Our Journey to “Kingdom House”
This journey Angie, myself and Lara have walked over this past summer has been incredible and has the fingerprints of God’s hand all over it.
To tell you this properly we need to go right back. Back before Angie & I were married and even before we had met. Back in 2007, while Angie was at a friend’s house, she was standing in their lounge looking out of their window at the beautiful countryside that lay in view. God gave Angie these words “One Day This Will All Be Yours”. She noted it in her prayer journal and prayed about it.
After her husband left her, she put her house on the market with a view to move on and waited…..and waited.
Jumping forward a couple of years the house had still not sold. By this time Angie had divorced and had married me (another incredible story of God’s hand in our lives, but that’s another story for another time!) Efforts to sell the house had failed.
Shortly after we first met, Angie was made redundant resulting in me paying her mortgage as well as my own on the property where I was living in Bicester at the time. This hit really hard and any money ran out fast.
When we married in 2009 I moved to Swindon I managed to rent my flat out via the local Council to Bless someone less fortunate than myself, as I had not been able to sell either. This allowed a breather as there was now only one mortgage to pay as the rent I was receiving was just covering my mortgage.
Shortly after getting married Angie was diagnosed with Lupus and became quite seriously ill and as a result was out of work for four months!
The market had dropped and properties were not selling. The price on Angie’s house had been lowered twice and things were getting tight financially. (Funnily enough, we always had just enough to make it through each month…..on paper we were hundreds of pounds short between our incomings and outgoing finances, but we always had just enough..…!!)
In the post to my flat in Bicester, I received a flyer from David Wilson Homes with the words “One Day This Will All Be Yours” and indicated to some developments they were building in Swindon. Immediately this grabbed Angie’s attention when I showed her, as the words were exactly the same as those given to her by God years before. We looked at some properties in the North part Swindon where they building and became quite excited! This could be our new start!
However our hands were tied as we had no property to sell and could not proceed. We continued to look at David Wilson Homes as we truly felt God wanted us to buy a house through them.
We even started looking at other David Wilson Home Developments in the Swindon area, but uncannily kept getting pulled back to the development in North of Swindon.
Angie was back at work by this time and still the house hadn’t sold. It had now been over two years. We became despondent as we would get a call to say we had a viewing only to have it cancelled, or find that the people the estate agents were sending round were totally the wrong people.
Angie had originally used an Estate Agent where you pay an upfront fee and the balance on completion, so didn’t want to move to a different agent as she had already made a payment. However we finally decided to remarket it with someone else.
For our first wedding anniversary my parents paid for me and Angie to go on a Spiritual Retreat at Stanton House, just outside Oxford. We enjoyed a wonderful weekend away together in quiet and peaceful settings. Ultimately though, we enjoyed a weekend away with God in worship and open and earnest prayer. It was incredible! We totally gave our time and ourselves to Him and will always look back with fond memories on that weekend. We both really needed it. There was no mobile phones, no computers – no distractions! Just us spending time alone together with God.
We had been praying hard and felt prompted to get the house Blessed. Very kindly John & Gail and Tony & Tina came round and prayed a Blessing on the house. There had been issues that we felt a Blessing would help with. It was very soon after this, (days in fact!) things started to happen!
I went on a Business trip with work to Jamaica and while I was away received a call from one very excited Angie to say an offer has been made on the house!! Praise God!! The new agent we had used had only had the place on the market 3 hours!
The purchasers were cash buyers and due to their own circumstances offered to pay for up to three months rent for us if we could move within 6 weeks!!
We accepted and started praying hard! Would we be able to find a property on a short term lease? Also would they accept pets?
Angie’s boss and friend Rachael just so happened to be in their company’s staff canteen one day (a place where she wouldn’t normally go) and asked around if anyone knew of someone who had a place to rent as she had friends who were looking. Amazingly, it just so happened a colleague was sat there (again, someone who wouldn’t normally be there!) who had a place! It was going to be vacant from EXACTLY the time we needed it. We quickly arranged to view the house and it was perfect. The landlord would accept pets and offered us a three month lease! Wow! Praise God!
The next day after Angie had received this purchase offer an email popped up from David Wilson Homes saying there was one property left in the North Swindon Development! Just One…!! The only catch was it hadn’t been built and there was no show home we could look at. It would be ready by the end of Aug/Oct that was in three months! We started praying hard and felt God tell us to Trust Him and go for it! We made an offer and negotiated terms of purchase. David Wilson Homes even offered to take my flat in part exchange along with a huge reduction in price and other incentives as it was the last house to sell!
We had decided to put our things in storage and travel light as we were only going to be in our rented home for three months.
God even had a hand in who we should use to move and store our things, as when we were making enquiries another flyer came through the door of a company who did removals and also storage! Another prompter from God! It’s worth noting, that when Angie rang to book them they had been fully booked up, but amazingly had just had a cancellation for the same day we needed them…!! This was all definitely the hand of God!
