The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Let the Work Grow | Faith in Action Friday

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Growth can’t be rushed.In this Faith in Action Friday episode, Kevin reflects on a lesson drawn from farming and from life experience: you can do the right work and still harm the outcome if you try to force progress.Using Psalm 126:5–6, this episode explores the difference between sowing well and harvesting too early, and what patience, consistency, and faith look like in 2025.

Welcome to People Process Progress. I'm Kevin Pinell, and this is Faith in Action Friday. The show is about leadership, family, health, and faith, and how progress actually happens in real life. You can find more episodes and written reflections at peopleprocessprogress.com. If the show has been useful to you, please subscribe and we review. That helps more than you probably realize. Today's episode is called Let the Work Grow.

One of the lessons I've picked up from living in the mountains and learning a bit about the history of the New River Valley is that growth doesn't like to be rushed. People who work the land figure this out over time, right? You could paint good seed and work hard and still lose the crop if you tried to force things. Too much water, too much checking, too much interference. The land needed time and it followed its own rhythm, whether you liked it or not. That idea keeps coming back to me because it shows up in my life in a lot of places. I tend to push when I'm unsure and what results when what's really needed is patient. And when clarity, before the work, has had time to settle, most of the time when I step back

and look honestly, the problem is an effort. It's impatience. There's a line from the Psalms that I think about or have learned about recently when I catch myself doing this, and it's Psalm 126, and it talks about sowing before it ever talks about harvesting, right? And it says that those who go out carrying seed, even when it's hard, will come back carrying the harvest later. It's not a promise of quick results.

It's more of a reminder that order matters, work comes first, the outcome comes later, right? And that way of thinking is hard in 2025, harder than it used to be because we're surrounded by updates and metrics and instant feedback. And if something isn't moving fast, we assume it's broken. If progress isn't obvious, we think we're doing something wrong, right? That mindset creeps into work, family, health, even our faith. I see it in leadership when I try to move decisions faster than people are ready to move. I see it in family.

when I jump into fixing instead of listening. I see it in health when I focus on results instead of the habits that actually produce them. When I'm honest, pushing usually creates more problems than it solves. Faith in action for me looks like learning when to stop forcing things. It's still showing up, it's still doing the work. This is in front of me. But it's also trusting that not everything needs my constant input, right?

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is give the work room to grow. So, right, if you're listening to this in 2025, my guess is there's at least one area of your life where you're feeling pressure to speed things up. Maybe it's work, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's your health or your own sense of direction. Before you push harder, it might be worth asking whether you're trying to harvest something that's still in the ground. So the action for today is simple.

Pick one thing you're working on and shift your focus from outcomes to consistency. Right. Do the next right thing. then give it some space, let time play its part. Progress doesn't always show up quickly, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. A lot of the most important work grows quietly. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today.

You can find more episodes, reflections, resources, at people processprogress.com. My books, The Stability Equation, and the People Process and Progress of Project Management are available on Amazon. I also have a YouTube channel called People Process Progress, where you can hear the audio version of this, some video episodes, some back video episodes,

workout videos, cold plunge videos and how-toes, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu After Action reports. It's a little mix of what I do and what a lot of others do and shared knowledge. You can follow me on X and Instagram at Penel K-G, P-A-N-E-L-K-G. And here, whatever platform you're listening on, I really appreciate it. Until next time, take care, keep showing up. Let the grow, work grow, and Godspeed. Thank you.