From the Home Place

June 17, 2026

Greetings! I’m finally able to sit down to this computer long enough to write a note to you folks. Three of our grandchildren were here last week for their annual visit! They live in Malaysia, so we try to get every minute we can possibly get with them. Of course, the time difference of 14 hours greatly affects when everyone is up and going. For example, when it is 6 a.m. here, it is 8 p.m. at their house. As you can expect when we were getting up, they were wanting to go to bed. However, I must give the kids great credit, they adjusted their schedule to ours as best as they could.

Therein is our story for today – adjusting our schedule to God’s. As God has told us on many occasions within the Bible, His schedule is quite different than ours. Most of the time, God is willing to allow His plans to play-out over the long haul. Study the life of Abraham and you will soon discover that God waited until Abraham was 100 years old before He gave Abe his promised son. Even though Abram and Sarai both tried to hurry up the process, all things still happened in accordance to God’s timing.

We American Christians are very much like Abram and Sarai, when we feel that we know God’s plan, we want to get it done yesterday! It would appear that most of us have a “microwave” faith, we want things to get done instantly.

New ministries should be up-and-running instantly; and not only running but running well. We want all of the pieces to fall into place quickly and operate efficiently; as long as someone else is doing all of the work. As we know, “my schedule is much too busy to help with such an endeavor, and then there is the fact that I am not properly trained to be of assistance.”

Well anyway, back to God being willing to wait before His purposes are accomplished. You see, I believe part of the reason for God working in such a way is that He is often more interested in the process than the results. We humans get a plan in mind and we get to going. God is willing to allow us to work our way through the process, learning about Him as we go. It would appear that God uses ministry opportunities to change the life of His servants; we tend to use ministry opportunities to accomplish something, rather than using them to advance someone.

So, may I ask, what is it that you feel God is calling you or your church to accomplish? May I suggest that you surrender your expediency for His experience. Allow God to accomplish something within you before you ask Him to accomplish something through you. Be willing to “wait upon the Lord” for things to take place according to His timetable, not yours.

Yep, as we waited for our grandchildren to get up and to get to going, we had much fun; but we had to constantly be respectful of their timetable, not just ours. The same is true when walking with God!

Waiting upon God with you, Neal