“Faith is the deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.” ~ Oswald Chambers

Wow – I can’t believe I left that last blog post about our situation here in Dallas hanging like that. I feel as though I need to hire a cheesy soap opera announcer to introduce this post: “When we last saw the Armitage family, their future was hanging by a thread. Did Sten-Erik register for classes? Did rent get paid? Are the Armitage children now living under a bridge in downtown Dallas? These questions – and more – answered this week on…The Armitage Chronicles!”

It has been a wild ride. The reason that I haven’t posted to update the blog is because I felt I needed to make a choice. Based on everything we were facing at the end of the semester I had to either, 1) Stop focusing on papers and exams and focus on finding a full-time job and a place to live since we would be forced to withdraw from DTS, or 2) Focus on finishing the semester well and trust God for tomorrow, investing in today.

Never underestimate prayer

I chose the latter. Lisa and I prayed and felt that God called us here to seminary to prepare for ministry – not to go back into the fast-paced world of Human Resources and Legal Compliance. One of the consequences of that choice was hours spent in the library, studying for Hebrew and writing papers. The semester has now ended, and although I don’t believe I finished as well as I would have liked, I did finish. It was the hardest three weeks of our time in seminary thus far. It is extremely difficult to devote the attention necessary to internalize Hebrew or to do quality research when your mind is always being torn with fear about the future. If it was just me, that would be one thing – but I have a wife and four daughters who depend on me for provision.

Once again, God humbled me with His provision. As I said in my earlier post, my scholarships had lost their funding, and we were looking at a large dollar figure to be able to stay at DTS. Instead of making this an epically long post in narrative form, allow me to list for you how God came through to meet our needs – yet again:

• Two scholarships came through unexpectedly, taking our need down from $7,000 plus December rent to $3,200 plus December rent. (I posted about that here)
• Two days before the tuition deadline, another scholarship came in taking our need down to $1,615 plus December rent. In less than two weeks God had provided $5,385 in scholarships. Amazing!
• The day that the remaining $1,615 was due I spoke to the accounting office. They told me that if I signed up for TMS (a way to spread your tuition out over five monthly payments during the semester) they would hold my classes – that meant that housing wouldn’t receive a notice that I was not an active student, and we could remain in our apartment. What a blessing! However, to enroll in TMS I would need to pay the administrative fee of $42. That was about $41.50 more than I had to my name.
• I walked over to my office on campus to pray and to do some work on a paper. When I arrived, I saw a piece of paper on my chair. It said, “To you, from God.” (FYI – I think God wrote with a non-dominant hand, as the handwriting was very shaky.) Taped into the piece of paper was a Visa gift card for $50. Wow. I promptly logged on to the TMS website and paid the $42 administrative fee.
• Talk about a stress relief! We were no longer looking at having to move out of our apartment on December 14th. That said, we still needed to pay rent. Two days before the rent grace period was up, we received a note from a friend letting us know that they would be taking care of our rent for the month of December.

As I said, I am humbled by God’s provision despite my recurring lack of faith. Lisa and I would appreciate your continued prayers – We still need the $1,615 by the New Year as well as January rent. Campus is closed over the holiday, so I have no income opportunities between now and then.

That said, great news! I have accepted a job that will keep me busy 30+ hours a week. I will be doing this in addition to my responsibilities at my other two jobs. I can’t give any details regarding this job until January 10th, but it is a great blessing. In addition to praying for God’s continued provision, please pray that I would have supernatural time management skills and wisdom as I start this new job. I need to be able to glorify God by keeping my family first, my education second and my work third as far as my priorities go. It would be entirely too easy for those priorities to reverse themselves.

Thank you so much for your prayers and kind words via email and in person. It means so much to us to know that there are people out there who love us and are praying for us as we go through this ministry preparation crucible known as seminary.