My Church Makes Ministry a Pain
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00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, here's an anonymous letter we got. "I pastor a church and I believe I
00:00:09.920 | have a healthy desire for God. However, I don't always have a healthy or robust
00:00:13.840 | desire for my people. They can make the ministry trying and unenjoyable." Pastor
00:00:19.640 | John, what advice might you have for a pastor in my position? Well, I have a long
00:00:24.900 | string of ideas, and probably I do because I am this guy. God calls a lot of
00:00:35.680 | introverts into the ministry, and these introverts must set themselves to love
00:00:45.280 | unrelentingly in the way they can love. And that's not going to look the same as
00:00:54.540 | the way an extrovert loves his people. And getting that clear can be very
00:01:00.440 | helpful and very freeing. An introvert has no excuse not to love his people,
00:01:07.000 | but he cannot beat himself up that he's not like so-and-so, who's so
00:01:14.240 | unbelievably gifted in the way he moves among people, and therefore we watch him
00:01:21.600 | and we go home and we feel, "Shoot! If that's the way love is, do I have it?" I
00:01:28.140 | mean, that's what pastors have to deal with if
00:01:32.400 | they're not wired that way. So here's my several counsels. Ponder the way
00:01:39.240 | Christ views his people. Acts 20, 28, "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to
00:01:46.560 | the flock of God in which the Holy Spirit made you overseers. Take care for
00:01:50.240 | the Church of God," here it is, "which he obtained with his own blood." The point of
00:01:56.640 | that last statement is to awaken the cost of the purchase and the
00:02:02.000 | preciousness of what is purchased. We pastors have the stupendous privilege
00:02:08.560 | of serving the people bought at the highest price imaginable in the universe.
00:02:15.600 | It's as if a king should call you a pastor and put you over a region of his
00:02:22.840 | kingdom that he just paid for at the highest price than any other region he
00:02:29.240 | ever bought, and he put you in charge of that position. So we should just stand in
00:02:34.880 | amazement that these people that we are called to serve are the purchase of God
00:02:40.480 | at the highest price imaginable. What an incredible privilege. Second, we should
00:02:47.000 | ponder not only the purchase but the aim. Ephesians 5, 25, "Christ loved the church
00:02:54.240 | and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her
00:02:59.720 | by the washing of water with the words, so that he might present the church to
00:03:04.120 | himself in splendor with no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and that she
00:03:09.800 | might be without blemish." So we should ponder that he didn't purchase a pretty
00:03:16.200 | girl. He has to wash her and remove her spots and her wrinkles and her blemishes
00:03:24.080 | and he says and other such things. He's doing all of this by his blood, by his
00:03:31.640 | word, and so it's okay to see the spots and wrinkles and blemishes. I mean we'd
00:03:38.120 | be stupid and naive to think that the church was anything other than a pretty
00:03:42.680 | beat-up and sick and wrinkled and blemished bride that we get the awesome
00:03:50.480 | privilege to join Christ in loving toward beauty. Toward beauty. Third, we
00:04:00.160 | should remember that Jesus died for those who made his life very hard. That's
00:04:08.000 | what love was. While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the
00:04:12.080 | ungodly. One will scarcely die for a righteous person, but perhaps for a good
00:04:16.480 | person one might even dare to die, but God shows his love for us in that while
00:04:21.440 | we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So the love of a pastor for his people
00:04:27.280 | is a love that precedes their beauty, precedes their readiness to be loved, and
00:04:34.200 | and slogs through a lot of misery just like Jesus slogged through Calvary in
00:04:43.040 | order to save his his bride. Fourth, remember that our joy in God and our joy
00:04:51.440 | in people rises and falls without being inauthentic. I think sometimes we can get
00:04:58.600 | the idea that, well, if it's low today, maybe it wasn't even real before, but the
00:05:05.080 | Bible talks about, "Restore to me the joy of my salvation," so salvation's joy can
00:05:11.360 | diminish, almost fade away, and we have to cry out for it, and so can the love of
00:05:17.000 | people. I mean, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, "The love of every one of
00:05:21.440 | you for one another is increasing." That means yesterday it was lower. Now should
00:05:27.520 | you feel inauthentic about yesterday's love because today's love is intense? I
