MY REBEKAH STORY

Rebekah was a young woman who left everything to marry a man she hadn't met.  Abraham sent his most trusted servant to his hometown in search of a wife for his son, Isaac.  Rebekah was given a choice, and she chose to follow the Lord's prompting and marry her cousin, who was a complete stranger to her.  She must have had a lot of faith and trust in the Lord to move to a new country and to live with strangers.  I'm sure she had lots of questions on her way to marry Isaac.  What was her future husband like?  Would he be kind to her?  How would he provide for her?  Would they have lots of children, or no children at all?  What did he look like?  Was he handsome or ugly?  Many, many questions must have flooded her mind.  I wonder if doubts swirled around her head, whether this was from God or not.  And I am sure if doubts did enter her mind, the Lord reassured her.  And she ended up marrying Isaac and having Esau and Jacob.  These two boys later became two countries, Edom and Israel.

Today I am Rebekah.  I am marrying a man I met online.  He lives in another state.  I haven't met him, at least not for another two weeks.  We talk on the phone all the time, and we chat online a good bit of our free time.  And we have video chatted.  So I know he is real.  He knows I am real.  To everyone I know and love, what we are doing makes no sense at all.  Common sense would tell us to wait to marry until we meet and then decide.  Common sense would tell us to wait at least a year to get married, like normal people.  Common sense would say to have both of us meet the other's family.  And most of all, common sense would be screaming at us that one of us should have a job and a place to live before marriage.

Yet, at this time in my life, I am making a flying leap of faith.  Just like Rebekah.  I don't know what is going to happen when I land.  Yet, the Lord has called me to live a life of faith.  And sometimes, that faith makes no sense to others.  It doesn't even make sense to me.  For to marry a man I've never met is so out of character for me.  To do it the way we are doing it is not like me at all.  I like to have a plan and the details.  When, where, how, why, and what for all scream in my head to be answered before I commit to it.  I don't have all the answers this time.  Every time I bring my concerns to the Lord, He reassures me that everything is working out.

He truly is working everything out.  The time we chose is the right time, though everyone says it's not.  We are putting the Lord first, and He is telling us that the date we chose is right.  Yes, I will be coming back home until everything else works out for me to move there.  Yet, I know that the Lord will work everything out.  He has so far.  One thing He has blessed me with is finances.  I am no longer concerned how I'm going to pay to  move there.  He has provided for me.  How He has increased my finances during this time of only working part time, I have no idea.  But He has always provided for me.  And He will continue to provide for me even after I am married and living with my husband.  I am no longer concerned about it.  I have put it all in His hands.

Everything I am doing, marrying a man I haven't met and planning on moving to his state in the near future, I am doing strictly by faith.  For if I sit down and consider everything, I will back out.  The right time will never come, even though He is screaming at me that it has come.  

The Lord reminds me every day that I am Rebekah.  I am traveling to another state to marry a man I've never met.  And one day, I will pack everything I own and move to my husband's state.  I am not to be concerned with the details.  He is working everything out.  I am seeing it every day, and I am feeling His presence in everything.  I am in constant prayer and in constant communication with Him.

I am facing a cliff, and very soon, I will be jumping off of it and flying into the unknown.  

To make everyone feel at ease, or at least that I haven't lost my mind, I will now tell you a little bit about my future husband.  To protect his privacy, I am not revealing his name, nor the state he lives in.  

I was on a free dating website.  I will only say I had to do a lot of weeding out.  One day, I got so frustrated with the responses I was getting that I decided to stop online dating.  I prayed about it and left it up to the Lord.  "Today is the day I am done with online dating," I told God that morning.  "One more bad apple messages me, I'm done.  If You want him to come through this site, then You'd better send him now."  That same day, I got a message from my future husband, though at the time I didn't know it.  When I saw his message, I figured why not give him a chance.  If he turns out to be like all the others, I'm deleting my profile.  His message totally blew me away.  It wasn't the normal message that I was so used to getting.  He told me he read my profile (actually READ it!) and told me everything he liked about it.  And then he told me about his faith in Christ.  Number one priority checked!  We didn't go through the superficial things of getting to know each other.  We went straight to our faith in Christ.  And it was just what I was looking for.  He has met every single one of my criteria for a husband.  He is everything I have ever wanted, and he is everything I need.  He is the Lord's gift to me, and I am His gift to him.

As the time passed, we grew closer every day, and we both knew we were made for each other shortly into our relationship.  We shared a connection that I call is a God connection.  And I have only been able to share that kind of connection with just a few people.  Well, he knew first that I was to be his wife.  It took me a little while longer to be convinced of it myself.  But once I knew he was the one for me, I began to pray for the Lord to bring us together.  And God has impressed upon me that He is working things out, and that it is happening quickly.  I would say marrying six months after our first message online is fast enough.  And I know that once I say "I do" that God is going to work the job and living situation out very soon afterward.

To everyone I know, this wedding is coming as a surprise, but to me and  him, it's not.  We have been planning to get married as soon as we both knew we loved each other.  We were just waiting on the timing.  And I knew from the time I began planning a visit to him that the visit would be a giant leap of faith for me.  Once both of us left the timing to the Lord, the date fell into place.  With both of us trusting the Lord and leaving everything to Him, everything that has happened and is happening is a God-thing.  Only God could have done this.  And He will be glorified in our marriage.  Without a doubt, I know that God is going to do amazing things in our lives.  And I cannot wait to watch it happen.