My Dream

After receiving a lot of positive feedback on my first blog I decided that this needs to be something I continue doing. I hope I can continue to bless you with encouraging stories of what God is doing in me and through me. I will continue to share about me, but I will also allow you to read into the things I see God doing around me.

I want to share a dream with you.

I'm just going to write out my raw thoughts so that you can understand where my heart is and how this dream is developing.

I'm at a point where I really need to find a new place to live. I have realized that I have a strong desire to serve people and bring people together. I really want to find a place to live where I can invite people from different areas of my life to come together and meet each other, allowing Christians from different churches an opportunity to meet each other, and people not involved in church the opportunity to meet fun Christian people. I also want to find a place where I can serve friends from around the country with a place to stay at if they choose to come and visit one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to.

I've been thinking about the different options I have that would be best for those two desires. The questions are what type of dwelling and where I would live.

The most affordable at this point in life would definitely be an apartment away from the water. The cost of an apartment is a huge benefit, but it doesn't really fit any of the desires I have for a home. Most apartments lack enough parking to have large numbers of people over. There is also not very much space in an apartment, and it's not very often someone gets really excited to go on vacation to, or hang out in an apartment.

In the same category as an apartment is a condo. A condo would be a little easier to host people at, but still wouldn't have very much room to have a lot of people over. Apartments and condos also don't really have yards to hang out in. The benefit of a condo is that I would own it so we could make changes to it that would best suit the needs of the people utilizing the home, but it still lacks the pull I think is necessary to attract people to hang out.

The option with the most benefits is to own a house. Renting a house is almost as good, except a lot of money is put into the home without seeing any return, and renovations can't be done to the home to better suit the desires of guests. I would love to be able to find a house that I could buy and make into a perfect place for people to come visit and spend time. Guests would always be able to have parking. There would be a yard to set up yard games, grill out, and enjoy the outdoors. In order to attract the most people to the home I would want to keep a tally of things that my guests desired the home to have. As a specific item, such as a large TV, dart board, pool table, grill, or something similar, became desired enough by guests, we would work on adding that item to the home to be enjoyed by everyone who came. An option would be to have jars sitting in an area of the home where people could donate money to an item that they think would be most beneficial, then buying the item once ~50% of the total cost was raised.

I started by determining which type of dwelling would be most beneficial because I think it's the most important decision. The other decision is what type of location. There are pretty much three locations: a beach, downtown, or away from the coast.

The biggest thing influencing this part of the decision is what area would have the biggest draw for people to come and visit. Unfortunately, I think the best place is also the most expensive. If I were to live on the beach people could visit from around the world and wouldn't need a vehicle in order to have a great time. They would be able to spend time on the beach and at the various small shops on the islands. I would also make sure there were bikes that could be used to ride off the island to bigger stores and other locations. I don't think it would be nearly as attractive to invite people to come stay at my house 30 minutes from the ocean. Unless I were to have a vehicle for these people to borrow, they would have to arrange transportation or spend most of their time away from the ocean. I just wouldn't be able to serve visitors the way I really want to serve them if I lived somewhere away from the coast. A place away from the ocean could still be used to bring people together, but I don't think that it would have the draw necessary to do it on a large scale, unless there were some other type of attraction.

CONCLUSION

I really want to find a place where I would be able to serve the people I know in Charleston, and also friends that I have from around the world. Personally, I think the best place to do that from would be a house near the beach. I think it sounds the most attractive to other people, and it has a lot more to offer for different options of what to do with time not spent on the beach. It would also be more attractive to the people I know in the Charleston area to offer a beach party followed by grilling out, rather than just asking people to come hang out in my grass yard.

As I was talking to the Lord about this earlier today and determining what situation would be ideal, I definitely had to ask myself if a beach house was really something that I should be looking for. Everyone would love to live in a beach house, and I didn't want my desire to live in a beach house stemming from selfishness and greed. I quickly came to peace with the idea of owning a beach house when I realized that I would be just as happy living in a shack as I would living in the beach house, as long as I was able to use the beach house to serve the people around me.

If you have any thoughts or ideas that could benefit me in finding a place to live that could be used to serve the people I hope to serve, please let me know.

PRAYER REQUEST

Please pray that God provides a place for me to live. God definitely met my needs for a place over the last few months and I know He will in the future. I really want to find a place that can be used to serve people, so please pray that God would provide something along those lines, regardless of location and type of dwelling. Maybe I'm wrong and the best thing would be to have an apartment away from the ocean, as long as God uses it to bring people together! I definitely don't have money right now to buy a house, and barely have money to rent an apartment, so my future is completely in God's hands, and I trust that He will provide something! I keep saying it over and over, but I just really really have a desire to serve people and bring people together, and I want my home to be a place that is used to do both those things on a daily basis. Please pray that my heart is in the right place in this desire, and that God would provide something where my passion for these things can be utilized.

I love you all. Thank you!