Pastor John, here's an anonymous letter we got. "I pastor a church and I believe I have a healthy desire for God. However, I don't always have a healthy or robust desire for my people. They can make the ministry trying and unenjoyable." Pastor John, what advice might you have for a pastor in my position?

Well, I have a long string of ideas, and probably I do because I am this guy. God calls a lot of introverts into the ministry, and these introverts must set themselves to love unrelentingly in the way they can love. And that's not going to look the same as the way an extrovert loves his people.

And getting that clear can be very helpful and very freeing. An introvert has no excuse not to love his people, but he cannot beat himself up that he's not like so-and-so, who's so unbelievably gifted in the way he moves among people, and therefore we watch him and we go home and we feel, "Shoot!

If that's the way love is, do I have it?" I mean, that's what pastors have to deal with if they're not wired that way. So here's my several counsels. Ponder the way Christ views his people. Acts 20, 28, "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock of God in which the Holy Spirit made you overseers.

Take care for the Church of God," here it is, "which he obtained with his own blood." The point of that last statement is to awaken the cost of the purchase and the preciousness of what is purchased. We pastors have the stupendous privilege of serving the people bought at the highest price imaginable in the universe.

It's as if a king should call you a pastor and put you over a region of his kingdom that he just paid for at the highest price than any other region he ever bought, and he put you in charge of that position. So we should just stand in amazement that these people that we are called to serve are the purchase of God at the highest price imaginable.

What an incredible privilege. Second, we should ponder not only the purchase but the aim. Ephesians 5, 25, "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the words, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor with no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and that she might be without blemish." So we should ponder that he didn't purchase a pretty girl.

He has to wash her and remove her spots and her wrinkles and her blemishes and he says and other such things. He's doing all of this by his blood, by his word, and so it's okay to see the spots and wrinkles and blemishes. I mean we'd be stupid and naive to think that the church was anything other than a pretty beat-up and sick and wrinkled and blemished bride that we get the awesome privilege to join Christ in loving toward beauty.

Toward beauty. Third, we should remember that Jesus died for those who made his life very hard. That's what love was. While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. One will scarcely die for a righteous person, but perhaps for a good person one might even dare to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

So the love of a pastor for his people is a love that precedes their beauty, precedes their readiness to be loved, and and slogs through a lot of misery just like Jesus slogged through Calvary in order to save his his bride. Fourth, remember that our joy in God and our joy in people rises and falls without being inauthentic.

I think sometimes we can get the idea that, well, if it's low today, maybe it wasn't even real before, but the Bible talks about, "Restore to me the joy of my salvation," so salvation's joy can diminish, almost fade away, and we have to cry out for it, and so can the love of people.

I mean, Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, "The love of every one of you for one another is increasing." That means yesterday it was lower. Now should you feel inauthentic about yesterday's love because today's love is intense? I mean, we really get into that kind of emotional battle, and coming to terms with the fact that our joy in God, our joy in people, our love for people rises and falls means that we must beware of not calling the low seasons inauthentic just because they aren't the high seasons.

Here's a fifth counsel. Beware of having a modern, romanticized, overly emotional view of love. We're told to reprove and rebuke and correct and discipline, most of which are experienced by people not as very loving, especially wayward people. They don't like to be rebuked and corrected, and yet they are forms of love, so beware of a modern, romanticized, overly emotional view.

Six, I often took heart in the ministry from Matthew 24, 45, where Jesus said, "Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed, blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes." And I want to say to the pastor, "Did you feed them?

Did you feed them at the proper time with good food?" And Jesus says, "If you feed my people, I'm gonna find you loving them." So you feed your people and you pray that your people would be well nourished by what you give them, and God's favor rests on you.

Seven, judge your authenticity and love not by the general feelings, how you feel toward people, but by your specific affections in specific instances where you're reaching out to help those in need. This is something I just discovered very personally over the years. If I tried to think in general terms, "Now do I love Bethlehem Baptist Church?" Well, I mean that's just so vague and so impersonal.

What kind of emotions are you supposed to spot in your heart when you talk that vaguely and generally? But if I get a phone call when I don't want to go to the hospital and I have a crisis and someone is on the brink of death, and I get in the car and I go not wanting to go and therefore wondering, "Do I love this person?" Almost every time that I have actually walked through a real door, taken a real hand, bent down over a real tube-laden face after a heart attack, at that moment, as I have said, "I'm here.

I'd like to pray with you. May I share with you some hope-giving truth. God has caused my heart to well up with affection for that real live person." And I've been over some pretty cantankerous dying folks, and it has been sweet to me to have the Holy Spirit bear witness with my spirit.

You are really loving those people by my power now. So beware of passing judgment on yourself in those vague general moments. Number eight. I got I got ten. How long is this gonna go? These are short. Pray for the people who are most irritating that God would bless them.

Jesus said, "Pray for those who abuse you." When you pray for somebody to be blessed, who you are finding a hard time liking, very often it rises in your hearts that you can actually start to feel an affection for those people. Number nine. Pray for a clear and deeply felt wonder and amazement at your own salvation, your own being loved by Christ at the cost of his life.

Be amazed that you are loved in spite of your sins, and you will more easily than love others in spite of their sins. And the last thing I would say is ask God for joy in your people and love for your people like Paul does when he prays, "My prayer for you is that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment." So pray, "God help me.

Love my people more and more." Love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, so plead to God that you would be filled with him. Amen, that's gold. Thank you, Pastor John. And with that, we now have 18 episodes of this podcast devoted to leadership in the church. To find all of those episodes, download the free Ask Pastor John app from the App Store for your iPhone or Android device.

Find the search bar at the top of the screen and search for the word "pastor," and you'll find the list of episodes on leadership. We will be back on Monday with another new episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a wonderful weekend.