Pastors have a million things pressing them from every side. Just to list all the things that pastors do (or are unrealistically expected to do) is overwhelming.
And we have so many obligations and people expect so many different things from us (and we expect so much of ourselves) we often get tired, and fatigued under the heavy load and feel like we can’t go on. Sometimes in fact we think we have so many things to do we don’t even know where to start. Furthermore the devil likes to accuse us of laziness if we do take a break or if we slow down to get our bearings.
Pastor, I want to encourage you to take time to wait before the Lord in prayer, in silence, yes even in sleep. I have found a beautiful thing is to sleep in a posture of prayer (often only for a few minutes) and then to awaken with a fresh vigor and zeal to talk to the Lord or actively listen to Him through Scripture reading or meditation on Him and His Word.
Secondly I want to encourage you to take the time to wait on the Lord. We obviously should be waiting in the presence of the Lord in the prayer room in an intentional time of prayer, but we also need to adopt a lifestyle of waiting on God. God’s timing is perfect, God’s revelation is perfect, God’s plan is perfect. So let us determine to not get ahead of Him or lag behind but to simply stay in step with His Spirit. We must trust that the Lord will make His will known and cause us to be able to hear His voice and His instructions in His timing. If we don’t know what to do and we haven’t heard His voice clearly, let us simply wait and listen and keep our eyes on Jesus.
Please take time to enjoy and rest in the presence of the One who died and rose again because He wants to be in your presence for all eternity!
Listen to these amazing words from a great (though perhaps little known) hymn of the church:
Peace, peace, wonderful peace
Coming down from the Father above
Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray
In fathomless billows of love
Wonderful peace, by W.D. Cornell
My heart yearns for this. My body and spirit ache for this.
And it seems that I expend much energy pursuing this.
And yet the surest way to receive and walk in this peace is simply to wait in the presence of the Lord. Wait in prayer. Wait in silence. Wait in worship & singing. Wait in the busyness of life and wait in the stillness of the prayer closet. Wherever you are, whatever is going on, no matter what else beckons, stand firm and insist that in the inner chamber of your heart you wait in God’s presence.
I pray that you receive and walk in the sweet peace of the Lord, knowing His forgiveness and love!
Do you want to be different and act/react differently?
Do you desire to have a different mindset and a different outlook and a different inner state of being?
Here is what we must do for things to be different:
We need to think on different things (not dwelling on the negative, the trouble, the losses/lack but instead like the Bible says we need to think about things that are excellent, lovely and praiseworthy)
We need to speak differently (don’t gossip or speak about earthly matters, instead speak about God and His goodness and His promises)
We need to act differently (not running around frazzled, stressed and overanxious but calmly, slowly and deliberately praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances and loving God and others through sacrificial action)
If we will think differently, speak differently and act differently, we will not only BE different but we will also feel different. And the circumstances around us will look different also. All of a sudden we will begin to see that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ, nothing will defeat us and nothing is impossible with God.
Please join me in practicing thinking, speaking and acting differently (with the help of the Holy Spirit and by prayer) and then watch and see how your life begins to change!
It is easy to paint an imaginary picture of pastoral ministry and/or the people we maybe one day could minister to.
But the reality is that God brings upon our path those He desires that we pastor.
This doesn’t let us off the hook for seeking people out, or for praying for more open doors or for being open to making new friendships or nurturing the ones that we have.
But instead it reminds us that we don’t have to force something, we don’t have to spend all our time daydreaming about some invisible maybe someday people.
Instead we can love those God brings before our minds eye or physically in front of us.
And then we can listen. Be inquisitive. Show compassion. Speak gently. Share the gospel. Pray with them.
And before you know it you will step back and realize that God has indeed allowed you the privilege and opportunity to serve and pastor another person in His name and for His glory.
I hope you will pray with me and be open to the people God connects you with (no matter who they are, how your paths cross or how different they are than us). I just don’t want to miss what God has for me or for them.
It often feels like all I have to do to really help my church to become healthy and vibrant and successful is to:
Call a few (or ten) more people per week
Visit more people every week
Text more people every week
Invite more people to church
Ask people better questions
Make sure to remember more details about people’s lives
Pray more
Read my Bible more
Study more
Make my sermons shorter (or sometimes longer)
Improve my teaching and explanation
Be funnier
Have more people over to my house
Take more people out to eat
Write more notes and letters of encouragement
Delegate better
Recruit more
Become a better cheerleader
Do less (or sometimes more)
Learn how to do altar calls
Spend more time discipling one-to-one
Offer more services, prayer meetings and Bible studies
Do more service projects
Get the van ministry going
Involve more people in Sunday morning worship
Get a few more volunteers
And since that is all I need to do to help the church grow spiritually and numerically, I really don’t know what my problem is and why I don’t just get to it!
