What Destroys more pastors than anything else? Stress. We examine the minister and how he handles stress to cope and relieve that stress.

What Destroys more Pastors than anything else?

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funconWhat Destroys more pastors than anything else? Stress. We examine the minister and how he handles stress to cope and relieve that stress.

In our day, everybody is under a lot of stress. One of the factors which causes a lot of stress is finances. What we earn compared to the level of life we want or expect just to live doesn’t match up in the majority of the cases. Factor in children which enter adulthood and have the same financial stress, or the minister’s parents having financial stress, and this becomes unbearable.

The majority of people become very stressful, focusing their lives on “making more money”. Some take what little they earn, save it, invest it, and look for benefits in the future. Our world economy does not lend that much help, because banks and businesses are not paying much in the way of interest anywhere it seems. Other just work harder, and that is very stressful, and causes health problems, which is counter productive at some point because medicine and doctors add to the financial stress.

See Pastor Stress Statistics

From that page, we can see the toll and damage done to people in the ministry. A lot of pastors “burn out” of their ministries and quit. This is because they cannot handle the stress, the situations dominate them instead of the pastor dominating his situations, his problems.

As a point of my personal point of view, I am a missionary and a pastor on the foreign mission field. I studied for this in college, and I have been doing exactly this since my college. I have seen missionaries come to the mission field, and leave within their first term (4 years). I live by support from churches in the United States, and we have traveled to most of the states doing deputation work. I have seen pastors of stateside churches also come in after I have started as a missionary, younger than I am, and leave the ministry. It is sad.

But I hold on to a few concepts that to me, they are gold in this area. Firstly, your salvation and relationship with God have everything to do with stress and burn out. The job of the ministry is nothing easy. But the minister has to realize that the “work” of the ministry is spiritual as much as physical. Anybody can buy a book of sermons and just read from it every Sunday morning for a $40 book buy.

But the constant dealing with people with problems is what the ministry is about, and that emotionally and spiritually just wears down a person so that the minister commits “the mortal sin” of the ministry.

The Mortal Sin:

Letting other people’s problems become your problem.

In a minute, I will flip this totally around, i.e. the ministry is exactly that. But first, the minister has to separate his own personal life from other people he serves, and their problems. The ministry is all about helping people in their lives, but at the same time, if a minister is going to not get burned out, he has to reserve himself, his own energies, and his spirit from getting too involved in people’s problems. We do a job, and to not be “burned out”, the minister has to understand what God requires of him as a minister.

Everything has to revolve around the Word of God. I cannot pay other people’s personal bills, because they are not my responsibility to do that. I can advise them what the principles of God are by exegeting, reading, explaining what those principles are. Many pastors lose everything in this point. They give their opinion. Nobody wants to know your personal opinion, they want a remedy that works. The only remedy that works is to go to the Word of God, understand what we should be doing, and do that, and what we should not be doing, and not do that, and if you are very smart and astute, understand the why, the motive behind those first two things.

Divorce advice from a totally biblical focus is disaster, even if in the short run, it looks to work. People’s problems are because they are separated from God. All blessings come from God, and nothing Satan can gin up looking like a blessing will be a true blessing with eternal duration.

The Sickness: Sin. The Medicine: The Word of God

So a minister applies the Word of God “medicine” to the sickness caused by sin. He has to keep that always in mind. When you counsel people, and they refuse to heed God’s Word, there is nothing more to be done except pray for that soul. Cooperation by the individual in changing their lives to conform to God’s will is the only viable solution.

The problem of ministry burn-out is when things get mixed up for whatever reason, and the application of biblical principles gets too distanced from the minister. He gives good advice to others, but he doesn’t follow that same good advice in his own life.

This boils down to his salvation. He is acting like a Christian minister, not being a Christian minister. This is the mortal sin here. Everything is a sham, and with time, shams have the bitter tendencies to fall apart. When a person is not sincere in his own relationship with God, disaster has taken its number and in waiting to arrive in your life.

