Hi Reader,

This week I watched nine ministry leaders kneel.

I am writing from the Healthy Calling conference, hosted by International Ministerial Fellowship

at Asbury Theological Seminary. Midway through the week, IMF held an ordination service

for nine men and women stepping into recognized ministry. Among them were military

chaplains, a prison chaplain, and an evangelist. The room was full of people who had gathered

all week to worship, and now we watched hands laid on heads and heard names spoken over

lives.

What struck me was not the ceremony itself. It was the arithmetic behind it. An ordination

service lasts maybe an hour. But each of those nine people represented years that nobody applauded.

Years of study, testing, obedience, failure, correction, and quiet service in places with

no audience. The public moment was brief. The hidden preparation was long. The fruit we saw

on that platform grew from roots none of us will ever see.

I had been sitting with Psalm 1 that same week, and somewhere between the worship, the prayer

room, and that ordination service, a phrase started following me around. It was not clever. It

was not a slogan I invented. It was more like a verdict: faithfulness before fruitfulness.

The tree that was planted

Psalm 1 opens the entire Psalter with a contrast between two ways to live. The person who

refuses the counsel of the wicked, and who instead delights in the law of the Lord and meditates

on it day and night, “is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither” (Psalm 1:3).

Every word of that image is doing work.

The tree is planted. It did not choose its ground, and it did not drive itself there. Someone placed

it deliberately, near water, with intent. That alone confronts the way most of us live. We tend

to think of ourselves as self-propelled, building our lives by force of will. Scripture describes

something humbler and sturdier: a life positioned by God and sustained by a source it did not

create.

The tree is nourished in secret. The roots do their work underground, out of sight, reaching

toward a stream that a passerby might never notice. Roots grow in darkness before fruit ever

appears in public. Nobody photographs a root system. Nobody applauds one. But everything

visible depends on it.

And the tree bears fruit in its season. Not immediately. Not on demand. Not year-round. A

healthy tree still passes through summer heat and winter bareness, and its health is proven not

by constant production but by the fact that it does not wither. Jeremiah presses the same image

further: the one who trusts in the Lord “does not fear when heat comes” and “is not anxious

in the year of drought” (Jeremiah 17:8). The absence of visible results does not mean God is

absent. It often means He is doing the slower work of deepening roots.

I want to be careful here, because this psalm has been badly used. Psalm 1 is not a contract

guaranteeing that obedient people get growing businesses, expanding audiences, or easy years.

That reading is the prosperity gospel wearing a Bible cover. The prosperity Psalm 1 describes

is a life aligned with God’s purposes, sustained by God’s grace, and made fruitful on God’s

calendar. It is the prosperity of a soul that stays green in drought.

What the week kept teaching

The conference theme was healthy calling, and the teaching pressed on a wound many of us

carry: the difference between a calling sustained by God and a calling driven by exhaustion, visibility,

and constant production. Dr. Arianna Molloy spoke on rest, workaholism, and burnout,

and the diagnosis fit many military chaplains and leaders. Military culture and entrepreneurial culture both decorate the

person who never stops, and both quietly teach them that rest is weakness and output is identity.

Her message asked a puncturing question: is your work flowing from communion with

God, or is it a performance you are afraid to stop?

Chris Pace preached yesterday from the other side of the coin, out of 2 Kings 13. The prophet Elisha,

near death, tells the king of Israel to strike the ground with his arrows. The king strikes three

times and stops. Elisha is angry with him: five or six strikes would have meant the complete

defeat of Israel’s enemy, but three strikes meant only three victories. The king held back, and that cost him.

It is a sobering scene for anyone tempted to dress up half-heartedness

as patience. Waiting on God’s timing is not the same as striking the ground three times when

He has put arrows in your hand.

The ordination service answered that question in its own way. So did the variety of callings

represented on that platform. A military chaplain, a prison chaplain, and an evangelist will

bear different-looking fruit - maybe an orange, kiwi, and a pineapple. One will serve soldiers who

deploy and disappear from view. One will serve men the world has deliberately stopped watching.

Fruitfulness does not have one public shape, and most of it will never be measured.

Then there was the account I heard of God’s work among female Christian leaders in Africa,

a story of ministry consecration that I will not embellish because I do not know all the details.

