The Good Hand of God - Part 1
October 2006
Normally I use this space each month to address
subjects, questions, or personal ruminations that don’t come up in the
normal week-to-week exposition of Scripture. This month is a little
different. I want to tell the story behind the building of our new
facility.
I know that many who are reading these words
have started coming to Kootenai Community Church rather recently.
Consequently, you only know that we are building a new facility and you
don’t know anything about what has brought us to this point. That is one
reason for telling this story.
A second reason is so that we might put down in
written form, a history of God’s dealings with us. I find myself telling
the whole story from time to time to curious people who ask about the
building program. Having it written down takes it from mere memories and
puts it down on record.
A third reason is so that God’s people at
Kootenai might stand in awe at the wonder of God’s gracious hand and
glorify Him for what He has done among us.
Psalm 78 instructs us to “tell to the
generation to come the praises of the LORD, and His strength and His
wondrous works that He has done. That the generation to come might know,
. . . That they should put their confidence in God and not forget the
works of God, but keep His commandments.” (Psalm 78:1-7)
I hope that in reviewing the way in which the
good hand of our God has been upon us, that it might resound to His
praise and honor, instill confidence in Him and in His further guidance
and provision, and increase our faith.
How It All Started
During 2001, it became obvious that we needed
more space. The Lord was blessing our church with growth in numbers and
we had an average attendance ranging from 90 to 120 in a building that
would not even comfortably seat 80. So we started to look at options.
The elders met to discuss ways in which we
could accommodate for the current growth and allow for future growth to
our church. All our discussions boiled down to four options.
First, we could alter the current building by
adding a balcony in the sanctuary. Second, we could add on to the
current building. Third, we could go to two services. Fourth, we could
buy land and build a new facility.
As elders, we have a desire to impact the
Christian church beyond just the borders of Kootenai. We have a vision
to start a Christian School, a Bible College, or both. With that in
mind, we decided to pursue the fourth option which seemed to be the only
one that made sense in light of our goals.
How God Gave us Land
At this point, I should back up a little bit.
For over two years we had been saving money. Our income had consistently
exceeded our expenses by $2,000 to $4,000 a month. We were saving the
extra money and in December 2000 we put $10,000 in a 13 month
Certificate of Deposit. At that point we felt that the Lord was allowing
us to store up money, but we weren’t sure for what yet.
It was a couple months after that that the
elders started to meet and pray about expanding our facilities. Our
prayer was a simple one and I remember praying it often, “Lord, we
can plan our ways, but You must direct our steps. Help us to make wise
decisions. Direct us in the path You want us to take.”
I started talking to the realtor who had helped
Diedre and I buy the lot that we built our house on. Her name is Pat
Closson. She and her husband had attended church here for a couple of
months and volunteered to help us with the transaction free of charge.
The first piece of property that we looked into
was directly across the road to the south of the church building. At the
time, the house on the lot was run down and hadn’t been lived in for
years. Similar vacant lots were selling for around $20,000. We didn’t
figure that the house was worth much, so it might be within our price
range. We had $10,000 in a CD and about $15,000 of available cash on
hand.
Pat discovered that the owners didn’t really
want to sell and priced the two lots to reflect that. They were asking
$50,000 for two lots totaling one-third of an acre.
We decided to look elsewhere and see what
turned up. At the time there were a couple of acres available over by
Coldwater Creek, a couple of acres on the east side of Kootenai, and two
acres on the other side of the highway across from the Conoco station.
All those pieces were listed for far more than we could afford. For
instance, the asking price for the two acres across the highway was
$425,000.
So we asked Pat to look at vacant lots that
were not listed. She came back with a 26 acre piece along Main Street in
Kootenai owned by a Mr. Miller. It was only about 2 blocks from the
church building and would be an ideal place for a new facility. Pat said
that she thought the owner lived out of state and she would contact him
to find out if he would ever be willing to sell. This happened in June
of 2001.
About a week later, Mr. Miller walked into the
church and shook hands. “Hi Mr. Miller.” I said. I recognized him as the
man who lives in the house north of the church building. My office
window overlooks his yard and I see him all the time. I had chatted with
him on many occasions. I had no idea that this was the Mr. Miller
who owned the land we were interested in buying.