Consider that Jesus is the Wisdom of God (Proverbs 8), and He is the Word or message, or the logos, working underlying principles of God’s message to sinful mankind (John 1:1-2). When we apply Scripture to life, we are really bringing the Savior to bear on the problems of life.

The Ministry:

The minister takes on the burdens of the people.

Having planted that we are separate from our charge, the sheep, then we can understand what our charge is. A minister is a Christian who is called to minister as an undershepherd for Christ. There is only one real good reason to be a minister, and that is because of your personal relationship with Christ. That forces you to minister. When a minister “burns out”, that burn out and the lead up to that burn out focuses on the why you are a minister in the first place.

Your Calling as a Minister

I heard someone once say, if you can do anything else OTHER THAN THE MINISTRY, you should quit the ministry and do that. The idea here is that the ministry is only for those people who have such a relationship with God that they cannot do anything else. There is no plan B. I see people quit the ministry and go to their plan B. Oh that they would have gone to plan B from the beginning, and they would have saved a lot of people a lot of bad ministering, because if you are not fully committed to the ministry of serving God’s body, you will do whatever you do poorly.

John 21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
John 21:16 He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
John 21:17 He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
John 21:18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.

Further in the next verses, Peter responds asking about another disciple, probably John Mark who had access to the trial scene of Christ (some kind of connections there), and he was a witness of what actually happened in the trial of Jesus. What about him, Jesus, what should we do to him or with him?

Blame Shifting is the Wrong Move

But when our loyalties to Jesus are questioned by the Master, the human nature in us tends to shift the blame to others. “Yes, I am failing, but look at the others that have more blame than me!” The point here is that nobody can be compared to any other person except to Jesus’ moral example. You stand or fall only on the single point of your obedience to the will of God. That is success or failure.

So we see that “other people’s opinions” tend to cloud and confuse the minister’s thinking. It makes no difference how bright other lights are shining, God wants you to do faithfully the task he has assigned you to do. You can do more than others and still fail at this will of God for your life, and you can do less than others and still be a total success in God’s eyes. God gives gifts that define His tasks for His ministers, and according to how God has distributed the amount and quality of those gifts, thus will success be defined.

Do not Incorrectly Define Success

I am a pastor for more than 40 years. I wish I could say that 90% of the people I have served in the ministry are saved, growing in the Lord, and successful Christians. The truth is that I doubt 10% of the people sitting under my ministry would even come close to that goal.

Why? Why do I fail? This is a question that will cause a minister to get depressed, meditate in a dark place on it, and eventually cause a ministry disaster. But the question can be settled very clearly, and every minister needs to understand this very early in his ministry. I see two reasons why I have spiritual failures in my ministry, among my flock.

As a Minister, I didn’t Follow God’s Will nor His Word

If a person is a mature adult, he needs to accept his own wrong doing and deal with it. Confession and abandonment followed by doing what is right is the only correction acceptable here. But I find so many Pastors who study the Bible in an asceptic way, with no personal involvement. Furthermore, this gets worse because they develop a whole culture of the same in their people and their ministry.

If you are wondering what this would look like in the nitty gritty, application of the spiritual principles we preach and teach. I understand this in the concept of moral change. Everything we do in the ministry is or should be directed towards moral change. I get really disgusted hearing sermons that have no application. Yes, it would be beneficial to know all the names of each tribe of Israel and of the 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ. But we put so much energy into “facts” that we never get to how those facts can change our lives. We miss the the forest because we focus on a tree.

To me, the crux of the ministry is this work of the principles of God bearing on sin and changing the sinner’s actual life. Too many pastors and Christians focus on getting to heaven to miss the why we need saving in the first place, because of our sins. We want the ticket to heaven, put it in your back pocket and forget about it.

A few examples here are in order.

