When I think of our last several years, I feel like we’ve been on a cruise ship. It has been a blast! We have loved serving at our home church, Jubilee Fellowship Church, for the past 8 years. It has been such a safe place to grow and learn and raise our family; however, the word we kept hearing God say was that we have been “comfortable”.
In January of 2019, Jon kicked off the year in our youth group with a series on Dreams. After preaching, he told me how convicted he was of telling the students to dream big, when we ourselves weren’t dreaming. We had told the youth that if your dream doesn’t scare you and if you know you could accomplish it on your own, then it’s not big enough. You have to be dreaming so big that it will 100% fail without God. We knew God was stirring our hearts for more. A few weeks later, our Senior Pastor and our Ministries Pastor told us that they see a call on our life to church plant and they would like to release us to start dreaming and planning. This release was exactly what we needed. Up until this point we had been fully bought in to Jubilee and wanted to spend the rest of our lives doing ministry there. Our biggest desire has always been to stay under our authority. But when they released us, the dreams started coming. It was so clear to us that God was calling us to step out of the boat. The safety and comfort of our boat was a blessing because it brought us to the middle of the sea where Jesus would hold out His hand and say, “Come,” and ask us to walk on water.
Jon is a man of great faith and he is naturally an optimist. I, on the other hand am a realist (pessimist). It didn’t take Jon long to step out of the boat, but it took me another month or so. I had to grieve the loss of what had been our home for eight years. And then the real storm began when I started to look at the wind and the waves. I realized that there was a big possibility that we could completely sink and drown. It’s just a part of my personality to “count the cost” and go through all the possibilities of wind and waves that we might face as church planters and senior pastors. In the end I knew God was telling me that it’s a part of who I am to “read the terms and conditions” before signing the dotted line. I wanted to be able to face storms head on and say, “Yes, I did sign up for this.” Yes, things will be hard. Yes, people will hurt us. Yes, we could fail. But ultimately, no matter if the wind and waves I am thinking about are true or not, I need to trust the One whose hand is outstretched to me saying, “Come.” Peter sank when he focused on the wind and the waves, but he walked on water when he kept his eyes on Jesus. Ultimately, the miracles we will see God do as a result of our faith in stepping out of the boat will far outweigh anything else. We are about to walk on water – and to be honest, we already are. Read on to find out all the miracles we have seen so far!
- Jon and JoAnna
