Your Stories

Written on 8/21/2019 - one day after Matthew's birth.

Let me preface this with some information regarding my other two boys. Long ago I realized God uses names (or changes them!) to define the purpose and/or giftings of His people. He still does this today! They were each given their names through the process of picking out names my wife and I liked from a list of family names, and then praying over them asking God to direct us to the name He wants to give them.

Our newest member is Matthew Ray. These are family names. However, the story you are reading is unique and wonderful to those who know the heritage of our family lineage and the man who chose to follow God - and in doing so, is now being honored.

The name Matthew comes from my wife's family. Its meaning is "Gift of God". The name…

God asked us to leave a good (but tumultuous) job in favor of raising our new family around our extended family. Here is how...

I came home from a tough and troubling day at work to seek God's counsel.

As my wife and I sat in our living room, we tried to quiet our spirits and be sensitive to the impressions of the Spirit. We did not have a plan other than this. We only asked Him to aid us as we attempted to be sensitive and "hear" the Spirit "speak".

I felt an ardent desire to get my son's chalk board that was across the room and ask specific questions. I wrote down the questions.

At the same time as I moved to get the chalk board, my wife felt a desire to get her Bible and start looking through it. She was led to specific scriptures.

For about seven months my wife and our two boys lived with my parents while I worked a new job. We had to move here suddenly and had little time to look for a house. While getting settled in, our previous house sold, and we were on the search for another house. The reason it took seven months is that we could not find a good house in our budget in the area because of an inflated housing market. Or it was because God had something else ready for us. Either way, we kept searching...

We expanded our search to surrounding cities and found a couple of homes we thought would work well for our growing family. In fact, the first house we visited would become our house. However, we saw several we were interested in.

This was a big decision to make. The house we were most attracted to…

In my college years, my wife and I had sponsored children through Compassion International thanks to Mark Matlock's Planet Wisdom conferences. We gave up this expense due to budget concerns - being newly married and in college.

Lately, we have had plenty of extra resources on hand to start this back up. We decided to sponsor three boys plus a yearly gift on their birthday. We let our boys pick out who we would sponsor.

For a while, I kept getting the idea that we needed to sponsor more. I was willing to sponsor an army - if God wanted... but knew that wasn't what He had in mind.

I was on my way home from work praying about it. As I pulled into my driveway, the Spirit clearly told me, "Take your full savings, plus the amount of your stocks, divide that by ten, and plan on giving that…