John 3 – Nicodemus

Nicodemus was a rabbi, a religious teacher who knew their Scriptures very well, the Old Testament. So why did Jesus in His eternal wisdom meet and have a discussion with Nicodemus say what he said? “Ye must be born again?” Because Nicodemus knew the facts of Judaism very well, but his problem was that he was still unsaved. He was a professional preacher and religious teacher that was unsaved. (Nicodemus would fit in well in our modern Christianity).

The point here is very simple, without that moral, spiritual being born again, his religion would win him one of the hottest seats in hell. All his life would have been in vain. If you can picture for a minute that Nicodemus was a PhD president of a Bible College, of a Bible Seminary, and Jesus was telling him this, confronting him like this? Jesus thought it was essential, yet we would never do such a thing.

Paul 2 Cor 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

What was Paul’s point? Isn’t it the same as Jesus with Nicodemus? If there is not actual moral change within the person, they are not saved.

Repentance is the other side of Faith

Faith is what saves us. There can be no other human action that accounts for the Bible’s teaching. But faith is like a coin, and on one side, it is faith, and the otehr side it is repentance. Both are the same in a sense. Repentance is what you abandon, and faith is what you put in its place.

James 2

James plants the same concept in differentiating between dead faith and live faith. You can “believe” (outward public confession of what you “believe”) and that not save you. Living faith is what is guiding your life. The just will live by faith, or their faith will be the guide of the life. (Habakkuk 2:2; Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38)

To me, I see burned out ex-ministers, and many, not all of them, are people who never got this memo. They have to live what they preach, and not just live from what they preach. The stress and burn-out come and destroy their lives because they never really used their ministry to minister to their own soul first.

As an aside, the best sermons I have every preached in my life were the ones that I started studying a topic because somebody needed such a topic clarified in their lives, but in the study process, that very spiritual principle began to eat away at me, and I broke down and had to repent and change my own life first. Preach that kind of sermon every Sunday and you will not be worrying about paying the bills, but where to put all the people.

As a Child of God, the People left God’s Will and Word.

We cannot forget that each individual has a free will. They do what they wan to do. Would you say Isaiah had a successful ministry or was his ministry a disaster? Yes to both. It was not because Isaiah did his ministry wrong, or didn’t deal with the sins of the people. All of the Old Testament prophets did exactly that, to get Israel back on track with their relationship to the Savior. But in the end, God rejected Israel and took up the Gentile church.

Analyzing this, the reason for “the failure” (people being lost, believers going astray) was not Isaiah’s fault. He did his ministry, the task that God gave him, and he did it well from everything we see in Scripture. Jesus does not berate the Old Testament prophets because they didn’t do their jobs well, but he did berate the people of Israel because they didn’t respond.

Verses

Isaiah 6:10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

Mark 4:12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. Mark 8:18 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?

Matthew 13:14 And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: Matthew 13:15 For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

John 12:40 He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

Note very carefully that this hard-heartedness, in reference to moral change, is an obvious sign of an unsaved state. Without this moral change, these people are not saved, no matter how much Bible information is in their heads. Many pastors would do well to stop informing their people of Bible information, and try to teach a spiritual principle from a passage and make them understand it, with the objective to apply it and change their lives. This hinges on a true “living faith” salvation. That is our goal in the ministry. Being blessed after that (what is the true concept of grace, receiving something good that is undeserved, mercy is pardon) is an extra. But the essential goal is conversion.

Where did I go wrong?

You didn’t start with your own salvation and relationship with God. That is what counts. A minister does what he does because of Christ. If you have any other motive, you do not have a biblical calling. You will end up washed out, worn out, and broken yourself.

What I want to look at in this article is to identify important factors and try to fix them so that they do not wear a person down. Most often, these things in themselves are not do-or-die problems. They are things Satan’s puts on a Christian to make him come to a breaking point, so that he gives in to sin, despair, and in general is miserable for long times to ruin his Christian life and ministry.

The Simple Solution

The simple answers here are as follows: (1) Trust in the Lord and follow what He says explicitly, and accept whatever comes as the will of God. (2) Meditate on the Bible to find solutions to your problems.

