How Do I Bear with Immature Christians?
00:00:00.000 | Well, how do I bear with immature Christians?
00:00:07.680 | The question is relevant to all maturing Christians, but today it comes from a listener named TJ,
00:00:13.800 | and I assume TJ is a young pastor.
00:00:15.880 | He writes this, "Hello Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:18.760 | When you were a pastor, how did you deal with the grief or burden you felt about the members
00:00:23.280 | of your church that seemed to not live like Jesus?
00:00:27.440 | How did you handle disappointment in people who are active participants in the church,
00:00:31.840 | but who always seem to lag far behind in personal growth and maturity?"
00:00:36.760 | Pastor John, what would you say to TJ?
00:00:38.840 | There are two kinds of challenges that I hear from the pastor or from the Council of Elders.
00:00:45.520 | One is the discernment challenge, and the other is the discouragement challenge.
00:00:52.400 | The discernment challenge is discerning when a person is not just weak and struggling,
00:01:00.360 | but is living out of a rebellious heart that looks weak and struggling, but deep down is
00:01:07.120 | very resistant to God and His Word, to the church, church leadership.
00:01:14.080 | It's not always easy to tell the difference between these two.
00:01:17.200 | The sincere, humble, often failing stumbler, on the one hand, and the person who's using
00:01:25.640 | weakness as a cover-up for hard, resistant, insubordinate, heart of disobedience.
00:01:31.800 | So that's the discernment challenge.
00:01:33.760 | The discouragement challenge is handling the discouragement of pouring your life out year
00:01:40.320 | after year and realizing that many in our congregation are not embracing the biblical
00:01:46.720 | vision we preach, and they're not being transformed into more holy and loving people.
00:01:53.520 | That can be really discouraging.
00:01:55.920 | It sounds like TJ is asking mainly about that.
00:02:00.240 | But let me say a word about each of them and then dwell on the second one that he seems
00:02:05.240 | to be most concerned about.
00:02:06.960 | A pastor needs a robust theology of sanctification that recognizes the dangers of perfectionism,
00:02:14.600 | on the one hand, and the dangers of carelessness about sin, on the other hand.
00:02:19.720 | There really is a holiness without which we will not see the Lord, Hebrews 12, 14.
00:02:27.160 | So woe to those who are careless as they deal with their people, as if sin doesn't really matter.
00:02:35.480 | You're all justified by faith.
00:02:36.480 | It doesn't matter how you live.
00:02:37.960 | Woe to such pastors.
00:02:40.120 | And it is really true that if we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us, 1 John 1, 8.
00:02:48.760 | So woe to the perfectionists.
00:02:51.120 | Woe to the pastors who have no sense of proportion, no sense of balance, no sense of how to deal
00:02:57.360 | with people who are real Christians and yet stumble.
00:03:01.360 | So there is such a thing as a fake faith, believing in vain, Paul calls it in 1 Corinthians 15, 2.
00:03:10.000 | And there is such a thing as weak faith, little faith, growing faith, embattled faith, all
00:03:18.920 | of which are real faith.
00:03:22.000 | And I would only mention one thing in regard to how to handle the challenge of discernment
00:03:27.400 | here, and that is take careful stock how the struggler and the rebel respond to correction
00:03:36.360 | and admonition.
00:03:37.900 | The true struggling believer will be much more likely to humble himself and follow your
00:03:46.960 | counsel than the rebel will be.
00:03:49.200 | So that's my word about the discernment challenge.
00:03:51.680 | Now with regard to the discouragement challenge, that people are not changing the way you've
00:03:58.520 | prayed and you've hoped and you've labored and you've counseled and you've preached,
00:04:04.280 | that's really depleting.
00:04:05.920 | I just said to my preaching class the other day, that very question came up, somebody
00:04:11.280 | asked it.
00:04:12.280 | I remember a man who sat in the second pew on the right-hand side in the old sanctuary
00:04:18.960 | we used to have, and then we built a new one, he sat in the same second pew in the new sanctuary,
00:04:24.120 | 15 years at least, and when he passed away, I could see no change in his life at all.
00:04:31.720 | No change in the way he talked about God, no change in the way he seemed to feel about
00:04:37.040 | God, no change in the way he talked to me about the concerns of his life, which were
00:04:41.320 | always something other than the Lord.
00:04:44.120 | That was really discouraging.
00:04:46.800 | So here are a few thoughts that I hope will help about this discouragement factor.
00:04:51.400 | One, the New Testament recognizes this sort of thing happens.
00:04:55.760 | In other words, you're not alone.
00:04:57.680 | For example, Hebrews 15, 11 says, "We have much to say," and he's thinking about Melchizedek,
00:05:04.280 | "and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing, for though by this
00:05:12.280 | time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of
00:05:19.440 | the oracles of God.
00:05:21.120 | You need milk, not solid food."
00:05:25.000 | So he doesn't seem to scold the pastors.
00:05:28.880 | He's scolding the people.
00:05:30.440 | He's going to refer to the pastors later on, but he doesn't scold them for this.
00:05:35.240 | The people have gone backward.