Here’s the deal: I really don’t know what I should be doing except that I listen to the Lord day by day and moment by moment. In spite of all the learning and experience I have, all I really can do is pray, listen and walk by faith.
But then I guess that’s really all Jesus asks of any of us.
Isn’t it exciting and amazing to realize we are doing the Lord’s work?! I mean, what you and I are doing matters for eternity. What we are doing will bear fruit even after we are dead and gone from this earth.
The things we are saying, the lives we are living, the attitudes we are portraying…all of these, if done for the glory of God and if consecrated to Him, will reap a harvest, will lead others to faith and maturity in Christ, and will impact generations.
Many times it doesn’t feel like much is happening. Many times we may doubt our effectiveness. Let this spur us on to more prayer, more intentionality, more creativity and more boldness. But let us not despair: as we surrender to God, our efforts, infused with His power will bring about His purposes, in His timing.
Let us not worry so much about what things look like from worldly (ungodly) or earthly (temporal) perspectives and instead rest in the knowledge, power and leading of God even as we diligently serve those God places upon our paths.
That this is impossible to overcome or come through
But there is a reality for those who serve God and surrender their lives to His eternal love, power, holiness and purposes:
All will be well
If it’s not good it’s not over
The way other people look at you, think of you, judge you, has nothing to do with who you are, what your value is, or what your life will look like
Your and my lives are important to God.
Practice saying it: “My life is important to God”
The things that God has placed upon our paths are significant for His glory, the salvation of others and our own sanctification. The things that I have the opportunity to be a part of are significant for the kingdom of God. The daily things I participate in (no matter how mundane, unpleasant or difficult) can be used to help the church, others and myself. In fact everything that I am a part of has the potential to be valuable and significant if I allow God to infuse it with His life and purpose. Furthermore, unless I strip away the value God assigns to every moment, every gift, every opportunity, then I can actually walk in the inner confidence and calm assurance that what I am now doing has eternal significance (because His redeeming grace is at work), and no matter how bleak things look, God is making it beautiful, redeeming it and making it new.
There is one simple condition though to whether or not all will be well.
That condition is whether or not we entrust our lives fully into the hands of God. If we seek to do it alone, we will fail. If we seek to figure it out on our own, we will fall. If we seek to push through it on our own we will come up short. If we try to think our way through, strategize our way through, coerce or force our way through, we will fail.
But God Himself, who is abundantly able, full of all power, exceedingly willing, extravagantly gracious and full of all knowledge, is waiting to hear you and I say: “Lord, I can’t handle this. I can’t do this. Help me! Save me! Forgive me! Remember me!”
And God says: “Yes my child, I am here. I will answer you. I will save you!”
Let us take a moment and remember the “eternal glory” that far outlasts the temporary struggles we are facing today. (2 Corinthians 4:17)
The great pastor, missionary, evangelist Paul faced the same things you and I face.
Fatigue
Being misunderstood
Being overlooked and ignored
Fears
Illnesses
Circumstances beyond his control
An inner drive to honor God and help people
Persecution
Confusion
Limitations
And much more!
Paul in His own wrestling with God in prayer, was given sufficient grace to help him in his times of weakness and despair. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
And what Paul learned from God he passes on to us:
We must remember that God rewards the diligent, He blesses the hungry, comforts the grief-ridden, delivers the desperate. God has shared with us His sufferings but also He is sharing with us the power of His resurrection and the eternal rewards granted by the heavenly Father. (1 Peter 4:13)
So today as you are tired and perhaps wondering what it is you are actually accomplishing and whether it is worth it….remember that there is an eternal glory that God is sharing with us and we will one day see with perfect clarity that it was all worth it for the sake of His name and for the sake of His children.
Let me challenge you to think about your life and all that you have personally experienced.
Can you think upon your life and name something that was done for you that you did not do, nor could have possibly done, for yourself?
You know, like giving yourself life? – Your parents did that
Like bathe yourself, feed yourself, clothe yourself until such time that you could possibly do it for yourself? – Again your parent(s) or guardian(s) did that
What about the last time that you had a headache, or a cold or an infection of some sort? – Although you may have taken it upon yourself to take some medicine, the reality is that even after the medicine was in you, you didn’t heal yourself. – The medicine did, or the regenerative cells, or the blood cells.
