What’s Next?

Eleanor’s screened porch overlooking the lake made a perfect place for the Big Dream Board to conduct important business. We had gathered together for two days to discuss, plan and evaluate our office, staff, and warehouse needs, finacial status and future projects. Each May we “retreat” to get a pulse on the ministry and see where God might lead us for the next year and we always come away with deeper faith in God Who has done far beyond anything we could have ever thought or asked.

After reviewing the present status, the question came up that I have heard over and over again from many of our loyal customers.

So what is next?

For the customer, that question is simple but for the board it is not because we are not the ones who set the path. It is God’s ministry and God’s will and God who we serve.

So the question really is “What does the Lord want us as a team to do next?

Linda didn’t seem to hesitate.

“We need to move forward with teaching women how to live THROUGH the Bible in their marriages and their homes. We have taught them the books of the Bible and have certainly encouraged them to study and know them all but there is a great need for women to know the ”HOW’ of living a godly Christian life.”

For years we have been intrigued, challenged and burdened with the Titus 2:3-5 command.

“Older women ….. encourage (train) the younger women to love their husbands and love their children, to be sensible, pure workers at home, kind being subject to their own husbands that the word of God may not be dishonored. “

Intrigued because it speaks to the older women in the church .

Challenged because there are so many facets to the command.

Burdened because we stand by and watch homes and marriages fall apart.

There was something about Linda’s confident statement that so resonated with each one of us. We have talked about such a curriculum for years but truthfully have not had clear guidance as to how the Lord would have us do such a thing.

So we left the screened porch and the lake and returned to our daily lives with conviction that we will pray fervently and ask God to help us help women who in turn will strengthen their homes and families and in the end bring further glory to God and His kingdom.

The following week I received a phone call from a woman I had never met. A friend of hers had encouraged her to call me. We met for lunch at a local sandwich shop. She was lovely, bright, and energetic. And she had a burning heart for women and their marriages and their families and their homes!

She had no idea that our board had just been discussing this very thing and now she had come to me with the same desire! And I began to think that perhaps God was up to something!

So what’s next for Big Dream? We do not know for sure but we do know there are signs, hints of what that direction looks like and it could be very good indeed.

Isaiah 30:21

And your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it, whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”