00:05:36.240 | They haven't just stayed still, they've gone backward.
00:05:39.680 | They've become dull of hearing, even as they listen to the teachers of the church.
00:05:45.120 | So it doesn't mean we excuse ourselves as pastors.
00:05:48.460 | We should test the content of our teaching and the prayerfulness of our lives and the
00:05:53.840 | example of our love.
00:05:56.160 | But what Hebrews does is to call attention to the fact that there can be people in your
00:06:02.440 | church who actually go backward under your faithful teaching.
00:06:06.400 | One observation.
00:06:07.840 | Paul makes clear that there will always be different kinds of disappointments in the
00:06:13.880 | people of our church.
00:06:15.080 | He says, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 5.14, "We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle,
00:06:23.000 | encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all."
00:06:28.960 | He doesn't talk as if those categories are going to go away.
00:06:34.800 | Just work a little harder, elders.
00:06:36.600 | Come on, if you just work a little harder, you won't have to deal with idle people, faint-hearted
00:06:41.000 | people, weak people.
00:06:42.560 | No, I don't think that's what he means.
00:06:45.640 | That's a perfectionistic notion that'll kill a pastor, I'll tell you.
00:06:49.560 | It'll kill a Sunday school teacher, whatever.
00:06:52.560 | If you think, "If I just work a little harder, all my people will move beyond idleness, faint-heartedness,
00:06:58.440 | weakness.
00:06:59.440 | There won't be anything to struggle with anymore in my church if I succeed."
00:07:03.160 | That's perfectionism about to kill a pastor.
00:07:06.040 | Third, be patient with them all.
00:07:09.360 | Patience is a huge necessity in the ministry, and the key to patience is the double look
00:07:16.200 | forward and backward, forward to the promises of God to turn all apparent setbacks into
00:07:23.120 | stepping stones.
00:07:24.120 | Genesis 50 verse 20, "They meant it for evil, you meant it for good."
00:07:29.320 | God means this slowness of their sanctification for your good, pastor.
00:07:34.120 | And then the backward look about the patience of God in our lives, the pastor's own life.
00:07:39.920 | How can I be harsh or impatient with a struggler since I have failed God so many times and
00:07:46.920 | he has drawn me back again and again and again?
00:07:50.640 | And here's the fourth observation.
00:07:52.760 | There's a great reward coming for pastors who keep on loving and faithfully teaching
00:07:57.400 | and preaching.
00:07:58.920 | They're people rather than being embittered and cynical and domineering.
00:08:04.520 | First Peter 5, 3, "Shepherd the flock of God, not domineering over those in your charge,
00:08:10.760 | being good examples, and when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown
00:08:18.800 | of glory."
00:08:19.840 | That crown of glory is going to be given to faithful shepherds whether the sheep have
00:08:24.800 | been responsive or not.
00:08:26.760 | In other words, when it feels like the rewards here are slim, don't forget the unfading
00:08:34.320 | crown of glory.
00:08:37.560 | And I think the last thing I would say is be encouraged that God's Word does not come
00:08:42.600 | back empty.
00:08:44.040 | You may think so.
00:08:45.040 | I mean, it may look like this is not producing the fruit.
00:08:48.940 | So what I did, I mean, he asked, "What did you do, Pastor John?"
00:08:53.160 | I memorized and I preached to myself these words from Isaiah 55, "As the rain and the
00:09:00.480 | snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring
00:09:05.660 | forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be
00:09:11.980 | that goes forth from my mouth.
00:09:14.260 | It will not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed
00:09:22.040 | in the thing for which I sent it."
00:09:24.160 | And I preached that to myself over and over again.
00:09:27.920 | How many times did I get up from the front pew, walk toward the pulpit, saying to myself,
00:09:32.720 | "It's not going to come back empty.
00:09:34.480 | It's not going to come back empty."
00:09:36.560 | So we may not see the effect in this life.
00:09:41.240 | Some of it God lets us see, and much of it he does not let us see.
00:09:46.000 | He knows how to manage our pride, and he knows how to manage our discouragement.
00:09:50.480 | So take heart, preach the word, love the people.
00:09:54.400 | God is at work.
00:09:55.400 | Yeah, that's a good word for pastors and their stability in the labors.
00:09:59.520 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:00.920 | And thank you for the question, TJ.
00:10:02.440 | Well, you can ask your own question to Pastor John, or you can search or browse our 1,600
00:10:07.480 | episodes that we have in our archive, and you can subscribe to the podcast.
00:10:10.600 | You can do all those things at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:12.840 | That's a web address, DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:16.800 | And coming up, part two of our Providence series is up on Wednesday.
00:10:23.400 | We're going to look at the affectionate side of Providence and how seeing and savoring
00:10:27.600 | this Providence awakens and sustains wonder and awe and holy reverence, and the kind of
00:10:34.240 | joy inside of us that leads us into true God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated worship.
00:10:43.200 | Cannot wait to look at that.
00:10:44.680 | That's next time.
00:10:45.680 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:10:46.680 | See you on Wednesday.
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