Trust in the Lord

Psalm 118:8 “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”

With school starting on Tuesday, and kickoff activities beginning tomorrow, I thought I’d share how it is we ended up on this road of helping start a school and being so involved in its growth. This is not something I could have ever imagined!

We had put our son in the public school for Kindergarten, but felt that it wasn’t challenging and I, having had Christian elementary education, missed the Christian foundation. We decided to homeschool for one year, but knew that we were not long term homeschoolers. In November 2005, my brother-in-law dropped off a packet of information about a new school. As I read the information about classical education (a model my husband and I both embraced and which I had gained more exposure of through homeschooling), I wondered if (and secretly hoped) this was the answer for our children’s education.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a couple had felt called of the Lord to start this school and by themselves had put together this information packet, set up an informational meeting, and sort of laid a fleece before the Lord, asking Him to provide at least 3 other families by year’s end if they were to move forward. At their first prayer meeting on New Year’s Eve, they had 3 other families.

For us personally, we began to pray about it that Thanksgiving, but did not know how we would afford private education. We went to the first interest meeting in early December, even recruiting other families to come. We began praying.

Then one morning that winter, I woke up with the words “one eighteen eight” going over and over in my head. What did that mean? Since yielding my life to the Lord and seeking Him that previous April, there had been a couple of times like this where verses were spoken in my head in the night, and both of the other times, it was very clear what it meant. But in this case, I wasn’t as sure. I knew that there was only one book of the Bible with that many chapters — Psalms. So I looked at Psalm 118:8 “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” Hmmm. “That’s good,” I thought, “and I guess I could apply that to many things, but Lord, I’ll just wait for You to show me what it means.”

A few days later, I decided to go to the school’s webpage that had just been constructed. When it popped up, there was a tree spreading across the homepage. That was significant to me because during our year of homeschooling, our theme was a tree. We had memorized Psalm 1 (also a passage within the school’s website), and we had a tree in the yard named “Roots” that we watched throughout the year. My son would journal about its changes. We studied the fruit of the Spirit and hung fruit on our tree. We wanted our lives to be like the tree firmly planted by streams of water.

But not only did the webpage come up with the tree, it came up with a verse, Jeremiah 17:7, that slowly moved in and out: “Blessed is the man whose trust is the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.” I knew immediately — That’s it! That’s the same verse as Psalm 118:8. In fact, when I looked it up in my Bible, to the side of Jeremiah 17:7, it said “Psalm 118:8.” They are the same thing. It’s better to trust in the Lord than put confidence in man! “Yes, Lord, I will trust You. I will follow You in this!!”

As we moved ahead, God graciously provided me a job at the school doing administrative work to help solve the question of financing private school education for our children. We met with the other “founding families” every Saturday to pray for the school. We saw God do amazing things with such specifically answered prayer regarding everything from teachers to location to curriculum.

Sometimes I think the call was so clear because the road would be so hard! At every point of doubt or discouragement, I could remember what He had shown us, and keep moving forward, despite the obstacles. And He met us every step of the way! He has used it as a means of our sanctification, too, which I had not expected.

We started in the fall of 2006 with 23 children, had 49 during our second year, and have 64 enrolled this fall in pre-K through 6th grade. We look forward with great anticipation to what God has in store as we continue to trust Him for what He has brought together.