It is Monday, and although it may come as a surprise to our non-pastor listeners, many pastors will know that Mondays can be some of the darkest days of the week for them. Steve, a pastor, writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, how do you cope, battle, and overcome post-sermon depression?

Every Monday seems like a dark cloud of depression looming over my head." Pastor John, what would you have to say to Steve? I don't want to give the impression that there are simple and quick fixes for deep and complex emotional conditions. I don't know what Steve is dealing with in any depth or complexity, but we are deep people, and we are complex people, and there probably are a hundred streams feeding into the slew of despond, as John Bunyan calls it for Steve.

So I would be hesitant to make decisive pronouncements about all of his therapies. It would be good for him to talk to somebody who knows him better, but having said that, there are things that we share in common. I am one of those, right? I know what he's talking about.

I think I mentioned in one of the chapters in Desiring God that, well, I wrote that book when I was approaching my 40s, and in those days there were days of discouragement so deep my mind could scarcely recall my children's names. I think I wrote that. So I have a little bit of empathy at least with Steve's struggle.

He doesn't tell me his age, by the way. I wish I knew, but I did want to say there is something about midlife issues for men that's real, and the turning point of 40, you know, those years on either side of 40, can be a crisis for men for reasons I don't think we fully understand physically and psychologically.

Certainly was for me. So beware, all you men between 35 and 45, that you're in a season that you will get through, and don't leave your wife and buy a sailboat or a motorcycle and find another woman. That's a stupid way to solve the problem. Stay faithful to your ministry.

Stay faithful to her. So here are some of my warfare strategies for Mondays when the plague of discouragement descends on a pastor. Number one, go out to pasture. Every pastor is a sheep on Monday. He needs green grass, still water. He needs a shepherd, and when I say he needs a shepherd, I mean Jesus ministering through a dead shepherd.

I'm talking about Puritans. I mean, it may not be Puritans for Steve, but it was for me, and what I mean is find the kinds of books, poems, whatever. Find the kind that feed your weary soul. This is different from wrestling with some exegetical issue. This is lounging in a field of incredibly nourishing grass and lounging by a stream of crystal pure refreshing water with a veteran lover of God and knower of men, and there aren't any better than Burroughs, Owen, Boston, Brooks, Bunyan, Sibbs, Edwards.

I mean, they're just--these brothers, or I'll add Newton since I'm talking to Tony Rankine. There are nourishing writers who aren't into controversy. They're into soul food. So that's number one. Go out to pasture. Know who your shepherds are, your dead shepherds, and let them feed you. And secondly, recall the words of Jesus, "Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven," because we can put so much of our emotional stakes in the success of our ministry that we forget that Jesus said, "Look, even if demons are coming out every Sunday morning, don't get up on Monday and feel great about that, mainly.

Get up Monday morning and feel great. My name is written there. My name is written there," which means you're safe with Jesus. Cultivate an amazement that he knows you and you know him, and make that relationship the place of wonder and the place of joy, and let ministry successes rise and fall as they will, but keep your heart staked right in Jesus and your name being written there.

Here's a third one. Get a prayer team to support you and put them to work on Monday morning. We required a prayer team support team for all the pastors. These are lay people in the church who love their pastor, maybe five or ten of them, and they are committed to pray for you every time you write to them or any other time.

My prayer team has been with me for years, and I credit them with many rescues and much fruit and much joy and a lot of survival, and so get one of those teams. Find those who you know would pray for you. Get them a list. Put them on a group mailing address, and Sunday night, as you feel it coming on, write to them and say, "Fight for me tomorrow morning.

Fight for me tomorrow morning in prayer," and I think he will feel the difference. And the fourth thing I would say is hammer your body with whatever exercise works for you. Don't become a couch potato. It is deadly. God made muscles for work, and he made the heart to sustain it, and he made the brain to produce antidepressants in response to vigorous exercise.

Don't spare yourself in this. Get a bike. Ride 20 miles as hard as you can on Monday morning, or run or swim or do weights or dig in the garden, but don't fool yourself that you are exercising when you're not panting. I mean, a lot of people think, "I'm exercising." You're not exercising.

You are lolling. Make it happen. You will be surprised. You will be surprised how closely connected are the body and the soul. One last thing. Trust the promises of God relating to your Sunday work just passed. Your preaching was not in vain. Isaiah 55, 10 to 11. It's not gonna come back vain.

It is not going to be in vain. Your suffering on Monday is not in vain. All pastors suffer because God ordains to turn their suffering and their comfort into the good of his people, 2 Corinthians 1. Your darkness is not too dark for God, Psalm 139. "Surely the darkness shall not shall cover me." If you say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you.

The night is bright as the day, for the darkness is light with you. So no darkness is dark to God, and your season of weeping will change. Stay at it. Psalm 126, "He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, will come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him." What that says pretty plainly is farming is just plain hard work, and you can't not go to the field when you feel miserable.

You got to go plant the seed while your heart is breaking, and the promise is it won't stay broken. It won't stay broken. There will come another season, so I want to say don't give up, stay with it, fight the good fight, finish your course, keep the faith. Thank you, Pastor John.

And perhaps you're not a pastor, but you have one, a pastor who expends himself for you every Sunday. Please consider taking time today on this Monday to pray for him and his heart and for his rest and restoration today. Also, this discussion reminds me of two episodes we recorded for pastors in the past, for pastors who are faced with a darkness that will not lift on Tuesday.

Episode number 27, "Fighting for Joy in Pastoral Ministry," and episode number 28, "Should a Joyless Pastor Preach Joy in God?" Check those episodes out in the podcast archive. Well, we have recently been talking a lot about Burger King and what to do with retailers who openly support the sin of homosexual practice.

We talked about this in episode number 394, but Burger King is not alone. Apple, Subaru, and Target have all done virtually the same thing recently. So should we buy products from these companies? Tomorrow a podcast listener named Joe will ask Pastor John. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening to the podcast.