He said, “I hear you are interested in buying a
piece of my land over here.” I was shocked. I was thinking that he meant
the lots north of the church building that his house sat on. We had
never even considered buying his house. Then it dawned on me that he was
the one that owned the 26 acres.
I said, “You’re the Mr. Miller that owns
that field.”
He said, “Yes, I am. I got a call from a
realtor saying you were interested in purchasing part of my 26 acres.”
“Yeah, we are. We are looking at building a new
church building and we are needing some land.”
“Well,” he said, “when you figure out what you
want to spend on the land, you come over and talk to me and we’ll work
out a price. No realtors, just you and me, and we’ll sit down at the
kitchen table and come to an agreement.”
The first thing we needed to determine was that
the City of Kootenai would allow us to build a church on that piece of
property. We didn’t want an uphill battle with zoning issues or property
use issues. So on August 6th, I attended the Kootenai City Council
meeting to present to them our plans.
We asked the Lord to grant us favor with the
council. If our desires to buy that land and build a church were
acceptable to them, we would proceed, if not, we would look for
something else.
They were ecstatic! The mayor said, “We would
love to see you build a church there and we hope you can get the land
from Mr. Miller.”
So, we decided to make Mr. Miller an offer. In
October of 2001, we had a special elders meeting and asked Pat to come
and give us some idea of what the land was worth and how we should
proceed.
First, Pat informed us that the piece we wanted
to buy was actually 6 and one third acres. Second, she gave us some
information on what similar properties were selling for in the area.
Directly across the street from the land we were interested in was a
five acre piece that Habitat for Humanity had purchased a couple of
years earlier for $72,000. That worked out to $14,400 an acre. That was
almost double what we figured we could afford!
After Pat left, we had a time of prayer asking
God to direct our steps and make His will plain to us. We decided that
John Kinne and I would go over and sit down to discuss the purchase with
Mr. Miller.
We had no idea what kind of a price Mr. Miller
had in mind. We figured that if we waited for the CD to mature, and used
all our available resources, depleting our cash reserves, we could
probably afford to pay $6,000 an acre. That would be $36,000. We also
figured, that if we needed to, we could probably raise around $12,000.
So, we decided to offer Mr. Miller the following terms:
1) We would offer $6,000 an acre for the 6
acres. We expected that Mr. Miller might counter with something much
higher. We hoped that we could settle on $7,000 an acre but figured that
worse case we could go as high as $8,000. We determined that if we could
not get the land for $8,000 an acre, we would simply tell Mr. Miller
that we couldn’t go higher than that and we would look for something
different.
2) We still had much of our money locked up in
a CD that wouldn’t mature for another 4 months. We didn’t want to cash
in our CD early and pay a penalty, so we decided to ask Mr. Miller if he
would accept $5,000 down and carry the note at whatever interest rate
seemed agreeable to him. Our intention was to pay off the land as soon
as our CD matured and we could raise additional funds if necessary.
So those were the terms we decided to offer:
$6,000 an acre, $5,000 down, and ask him to carry the note. John Kinne
and I went over on the appointed day to talk to Mr. Miller. We went in
and he fixed us coffee and we sat down at his kitchen table.
After a few pleasantries, he asked, “So, you
boys ready to work out a deal on that piece of land?”
“Yeah.” I replied. “We are prepared to offer you
$6,000 an acre for your 6 acres.”
As if he had not heard a word I said, he
replied, “I was thinking that $30,000 would be a fair price.” At first I
thought he meant per acre. I thought, “Wow, he sure is in for a rude
awakening!”
“For the whole six acres?” I asked hopefully.
“Yeah. $30,000 for the six acres.”
Hardly able to believe what I was hearing, I
asked, “So. . . that would be $5,000 an acre?”
He said, “Yep. Is that agreeable to you?”
I don’t know about John, but I wanted to pinch
myself. I could hardly believe what I was witnessing! “That sounds
fair,” I said. I didn’t want to argue with that. I had never been in a
situation where the seller had offered a lower price than the buyer!
I said, “If we are agreed at $5,000 an acre
then we just need to work out the terms of payment.”
He quickly replied, “How about this: You give
me $5,000 down, I’ll carry the note at 1/2 a percent interest rate, and
you can work out whatever monthly or annual payment schedule you want.”
The going interest rate for such a note was around 6.5-7%.
