House Stories - Signs of God's Provision (v1)

(Note to the reader: the real names of my friends are not used herein)

Teaser from below: In the words of the great theologian, Tony Stark, “Yeah, I detected that too.”

After the crazy events that led to our decision for my exodus from Southwestern Bell, we began sharing the story and reasons more broadly, beyond our closest friends. (Those crazy events can be found here https://geraldhinson.com/blog/2025/BadReviews-Prayers-AndRollerCoasters/ if you want to read them first.)

Despite how compelling we deemed the story and the signs leading to that decision, we still encountered some doubters.

They were mostly friends with concerns as to whether we were truly hearing from God versus being deceived by the allure of more money, etc. (I didn’t bother telling them that I had taken a cut in pay.) Others were followers of the “bloom where you are planted” philosophy and thought it unlikely that God would pull us away from family roots in the Midwest / South.

It probably shouldn’t have bothered me.

But it did.

We weren’t questioning our decisions. It just stung to have friends we had known for years question our judgment and decision-making.

Those opinions were weighing on my heart one weekend while in Dallas at a church conference that Jina’s sister had invited us to attend. I shared my frustrations with her friend, Tom, when asked if there was anything he could pray about for me or our family.

To my horror, he then prayed and boldly asked God to give us 5 clear signs that we could share with friends to prove we were truly hearing from Him. I thought to myself:

“Dude, are you serious?!?

“Five signs? I would be happy to get even one! Even Gideon only asked for two with that whole grass and fleece thing! What the heck?”

Of course, I didn’t verbalize any of that. Outwardly, I thanked him and privately thought to myself how ridiculous and overly religious he was behaving.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that faith has not come easily for me. It is not my tendency to just accept things at face value without those things first surviving the gauntlet of (in my mind) legitimate questioning. One of my favorite pieces of wisdom that my Dad shared with his sons was:

“Anything worth believing in can withstand a lot of questioning.”

I’ve never forgotten that and have endeavored to live my life in mind of it since the day he said it.

Add to that the reality that I (like you, I suspect) have encountered my fair share of religious ‘goofballs’.

I was soon to discover this was no such encounter. Tom, who prayed so boldly for signs of confirmation, was no religious goofball.

I won’t detail them all here, but between that prayer and when we moved, we wrote down not 5, but 21 signs that confirmed as he had prayed. As the count rose, I realized that I should document them as a reminder, which I did. Unfortunately, I’ve since lost that document due to the evil spirits that lay waste to all things ‘hard drives’ (thank God for iCloud and Dropbox these days).

Some of the signs I recorded in that lost doc had to do with selling our house in St. Louis. Here are three that I thought would be fun to share here:

House Prep

The day before our open house showing (when your real estate agent kicks you out of your own house so they can do their job), we were exhausted. The last few weeks had been a continuous cycle of:

• work as much as possible during the day while the kids (ages 5 and 2) were awake
• work even more into the wee hours after putting them to bed

We had been pushing hard for weeks, painting, repairing, fixing, etc., to get the house ready to present. As the big Sunday approached, I remember thinking,

“It is not humanly possible to get all of this done in time.”

Our agent swung by on the Saturday morning before and assured me that nothing left on our to-do list was optional if we wanted to present well. If memory serves, she even added an item or two to my list while she was there. She commented unhappily as she left, “I don’t see how you can possibly be ready for this open house tomorrow”.

My reaction was the same as that of the great theologian, Tony Stark, when he said,

“Yeah, I detected that too.” (true Marvel fans will know this reference…)

After she left, I returned to my slog.

She wasn’t wrong. The yard wasn’t mowed. The flower bed alongside our brick walk leading to the front door was a mess. Inside the house we were in the midst of painting, cleaning, etc. with signs of our in-progress work everywhere. The place was a mess and finishing in time was an impossibility.

I honestly don’t remember if I prayed at that point. But I had known from the start that we were in over our head. Words like “I am trying to be faithful with all of this work, God, but you know this isn’t my wheelhouse” had been voiced well before this last-minute crisis. This wasn’t a case of procrastination.

Given the deadline now faced, those earlier conversational prayers were feeling pretty hollow. Despite them, and working our butts off, the cold hard fact was that we were 24 hours out from the big showing with far too much work left to do.

A few minutes later, someone knocked on my door. I opened the door to find Steve, the youth pastor at our church, and the entire youth group standing there. I looked at him with confusion, having no idea why they were visiting me.

He said, “We had this big youth event planned for today that fell through at the last minute. But, I remembered that you were working on your house, getting it ready to sell, and we wondered if there might be anything that this whole crew could help with.”

Completely dumbfounded, I think I muttered, “No way. You have got to be kidding me”, before happily accepting their offer.

A few minutes later Jina returned home. If memory serves she had gone out to get some flowers and mulch to repair the flower bed. Her confused look transformed into a huge smile as I answered her question, “Why are Steve and the youth group here?”

Steve then turned into a general contractor extraordinaire. Between him, Jina, me, and that amazing youth group, we crossed things off of our to-do list in record time. They mowed, they planted, they cleaned. They disassembled our heavy swing set in the backyard. And more. After they left Jina and I still pulled an all-nighter working our list until the next morning, barely finishing before our real-estate agent showed up to take over.

The providential arrival of Steve and his army of youth volunteers that Saturday totally saved our bacon. We never would have made it - not even close - without their help.

We were relieved, humbled, and in awe. But, mostly, we were just thankful.

We felt seen and cared for.