00:05:32.720 | mean, we really get into that kind of emotional battle, and coming to
00:05:38.600 | terms with the fact that our joy in God, our joy in people, our love for people
00:05:41.920 | rises and falls means that we must beware of not calling the low seasons
00:05:48.800 | inauthentic just because they aren't the high seasons. Here's a fifth
00:05:53.200 | counsel. Beware of having a modern, romanticized, overly emotional view of
00:05:58.960 | love. We're told to reprove and rebuke and correct and discipline, most of which
00:06:04.480 | are experienced by people not as very loving, especially wayward people. They
00:06:08.960 | don't like to be rebuked and corrected, and yet they are forms of love, so beware
00:06:14.320 | of a modern, romanticized, overly emotional view. Six, I often took heart in
00:06:21.360 | the ministry from Matthew 24, 45, where Jesus said, "Who then is the faithful and
00:06:26.960 | wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their
00:06:31.600 | food at the proper time? Blessed, blessed is that servant whom his master will find
00:06:38.360 | so doing when he comes." And I want to say to the pastor, "Did you feed them? Did you
00:06:44.320 | feed them at the proper time with good food?" And Jesus says, "If you feed my
00:06:49.280 | people, I'm gonna find you loving them." So you feed your people and you pray that
00:06:55.640 | your people would be well nourished by what you give them, and God's favor rests
00:07:02.200 | on you. Seven, judge your authenticity and love not by the general feelings, how you
00:07:10.800 | feel toward people, but by your specific affections in specific instances where
00:07:18.200 | you're reaching out to help those in need. This is something I just discovered
00:07:23.280 | very personally over the years. If I tried to think in general terms, "Now do I
00:07:27.760 | love Bethlehem Baptist Church?" Well, I mean that's just so vague and so
00:07:32.000 | impersonal. What kind of emotions are you supposed to spot in your heart when you
00:07:37.080 | talk that vaguely and generally? But if I get a phone call when I don't want to go
00:07:43.320 | to the hospital and I have a crisis and someone is on the brink of death, and I
00:07:47.560 | get in the car and I go not wanting to go and therefore wondering, "Do I love
00:07:52.200 | this person?" Almost every time that I have actually walked through a real door,
00:07:59.200 | taken a real hand, bent down over a real tube-laden face after a heart attack, at
00:08:07.200 | that moment, as I have said, "I'm here. I'd like to pray with you. May I share with
00:08:12.720 | you some hope-giving truth. God has caused my heart to well up with affection
00:08:18.760 | for that real live person." And I've been over some pretty cantankerous dying
00:08:24.000 | folks, and it has been sweet to me to have the Holy Spirit bear witness with
00:08:30.120 | my spirit. You are really loving those people by my power now. So beware of
00:08:36.120 | passing judgment on yourself in those vague general moments. Number eight. I got
00:08:41.720 | I got ten. How long is this gonna go? These are short. Pray for the people who are
00:08:48.200 | most irritating that God would bless them. Jesus said, "Pray for those who abuse
00:08:53.720 | you." When you pray for somebody to be blessed, who you are finding a hard time
00:08:58.360 | liking, very often it rises in your hearts that you can actually start to
00:09:02.320 | feel an affection for those people. Number nine. Pray for a clear and deeply
00:09:08.360 | felt wonder and amazement at your own salvation, your own being loved by Christ
00:09:15.080 | at the cost of his life. Be amazed that you are loved in spite of your sins, and
00:09:21.560 | you will more easily than love others in spite of their sins. And the
00:09:26.680 | last thing I would say is ask God for joy in your people and love for your
00:09:34.640 | people like Paul does when he prays, "My prayer for you is that your love may
00:09:39.920 | abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment." So pray, "God help me. Love
00:09:46.840 | my people more and more." Love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, so plead to God that
00:09:52.360 | you would be filled with him. Amen, that's gold. Thank you, Pastor John. And with
00:09:57.520 | that, we now have 18 episodes of this podcast devoted to leadership in the
00:10:01.680 | church. To find all of those episodes, download the free Ask Pastor John app
00:10:05.080 | from the App Store for your iPhone or Android device. Find the search bar at
00:10:09.360 | the top of the screen and search for the word "pastor," and you'll find the list of
00:10:13.520 | episodes on leadership. We will be back on Monday with another new episode of
00:10:17.880 | the Ask Pastor John podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful weekend.
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