I couldn’t believe it! It was as if Mr. Miller
had listened in on our elders meeting. He was repeating back to us the
same terms that we had decided to offer to him. We had asked the Lord
that He would grant us favor with Mr. Miller and that these terms of the
sale would be acceptable. God not only did that, but He actually gave us
the land for $1,000 an acre less than we had offered. Truly, the Lord
does exceedingly beyond all that we ask or think! (Ephesians 3:20)
The last thing I wasn’t sure about was the 1/3
of an acre. You see the piece of property was not 6 acres, but 6 1/3
acres. I told Mr. Miller, “The realtor told us before we came over here
that the piece is actually 6 1/3 acres and not 6. So should we add 1/3
of $5,000 to the $30,000 to cover that third of an acre?”
“No.” he said, “Just keep it at $30,000. That
is a good round number for us all to work with.”
I signed the papers and closed on the purchase
of the property on November 9, 2001.
Consecration Sunday
We moved to the gym of the Kootenai School in
March of 2002. After our CD matured we paid Mr. Miller the remainder of
the price of the land. That was about April of 2002.
We wanted to move forward with designing a
facility and working on a foundation. However, with the purchase of the
land and the equipment necessary to set up church in the gym, we had
depleted our funds.
We were faced with the issue of how to raise
money for the construction of the new facility. The elders were in
agreement that we didn’t want a long drawn out stewardship campaign
where we were begging people for money every Sunday and always
mentioning the building fund. We also didn’t want to have dozens of bake
sales, car washes, and rummage sales for fund raisers and we didn’t want
to borrow the money for the facility.
We were asking God to provide what was needed
and we determined that we would wait on Him for that provision. At the
time, I was preaching through the book of Ezra and we were seeing how
God provided for the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Seeing
God’s hand of provision was encouraging to us and we decided to raise
money the same way they did in the Old Testament.
When Moses needed funds for the construction of
the tabernacle, the children of Israel appointed a day and they all
brought of their resources and contributed it for that cause (Ex. 35,
36). When David purposed to build the temple in Jerusalem, he had a
worship service where the people contributed on one day to the
construction of the temple (1 Chronicles 29).
So, we determined that we would appoint a
special day to bring our offerings to the Lord for the new facility. We
would call it our Consecration Sunday where we would first consecrate
ourselves to the Lord, then we would give of
ourselves to the Lord. Our giving to the building fund would be an act
of worship and trust. We set December 15th, 2002 as our special day.
We asked people to keep that day in prayer and
to lay aside resources to be offered to the Lord on that day. We
reminded people that this offering was to be above normal giving to the
Lord and that we were to pray for the Lord to bring us extra to give on
that day!
We set our goal at $35,000 and began asking God
to bless us with that amount. Our Consecration Sunday came and we
planned a special worship service and a special sermon from 1 Chronicles
29 on the subject of consecration. After our worship, the preaching, and
a time of prayer and personal consecration we took up an offering. While
we sang some closing songs at the end of the service, the treasurer and
the other elders counted the offering in the office. After the singing I
announced the total: just over $36,000!
For those of you who were there, you remember
just how emotional a time that was! What a tremendous blessing it was to
see God answer our prayer and provide so abundantly through His people,
all to the praise of His glorious grace! What God did through His people
that day was a testimony to His power, grace, and glory! And God wasn’t
finished.
Exceedingly Abundantly Beyond
Every Tuesday at noon I meet with a group of
area pastors for fellowship and prayer. After one of those meetings,
Pastor Larry Nelson from Lakeview Bible Chapel came up and said to me,
“Jim, you know that there are only a few people left at the church in
Lakeview and I have felt for some time that I should be pursuing a
counseling ministry in a larger city.” In fact, Larry had gone to
Master’s College to get a degree in Biblical nouthetic counseling.
“Does it look to you like you will be leaving
soon?” I asked.
“Yes, there is a church in the Seattle area
that has contacted me and is asking me come on staff as a counseling
pastor. The leadership at Lakeview has discussed our options and prayed
about what to do, and we unanimously feel that the church should close
down and we think Kootenai (Community Church) should have the
facilities.”
I said, “Larry, I don’t even think that is an
option for us. We are in the middle of a building project of our own; we
are trying to raise money for that and we can’t afford to buy your
facilities in Hope.”
“No.” He said. “We want to give them to you.”
