Today my husband signed his name on a stack of papers and handed the next guy the keys to thirty years.

Thirty years of spiritual community, altar calls, salvations, and feasting - both spiritual food and physical food. Thirty years of babies dedicated and saints mourned. Thirty years of a building positioned in such a way that you pretty much had to already know it was there to find it.

The Preacher signed. The building sold. It sold for many times more than we paid for it thirty years ago, which is its own amazing grace, because it means every hour of labor my husband and our daughters and their husbands and a small army of church members poured into that place didn’t just build a church.

It built equity for the next adventure.

I keep thinking about the word a prophet friend gave us, a few days ago. About Abraham’s son Isaac.

Genesis 26 is a chapter people skim past to get to the good parts, forgetting that digging wells was the good part.

It’s the story of Isaac re-digging his father’s wells, and the herdsmen of Gerar pick fights over every one. He named the first well Esek (“contention”). He dug another. Sitnah (“hostility”). He kept digging.

We have known seasons (and people) that became our own Esek and Sitnah.

And then, finally, Isaac dug a well nobody fought him about. He called it “Rehoboth”. This has been our season, now, for awhile! We have been living in our own “Rehoboth” as a church family.

I ask you: WHO SELLS REHOBOTH?!

(Again, Isaac named that well no one troubled him about, Rehoboth. He said, “Now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” )

But then. Then, he went up to Beersheba. He sought the Lord, and God met him there, and Isaac built an altar, and he pitched his tent, and…

…he dug still one more well.

He didn’t rest!

He finally had peace. Fruitfulness. An altar. A personal tent.

But still, he dug again.

Because Isaac understood something about the Kingdom that I am, at fifty-nine, dramatically living into: digging yet another well.

You do not stop digging just because you finally found water.

As a church, we are a deep, deep well. We have been enjoying springs of water!

Still. We are digging again. We are leaving a somewhat hidden spot for a location that sees tens of thousands of cars pass by every single day! We will transition for a season on a stretch of interstate frontage in a city that has a church on every corner except, apparently, this one.

Thirty years tucked away. Now we are about to be the thing many thousands can’t miss driving to work.

I did not pick that. God is a better location scout than any of us.

And so, beginning this Sunday, we meet in this transitional space. A space with room enough for what we already are and what we are about to become.

Our next location is at 5331 Central Avenue Pike, Knoxville, TN 37912

But let’s not pretend the math is math’ing yet! In this market, buying land and building a permanent space will take nothing less than a miracle, the kind you do not merely budget your way into.

I am fifty-nine years old. I picked up a paintbrush at almost fifty, because I was called. And now I’m watching my husband ride a Harley, and go to Africa, and step into the biggest building project of his life at an age when the world hands you an RV brochure.

We are doing the opposite of downsizing. We are doing the opposite of resting on what was built. Many of our friends are preparing to do less. We are preparing to invest more than we ever have, with our middle-age children with us, and our grandchildren surrounding us, and alongside our church family…

….because this Gospel does not know how to grow old.

It renews the youth of the man and woman carrying it, and evidently, this message renews the youth of the church carrying it, too!

Back to our friend, a Scottish prophet, whose accent makes every word sound like a blessing. He gave us the word about Isaac and his wells, and then he brought another scripture passage, seemingly out of nowhere: “You have never been this way before.”

He prophesied to us straight out of Joshua 3. This was the words Joshua spoke to Israel the morning before the Jordan split open in front of them. It was not a general encouragement. It was a specific one, aimed at people about to walk into water they’ve never crossed.

I want you to hear me on this, because I have learned it the hard way and I’d rather you learn it the cheap way: the most valuable thing you can have in any season of your life is a friend who hears from God and is bold enough to tell you. Not a hype woman or man…you need a seer.

There’s a difference, and only one of them is worth keeping close.

Every generation in our church family is leaning into this “crossing of the Jordan”.

*My friend Trinette, ministering to our children*

My grandchildren’s generation brought a corporate, prophetic word this past Sunday! (It was our last one in that little black building). Harvest Church’s children are as much vested as the elder and the deacons who’ve been there before they were born - who’ve been there since the “green carpet days”.

Nobody is standing on the sidelines.

Everybody is bringing whatever they’ve got to the table, which is, I think, the whole point of an inheritance. A legacy is not a building. Not equity. Our legacy is the Gospel, handed forward, generation to generation, until the ones who weren’t even born yet are the ones digging the next well.

The Preacher and I aren’t doing any of this because we’re brave. We do it because Jesus means all the world to us.

Because forty years ago two people fell in love, and one of them turned out to be a preacher, and the other one turned out to be….well, odd, apparently.

But willing.

Two people fell in love with Jesus, then with each other, and then we fell in love with the local church. And because of that, a little hidden building became a launching pad, and a launching pad is about to become...

…we don’t know yet.

That’s rather the point.

Never too old for another well.

Today, We Sold The “Well” {…get a cup of tea, because this one is long…}

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