Faith To Buy A House

New House we are buying in Kunia, Hawaii

We have just bought a house here in Hawaii.  It is a nice house in a nice area and we are looking forward to moving in and having a place that we will permanently have (at least for the next thirty years or so).   But it is scary.

It might seem crazy that we are buying a house right now.  I am getting out of the Navy at the first of February and I do not have a job lined up yet for when I get out.  No one would logically say that buying a house in the most expensive state without a job lined up or an idea of how much I will make if/when I find a job is a good idea.  (FYI the house cost $600K but this is on the low end of house prices for Oahu.  Average house prices are around $700K!)

So why are you buying a house now? 

Because just like Brigham Young, I know this is where my family is to settle down.  I have seen it in a vision; I saw my family being happy and blessed being together here in Hawaii.   That is all I saw.  I did not see what job I would have,  or what our house/apartment was like, or where in Hawaii we should live.  All I saw was that this is where we need to be.

Like the pioneers, we have moved every few years from state to state (and country to country) since my wife and I have been married.  Now that my kids are growing up and are starting school, I am glad that we are finally settling down.

But knowing that you should live in Hawaii does not mean that you need to buy a house now.  Wouldn’t it be smarter to wait, rent an affordable apartment now and buy a house when you know you have a stable job?

I initially thought the same thing.  Then one Sunday I remembered this talk by Elder Kevin R. Duncan, of the Seventy given in the October 2010 General conference: Our Very Survival

In it he tells of how some pioneers came to Utah and endured a hard winter and when spring came they were afraid to plant their seeds:

“A spirit of uneasiness began to descend upon the Saints. Some Church members declared that they would not build their homes in the valley. They wanted to remain in their wagons, for they were sure that Church leadership would herald them on to some better location. They had brought seeds and fruit plants, but they dared not waste them by planting in the barren desert wasteland.”

When I remembered this, I felt the loving chastisement of our Heavenly Father. I could almost hear Him ask me “Why are you afraid to plant your seeds? Did I know show you this is ‘The Right Place’?  You know this is where you are to settle, find a house and settle down.”

How could I argue with the God?  So we started looking at homes.  We started looking at everything.  Like I mentioned earlier, I do not know what job I will find or how much money I will earn so we can afford a home. So we looked at everything: from small one-bedroom apartments to million dollar homes.

I kept expecting a great manifestation that we have found “The Right House”.  But it did not turn out that way.  It really became more a process of elimination before we settled on the house.   We settled on this house because we did not get a negative feeling about it like the hundreds of others that we looked at.

I kept worrying that maybe I possibly could be mistaken that this was not the house that we should buy.  Maybe it is too expensive.  How are we going to afford it?  Then I came across this talk that John H. Groberg, then a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave at Brigham Young University on 1 May 1979. 

Let me spend a moment on an item that I think a great many people, particularly members of the Church, do not understand. A lot of our people—including a lot of you—have great amounts of faith but sometimes tend to distort that faith a little by saying, "I am not going to move until I receive a positive assurance"—a burning in the bosom, as it were—"that that is the right thing to do."…
 …Let me tell what I have discovered—and this is somewhat repetitious. I do not say that we will not get that burning in our bosom, for we will when it is the right thing. In my life there have been quite a few occasions where there was absolutely no question about it—that burning was there. For instance, I have had the experience of installing stake presidents when there was absolutely no question, when I was positive that "that is the man to be the stake president now." It has happened in other situations also, but generally it has worked the other way—that is by eliminating the wrong directions to reveal the right direction, especially concerning our opportunities for progress in life in what we often term the temporal sense. We must try to figure it out ourselves. In the past I have tried out whether I should go into business or into teaching or into the arts or whatever. As I have begun to proceed along one path, having more or less gathered what facts I could, I have found that if that decision was wrong or was taking me down the wrong path—not necessarily an evil one, but one that was not right for me—without fail, the Lord has always let me know just this emphatically: "That is wrong; do not go that way. That is not for you!"
 On the other hand, there may have been two or three ways that I could have gone, any one of which would have been right and would have been in the general area providing the experience and means whereby I could fulfill the mission that the Lord had in mind for me. Because he knows we need the growth, he generally does not point and say, "Open that door and go twelve yards in that direction; then turn right and go two miles . . . " But if it is wrong, he will let us know—we will feel it for sure. I am positive of that. So rather than saying, "I will not move until I have this burning in my heart," let us turn it around and say, "I will move unless I feel it is wrong; and if it is wrong, then I will not do it." By eliminating all of these wrong courses, very quickly you will find yourself going in the direction that you ought to be going, and then you can receive the assurance: "Yes, I am going in the right direction. I am doing what my Father in Heaven wants me to do because I am not doing the things he does not want me to do." And you can know that for sure. That is part of the growth process and part of accomplishing what our Father in Heaven has in mind for us.

Like Elder Groberg said, we are moving on.  We do not feel like this is a wrong choice.  We are starting the next major step in our family journey and I know that Heavenly Father is happy with the path that we are on.  I just need to trust in Him and all the other uncertainties a head of me will turn out.