Should a Joyless Pastor Preach Joy in God?
00:00:00.000 | In episode 27 we talked about pastoring through dry seasons, and Pastor John, as a
00:00:08.920 | pastor, how did you deal with seasons when you did not feel joy in God, and yet
00:00:12.600 | you were preparing to enter the pulpit and preach to your people about joy in
00:00:16.200 | God? Did you ever feel the need to disclose your personal condition in
00:00:19.040 | those sermons, or did you just preach confidently knowing that it's God's
00:00:22.520 | ever-relevant Word? How did you approach the pulpit in spiritually dry seasons?
00:00:27.480 | The principle I would use, then I'll tell you the actuality, the principle I would
00:00:34.000 | use is be real with your people. Don't fake it. Don't ever fake it. They'll see
00:00:42.440 | through that pretty quick, and your own conscience will condemn you. That
00:00:47.680 | doesn't mean that you always need to say every hard thing you've dealt with
00:00:53.360 | during the week. It just may mean you need to say, "There was a text appointed
00:00:59.240 | for today, and I wasn't able to do it," or "This text is appointed for today. I want
00:01:05.120 | you to know I don't feel the fullness of this text, but I'm going to tell you what
00:01:08.760 | this text says, and you pray for me, and I'll pray for you." You can say things like
00:01:12.120 | that, but my experience, Tony, is simply astonishing. In all the depression,
00:01:18.440 | discouragement, and blankness that I have felt over the years, the Lord has always
00:01:25.400 | lifted it enough so that as I've gotten ready for Sunday, I've loved what I'm
00:01:32.360 | about to say. It's just uncanny how on Thursday--I used to take Thursdays off,
00:01:38.200 | and some of those Thursdays off were just the lowest days. They were just low days, and I
00:01:43.600 | remember saying in Desiring God, I would sit in Nokomis Park on the grass, and I
00:01:50.720 | couldn't even remember my kids' names. I was so discouraged. And by Sunday morning,
00:01:56.480 | I was able to love what I was saying and say it. So God has simply been very
00:02:03.600 | good to me in terms of the cycles of my struggles. So if a pastor is not feeling
00:02:09.320 | joy in God, he's not delighting in God and his preparations, you say just press
00:02:14.160 | in, keep pressing into the text, don't give up? Yes. I mean, there are more things
00:02:21.120 | that you can do. There are 15 things at least that I mentioned. He may need to
00:02:27.520 | get up from his desk, close his books, and take a long walk by a lake. That's maybe
00:02:32.880 | what he needs to do. Or he may need to get on the phone and apologize for a sin
00:02:36.960 | he committed, or he may need to get a good night's sleep. I mean, there's just
00:02:43.400 | lots of things. If I were to be a spiritual counselor for some wounded
00:02:48.960 | pastor, I wouldn't just say, "Read your Bible more, keep your nose in the text." I
00:02:53.640 | would probe into this man's life and look at him as a body and a soul and a
00:02:59.280 | spirit and try to discern all the factors that might be going into making
00:03:03.120 | him depressed or discouraged. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening
00:03:07.640 | to this podcast. Send your questions to us via email at
00:03:10.800 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown. You can
00:03:14.960 | find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at
00:03:17.880 | desiringgod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.
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