What is the Theiss family doing now?!?

So what is your next step?

This was the question we were asked so often when people heard Blake graduated in December (2018) from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a Masters in Divinity.  (Whew,that’s a mouthful).   Do you know what our answer to every question was?  “I don’t know”.  Do you know how humbling it is to have to say that when Blake worked himself so hard for 5 years in seminary only to not know what’s next?  Well, here is the full story...
In 2013 we were called to move up to Fort Worth for Blake to begin work on a masters degree to enable us to go overseees with the IMB as missionaries.  (See my 2013 blog postings for all of those details). God did groundbreaking things like sell our house immediately after it was listed and provide for us an amazing house to rent that was perfectly affordable in Fort Worth, and the list goes on.  God got us up here.  We found a church family that we fell in love with and found family away from home, since we both heartbreakingly left our families in Houston.  Blake began school that fall of 2013 and things were moving along.  About 2 years into his studies Blake came to me and asked if I still felt God was calling us to mission.   I told him that I felt that God was moving us in a different direction and to my surprise Blake said he felt the same way.  We had no idea where He was moving us, but just that it may not be overseas.  As time went on, Blake began to feel the burden on his heart for the local church, and then more specifically church planting.  We started to feel excited at the direction God was taking us!
2018 comes along and Blake is in his last semester and God gave him such a clear vision for the nuclear family and the role a father has.  Within that vision was a clear passion for the youth of today and how family dynamics can affect a teen’s walk with the Lord.   However, when graduation came, Blake came to me and said he felt that God was calling us to a season of rest first.  Seminary was some of the hardest years on us.  Full-time work, full-time seminary and full-time husband/father wore Blake out and consequently wore me out as his wife and mother of 4 boys.  There was a lot of struggling those 5 years.  Yet, Blake had seen a vision of family ministry and, with our season of rest, he wanted us to practice it in our own family and practice it with other families in our church, which birthed our ministry of Family Night of Worship.  He wanted us to have a weekly plan where we worship as a family in our own home and alternate weeks inviting other families in our home where we eat a meal, worship together and then he leads a devotional.  He wanted to be able to tell people, I have done this; I believe in it.
It is now exactly one year later.  God has continued to move us along step by step. He provided us a house to buy that was just perfect for us. It’s a 1,000 square foot mid-century house on a big lot and it’s forced us to minimalize our life and let me tell you, it’s AMAZING.  Blake is still buying vehicles for Carmax 15 years later and we are still waiting on the Lord to open up what He wants us to do. We still do family night of worship weekly, though during the move and remodel it was difficult to stay on track.  I finally feel like I am seeing the stress of the past 6 years come off the shoulders of Blake and we are resting.
I am still homeschooling our boys: Parker 10, Beckham 9, Jett 5 and then Denver 3 (he obviously isn’t in on the school yet).  God is faithful, God is good, and God is daily refining us and making us holy.  We are so so thankful for the love and support from our family and our church family.  We are excited for what God has in store for us.  We have told Him YES to whatever His plan is for us, and we are thankful that before that plan happens, He has given us a time to rest as a family.  Merry Christmas Ya’ll!!!!!

FEAR

“Ok, Lord, I will write, I will write!  What do you want me to write about?”....a conversation I just had with the Lord when my blog was put on my heart.  So I sat down with my iPad and the big word “FEAR” came to my mind.  So here I am, writing about fear.  I am 36 years old and for as long as I can remember FEAR has had some sort of grip on my life.  Lately God has been speaking to me on this subject.  I’ve realized that the Lord is finally....FINALLY addressing fear and anxiety in me and bringing it onto the battle ground.  When I realized this was happening I must say FEAR came rushing in.  What is this going to FEEL like, what is going to happen to me, how difficult of a battle is this going to be?  It’s crazy to me that I would have FEAR about God finally addressing FEAR in my life, but it’s true, this is a huge area of bondage that I have been begging the Lord to address for the majority of my life.
God has opened my eyes to some things about fear:
1. Fear is a sin.  You may not agree, but fear is a result of not trusting God, and not believing He is sovereign and in control, and therefore is sin.
2.  Fear must be confessed- it has such a gripping hold on my life that you better believe I am confessing all.day.long.
3.  Fear needs to be brought from the darkness to the light- I do this out loud.  I tell the Lord “Father, I am afraid that , I am bringing this from the darkness to the Light, to the one who is sovereign and in control of this fear.  By doing this it not only sheds light on your sin of fear, but it strips the enemy of having any power.  So often I didn’t want to voice out loud my fears, because the enemy would hear them and haunt me with these fears...I was giving power to an enemy that has NO power against me.  Try it.  When a fear pops in your mind, for example “God, I am fearful that I have cancer, I am bringing from the darkness to the light, to the one who has power over sickness and health, who is sovereign over all things, Father forgive me for being fearful”.....saying that out loud, or whatever fear you have, brings such a freedom and a feeling of peace.
4.  Once fears have been confessed and brought from darkness to light, I leave them with the Lord and ask him to fill me with his spirit.

The more you confess a sin, the less and less you will struggle with that sin.  I am not saying this is immediate, far from immediate, but it’s through OBEDIENCE of confession that you receive miraculous healing of your bondage to fear.

When you read about miracles in the Bible, it was usually accompanied by an act of obedience by the one being healed.  The act proved the person’s FAITH.

Someone wrote that fear is “False Evidence Appearing Real”...that’s what fear is.  When you feel fear rise up in you, bring it from the darkness to the LIGHT, confess it, and allow truth to be spoken over it, and then it’s the TRUTH that will set you free.