What I can say is this: it reminded me that God is advancing His kingdom in places far outside

my platforms, my categories, and my line of sight. The harvest does not depend on my visibility

into it.

The confession

Here is where this stops being a Bible study and gets personal.

I am building things. I am building Exponential Advisors, an advisory firm that builds mission-ready plans

for military leaders. I am building Exponential Purpose, this publication you are reading. I write, I publish,

I study the numbers, and I ask God, sincerely, to grow the reach of this work so that more people

encounter the truth of Jesus Christ through it, understand military finance better, and maybe think thoughtfully

about productivity and artificial intelligence.

I believe that prayer is legitimate. But I have learned to pray it with my hands open, because I

know what my heart does with metrics. A subscriber count can quietly become a scoreboard for

my worth. A slow month can feel like a verdict from heaven. The desire to serve more people

and the desire to be validated by more people can sit in the same pew, wearing the same clothes,

and I cannot always tell them apart. Maybe you're concerned about the number of patients you serve

or your Officer Evaluation Report (OER).
​

The conference did not cure that in me. It named it. And it reminded me that a growing audience

cannot compensate for a neglected soul, a neglected marriage, four sons who need a

present father, soldiers who need an unhurried chaplain, or clients who need my full attention

rather than leftover chicken nuggets. (They're nasty anyways.)

Faithfulness is not small thinking

I want to be clear about what this conviction does not mean, because “faithfulness before

fruitfulness” can be twisted into an excuse for passivity.

The farmer who trusts God for the harvest still plows. Trusting God’s timing has

never excused sloppy work. The king with the arrows was not rebuked for ambition; he was

rebuked for stopping early. So I will keep writing, improving distribution, studying

the people I serve, building systems, and yes, asking people to subscribe. Ambition, excellence,

and disciplined execution are not the enemies of surrender. The enemy of surrender is the belief

that outcomes are mine to force, and that results are the proof of my worth or God’s favor. A

steward works hard precisely because the field belongs to Someone else. You work the soil,

plant the seeds, and wait for fruit that only God can grow.

The Man who fulfilled the psalm

If Psalm 1 were a self-improvement program, it would crush us, because none of us has

kept it. We have all walked in wrong counsel, stood too long in wrong company, and sat down

in cynicism. If blessing depends on my performance, I am the chaff.

There is one Man who perfectly delighted in the Father’s law. Jesus prayed in hidden places,

refused Satan’s shortcuts to visible power, submitted to the Father’s timing through thirty silent

years and three public ones, and stayed faithful through suffering that looked, on Friday, like

defeat. He is the righteous man of Psalm 1, and the fruit of His faithfulness was

a resurrection no one saw coming.

Our hope is not that we will finally become impressive enough to earn a harvest. Our hope is

that by grace we are united to Christ, His righteousness counted as ours, His Spirit producing in

us fruit we could never manufacture. “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides

in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). We are planted in Him. That

is the stream under the soil.

Where is God asking you to wait?

So let me ask you what the week asked me. We often tell our two-year old, "Waiting!" And

follow-up, "Sammy, good job waiting." What are you trying to make happen through anxiety that God

has asked you to receive through faithfulness? Where has visible activity quietly replaced communion

with God? And are you willing to remain faithful if the fruit arrives in a different season, or a different

form, than you expected?

Do not grow weary of doing good. In due season we will reap, if we do not give up (Galatians

6:9).

A closing prayer

Father, thank You for the week at Asbury, for the worship, and for the fellowship of the saints.

Bless and keep the nine ministry leaders ordained this week; sustain them for long faithfulness

in hidden places. Teach all of us who serve You to work from health rather than exhaustion. I

surrender Exponential Purpose to You, its growth, its readers, and its future. Give me courage

to work diligently, and free me from vanity, desperation, comparison, and the urge to force what

only You can grow. Lord Jesus Christ, help me to be faithful before I am fruitful, and faithful

even when I cannot yet see the fruit. Amen.

Where is faithfulness being tested in your life right now, while the fruit remains out of reach?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every response, and I would count it a privilege to pray for you.

Grace and peace, Joshua

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<p>Exponential Advisors LLC is an investment adviser registered with the Texas State Securities Board. Registration with any securities authority does not imply a certain level of skill or training.</p>