A story about listening to God's voice

Today I read a verse that I had underlined in my Bible 2 years ago, and it reminded me of the situation we faced at that time.  I thought I'd share the story with you, and maybe it will be an encouragement to you as well. 

We were deep into waiting to adopt, we had been waiting for 2 years already.  Our preferences for a child were boy or girl, up to one year old.   Then one day our agency sent us an email asking if we would consider adopting a sibling group of three sisters, ages 9,7, and 2.  We pretty much thought that would be crazy and so wrote them back and said no.  However, we had not stopped to pray about it!  After we told them no we just couldn't get the girls off our minds.  We knew that if we did end up adopting them it would be the most challenging thing we had ever done.  That's when I read these verses.

for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts

as you did at Meribah,

as you did that day at Massah in the desert.

Psalm 95:7-8

Both Andy and I definitely felt like the Lord was wanting us to say yes to these girls.  So, we emailed the agency back and told them they could show our profile to the girls' mom.  We waited about a week and then heard that we were the mom's first choice and she was going to call us the next day!  We were very excited and couldn't believe it!  But she never called, and never contacted the agency again.  I guess she changed her mind.  Hopefully things worked out for her and she was able to keep her girls. 

But here's the amazing part.  Because we listened to the Lord's voice, and opened our hearts to those girls, the Lord also opened our hearts to the possibility of adopting an older child.  We told the adoption agency we would be willing to adopt a boy up through age three, or an older girl.  We didn't feel it would be right to add another boy in between our boys' ages.  It was only 2 weeks later that we got the phone call saying we had been chosen for AJ, a three year old boy.  You can read the rest of the story here, if you like.

So I challenge you, that if you hear God in your heart, asking you to do something new or different, don't harden your heart to what He is saying to you- there just might be a precious gift right around the corner!

Our precious gift- AJ