For the not so simple solution, we will need to get into specifics, and delve deeply into our personalities and our ministry.

Defining and Solving Depression

Depression is a spiritual problem.

Depression is not emotional, nor is it physical, it is spiritual. Yet we need to understand that spiritual problems affect us emotionally and physically. The only good solution is spiritual.

The key point in understanding depression is to understand that all good is concentrated in God, in His being, in His nature, and the only way for us to be benefitted by that is “by being near God”. That is not a place we go to physically, but it is a place we seek spiritually.

James 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

See Bs44 The Blessing of God’s Presence

When God is “near us” (really God is always present with us, so we draw near to God, and walk away from God, and we are the variable here, not God), we are blessed AND ENCOURAGED. Depression is when Satan sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, “God doesn’t love you any more. God doesn’t care about what happens to you. God doesn’t even know or care to know that you exist or your life’s problems.” When we “listen” to him, then depression enters in.

The effects of depression

The first effect of depression is a lack of energy, or energy misplaced. The paralyzing of the roaring lion, or the prey jumping but not away from danger but into that danger. But simply put, depression changes your life for the worse, never for the better. That is the key sign it is from Satan and not God.

God wants us to be happy, because we walk in the ways of the Lord. Where God is, there is peace, contentment, fulfilment of God’s will. Those spiritual virtues that give good mental and spiritual health are never coming from depression, but from a close walk with God.

In the end, depression goes from inactivity to suicide. Inactivity makes things worse, by the way. Misplaced activity also makes things worse. Depression causes a person to “not think straight” about what to do next. Then there comes, “I don’t want a next.”

As a counselor,

I have to insist that this depression goes against the grain of being saved. Saved people get depressed a lot. But the solution to their depression is their faith. They are not engaging whole-heartedly in their salvation. When they do engage, God give them joy. Joy is a focus on the heavenly, the eternal. Nobody can take the salvation from the redeemed, so why does anything anybody here do to you matter? Take it, and smile. Say to yourself, “But I am going to be with Jesus in the end.”

Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

What overpowers us, or should overpower us, is God who deals with people on an eternal level. Fear nobody that can do you harm in this world. Fear Him who can harm you here and in eternity. Live is respect of Him.

See PC68 Confidence, or worry dealing with Stress

Stress is the Problem

Stress is when you worry or occupy your mind with matters that you probably cannot change anyway. It is much more productive if you analyze what you can do to change for the better your problems, and leave those that you cannot change yourself to the Lord in prayer.

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Cats hunt prey. When they do, they are silent. The point is that the prey should not know that they are being stalked. So when a lion roars, why reveal himself? Because he feels that he is close enough to jump and catch his prey, but the roaring serves his purpose. Hearing the sudden roar of a jumping lion, the prey momentarily freezes, is paralyzed, and then he jumps into action.

Satan uses the same thing on us. By fear, by stressing us in the extreme, we become paralyzed. What happens when a minister is stressed out? Does he pray, does he study his Bible, does he witness? No. He is inactive. He is depressed and does nothing. That is the same principle. The best medicine for stress is work. But we need to work inteligently. In other words, we need to direct our work or energies at solving the problems before us, and focusing on what we should be doing all along.

The startled animal may jump on sensing the lion, but if his energy is misdirected, he will jump into the lion’s grasp, which is worse for him.

Stress is both a problem and a blessing.

Only when we are under stress (it seems) that we will exert ourselves. Having something “worrying us,” means that it is foremost in our minds. We should handle stress in a way that channels that “stress and worring” into energy to solve problems and get things done. Again, I repeat, there are things that God obligates us as Christians in our own lives and as ministers to do. But we need to very keenly separate what can change the stressful situation, and what cannot. Release yourself from what you cannot change, and focus on what you can. Contentment enters here to accept what God send you. See Job. For being happy and content with God’s dealing in your life when everything is falling apart and stressful, Job is the perfect example.

