The McAlistErs

We've seen amazing things happen when God's people believe in faith. We've even had a ton of faith for other people. It's interesting though; don't you find it's so much easier to believe for someone else than it is to believe for yourself? 

A little over a year ago, we experienced our own miracle, and it was such a huge reminder to us of the grace of God and how He is in every little detail. 

Rewind to about 6 years ago. We were living in a small house in Silver Spring, MD and Mark was working 3 jobs at the time, to provide for our growing family. One of our alternate streams of income was giving guitar lessons. He came home from a lesson, telling me how much he LOVED the neighborhood that it was in, Kensington, MD, that they had some of the highest rated schools in Maryland and was a "coveted" place to live. I remember him saying he was praying that one day God would give us the opportunity to live there. 

Fast forward a year...it was time to move out of our little house with the addition of our 3rd son! We looked all over the place to find a deal on a rental, and through the grace of God, we found a house in Kensington, MD. Over the 4 years we rented there, we saw tons of houses sold and prices continue to rise. In our words we were saying, "God, we believe you will meet the desires of our hearts." But in our minds, we were thinking, "God it's becoming more impossible for us to ever buy here."

We started off 2017 with 21 Days of Prayer. I distinctly remember Ps Heather praying over Mark & myself and telling us that this would be the year that God would provide a house for us. (I even remember thinking in my mind, "Ha! Yeah right!" Great faith, right??) Little did we know, that God had already been working so many details together, behind the scenes.

We started seriously looking that year but continued to be discouraged by prices in our neighborhood. Finally, we found a steal of a deal in our neighborhood. Jokingly, we texted a realtor friend of ours and asked her what was wrong with this house that had been on the market for 6 months already...that's a LONG time in our area for a house to be up for sale. 

Well, long story short, that's the house we bought at the end of 2017. But, the story doesn't end there, God’s faithfulness in favor and provision blessed us through the purchase. During the previous 3 years, Mark had been working at the same job-with no increase in income. He's in sales, and he'd been pushing through deals like crazy with expectations to continue to grow. We'd get to the end of each of those 3 years and be discouraged with the bottom line...asking God, "why are we not seeing greater increase here?" Little did we know that to get the type of loan we needed, Mark had to be under a certain income number. Guess how close we stayed to that number for those 3 years?? Just barely under it! 

God spoke to some dear friends of ours, who gave us a lump sum to put towards our down payment. We were blown away by their generosity, knowing that without this provision, we could not have purchased our home. 

We have now been in our home, in Kensington, for a little over 1 year. We continue to be blessed and blown away by God's attention to detail and the provision of our hearts' desires. We are challenged to believe bigger. And to truly live the mantra, "Possible Awaits!"