Stepping Out & Stepping in
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Here we are. July 2026.
A specific year, a specific moment in time. A turning point, guided and directed by the One that makes all wandering paths straight and clear. Our lives, arcs of purposeful open and closed doors strategically placed in front of us. In any given moment, every rise and fall appears to be a completed story with a beginning and end, yet the stories seem disjointed from one another…until you broaden the picture and what was once a series of hills and valleys becomes one cohesive unit of peaks and troughs…a singular wavelength.
God’s plan was well orchestrated, and though finished and visible to Him, isn’t so visible to us. However, we are now presently aware our lives are not simply a cluster of short novels with peppered bits of learned wisdom but an open ended, interconnected epic, penned by the ultimate divine author of the universe. Where we are is no accident and it wasn’t happenstance (I would encourage you, as a believer, to look at your life similarly).
It started as a planted thought that blossomed into something larger than expected. Over the past decade, Angelina and I have made the trip to California countless times to visit family. On those journeys, we’d dream up different ministry scenarios, talk about our pasts and how God has grown us through the seasons. We always wondered where God was going to take us, how he’d use us in cooking and hospitality in the broad scope of YWAM. We would have never guessed how far His vision would go until early this year.
As I stated in the last update, we were getting to a point of complacency in the ministry. Not to say we were lazy, but the comfort was there. We lived within our means, had a predictable schedule, ministry opportunities were straightforward and easily accomplished. It was easy to get complacent. This last time in Japan, God confronted me, made me look within myself and, subsequently, Angelina as well. We recognized that we were slowly getting locked into what we could control, wrapping up our lives around things that brought
us security and comfort, tangibly and emotionally. God brought us to the point of recognizing that everything outside of Him was corporeal, that our trust, security, hope and future needed to be placed in Him and Him alone. We needed to step out and let God use us, to grow us, to transform us… because if we continued in our own strength, we wouldn’t be able to go any farther. That's when the Lord stepped in and basically said let me take you out beyond what you're capable of, let me build you up in only a way that I can. Both Ang and I struggled with these words at first, but the more we meditated on His revelation, the more our souls were stilled and our walls of security lowered.
The reality was, God had called us, our whole family, out… far out beyond the safety we could produce on our own.
And so, our hearts evolved. We got closer, we prayed, we talked, and we discovered a calling placed on both our minds. A vision that reached far back into our childhoods, our present and what would soon be our future. God was ready to take our gifting of hospitality to a level we’d never thought, but were we ready? We are, and are confident in this calling enough to communicate it with all of you as we prepare for what’s to come.
In 2028, The Keller family [Steven (myself), Angelina, Milo, and Heidi] will be uprooting from our Ozark, AR home, to be transplanted and called full-time to cultivate a spiritual harvest in the nation of JAPAN.
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