Handle Stress by Channeling the Issue into Helpful Sermons

As a pastor for 40 years, dealing with churches and people is stressful. But this is the calling, to hande other people’s stress so that something productive for God is done. Personally, I channel a lot of the other people’s burdens that I take on through counseling by writing tracts and sermons that deal with the foundational problems that cause those problems. Putting it into paper or in a sermon helps others. It is beneficial for the body of Christ, and maybe to those who are in that problem if they will focus on God’s Word.

You can read various links to my tracts here where these studies have come directly from working with people on their problems. It is a blessing because you have served the body of Christ, the world, by shouldering other people’s burdens. That is essentially what God calls us to do, and that is what Jesus did when he came and died on the cross for us. This is just a projection of this love of God for mankind.

Note that, as a mnister, you are required by God to teach the whole counsel of God. As a church member, God requires them to attend church and learn. Never back off of preaching an issue because the person who needs it most isn’t there. Preach it anyway. The Lord could have intended it for somebody else, even as a preventive thing. Your accountability is to preach the truth, and it is each man’s blood on their own heads if they don’t heed that warning, or are too lazy to not even come to church to hear it.

Instead of hating all stress, accept it as a blessing and way to minister, and go with it.

See PC68 Confidence or Worrying with Stress

Dealing with problems in a spiritual way.

The entire point here is to attack stress and problems in such a way that God’s point of view comes to bear on the situation, and moral change is encouraged. The plan of God is made plain, and motives, call to action appeals are made to make a change.

Are you Saved?

This is an offensive question to ask a minister of God, but that is where we need to start. Salvation is to confess you are a sinner, and you are a sinner, have faith. But faith is a coin that has the concept of faith on one side and repentance on the other. You have to give up sin, and you have to seek and implement the righteousness of God.

While you can pass over this point saying “of course I am saved,” in many cases, what “good pastors” do before they break down, and how they break down seem to indicate that this was at the root of every one of their problems. Their personal relationship with God is missing, fractures and incorrect, or something amiss was there. This is like a doctor that is sick with a curable disease. He didn’t apply his own knowledge to his own life, and suffers for it.

As a pastor and missionary of 40+ years, how would I consider this question would affect a pastor’s breakdown? Very simply, read Hebrew 11.

Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

A Christian has a heavenly vision that overwhelms everything in his earthly life.

This means that no matter what happens here, you, as a child of God, God has something better, much better, waiting for you after you die. This is not a pie-in-the-sky cliché. It is a daily hope. It is what you live for, and what motivates you every day of your life. Yes, you will have problems in earth. So what? Everybody, saved or unsaved, spiritual or carnal Christians, have many problems. You will not be any different. What will make you different is only how you handle your problems.

You need to dominate your problems so that whether they are solved or not, they do not dominate you. Because when they dominate you, they will wear you down constantly. Ever vigilant is our motto.

1 Corinthians 9:1 Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul defends his ministry against those who claim he was a fraud. This accusation came from a church that he planted in Corinth. (So much for loyalty to your pastor.) But Paul claims that he “saw Christ”. When did Paul see Christ? I cannot find anyplace where it clearly states that Paul crossed paths with Jesus in some place.

Paul is not claiming to have a link to Christ as the 12 Apostles did (Judas’ replacement had to have walked with Christ Acts 1:20-22). He is just saying that he is saved. He saw Christ like anybody today can say that, and they are referring to coming to Christ for salvation.

Salvation is a relationship between the individual and God…

…and that relationship becomes the heartbeat of the redeemed’s life. The world becomes insignificant, because we have Christ. Christ is “our all.” This refers to the all sufficiency of Christ. With Christ, we do not need anything else. He will provide and comfort us in everything. This is as much a relationship of faith on our part in Christ, who He is, what He is in His moral character, as it is his providing for us.