I kept asking myself: Have we just bought a house, one of the biggest investments one will ever make – without even seeing it or viewing it….?!!
So we had finally sold and had moved to our rented place and waited. During this three months all manner of set backs happened. The buyers of Angie's house decided to question what they had originally offered us. Issues arose with the tenant of my flat with whom I had already served notice too. He didn’t want to leave and the council dragged their feet in re-housing him. Everything they had agreed suddenly changed. They knew that taking action against them was not an option open to us as we were in the process of buying a place and having my flat vacant hinged on this, so potentially they had me. As my property had to be vacant in order for the part exchange to go through we were suddenly in great danger of the whole thing falling through. Twice we were told we would loose our new home…
Because of the issue with my tenant, a game of cat and mouse started between the Council with whom I had let with, us, and the builders of our new home. Very suddenly everything slowed with the building of our new home. They were threatening to remarket it.
The situation with my tenant and the Council became a real issue and caused lots of stress. Many people were praying for favorable outcome at this time.
Finally after many phone calls and emails my tenant moved out and was rehoused. He had sadly left the property in a bad state and I also learnt there had been issues with the neighbours which the Council had never relayed to me. My main priority now was to get he place straight in order for the part exchange to go through.
The issue of the deposit then started as I was told I had to pay it back! I had become very dismayed.
Funnily enough, over all this time we would drive by the house and watched it go up as it was being built. We would try to look through the windows to get a view and really wanted to see what it was like as we had never even been in a show home. One Saturday afternoon while we were doing this a neighbour came out who lived in the same style property over the road and invited us in so we could see his place! Amazing! He had seen us over the proceeding weeks coming up to look!
Finally things started moving again and the house development picked up speed. We were invited to an inspection on our new house on 24th Sept. I clearly remember driving over that day with Angie and I felt like one of the Israelites entering the Promised Land. After years stumbling in the wilderness, complaining and moaning, they were finally going to enter the land God had promised them! I truly felt like one of those Israelites, as I too had complained and moaned that things hadn’t gone smoothly….! Bear in mind until this point we hadn’t seen our new house at all, so going inside was amazing! We loved it!!
There had been a mix up with the date we had given to the removal company and they had put us down for a date a week after our completion. God, yet again, came through and gave us a cancellation for the day we needed it!
The very day before we were due to complete and take ownership of our new house, the bank called me who had offered us our mortgage to say we had been picked randomly for an audit and they could not guarantee we would complete as the funds would not be released. Everything had been set up for us to leave our rented home and the removal company booked. By this time my nerves were in tatters and I literally wept. How would I tell Angie & Lara that we wouldn’t be moving? Lots of prayer was lifted up to the Lord and as always He kept his promise and that evening we received notification it was all sorted! Funnily enough this was literally an hour or so after I had said to God I would make a compromise on the said disputed deposit on my flat!! I think maybe God was trying to tell me something about Grace!
The day of our move it was raining hard. We are by no means house proud, but we had just bought a new house with everything new – including the carpets! The removal men were due to bring our things in out of storage and now it was pouring with rain and our new carpets were shortly due to get soaked! Angie & I prayed in our new kitchen that morning and our faithful God gave us yet another miracle! I am still in awe of what I witnessed that morning and believe me when I say this that as the men brought the things into the house not a mark was left on the carpet…..It was almost as though God had an enormous hairdryer that blasted their feet with hot air as they stepped in the entrance……and trust me – it was raining very hard that morning!
Another miracle was that all our furniture fitted perfectly – it was incredible. We felt that if God had given us this house and that it was His gift to us, then why wouldn’t everything fit?!
We had already aptly named the house “Kingdom House” and had ordered up a slate name plate that arrived the very day we moved in! We truly felt this house was a gift to us from God and wanted a name worthy and fitting.
During the first days in the house we were in awe. God had given us this?! It was very humbling. We felt like we were staying in a hotel! Everything was perfect and new! I remember standing in the kitchen with tears of gratitude in my eyes, it was so overwhelming. We totally acknowledge that this house is a gift from God and it was Him that allowed us to have it.
Uncannily we have received prophetic words and pictures since moving that re affirm us being here and that this really is part of God’s plan for our lives. We are excited about what the future holds and what God has in store for us in North Swindon.
We have learned a valuable lesson – Trust in the Lord. While in the midst of crisis it can be easy to loose sight of God’s promises, but He will be faithful to us and always delivers on His promises. He is Sovereign and when He promises something, He always delivers, no matter what obstacles come up.
There are so many people to thank for their prayers and encouragement, not to mention Jesus himself, who was there with us the whole time on this incredible journey. Thank you Lord, we love you.
Jonathan & Angie Knight, Nov. 2010