One more example. Is there a job that you had or an education you received or a relationship you were in that you couldn’t possibly have secured for yourself? I know you are thinking, wait a minute “I applied to that school” or “I sent out my resume, which shows MY skills” or “I reached out to that person to build that relationship”. And though all of that might be true, that person could have said “no” to offering you the job, accepting you into the school or reciprocating your friendship.
Anyway, I think you understand my point, there are things in your life and mine that we had no control over. We didn’t make it happen, nor could we have. In other words, where you and I are right now in life has a great deal to do with things, people, circumstances that are out of our control.
So why do I bring it up to you?
Because of this…
The reason you are alive is no accident. And it is (obviously) not because you made it happen! God Himself, your Creator, decided that He wanted to make you so that you would experience His love, and be born into the creation He made for you to live in and experience His goodness. Furthermore God then placed things, people and circumstances along your path in order that you might know Him, hear His voice, see His goodness and accept His invitation to a personal relationship.
I know, I get it, you might say, that just because there are things in your life that you didn’t have any control over doesn’t mean that God exists or that He arranged those things or even that He has a plan for your life.
And yet I am here to tell you, as an personal eyewitness of what God has done for thousands of people before you (feel free to ask me more about the things I have personally witnessed and can attest to), that indeed God does love you and has a plan for your life. As a matter of fact I want you to go back and begin looking through the annals of your life history and all of the things that you didn’t cause or create but they were “just there” and look carefully: do you see the hand of God? Do you see the careful attention of a loving Creator and Savior?
That sunset: do you only see light waves passing through particles of dust and various atmospheric gasses? Do you only see light be reflected and refracted by the atoms it bounces off of? Or do you see the hand of God, painting out something beautiful in order to reveal His own beauty to the world?
The breath in your lungs: do you only see water and minerals, tissue, muscle and bone evolved by happenstance somehow cohesing together for about 70 years and then dissolving back into its base elements? Or do you see the hand of God intricately weaving together humanity in His image to be able to think, feel and desire as He does, full of life and rejoicing in life and relationship?
The basic stuff of life:
The food that you eat that is made from the crops and the animals that co-inhabit this space with us.
The abilities and skills that seem to come naturally to you
Do you see in these things happenstance, coincidence, the random firing of synapses or the serendipitous existence of flora and fauna that exactly meet our nutritional needs?
Or do you see the gracious heart and hand of God making it possible for humanity to have not just existence but a full and abundant life full of both functional and pleasing supply?
I will follow up with another article, but let’s leave this one here for now. In the Bible in the book of Romans in the New Testament the apostle Paul tells us that you and I can see God’s invisible attributes and His eternal power and His divine nature all around us. He also says that means we are without an excuse to say “I don’t think God is real” or “I didn’t know about God” but instead that we should see, take note and then come to know the God we see evidence of all around us. Please, let this article serve to help you consider all the times and places you have had something good in your life that really was God at work revealing Himself to you and calling you in His love to a personal relationship with Him. The point is that God wants us to acknowledge Him and receive the kindness, tolerance and patience of God which brings us to repentance and salvation.
You may not agree with me, I just want you to consider the possibility. What IF God is real? What IF God is the Creator of the cosmos and everything in it? What IF God gave you personally life and indeed has a personal plan for you and a desire to be in a relationship with you? IF any of this is true, can you see how there are evidences in your life of that God seeking to get your attention, giving you blessings and His love, and calling you to be in a relationship with Him? I hope you can at least admit that the possibility exists after analyzing the things in your life that you simply could not have made happen or done for or provided for yourself.
If I continue on the current path and trajectory will I be more like Jesus in a year than I am now?
Do the people closest to me think that I am anything like Jesus?
These are hard questions for me to consider. As a matter of fact I’m not sure I want to spend much time thinking about them because I fear perhaps I am stuck in a rut in my spiritual life.
I want to be more like Jesus, and yet sometimes I think I just keep defaulting to certain rote behaviors, not to intentionally be selfish but just because I am busy and I have not intentionally pursued growth in grace nor sought to change my habits, attitudes and behaviors to more closely match Jesus’.
I know of course that by myself I can’t change myself, but I also know that God won’t change me without my cooperation and participation with His plan.
If I spend time with God in prayer and the Word and even time at church with other believers in worship but I don’t act any differently in the rest of my life, I realize that I am grieving the Spirit of God and treating flippantly the blood of Jesus which He shed for me.
So my prayer for you and me both, is that we will sit a while with the Lord and ask Him with David to “search me and know me and see if there is any wicked or anxious way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” (see Psalm 139)
And then whatever God shows us, no matter how painful, let us come under His care so that He can bind up our wounds, heal our brokenness and change us from the inside out.
Pastor Michael Johnson 