But the point in our discussion is that if you are truly saved, truly have this salvation we so often speak of, where is the evidence of that? It appears very clearly in our lives. In Hebrews 11, the heroes of the Christian faith, all those mentioned in that chapter had tremendous problems in their lives, and it didn’t faze them. They continued on despite the oppression and problems, the stress. Many of those mentioned reference people who lost their lives in service to Christ, their Savior. Why are you worrying about “minor things” when those people died staying faithful to Christ? Do you not understand that how you, a saved person, react to those stressful problems is how you show and build up your faith? James 1 shows us how God wants us to have stress, tests, spiritual proving experiences to prove what we are spiritually.

The Process of Handling Problems

There is a process for handling problems, and you need to be an expert in always handling every problem with this process.

1) Identify the Problem.

Analyze it. Is the problem of your doing (because of your willful sinning, or is it somebody else that is involving you with their problem). If you sinned and caused the problem, you need to confess it to the Lord and totally abandon it. Addicts have to be handled this way, very brutally, by you. If you have sinned against others, apologize to them and ask for forgiveness.

This focuses on discernment, the preposition bin in Hebrew. Discernment is to separate a single thing into parts or two things. The concept is to separate what appears indivisible into parts, and identify what is good and desired, and what is not good, beneficial, and to be rejected.

Wisdom

Proverbs 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

Wisdom is the use of knowledge for the benefit of one’s self, or in counseling, for others. But the highest goal is understanding with wisdom. Know why your problems are there in the first place. God’s ministry of consolation (Jesus, Holy Spirit, and that ministry entrusted to believers), is all about understanding the spiritual principles of life, those that cause blessings and those that cause problems. In many situations, the counselor has to suffer first before he can counsel well others. So God uses this principle to let his beloved children fall into hard times, so that they can testify FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE how to overcome.

Consolation is basically, a dual concept, like when a person is having problems with his neighbor and goes to a lawyer “for counseling”. First, it can be considered as a rebuke when you are doing something wrong. Then it can be a “consolation” when you did what was lawful and right, and somebody is trying to make it into something that it is not. Satan is an expert at that. Just look at a Christian teen in a public school. Peer pressure is when people try to convince the Christian that what he is doing right is somehow wrong.

But the first step here is to identify correctly the problem. There can be no guessing. We have to know what God’s norms are, and this becomes easy, or if we are ignorant of the Scripture, then we are rudderless.

2) Compare the problem to Christ, our Savior.

The solution to almost every counseling problem that can be thrown before a pastor is very simple. Study what God wants us to do instead of this problem. Do that correct thing (the justice and righteousness of God), and you are a long way towards solving the problem. Marriages are fixed by studying what God commands us in that of our romantic relationship, and changing the failing conduct for that what it should be. That is the norm or standard.

See Doct25 Jesus is our moral pattern

3) Break any possible solutions or remedies into parts.

Analyze each part and how it is necessary to fix the problem. Start executing the parts and analyzing them with Scripture to see if it was a correct step, and did it work towards a fix. Wisdom can be defined as using knowledge expertly for personal advantage. You need to understand how things work in the first place in order to six what is broken. Bible knowledge and true understanding and wisdom cannot be left out. Beyond knowledge skillfully used to gain advantage (wisdom), you need to mediate on both the problems of people and the Word of God, how it is disobeyed or followed, and the consequences of each.

Again, this is discernment. Separate a whole into parts, and identify what is right and good, eternally beneficial, from what is not.

4) Use the Word of God to Guide you.

We think we are the smartest human that ever lived, but our problems seem to discover that we are not. Most preachers study the Bible for their work. They preach to other people. Stop doing that exclusively, and add to that, study to change your own spiritual life. Faith is believing what doesn’t seem to be logical. You cannot “see” an object of faith. You have to spiritually know that it is true. Moreover, you have to have confidence in the infinite wisdom of God. No repairman can fix a broken product like the person who designed and made it. God is our designer and maker.

