I want to be honest with you about the last six months, because I write these letters to tell you the truth from my desk, not to perform for you.

For six months, I have been asking God a question I was embarrassed to say out loud. Did I actually hear You in 2018? Or did I imagine the whole thing?

Let me back up so you understand why that question has teeth.

I did life my way right up until 2018, and my way failed. I've written about that season before so that I won't rehearse it all here, but you need to know that when I finally stopped running, I didn't wade in slowly. I jumped in with both feet. I decided that if I were going to follow the Lord, I would do it His way this time, because mine had already been tried and found wanting.

And almost immediately, He asked me to do something that made no earthly sense.

I was at the Gila County Sheriff's Office, in excellent standing, on a first-name basis with the people I served under. I had no reason to leave. None. Ask anyone who worked with me. But I felt a pull I could not explain or shake, so I obeyed it. I left and was hired at the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, where I serve to this day. I worked patrol. I made detective. And now I'm back on patrol, a former detective in a marked unit, still answering calls.

Here is the math that has been sitting on my chest. That was eight years ago, eight years since I said yes with both feet. And I am still not in full-time ministry. I am a pastor who puts on a uniform. From the outside, it looks like nothing happened. From the inside, at five in the morning on a quiet shift, it has sometimes felt like nothing happened, too. That's where the question came from. Did I hear right?

Then I look down at what I'm actually holding, and I have to tell you the truth about that, too.

God has given me one thing in the waiting. Not a building. Not a launch date. Not a congregation. A name. The church I am called to plant is called Threshold Assembly. That name is settled and will not change, and right now it is nearly all I have.

And I've started to understand that the name is not an accident. A threshold is the piece of the doorway you stand on right before you walk through. It is not the room. It is not the hallway behind you. It is the in-between, the place where you have left where you were but have not yet entered where you're going. I have been standing on a threshold for eight years. God named the church after the very place He's kept me.

Here is what Scripture says to a man doing that math:

"If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay." — Habakkuk 2:3, ESV

Read that slowly. The Lord does not deny that it seems slow. He says to wait anyway, because seeming slow and being late are two different things. God has never once been late. He has often been slower than I wanted, but He has never been late.

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." — Galatians 6:9, ESV

In due season. Not in my season. His.

So I'll tell you where I've landed after six months of wrestling. I did hear Him in 2018. The proof is not a pulpit. The proof is that a man with no reason to leave left, and a man with every reason to quit waiting hasn't. Waiting is not the delay of calling. The waiting is part of the calling. God was not behind schedule when He kept Joseph in prison, Moses in the desert, or David in the field, and He is not behind schedule with me on patrol.

Maybe you're standing at the threshold of your own. You said yes, you meant it, and the door still hasn't opened. You're starting to wonder if you imagined the whole thing. I'm writing to tell you what I had to hear myself: you didn't. He is not slow the way you count slowness. Stay at your post. Keep your yes on the table.

The door is coming. He named mine before He opened it, and I have decided to trust that the God who gives a man the name of the room will, in due season, walk him into it.

Pastor Keith