It was big numbers in this meditation that got my head spinning: thirty feet of digging with a hand trowel, forty years as a shepherd before Moses started his next career as shepherd for God’s people and again another forty years! Moses waited, Noah, Abraham, David all waited. It occurs to me that I can be “knowledgeable, and skillful� as a shepherd but lacking “perseverance� – sometimes the I need to dig in more than I first thought. Laniak stated that “leading means trusting�, and I agree. Trusting means not stopping until He says. Going when He says. Giving when and how much He says. To be able to trust means learning to listen to the Holy Spirit. It is so very easy to put ministry into automatic pilot and as another one said in this forum, do what has worked for us in the past or focus on what we’re most comfortable doing today. I’m not finding that very satisfying, and I’m reminded today that to pastor means to trust, to learn to trust means obedience to all God is saying, and certainly not stopping to dig just because I did not find water in the first ten feet! So pray until there is breakthrough in a particular issue, keep preaching about forgiveness so one more person practices forgiveness this week, keep telling people about Jesus so one more prays this week… Go into all the world, 400 years, forty years, sell everything – these timelines or distances or measures mean nothing to our God.