When my ever-practical husband first saw the title of God Wears His Own Watch by Reid Lehman, he commented, “God doesn’t wear a watch.” True, but Mr, Lehman explains that what he means is that God operates on His own time table, not ours. Sometimes He seems to act in ways that seem late, even past our human deadlines, but He never fails.

At 144 pages, this book is a brief but compelling history of Miracle Hill Ministries and how God has provided for it and worked in the lives of both the workers and the clients.

If you’ve ever tried to work with homeless or addicted, you know it can be discouraging and frustrating, yet God does still patiently change lives. Sanctification is a long process, and when we struggle with our own besetting sins we shouldn’t be surprised that others with perhaps more visible sins do as well. It was a thrill to read of those whose lives the Lord saved and changed, and it encouraged hope for some of my own lost loved ones. One particular lady in one pastor’s neighborhood was in “a drunken haze” for fifteen years before she finally responded to his invitation to trust Christ. How few people are that patient and persistent in working with people! This lady was one of the very few who never relapsed once she was saved and later on became a faithful worker at Miracle Hill. Her own children had been taken from her by DSS, but she became a baby-sitter to Mr. Lehman’s children, which helped heal that wound in her heart, and she was later able to reestablish a relationship with her own children. Sometimes we can harshly judge that some of the painful consequences people encounter are “only what they deserve,” forgetting the depth of pain of those consequences and the mercy we have received in not getting everything we “deserve” for our sins.

Mr. Lehman is also very transparent about his own struggles with feeling inadequate to take over the leadership and how God used different situations in the ministry to reveal to him his own sins and needs in order to change him. He says on page 129:

The people we serve at Miracle Hill have real problems — massive, unsolvable problems. Pious platitudes just won’t do. Quoting Scripture at them, even though it’s the tool God uses to change lives, isn’t enough, either. When we want to see the lives of others transformed, we cannot hold anything back in our own lives — secret sins, past hurts, or running from an issue we have never been willing to face. Some counselors have left our ministry defeated because they were unable, or unwilling, to allow God to change [them].

All of us are broken in some way. If we’re allowing God to continue His painful work of change within us, if we are willing to admit we’re struggling, we can still help others change. If we deny we have problems, or hide our struggles, how can we tell others God can transform and change their lives? And so we have persevered in prayer until God showed Himself.

There are many accounts of God’s provision for the many needs of the ministry. I enjoyed hearing how it got its name: when they were pouring concrete for the children’s home, rain threatened, and volunteers who had come from out of state were limited in the time they could spend before having to return home, so they really needed to finish what they were doing. They stopped “to pray that God would not allow the rain to hinder pouring of the concrete. Soon after that prayer, the workers could see a solid sheet of heavy rain moving toward them, but they watched in astonishment as the thunderclouds parted right at the construction site at the top of the hill. The rain fell all around them, on both sides of the hill, then joined again at the base in force. The bottom of the hill was soaked, but there was only a light sprinkle at the top!” So the volunteers were able to keep working. When secretary Vera Wright heard of this answer to prayer, she said, “This is just like a miracle, isn’t it?” The “miracle on the hill” led to the entire ministry being named “Miracle Hill,” looking forward, I am sure, to the greater miracles they were trusting God to accomplish in lives.

I enjoyed this closer look into this ministry, and I hope many will read it and be stirred anew for what God can accomplish in and through people.

(This review will be linked to Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books)