With a heart to encourage pastors, this has been a frequent inquiry.
May I share a recent response in hopes of encouraging you, too?
While engaged in a morning conversation with a pastor of over 40 years experience, I asked, “What keeps you encouraged in ministry?” His reply took him back to his early days. He said, “I had an old pastor say to me, ‘If I had to do it over again, I would spend the first hours of the morning in prayer and Bible study.’ Being young and cocky I bypassed his exhortation and set out to push programs in ministry; to get the job done my way.” With tears now coursing down his cheeks, he said, “In the past five years, God has broken me and made me become a man of intercessory prayer.”
Pastor, there is no greater place to be encouraged in ministry than at the feet of Jesus! John 15:4-5 records the blessed, encouraging, directive words of Christ as He spoke to His disciples in the Upper Room, and now to us, Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Psalm 73 depicts Asaph wrestling over the apparent prosperity of the wicked in this life versus the sorrows of the righteous. His viewpoint changed when he went into the sanctuary of God (73:17). Spurgeon says it so well in his Treasury of David commentary . . . “His mind entered the eternity where God dwells as in a holy place, he left the things of sense for the things invisible, his heart gazed within the veil, he stood where the thrice holy God stands. Thus he shifted his point of view, and apparent disorder resolved itself into harmony.”
Where is your “sanctuary”? Yes, we are indwelt now by the Trinity (John 14) in the inner man so we do not go to the temple to meet with God, but where is that place to which you resort to cry out to God . . . to share your burdens, your anguish, your sorrows, your discouragements, your need of abiding in the Vine? Where’s that quiet place that in the midst of your darkness you run to your God whose ear is open to your cry (Psalm 34:15)?
Asaph ends Psalm 73 with these words, But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all Your works (73:28).
Pastor friend, after a long day serving on Sunday, the Lord is waiting to meet you in the sanctuary to encourage your heart, to hear your burdens, and to receive your praise.
“If I had to do it over again, I would spend the first hours of the morning in prayer . . . .”
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