I will risk saying something that people may take a different point of view from mine on. EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM relating to salvation, the Christian life, pleasing God, and every sin man or demon can possibly throw at humanity is answered in the Word of God. You just have to “discern” this issue and find out what God says about it. Then go to that.

5) Your wife is part of you and your ministry.

You are one flesh with her, one body. What stresses you, stresses her. What stresses her, stresses you. I wonder if most pastors (and laymen) understand how much a good wife really adds to your life and ministry. We do not appreciate our wives like we should. But do not think that she is a box of chocolates. You make that relationship good because you invest in it. You make it good by treating her well.

Wives are a blessing of God, but that is when there is harmony and peace, both being “on the same page.” When they are not, such a bad wife can really wear down a man. Equally the opposite, an unsaved or unspiritual husband can wear down his wife. But while the minister has a lot that he himself has to shoulder, a good wife makes things more bearable.

6) Deal with defeat intelligently.

As a minister, we are not required by God to be successful, have bold brilliant and showy results. We are called to obey God’s will, and “let the chips fall where they will.” I have been depressed many times in my ministry for “lack of results.” But what is that? And who convinced me that it is the most important?

Consider the ministries of the Old Testament prophets. How many times did they give their entire lives to doing the will of God only to have Israel not listen. Or they listen with a deaf ear (not reacting correctly to what is said), or just turning on them to persecute the prophets? Were they successful in God’s eyes or not? I say they were great successes. The people they ministered to were great failures. That is not for me or you to judge really, we do the job, we do it well, and we do it exactly as God tells us to do it.

7. Handle Depression. 

We need to define and clearly understand depression. But first, depression is a feeling, that often leads to coping mechanisms like alcohol, pornography, drugs, etc., and can end up with suicide. But depression comes when you listen to Satan. What does Satan say to you when he is trying to depress you?

“God is not hearing nor helping you, because God is far away. He has his eyes closed, or is asleep, or went on a vacation to a far away place.” All of these focus on your relationship with God, that God is not near you. That is how the downfall happens. Not only does God not near you, the majority or all of the people around you aren’t with you; they want to destroy you.

See bs44 The Blessing of the Presence of God. In this tract, I explain the Bible’s position that all blessing is in the presence of God, and comes from God. The worst part of hell is that none of those blessings nor mercy are available to the inhabitants of hell.

Depression is how you feel inside. It can be controlled. Everybody in the world has depression to some degree at some time. Many turn to an addiction to “cope,” which means that doesn’t fix the problem causing depression, it just makes you forget (for a while). Most often the coping becomes its own problem, and the problems always return. Many Christians turn to chocolate in order to cope. When they have health problems, they finally can get a glimpse at the conclusion, that didn’t help me really.

See pc15 How to handle Depression.

8. Buck up.

Continue on with what you know is right, even if you have problems.

The entire point of the book of Job is exactly this. What a true believer does, reacts, when his whole life goes to trash. Job lost everything (except his wife that didn’t help him much at all, “Curse God and die” is a poor way to counsel and comfort a suffering soul). But Job’s spiritual fabric of his soul is on exhibition in the entire book. His friends were pretty useless also. He basically stood alone, and the entire ending of Job is that he really didn’t understand why God allowed this. But his life was dedicated to his Savior, and he just kept on being faithful.

You can very hardly help other people if you don’t know what their problems are. You hear the words, but you have never felt the pain. A millionaire from birth cannot understand what financial problems really are. If you have gone through a bankrupcy, you are probably better experienced to counsel and comfort those going through the same.

So we need to understand the place of problems, situations that God very much controls, and He could exempt you from them, but He doesn’t because He has His purposes for you to minister to others. Give thanks to God in everything, even your problems and stress of life, even in your crises.

See

9. Prayer changes things.

Believe in the power of prayer. Understand that prayer is a spiritual function of what you are before God. God listens to the prayer of a just man. If your prayers are not heard by God, do you have unconfessed, undealt with sin? Go there and explore.

