Decade

The timelines that we like to work in - weeks, months - are often not the ones that He likes to work in - years, decades.  This can create a lot of angst for us as we try to "speed Him up."  But what I've found is this:  We are not going to speed Him up, so we need to allow Him to slow us down, by praying more and planning less, listening more and talking less, trusting more and worrying less.

You may have heard the old saying, "Rome was not built in a day."  Having had the opportunity to visit Rome this summer, this saying made more sense.  When you see the magnitude of, say, the Coliseum (which seated over 60,000 people) you realize that building it was a major undertaking that took a lot of persistency and consistency.  May I suggest that you, as a Christian leader, are involved in that sort of an enterprise.  Building up people is painstaking work, that doesn't get accomplished overnight.

Having pastored in the CTK International story for 14 years now, I've had the joy to see quite a few people mature in Christ.  But some of them have just recently begun to bloom.  The years of planting and watering eventually bring a harvest.  But we have to be patient.  Not for years.  For decades.