus is always on me and yet I never am satisfied until I get to the NEXT thing in life that promises me more.
When I focus on Christ and see Him for Who He really Is, I am satisfied. I see that HE IS more. Only then can I truly delight myself in the Lord. The backside of that verse happens so naturally when I am truly delighted in the Lord: He will give me the desires of my heart. My desires become His desires when I focus on Him.

Now, this has direct significance on God’s calling us to live in Orlando:
It means that He promises that we will find MORE satisfaction, not less. Again, we won’t find the satisfaction IN Orlando as a place or IN a house or job. The satisfaction and delight will be IN HIM and watching Him work.
Also, it means that life in Orlando will be a joy even if life there is harder or more difficult. Whether or not we find a nice home to live in and find good friends (and these things are not promised to us), the Lord does promise to be our delight!
Only when we walk in faith – trusting in Him, not His blessings – will we find “the better life” – ultimate satisfaction in life.

Not that there isn’t true sadness over leaving behind things that are dear: friends, church home, beautiful and familiar running trails, fun family memories, etc. The people and memories God has put in our lives – He Himself gave us the joy of experiencing these people and this place. So, yes, there is genuine sadness.
Yet, if God has provided all these joys in the past as we moved to Atlanta by faith, why wouldn’t He provide them in even more abundance in the future? Moreover, if God has provided a beautiful eternal home with Him and joys indescribable from being face to face with Him, why would He fail to do the lesser here on earth?
So, as surely as all of the above is true, we’re sure that moving to Orlando is better than staying here. If God has directed us to move there, then following Him will be, by far, the best option.

~ David & Shannon