We can talk piously about prayer and how powerful and needy it is, but as they say, “the rubber meets the road” when you have to depend on prayer for accomplish things. So many Christians of our day use prayer as a powerless commandment that they do, but it has no real effect in changing their lives. This is sad. Truthfully, prayer does not work at all if your spiritual life is such a disaster that God will not listen nor answer your desires. You are so far from the will of God, that even your requests are just tainted, and God cannot help you much.

<strong>James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Prayer is only powerful when the person praying is humbled by his sin before God, and his life is lived righteously. With those conditions, prayer can be very effectual. But prayer is not a magical incantation. It is a conversation with God. God sees you for what you are, and hypocrisy disappears with God. His treatment of you depends on your spiritual life. There is no other way to look at this. Prayer is a powerful weapon.

But do spiritual and people who are just and have effectual prayer not have problems?

God called Job “just”.

Job 1:8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

I do not know your personal theology, but if you are a Calvinist, how do you harmonize that there is nothing that any person can do that pleases God with this verse. From the very mouth of God before Satan (who is a critical audience, if it were not true, Satan would have countered God’s declaration, and he did, but God proved to Satan the reality of his pronouncement of “just Job”.) We cannot accept any theology that is disjunctive with what we see in Scripture.

We see Job praying for his children. He believed in the power of prayer. But prayer is more than just asking for trinkets from God. Prayer is conversing with God, and this brings prayer into another perspective. Praying with God, talking through situations with God is extremely important. You pray to understand what God does to you in your own personal life. This is whether you understand God in the end or not. (Job seems clueless even at the end of the book.) But the point is the constant witness of Job’s life in continuing in his faith no matter what situation arises. That is what comes from a powerful prayer life.

Are you selfish in prayer?

Make an honest list of all the things, people and situations you pray for over a week. Then check the ones where you are praying for something that is not personally beneficial for yourself or your family. Place a cross on the ones that are “personal.” If the checks out number the crosses, then you are selfless in your prayer life. You are a minister of God. But if your time, energy, and interests are more for your own personal life, be careful. You probably should not be in the ministry, or things are bad for you. There is a problem there to root out and fix.

Responsibility Rule:

A pastor is a person who makes himself responsible to fix what is wrong.
Ancillary Rule: A man is someone who makes himself responsible to fix what is wrong in his marriage and family.

That goes for the church life, his doctrine, his preaching, his counseling. But it also goes for his personal life, his marriage life, his family life. You have to be an expert at discerning problems and their root causes, and how God makes solutions for these problems. You are an excellent counselor if you are constantly preparing yourself and others in preventative measures to help people not fall into spiritual problems in the first place.

Resolution Rule:

Preaching is the solution of our problems

God understands and has created our situation with the allowance of problems. But God also placed the solution, which is the Word of God, the message from God to problem filled man.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Both Jesus is that “Word of God”, and the Scripture is that Word of God. This is the message of God.

10. Study why God has permitted the problem into your life.

James 1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
James 1:3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

God has total control over everybody’s life. Why did God allow Job to fall into evil times? God knows, and it is up to the individual to find that reason. Look for spiritual lessons in your own failures and those of others, and form spiritual principles to keep that from happening in your life a first time or in the future. James 1 presents two concepts, a trying or test, and a temptation. We try a metal to make it purer, and to make it stronger. The suffering of the saints is the foundation of biblical ministry of consolation. We suffer so that we can console others.

A temptation is again to see how spiritually strong you are. In life, only tried metal products are the ones that are useful. God has to try you with problems before you are really any good to God. Understand that. Your conviction, your faithfulness, no matter what disease happens in your personal life or your ministry, is what God is pounding like the blows of a blacksmith on a piece of iron. When working with metal, it is either the fiery furnace or the hard pounding blows of the blacksmith.

The reason for this is that God wants us as gold, not dross.

What Destroys more pastors than anything else?

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