From the Home Place

July 29, 2026

It wasn’t daylight when I started this day, but I could see and feel the dense fog that is covering our town. The old timers would say that because of this heavy fog in July, we will be getting snow the second week of September. Though I don’t really enjoy this extreme hot, I’m in no way ready for winter. However, a blanket of wet snow would be a welcome site, I guess we shall see how our Lord plays this one out? Right now, it is 58 degrees headed for 91 for a high, with a 55% shot at some rain this afternoon. We missed the better chance of rain yesterday.

For today, let’s visit about a couple of lessons from the life of Abraham. First, Abraham was a man of faith in who God is. Just pause there and think for a moment; isn’t it amazing that as a Christ follower, you worship and love the exact same God that Abraham did. Perhaps, you don’t yet know God to the depth that Abraham knew Him, but if you will allow yourself to walk with Him every day for the rest of your days, you will get to know God better and better as time passes.

Like all other relationships, knowing your Heavenly Father takes time, and energy on our part. I once heard a pastor say that we all have a long way to go to be more like God. Meaning that we all have a lot of changing to do before we are ready to leave this ‘ol ball of dirt behind. We are the ones that need to change, because God does not change.

He has always been and always will be GOD; perfect in every aspect of who He is. Us on the other hand, well I reckon we could all use some more adjusting in our journey to be more like Jesus. I’m so grateful that our Heavenly Father accepts us right where we are, but He has no intention of leaving us there.

It’s like getting married. Miss Deb I and started our journey of marriage, filled with excitement about who we would become and how our love would consistently mature. The one thing we didn’t know was that most of our growth as marriage partners has come through trials we have faced together through the years.

Abraham’ ‘s life teaches us that life is often the sandpaper God uses to remove the rough edges of our personalities. God gave Abraham a promise, but it took forty years before Abraham would hold his promised son. You see, God works according to His timetable, not ours. And that is the second lesson for today.

We humans want to see immediate change, immediate growth, immediate transformation. To some degree, hopefully we all have things that we can look back to and say, “Wow, God changed that part of me immediately.” However, most of the maturity we realize years after our conversion are the things that it took love and time to change. Once again, much like marriage.

In 1968, I remember our new history teacher making this comment, “The one thing we learn from history is that we usually don’t learn from history.” Painfully, the problem is that for most of us, we don’t learn from the mistakes of others, so we tend to make the same mistakes as we make our journey through this thing called life.

Abraham repeated several mistakes, and so have I. Yet each mistake caused Abraham to trust God more and more. One again much like a marriage relationship. Those difficult times in our physical and spiritual life are actually God’s way of giving us the opportunity to see His hand at work around, and within our lives. Think on it, if everything went perfectly all of the time, wouldn’t we all get to thinking way to highly of ourselves, and too little of God. So, our loving Heavenly Father allows trials to come into our lives so that we will learn to trust Him, and even more importantly, we will learn to depend upon Him instead of ourselves.

So, don’t expect God’s promises to be fulfilled in your life tomorrow. Remember, time and His love for you, and your love for Him are important elements to God’s promises. Secondly, don’t run from trials, step into them. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Abraham didn’t say that he would pray on that. No, Abraham gathered up his promised son and headed toward the sacrificial mountain.

What is God asking you to trust Him with? May I suggest that you step toward it, not away from it. For when it is the darkest within our lives, God’s light shines the brightest!

Walking toward maturity with you, Neal