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!!!!!