(Written a few years back. I decided to leave it intact and post it as is.)
“Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat down by the well….” (John 4:6).
Jesus grew tired, so don’t be surprised if you do, too.
Jesus needed rest and wanted a little solitude, and you and I are no different.
Give yourself permission to be human, friend.
As for me, it’s Monday night and I’m tired.
How did I get this way?
“From now on let no one cause trouble for me, for I bear on my body the brand-marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17).
“…I bear branded on my body the owner’s stamp of the Lord Jesus” –the Moffett translation.
“…I bear on my body the scars that mark me as a slave of Jesus” –Goodspeed.
At Mississippi State University, the Kenyan student carried horizontal scars across his face. “Identification marks for my tribe,” he explained to me. Wow. Tough clan.
We were returning from the cemetery in the mortuary’s station wagon. The director and I were chatting and perhaps could have been more observant. We did not notice the pickup truck coming from our right and running the stop sign at 30 or 40 mph. We broadsided the truck.
My forehead broke the dashboard.
Bob is the pastor of a small church in another state. He told me this story.
As a layman he was put on the search committee to seek the next preacher. Then, they elected him chairman of the team. Soon he began to gather information to present to prospective pastors.
“What is our salary package?” he asked the church treasurer.
The old gentleman had controlled the purse strings for that little congregation for several years. He said to Bob, “We don’t want a preacher who thinks about those things. He should settle with the Lord if He’s calling him here, and come no matter what it pays.”
Bob said, “I don’t think so. The laborer is worthy of his hire, Scripture says.”
Because Bob wanted to do this right, he insisted that the church pay an adequate salary with benefits. And did what was necessary to put it together into an acceptable form.
And then, something interesting happened.
The angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them forth, and said, ‘Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:20).
Go. Stand. Speak.
Preach the Word. Preach “all the words.” Preach the Word as the Lord leads.
A denominational website reprinted an article of ours. Most readers were appreciative but one guy left a comment instructing me on what to preach.
“You ought to be preaching on racism,” he said. “The churches are full of it.”
He came back later with a post script. “After the church shooting in South Carolina, the sale of Confederate flags and guns went through the roof. Yet the churches were silent. This is sinful.”
Interesting. He says the churches are full of racism and silent on the subject. You wonder how he knows this.
“Why not rather be wronged?” (I Corinthians 6:7)
Ask any pastor.
We hear it all the time. Variations on this theme are endless…
–“All these years we have belonged to this church and given our money to support these preachers, and now when we need him, he’s in Israel on a holy land tour!”
–“I went by the church. I needed to see the preacher then, not the next day. And you’re not going to believe this, but he was on his way out the door, headed to his son’s little league game! And me a member of his flock. What kind of preachers are we getting these days?”
–“The preacher needs to apologize to me for what he implied in that sermon on Sunday. I know he was talking about me, even though he used someone else’s name.”
And one that happened in my last pastorate…
No one ever told Superman, “You be strong now.” Strong was his middle name.
No one ever told Adrian Rogers, “Preach a good sermon now.” They never told Warren Wiersbe to “Give us a good Bible study.” It was what they did.
Words such as “Be strong” and “Be courageous” were given to the weak, the hesitant, the young.
Take the words “Be strong and of good courage.” Moses told Israel to do that in Deuteronomy 31:6. One verse later, Moses told Joshua to “be strong and of good courage.” Same chapter, verse 23, Moses commissioned Joshua to lead God’s people and said to him, “Be strong and of good courage.”
Are you with me now? Then, get this…
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
One of the most productive things any minister does is spend time with a good friend bouncing ideas and stories off each other.
Their wives might not appreciate what they are accomplishing–it looks a lot like fun and if she is the left-brained pragmatic one in the family, she can cite a list of a hundred things her preacher-husband could be doing. But let the ministers insist. Resist. Persist.
A pastor friend and I were in my office one morning, bouncing ideas and stories off each other. My favorite thing to do.
Somehow we began discussing the Amazon River. I have no idea how that happened.
Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. (Luke 6:26)
Let’s just come right out and say it up front:
Unless someone is not constantly on your case, mad at you, irritated, and upset with you all the time, you are most likely not doing anything of importance. You are not a leader.
The would-be leader who fails to recognize this will be constantly bewildered by the reactions of the people he/she has been sent to serve.
The new pastor comes to a church with a divine mandate. This is not pious talk. The preacher has been called by God into the ministry and sent by Him to this church. If that’s not a divine mandate, nothing is. So, he proceeds to take the reins and lead out. To his utter amazement, the very people he expected to welcome his ministry, to support his vision, to affirm his godliness, to volunteer their service, do anything but what they should. Many of them stand back and carp and criticize and find fault.
Not always, thankfully. But too often.
This was the last thing the pastor needed or expected.
Being human, he may begin to wonder: Did I make a mistake in coming here? Am I doing something wrong? Are these people not God’s children? Should I stay? Should I leave?
My answer: You’re doing just fine, preacher. Stay the course. After all….
About when you think you’ve heard it all….
A pastor friend told me this.
From time to time, members of my old church–the one where I came to know the Lord and was baptized, was ordained as a deacon and later to the ministry–will tell me they want me to be their new pastor. They do, that is, just as soon as they get rid of the one they’ve got.
I will confess that I’ve thought from time to time maybe the Lord might send me back there to pastor. It’s just a thought, you understand.
But when people say that to me, I tell them, ‘Okay, here is the only way I would want to become your pastor. Go see your present pastor. Tell him that you are going to support him 100 percent, that you are going to pray for him every day and be his biggest encourager. Then, if and when the Lord leads him away, if God tells me to become your pastor, I would be honored.’
Invariably, though, they say to me, ‘But he’s not giving good leadership. The church is suffering under him. He needs to go.’
I tell them, ‘Maybe he would if you would love him and encourage him and pray for him. If you would go out of your way to assure him you are supporting him and that he can count on you a hundred percent. You’d be amazed what that does to a pastor.’
Frankly, that is not what they want to hear.
Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)
You will know the name Jimmy Doolittle.
He flew bi-planes in World War I for the United States, and then barn-stormed throughout the 1920’s, thrilling auiences by taking risks you would not believe. He led the retaliatory bombing of Tokyo in early 1942, a few months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. He played a major role in the Allied victory over the Axis, eventually becoming a General. His autobiography is titled I Could Never Be So Lucky Again. It’s well worth reading.
Doolittle and his wife Joe (that’s how they spelled her name) had two sons, Jim and John, both of whom served in the Second World War.
The general wrote about the younger son:
John was in his plebe year at West Point and the upperclassmen were harassing him no end…. While the value of demeaning first-year cadets is debatable, I was sure “Peanut” could survive whatever they dreamed up. (p. 284)
Later, General Doolittle analyzes his own strengths and weaknesses and makes a fascinating observation: