From the Home Place

August 1, 2026

Good morning, dear friends. At 3 a.m. the temperature is a sweet 54 degrees. I reckon a feller had better soak some of that cool up for a while, it’s going to be another scorcher at 96 degrees for a high! We were blessed with a shot of rain last evening, but it also came with a lot of dry lightning which started several fires around our area. Our poor fire fighters are spread out thin as they try to battle several different blazes in many different kinds of terrain. Please pray for them!

Well, here we are looking August 1 right in the eye. Yep, the days will continue to be hot (104 on Sunday) and dry, but then there will be a few cooler days as well (74 on Tuesday), as we slip ever closer to Fall. Right now, those ‘ol snowballs sound good, but we will see how many of us are cheering about the cold come December? Or maybe we should just learn to appreciate whatever He sends us?

As I said earlier, my ‘ol Coffee dog and I started this day a tad before 3 a.m. I’m trying to get ready to travel 50 miles south to serve breakfast to a group of men gathering for a time of food, fellowship, song, and a biblical lesson. Please be in prayer for us as we get to minister to men hungry for a deeper walk with God.

I’m taking two of the young men with me, who I was blessed to get to mentor this past winter. One will lead the singing and share a bit about the value of mentoring, while the other young man will share his personal testimony and lead us in a lesson from God’s word.

In 1995, Dr. Howard Hendricks made the following comment, “It’s a fact of life that for every man willing to serve as a mentor, there may be a hundred men looking to be mentored.” Dr. Hendricks made that comment 31 years ago, and here we are today. As we attempt to figure out what to do with the average American male today, the need for mentors has exploded in our faces. It would seem that in today’s culture there is one man willing to mentor for every several hundred men who would like to be mentored. The American male is starving for someone to help him figure out what it means to be called “a man of God.”

In the Bible we read reports on the lives of men like Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Paul and Peter. I am of the strong opinion that those same types of men exist today, we just usually have to look deeper to find them; and we certainly have to get busy trying to help them develop into men who reveal the nature of Jesus Christ!

As I have written before, we have done a good job of advancing the cause of womanhood, but at the cost of emasculating most of the males of today’s society. We men have stood by and watched as a very confused culture has painted men as a blundering group of half-wits. If something goes well, women did that; yet if everything is wrong, men did that.

I’m not asking for equality, nor am I saying that the advancement of womanhood was wrong; I’m simply stating that biblically balanced men need to be a valued part of today’s society as well! It would appear that the Holy Spirit is leading me to finish out my earthly journey attempting to help men of all ages find a biblical balance to their roles within a very confused culture.

So, today, I and two young men who love Jesus will be investing our Saturday morning into helping a group of men understand what it looks like to be men of God who are mentoring others. We may not be a large army, but we serve a great-big God! It has been well stated that a revival starts with one. And if our Lord blesses, that one will soon become many such gatherings all around our great nation!

I would sure enough appreciate your prayers as we travel, share and challenge a group of men today. It will be a long, hot day, but we are praying that it will also be a very fruitful day! Please pray that many men will draw ever closer to their Heaven Father and choose to walk as His sons as we develop groups of mean who are willing to mentor men.

Reaching the confused culture with you, one changed life at a time, Neal