“Give them to us?”
“Yes. Sign over the deed. Hand over the key.
You do what you want with them. Start a church, start a school, you can
sell them if you want. Take the money from the sale and use it to build
your new facility in Kootenai. As far as we are concerned, we can think
of nothing better for that facility than that it be used to help the
ministry at Kootenai.”
I was overwhelmed. I met with Larry several
more times to discuss the transfer of the facilities. During those
meetings Larry expressed that Lakeview was giving us the facilities
because they trusted our eldership, agreed with our doctrine and our
philosophy of ministry, and believed in our vision for ministry.
Local attorney and friend of both Kootenai
Community Church and Lakeview Bible Chapel, Steve Smith, helped with the
legal transfer of the property. By fall of 2003 the transfer of the
facilities was complete. Diligently seeking the Lord for guidance as to
what to do with the property, we waited almost 6 months before we listed
the property for sale.
In the fall of 2004, we had an offer for
$350,000 that we were only minutes from accepting when a second offer
of $450,000 came in. We accepted that offer and on February 1, 2005
deposited $418,832.50 into our building fund.
Here is how I like to think of it: we offered
all we had to the Lord. In consecrating ourselves to Him and giving of
ourselves to Him, He blessed us with $36,000. Then He stepped in and did
exceedingly abundantly beyond what we asked for or could even have
imagined! All this, He has done in such a way that He has been honored
and glorified.
Seeing the Hand of God
For those who have eyes to see, the Hand of God
is obvious. When Ezra returned from Babylon to minister in Jerusalem,
the Scripture says that the “good hand of his God was upon him.” In
fact, in Ezra 7 and 8, it says six different times that the Hand
of God was upon Ezra (Ezra 7:6, 9-10, 28; 8:18; 22, 31). The
success of Ezra’s journey to Jerusalem is attributed to “the Hand of God
over us.” (Ezra 8:31) Any success we have in building a new
facility, spreading the gospel, preaching the Word, evangelizing the
lost, or serving the Lord is always due to the “Hand of God over us.”
Who but God could have arranged the purchase of
that property the way He did? Who but God could have blessed His people
and moved in such a way as to provide $36,000 through such a small group
of people? Who but God could have dropped land and buildings into our
laps to provide nearly half a million dollars for a building fund? If
that is not the Hand of God, then I have never seen it. If those events
do not evidence the moving and blessing of God then I have never seen
the moving and blessing of God.
We have seen all this not because we are a
great people, but because our God is a great God. We have received this
not so that we can glory in our accomplishments, but so that we can
boast in the Lord and His work.
Let me offer a couple of observations. First, I
believe that God blesses His people when His people are committed to
honoring Him and waiting on Him. That is what Ezra 8:22 says:
“The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him.”
If we wait on Him, seek Him, trust Him, look to Him, honor Him, and
glorify Him, then His hand of blessing will be over us.
Second, I believe that God blesses His people
when they honor His Word. Ezra 7:9-10 says that the “good hand of
his God was upon him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of
the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in
Israel.”
So our focus will continue to be what it has
always been: to equip the saints for the work of ministry by preaching
and teaching the Word, and to trust God to honor both His Word and the
confidence of His people in Him.
For those who are rather new to Kootenai
Community Church, I hope this has served to give you a history of God’s
work among us in connection with the building of the new facility. For
those who have been here a while, I hope this has served to remind you
of the faithful hand of God and bring to your mind afresh the reality of
God’s blessing and moving. Do not forget His benefits!
For all of us, I hope this has served to
increase our faith and our confidence in God. We tell of His greatness
in order that we “should put our confidence in God and not forget the
works of God, but keep His commandments.” (Psalm 78:7)
There is not a thing here in all of this story
that a single man or woman can take credit for. Nothing has been done
that might result in praise to men. It has all been God’s blessing. He
gets the honor. He gets the glory. Quite frankly, that’s the way I like
it.
Now, did you notice the title of this article?
The Good Hand of God - Part 1. The rest of this story has
yet to be written. I am convinced that we have only witnessed the
beginning of the good hand of our God. We will see Him do so much more,
if we will trust Him and ask Him to do great things, all to the praise
of His glorious grace! Stay tuned for The Good Hand of God - Part 2
sometime in the future.
Without Wax -
Jim Osman
Pastor/Teacher |