My next conversation with God was one of confession - I asked forgiveness for my never-ending doubts about His provision and vowed to do better.

The following morning, when the real estate agent arrived, she looked at us in total shock and said, “How?” I think I let her think we were just that amazing for a few moments before telling her the truth. :)

House Inspection

The next sign was George.

George was a living legend in our little suburb of St. Louis. He was the city inspector for all things having to do with houses, be that renovations, adding a deck, selling, or other.

There was “city code”, and then there was “George code”. Passing the first was easy because it was documented. George code? Not so much.

And George was rather passionate about his job.

One of my friends told the story of how George had once abruptly bolted away from a friendly neighborhood conversation, mid-sentence, to run to his car and speed away upon hearing a power saw running in the distance. No one in that earshot vicinity had registered for a permit to do whatever work George sped off to put an end to.

One did not simply work on their house without first receiving formal approval from George in his realm, er, suburb.

But don’t get me wrong.

George was not good at his job. He was quirky, careless, and didn’t know the actual home improvement code worth a darn.

My first run-in with George occurred when I added a small deck onto the side entrance of our house. Being a computer nerd, I had found a nice piece of drafting software and drawn the entire design for George, hoping to win some of his good grace (or would that be mercy?).

He informed me, “I can’t read that stuff. I’ll just come by and look at it. But don’t call me until you have dug the foundation holes - and make sure that you dig below the frost level! Otherwise, I’ll not pass you!”

I did my homework and dug the holes to the proper depth, and was ready to pour my concrete when I called George. He didn’t come by that day, or the next, and so on. Mid-week, rain was in the forecast, so I covered all of the holes with sheets of plastic held down by bricks.

Per the forecast, the rain fell, and a good amount too.

Unfortunately, the morning before it started, George came by to inspect my foundation hole depth and, rather than lifting the plastic, he just poked a hole through it so he could measure the depth. Thank God he was lazy and only checked one of them! I passed the inspection, then got to deal with a couple of inches of water in that foundation hole.

So, you can imagine how ecstatic I was to hear that George would be doing the pre-sale inspection of our house.

• My realtor told me to brace myself for bad news.
• My neighbors told me the same.
• Numerous friends who lived in our suburb piled on.
• Numerous friends who worked in construction did as well.

Everyone I knew who even knew of George predicted the same outcome.

George-news was bad news. That part of the legend was never left out in the telling.

To all of our collective knowledge, George had never passed a house without requiring something - and the rule was multiple somethings that were unpredictable, annoying, and commonly expensive.

We braced for George to wield his almighty power.

George showed up and looked over the house. He seemed to be in a pretty good mood. But, I wasn’t putting any stock in that!

Finally, he called me over to my driveway and said, “You know. I really should make you repair where these cracks are starting.” I looked down at the complete, non-issue cracks and thought, “OK, here we go with the George issues.” But, before I could formalize a response, he continued with legend-deviating cheer, “But, I’m not going to do that!”

I paused, thankful that none of my irritated thoughts had yet been uttered.

But after his one comment, George had paused as well and was just standing there looking at me. I cautiously said, “I appreciate that, George. So, uh, what is on your list for me?”

He looked at me like I was daft and then said, “Nothing! That was my point! You passed. The house is fine.”

I couldn’t believe it!

Right now, you may be wondering if this experience qualifies as a sign the likes of which Tom had prayed for - signs to serve as evidence that God wanted us to move.

But those of us who knew George? Not one of us doubted it.

God’s favor takes many forms, and His ability to use anyone He chooses to demonstrate it is without limits.

To be honest, I was not convinced that we had truly escaped George-the-Inspector until we drove away from that house for the last time.

House Sell

We prayed about what asking price we should list for our house.

Upon hearing our price, our very experienced real estate agent told us that we were nuts (her words were more polite, but “nuts” captures how she felt), that it would not sell for that. We ignored her and listed it at our chosen price anyway.

Perhaps emboldened by Tom’s prayer, we also prayed that the house would sell on the first day - as a sign from God that He was guiding us. I boldly shared this with our church family because some of those who had expressed doubts about our plans were members there. I remember thinking after, “I’m probably going to regret sharing that”, and partly wishing I had not.

For context, neither St. Louis nor our dated suburb was a hot housing market at the time.

Despite that, the house sold to a couple who toured it on the day it opened. They toured Sunday and, the following day (when the business week began), we received their initial offer, which was below what we were hoping to receive.

Our real estate agent, still convinced that we were asking too much, told us we “You should absolutely accept this offer.”

I wasn’t sure, but Jina felt strongly that this was the wrong call and not in line with what we had prayed. She put her foot down with a hard “no”.

To our agent’s horror, we countered the offer - and without budging much on our price.

She told us that this was a huge mistake and predicted that we were about to lose the sale.

By the end of that Monday evening, we had bartered back and forth a few times without agreeing on a price. Our agent was beside herself with our stubbornness. I thought she was going to lose it when we said, “We are done. The last offer (that had already been rejected) is our final offer. Tell them to take it or leave it.”

They took it.

In the end, we sold for just $2,500 less than our asking price, with a frazzled agent saying, “I can’t believe it.”

My ‘highly spiritual’ attitude toward our agent (who, btw, was a beautiful, Godly person that I loved despite all of this fun banter) was a friendly but defiant: “Ha! See there!”

That may not have been the most Christian response. I’ll let you decide. :)

We moved to Seattle on Memorial Day weekend.

-Gerald (thus far)